Critical Food Issues [2 volumes]: Problems and State-of-the-Art Solutions Worldwide

How to go to your page This eBook contains two volumes. In the printed version of the book, each volume is paginated se...

Author: Laurel Phoenix | Lynn Walter

137 downloads 1388 Views 2MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

How to go to your page This eBook contains two volumes. In the printed version of the book, each volume is paginated separately. To avoid duplicate page numbers in the electronic version, we have inserted a volume number before the page number, separated by a hyphen. For example, to go to page 5 of Volume 1, type 1-5 in the “page #” box at the top of the screen and click “Go.” To go to page 5 of Volume 2, type 2-5… and so forth.

Critical Food Issues: Problems and State-of-the-Art Solutions Worldwide

This page intentionally left blank

Critical Food Issues: Problems and State-of-the-Art Solutions Worldwide Volume 1: Environment, Agriculture, and Health Concerns

Edited by

Laurel E. Phoenix

PRAEGER An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC

Copyright 2009 by Laurel E. Phoenix All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Critical food issues : problems and state-of-the-art solutions worldwide. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-313-35444-1 (set: hard copy: alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-313-35446-5 (vol. 1: hard copy: alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-313-35448-9 (vol. 2: hard copy: alk. paper)— ISBN 978-0-313-35445-8 (set: ebook)—ISBN 978-0-313-35447-2 (vol. 1: ebook)— ISBN 978-0-313-35449-6 (vol. 2: ebook) 1. Food supply. 2. Food consumption. 3. Food—Social aspects. 4. Agriculture. 5. Produce trade. 6. Nutrition policy. I. Phoenix, Laurel E. II. Walter, Lynn, 1945HD9000.5.C733 2009 363.8—dc22 2009018999 13

12

11 10

9

1 2 3 4 5

This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

This work is dedicated to future generations. We will learn to save the seed corn for you.


Contents

Foreword Lynn Walter and Laurel E. Phoenix

ix

Preface Lynn Walter and Laurel E. Phoenix

xi

Introduction to Volume 1 Laurel E. Phoenix

xiii

Abbreviations

xxi

PART I. ENVIRONMENT 1. Water and Land-Use Policies in the United States Laurel E. Phoenix 2. Soil Degradation and Soil Conservation Patricia E. Norris and John M. Kerr 3. Integrated Pest Management, Sustainability, and Risk: Linking Principles, Policy, and Practice Michael J. Brewer and Marcia Ishii-Eiteman 4. Agrobiodiversity Vicki L. Medland

3

19

33

53

viii

5. Energy Conservation in Agriculture and Food Transport David Pimentel

Contents

69

PART II. AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES 6. Sustainable Agricultural Practices in the United States and Other Postindustrial Countries Daniel A. Cibulka 7. Sustainable Agricultural Development in Developing Countries Richard H. Bernsten and Sieglinde Snapp

81

95

8. Urban Agriculture Jim Bingen, Kathryn Colasanti, Margaret Fitzpatrick, and Katherine Nault

109

9. Achieving Sustainable Fisheries: All Hands On Deck! Tracy Dobson

123

PART III. HEALTH 10. Food Security and Food Insecurity in the United States and Their Consequences for Child Health John T. Cook

143

11. Food Security in Developing Countries John M. Staatz, Duncan H. Boughton, and Cynthia Donovan

157

12. The Effect of Agricultural Practices on Nutrient Profiles of Foods Debra Pearson

177

13. School Lunch and Breakfast Programs Sandra M. Stokes

195

14. Disordered Eating and Body Image Cheryl Toronto Kalny

213

15. Obesity Joanne Gardner

229

About the Editor and Contributors

245

Index

251

Foreword Lynn Walter and Laurel E. Phoenix Eating is one of the first things we do in life and one of the last things we do. In between our first and last bite, food sustains us, orders our days, celebrates our lives, stimulates our senses, brings us together, and sets us apart. Food is so central to our individual and collective experience that we are intimately familiar with it. But, even with all we know about food, we need to know much more; and this is as true of gourmet “foodies” as it is of those who consider food a trifle. First, we need to identify how the way that food is produced, distributed, and consumed affects human well-being as well as that of our environment and communities. Critical Food Issues: Problems and State-of-the-Art Solutions Worldwide examines many of the problems that derive from our prevailing agrifood system—from environmental degradation, resource depletion, and disordered eating, to declining rural livelihoods, food insecurity, unjust labor practices, and animal mistreatment. Second, we need to know how to address these critical food issues, which is the key question of this collection. Each chapter focuses on strategies and practices that will enhance the synergy between sustainable agrifood systems and a sound environment, healthy people, and equitable communities, locally and globally. As befits the scope of the problems, the solutions are wide-ranging—from local markets, appropriate technologies for pest management and soil improvements, and policies for better working conditions for agricultural workers to social movements for land equity and environmental quality, political consumerism, and creative and scholarly work in the arts and sciences. The critical food issues are examined by specialists from many academic disciplines who analyze the current state of research on both specific problems and potential solutions. They bring authoritative depth to their analysis of the current literature based in their specific disciplinary specializations, from environmental, nutritional, soil, and agricultural sciences; public health and dietetics; education; literature; history; philosophy; economics; sociology; anthropology; and gender studies. Most of the chapters examine case studies from around the world, wherever problems are being addressed effectively; others concentrate on the United

x

Foreword

States, where the research in agrifood studies is growing in concert with the rapidly increasing number of communities, schools, farms, agencies, and businesses working on sustainable agrifood projects. Each chapter is written in jargon-free language to inform citizen and consumer engagement in the future of food and agriculture and to advance interdisciplinary agrifood studies. The breadth of the problems and solutions is examined in two volumes, generally divided into more bioenvironmental issues or more sociocultural ones. Volume 1 covers Environment, Agriculture, and Health Concerns, while Volume 2 focuses on Society, Culture, and Ethics. To an extent, the partitions between the volumes and among the sections within them are simply paper ones, because addressing the problems and solutions requires integrating knowledge from the natural sciences with the social sciences and humanities. As farmer and writer Wendell Berry observed, “Eating is an agricultural act.”1 Because eating links our bodies to the Earth, developing strategies to sustain agriculture requires considering nature in relationship to the ways humans transform it into culturally appropriate foods through social processes. Therefore, while the contributors analyze specific problems and solutions with the depth that comes from their specialization in one of the many academic disciplines represented in this collection, they share an overarching interdisciplinary problem-focus that integrates their work as a whole. That focus is on strategies to promote a sustainable symbiosis among viable agrifood systems, a sound environment, healthy people, and equitable communities. Scholars of “agro-ecology” and “the ecology of food” have conceptualized the holistic, interdisciplinary character of agrifood studies with various ecological models. The value of ecology as a framework for agrifood studies is that it takes the long-term sustainability of natural resources, the economy, and human health into consideration. As it is understood here, the ecology of agrifood framework also includes values, tastes, traditions, and an ethic of equity and justice. Because an ecology of food links health, economy, environment, community, culture, and ethics, strategies based on it should (1) provide food security for all, (2) renew and sustain the natural resource base and the biodiversity of the environment to ensure future food security, (3) build viable agrifood systems that provide for decent rural livelihoods, and (4) promote democratic access to agrifood decision-making as a basis for just and equitable communities. Encompassing all of these factors in the creation of sustainable agrifood systems will take serious thought on all our parts and knowledge of the models, ideas, and information with which to consider the problems and solutions. Whenever we think seriously about food, we evoke the past millennia during which times turning soil, water, and sunshine into sustenance was understood to depend on prayer, since food was such a precious and precarious thing. The rising call to return food to its central place in our imaginations and our politics indicates that we are once again uncertain about the future of food. Critical Food Issues: Problems and State-of-the-Art Solutions Worldwide examines the bases of our fears and ways that we might address them.

NOTE 1. Wendell Berry, “The Pleasures of Eating,” in American Food Writing, ed. Molly O’Neill (New York: Library Classics of the United States, 2007), 551–58, 552.

Preface Lynn Walter and Laurel E. Phoenix A project of the scope of Critical Food Issues: Problems and State-of-the-Art Solutions Worldwide requires a collaborative effort. Especially critical has been the work of the forty-one university researchers from around the country and around the world who have provided their academic expertise to this collection. They were asked to present complex information and ideas in a way that not only revealed the complexity of their subjects but also communicated it across the disciplinary boundaries. Communication among the many different disciplinary specialists depended on their commitment to the goals of the project as a whole—first, to provide the public with the information necessary to address the critical foods issues confronting the world today; and second, to contribute to the development of a new interdisciplinary field of food studies. Given the range of disciplines represented here— from environmental, nutritional, and agricultural sciences, to literature, history, philosophy, economics, sociology, anthropology, and psychology—this was no easy task. The knowledge integration process has been institutionally supported by the fact that the editors and some of the contributors are faculty members at the Center for Food in Community and Culture at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay. The mission of the center is reflected in the central interdisciplinary problem-focus of this collection, which is to promote “interdisciplinary scholarship to enhance the synergy between sustainable food systems and a sound environment, healthy people, and equitable communities, locally and globally.” Its work is reinforced by the innovative, interdisciplinary structure of the university’s mission, in which the faculty is encouraged to cross the traditional boundaries of knowledge within the broad frameworks of ecology and engaged citizenship. We are indebted to Debora Carvalko and Elizabeth Potenza from Praeger and Rebecca L. Edwards of Cadmus Communications for their editorial support. At the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, we relied on Katie Stilp for editorial assistance with the manuscript production. We are grateful for their efforts, their talents, and their encouragement.

xii

Preface

Lynn Walter personally thanks her friends and colleagues Katherine Hall, Diane Legomsky, and Judy Martin for reading and reviewing her work throughout the process. Finally, none of this would have been possible if it were not for the fact that people around the world, farmers and farmworkers, chefs, family cooks, gardeners, artisan food producers, community activists, journalists, and scientists, are awakening us to the critical food issues and to ways that we might learn from their experience. We recognize their work in ours and hope we have done it justice.

Introduction to Volume 1 Laurel E. Phoenix Food binds us—to past generations of peoples and places, and across oceans to those who benefit or suffer from our food choices. Food unites us—when we have time to share a meal. It divides us through access—the haves and have nots in city, nation, and world. Eating also shapes us—much of our health and happiness is derived from our relationship with food. For something we need so critically, it is worrying that we do not know what we should know about what we eat. Complex systems prompt growers to select their seeds, coax crops to harvest, transport food from farm to factory to market, and entice us to buy and consume. What we buy then perpetuates the current agrifood system, while weakening human health and destabilizing Earth’s environmental systems. Critical Food Issues: Problems and State-of-the-Art Solutions Worldwide identifies a variety of traditional and innovative strategies to restructure policies and practices related to food. Urbanization has distanced many generations from their rural beginnings and the arts of agriculture. Seldom do we think of the soil, air, sunlight, and water as elements within our daily meals. These fundamentals, so basic that they are easily overlooked, were once acknowledged by cultures offering prayers to Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.1 Industrial development based on fossil fuel use moved people out of the fields into urban factories. The subsequent application of fossil fuels and new technology to farming evicted even more farmers and farmworkers from the land, a trend that continues to this day. The last three generations have witnessed an accelerating use of and dependence on fossil fuels and technology that have reshaped our food systems and promoted Western cultural and agricultural ideals around the world. These energy and technology inputs were lauded in the Green Revolution, which helped to feed another doubling of the world’s population. Thus, millions more were added to the planet before the constraints of land, soil, water, energy, and technology became evident.2 The consumption patterns of the global north and the rising populations of the global south now reinforce each other in their pressure on agricultural lands.

xiv

Introduction to Volume 1

We are surely at, or beyond, the natural limits of the Earth to supply our needs unless we begin to change our approach to food and agriculture. A range of disciplinary research is collected here to demonstrate multilevel approaches and strategies to solve the environmental and access problems related to food. The purpose of this volume is to draw the reader’s eye to a web of systems, natural and human, that currently produce and deliver our food: the natural resources providing the agricultural inputs to grow the crops and the policies and practices that either obstruct or promote sustainable agriculture and healthy populations. The fifteen chapters of Volume I are divided into three parts: Environment, Agriculture and Fisheries, and Health. The environment section lays the groundwork for reviewing the status of the natural resources upon which our food supply depends: soil, water, plants, animals, and energy. Next, the relationship between natural resources and laws, policies, and grassroots efforts to achieve sustainable agriculture and fisheries are examined. Finally, the health section discusses the connection between poverty and access to food security, the ways government or corporate policies affect access to food and affect its nutritional content, and the spectrum of health disorders related to our food choices.

ENVIRONMENT We cannot ensure food security if we degrade our environment. How we manage the land and water and organisms that live on or within them determine not only the quality of the food we eat, but how quickly we destroy the environment’s capacity to support current populations, much less future ones. In chapter 1, Laurel E. Phoenix introduces the issues of the fragmentation of water- and land-use policies in the United States, and how these policies affect or are affected by agriculture. The lack of coherent policy acknowledging the fundamental physical linkage between land and water results in policy too narrowly focused on land or on water. The lack of policy coordination leads to contradictory decisions being made at different government levels. Because the allocation, use, and environmental protection policies of land and water are developed independently and without a focus on food security, they simultaneously encourage the loss of agricultural farmland and perpetuate the unsustainable externalities (i.e., soil, water, and habitat degradation and low-quality food) of industrial agriculture. Because elements, nutrients, pathogens, and chemicals are endlessly transported and recycled between soil, water, and crops, land- and water-use policies must be integrated together with agricultural policy. And, yet, she argues that citizens have powerful ways to influence the way municipalities develop their comprehensive land-use plans. More challenging for citizen action is the strengthening of laws that allocate or protect water so that waters can be managed sustainably. Phoenix provides models for legal and administrative reformation at state and federal levels. In chapter 2 on soil degradation and conservation, Patricia E. Norris and John M. Kerr further examine the land allocation policies or agricultural practices that degrade soil, and point out numerous strategies used around the world to improve and rehabilitate it. They note that soil degradation has on- and off-site impacts and emphasize that beyond typical regulation and subsidy policies, socioeconomic


xv

factors that are barriers to adopting conservation practices must also be addressed. For example, they examine issues beyond farmers’ personal annual income that constrain soil conservation, such as cash flow, access to credit, or lack of collective action by all farmers in the landscape. In addition to concerns about the impacts of soil, land, and water depletion on agricultural production, another problem is getting crops to harvest without losing too much to pests or disease. Providing a detailed examination of the Integrated Pest Management (IPM) system, Michael J. Brewer and Marcia Ishii-Eiteman in chapter 3 discuss the history and current practice of IPM, and survey policy options for supporting it. They explore the difficulty of balancing the risks to the environment, human health, and societal consequences when selecting particular methods for pest management and offer a rubric by which the sustainability of an IPM tactic can be determined. A case study in Indonesia provides a powerful illustration of how to introduce a new strategy to farmers in a way that they will accept it and ultimately promote it themselves. This example underscores the fact that top-down regulation is not effective by itself, but that the knowledge base and constraints of farmers doing the actual work for any sustainable practice has to be considered. The Farmer Field Schools described in this case study are a powerful peer method to promote sustainable practices. A discussion of animals as pests is only one aspect of the relationship of plants and animals to agriculture. In contrast to the focus of chapter 3, beneficial plant and animal species in agriculture are viewed through the lens of agrobiodiversity in Vicki L. Medland’s chapter 4. She examines the planned biodiversity of the domesticated species on a farm as well as the wild species (i.e., worms, mites, beetles) that support agricultural productivity. To reverse the trend of industrial monocultures, agrobiodiversity emphasizes the resilient nature of biodiverse ecosystems and the free inputs they supply that reduce agricultural input costs. Medland describes several organizations supportive of revitalizing traditional agricultural knowledge. For example, DIVERSITAS conducts and shares research in many countries. It is focused on using the natural capital of ecosystem services combined with increasing diversity of seed and animal species. Many of these practices are drawn from more traditional, indigenous practices. Sustainable agriculture is not just about what happens on a farm. After the crops are harvested, how they get from rural farms to urban consumers is also a critical issue. A study of energy inputs for U.S. food transportation provides data highlighting the enormous amount of fossil fuel energy expended on contemporary U.S. food distribution relative to the energy provided by the food itself. David Pimentel’s chapter 5 contrasts the “fuel” in the food (i.e., cabbage and lettuce) with the fuel expended to traverse vast distances. The relative energy inefficiencies of trucks are detailed and compared to the even greater inefficiencies generated by transporting food by air. He focuses on fossil fuel inputs because our future no longer includes cheap, plentiful oil. Roughly half of the current fossil energy use could be saved, states Pimentel, if changes were made at every step of the food system, including on-site farm production, processing and packaging, various transportation modes, and consumption choices. We learn, for example, that junk food is high in fossil fuel inputs: you should look at your next soda, french fries, and hamburger and remember the fossil fuel that made them. Pimentel poses several useful strategies to reduce the fossil fuel inputs hidden in our food supply. His study has

xvi


implications not only for the United States with its far-flung transportation network, but all countries using industrial farming methods and shipping food by truck or plane.

AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES For a brief but limited period of time, industrial agriculture temporarily increased Earth’s carrying capacity (for humans), engendering a false sense of security that nature is still bountiful and we can scoff at the word “scarcity.” But research has proven that such intensive production cannot continue. We face ever-diminishing returns from depleted soils producing food with little nutrition but numerous contaminants. As the previous chapters introduced various natural resources upon which agriculture depends, this next section provides a broader picture of production and harvest on land and sea. Beginning with the concept of “sustainable agriculture,” examples of effective methods and policies are highlighted in the rural lands of the industrial and developing countries. This concept is extended into the cities, where numerous examples of urban agriculture are described. And what is probably the most unfamiliar to most readers is the critical status of ocean fisheries and the uncertainty of what can still be harvested. For land and sea we now explore the possibilities. Providing an overview of sustainable agriculture and the various alternative methods it employs, Daniel A. Cibulka (chapter 6) introduces and defines sustainable agriculture as it is practiced in selected postindustrial (i.e., wealthier) countries of the world. Hydroponics, cover crops, perennial grains, and rotational grazing are some of the methods he describes. After surveying movements promoting these alternatives, Cibulka identifies some of their founders to reveal how these initiatives began, and where they are supported or opposed by governments, industries, or other interest groups. Sustainable agriculture is also growing in the developing countries, with some shared and some unique variations. Chapter 7 by Richard H. Bernsten and Sieglinde Snapp sets the stage by revealing trends toward resource depletion that these countries share that underscore the need for sustainable methods. Poor countries, particularly in Africa, are suffering from increasing populations, decreasing food productivity, decreasing worker productivity from HIV/AIDS, poverty that precludes the use of high-yield seed varieties that require expensive chemicals and fertilizers, and sometimes unreliable irrigation, and global climate changes causing even more droughts or floods. They explore the successes of organizations such as the Consultative Group for International Agriculture Research (CGIAR) and its agricultural research centers, and the Collaborative Research Support Programs that link countries with agricultural research at U.S. land-grant universities. Bernsten and Snapp argue that strategies for promoting successful sustainable agriculture must include research-driven, market-driven, or extension-driven approaches. To make their case, they point to programs around the world using each of these, and the various collaborations between agencies, governments, and farmers that were successful. Projects can aim at hillside production systems, more efficient water management suited for a particular site, using different seed varieties, connecting farmers to more markets or developing their own “value-added” products, sustainably harvesting agroforestry products, and much more.


xvii

Food production is no longer solely a rural pursuit. In what they call a “quiet revolution” in chapter 8, Jim Bingen, Kathryn Colasanti, Margaret Fitzpatrick, and Katherine Nault note that urban agriculture and gardening are currently undergoing enthusiastic acceptance in many cities. These pursuits provide an additional means to food security. There is surprising diversity in stakeholders as well as their reasons for participating. Individuals, various coalitions of neighbors, civic or social service groups, and even commercial entities are being drawn to this renaissance of growing fresh food and reaping the additional benefits of health, education, feeling part of your community, and ultimately, food security. Food is grown on public and private land, empty lots, and even on balconies, windowsills, parking lots, and roofs. Bingen, Colasanti, Fitzpatrick, and Nault describe city farms and gardens, the intersection of city land-use planning with political interest groups to achieve support for urban agriculture, and learning to value multiple agendas to achieve these more comprehensive goals. Some of the critical questions they ask are: “How are urban farm and garden activities both shaped by, and active in shaping, instances of disinvestment and/or investment in cities?” and “Do urban agriculture activities and programs create the conditions for grassroots and neighborhood groups and coalitions to emerge in defense of urban agriculture in public policymaking and planning?” Turning to fisheries, both wild and farmed, Tracy Dobson (chapter 9) presents the history and current status of global fisheries, highlighting current literature to identify and describe declining biodiversity, ever-shrinking annual harvests, degraded marine environments, and destructive harvesting methods. In addition, inequality of fishing access is the result of wealth and technology combining to “vacuum” the ocean in waters that are deeper than fishers with small boats can reach. To the degree that there is any management of fisheries (since it is next to impossible to police the oceans), Dobson highlights different approaches that have been taken to slow this “race to the bottom” in marine harvests and discusses the role of capture fisheries (i.e., farmed fish) in mitigating these shrinking marine harvests. She describes the role of regional agencies in public education and monitoring coastal or lacustrine (i.e., lake) fisheries where equitable quota systems can be enforced. The more difficult issue of deepwater fisheries outside of national controls, she notes, is being tackled by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as Greenpeace and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

HEALTH Human health and well-being are nourished and supported by food that is accessible, affordable, and nutritious. Without these prerequisites, hunger, disease, and poor social and academic skills result. This section introduces the critical issues of food security, the science of nutrition, national or corporate policies affecting access or quality of food, and various aspects of our relationship with food and more extreme manifestations of food-related health problems. John T. Cook (chapter 10) incorporates multiple household-level studies to document food security in the United States. Using the food security definition, “access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life,” he outlines the relationship of food insecurity to poverty, child health and

xviii


development, maternal depression, and academic and social risk. Cook concludes that food insecurity in the poor and near-poor U.S. population is “one of the most readily measured as well as one of the most rapidly remediable by policy changes.” If there is political will, wealthy countries can readily achieve food security for their populations. However, the magnitude of the problem in developing nations makes it more difficult to solve. To address the constellation of factors affecting food security in poorer countries, John M. Staatz, Duncan H. Boughton, and Cynthia Donovan (chapter 11) focus on Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia to illustrate the complicated trade-offs policymakers face to address food security in impoverished areas. Because the real cost of food includes productivity of each step in the food system, from farm to “agricultural input markets, assembly markets, processing, wholesaling, and retailing,” it is a delicate business indeed to devise practicable interventions at each step that increase productivity and reduce costs without harming the current workers or owners. Moreover, food might be available at the markets but remain inaccessible because someone cannot afford it. Thus, different approaches to improving food security sometimes need to be adopted in unison to solve the multiple aspects of food security problems. The authors argue that the biggest challenge is in addressing transitory and chronic food insecurity simultaneously. The multiple factors of human, biological, and physical capital tied to food security are explored and then placed in the context of state institutional capital, which determines land and resource tenure and how they can be equitably exchanged in working markets. Staatz, Boughton, and Donovan point to government and nongovernmental programs currently promoting food security programs to demonstrate strategies have been tried and achieved success. Another aspect of food security is the nutritional quality of food, which is affected by the ways that it is grown, harvested, stored, and transported. Consumers cannot tell from looking at produce if it is highly nutritious as well as without blemish. Imagine two heads of broccoli: same size and color, but containing vastly different nutrients. What are the factors of soil, seed, fertilizer, and grower preference (i.e., pest resistance, capacity to withstand mechanical harvesting/sorting) that determine how one head is nutritionally superior to the other? Debra Pearson’s chapter 12 illuminates how different aspects of agricultural practices alter the nutrient profile of the food you buy and gives examples of other varieties that you would select using nutritional rather than aesthetic criteria. She traces the history of overall crop nutrient density decline over multiple decades, and then further examines particular varieties to assess their differential nutrient densities as well as the effect of organic versus industrial farmed on the same variety. In addition to analyzing the familiar minerals, vitamins, and macronutrients (i.e., protein, carbohydrate, and fats) Pearson also unearths how agricultural practices affect the roughly eight thousand phytochemicals in food that are also important to human health. Even the common practice of harvesting before the plant is ripe reduces its phytochemical content. To promote good health and reduce common diseases linked to malnutrition, she argues that agricultural production must consider the nutritional qualities of varieties as well as their yield. She suggests that more local production of fruits and vegetables for sale in local markets might improve their nutrient quality. Nutrition and national food policies are merged in Sandra M. Stokes’s (chapter 13) history and analysis of federally funded school lunch and breakfast programs.


xix

She outlines how a federal policy ostensibly aimed at feeding children became a support program for agriculture, and then became co-opted by food industries setting further lucrative conditions on schools before they could be accepted into receiving this federal support. For example, schools are required by federal law to buy up to 80 percent of their food from one central supplier. To demonstrate how this trend of poor-quality food supplied for school children has been reversed, she provides a case study of an award-winning elementary school that has taken an innovative and comprehensive approach to improving the food it serves while educating the children and families as well. After analyzing the weaknesses and roadblocks of current federal policy, Stokes gives nine recommendations that would result in healthier school lunches. Popular culture not only tells us what to eat, but also increasingly stresses body image and ever-more-emaciated models wearing clothes no larger than size four. Is this merely a passing American fad or modern phenomenon of the global north, or do its roots go deeper? Disordered eating and body image is examined in chapter 14 by Cheryl Toronto Kalny, who relates historical cases from Christian, medieval Europe of voluntary food denial among young women through the 1600s. Researchers in the last half-century in the Western world have studied anorexia and bulimia, a related eating disorder, in greater depth, developing and revising theories on causation and treatment. From this data, Kalny summarizes several American demographic studies on eating disorder patients by age, income, and ethnicity. Most were white, middle-class, young women. In other studies, risk criteria are documented for women in Western and Eastern Europe, finding increased incidence of food disorders in Eastern Europe as Western influence strengthened (e.g., after the collapse of communist power in 1989). Kalny analyzes studies from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, all of which demonstrate greater risk and higher incidence of disordered eating as closer links are forged with Western culture. Anorexia has even emerged in cultures with traditional preferences for fat body types, but studies suggest causation and therefore, risk factors are more circumscribed. For example, a Hong Kong, China, study noted that most of the patients were from lower economic classes, and the fewer from higher classes used disordered eating as a way to show their rebellion. Kalny concludes by surveying treatment modalities used in various countries. Adult obesity is also a growing problem, initially seen in Western countries but now spreading to developing nations. The rising incidence rates now seen in children and teens are generating multiple target populations for which strategies must be found. Joanne Gardner (chapter 15) identifies U.S. obesity rates for age, race, and gender, and analyzes the incidence and the massive costs to treat these health problems related to obesity. She notes that simple taking in more caloric than what’s expended is part, but not the only cause. The ratio of fats, sugars, and other components of food calories not only make critical differences, but act differently on very young children than adults. In particular, she explores recent research on high-fructose corn syrup as having effects on body metabolism different from other sweeteners of the same calories. Advertising, popular culture, restaurant food portions, federal subsidies for corn, personal income, and lack of nutrition education are some of the factors she discusses that combine to exacerbate this obesity epidemic. Gardner surveys contemporary programs now aimed at reducing the “supersizing” of America.

xx


As our current food systems push the limits of both natural systems and our own bodies, we impoverish our current generations and endanger our descendants. We need to realize that what happens on farms and fishing vessels not only changes the physical systems providing the harvest, but also changes our physical and mental health. In other words, “we are what we eat” means our bodies carry the memories of the harvesters and the harvested, the water and the land. We can no longer pretend that we are separate from these environmental or agricultural systems. The authors of Critical Food Issues demonstrate that we are capable of learning to grow food with wisdom and without harm.

NOTES 1. Jill Ker Conway, Kenneth Keniston, and Leo Marx, Earth, Air, Fire, Water: Humanistic Studies of the Environment (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999). 2. Richard Heinberg, Peak Everything: Waking up to a Century of Declines (Gabriola Island, Canada: New Society Publishers, 2007).

Abbreviations

ACOE AFS AHA ANDES APA ARS AU BAPPENAS BMI BRFSS BVCs CAADP CAFOs CBT CCHIP CCX CDC CFSP CFSS CGIAR CHCC CIAL CIFOR CIP C-SNAP COFI COMACO CPI

Army Corps of Engineers American Fisheries Society American Heart Association Association for Nature and Sustainable Development American Planning Association Agricultural Research Service Africa Union Badan Perencanaan Pembangunan Nasional body mass index Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Beach Village Committees Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program Concentrated Animal Feed Operations Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Community Childhood Hunger Identification Program Chicago Climate Exchange Centers for Disease Control and Prevention California Fresh Start Program Children’s Food Security Scale Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research California Healthy Cities and Communities Comite de Investigacion Agricola Local (Local Agricultural Research Committee) Center for International Forestry Research International Potato Center Children’s Sentinel Nutrition Assessment Program Committee on Fisheries Community Markets for Conservation Consumer Price Index

xxii CPS CRP CRSP CSPI CWA DSM ECAF ECLS EEZ EPA EQIP ERS FAFS FAO FASEB FDA FFS FNS FSP FSS FTC FTS FWPCA FWS GLASOD GLFC GMOs H&CFI HFCS HFI HOPS IAAD IAASTD ICARDA ICAT icipe ICRAF ICRISAT IDA IFDC IFPRI IOM IOPs IPM IPM CRSP IPT

Abbreviations Current Population Survey Conservation Reserve Program Collaborative Research Support Program Center for Science in the Public Interest Clean Water Act Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders European Conservation Agriculture Federation Early Childhood Longitudinal Study exclusive economic zone Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Quality Incentives Program Economic Research Service (of U.S. Department of Agriculture) Framework for African Food Security Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Food and Drug Administration Farmer Field Schools Food and Nutrition Services Food Stamp Program U.S. Food Security Scale Federal Trade Commission farm-to-school [programs] Federal Water Pollution Control Act U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Global Assessment of Soil Degradation Great Lakes Fishery Commission genetically modified organisms household and child food insecurity high fructose corn syrup household food insecurity Healthier Options for Public Schoolchildren International Association of Agricultural Development International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas International Center for Tropical Agriculture African Insect Science for Food and Health World Agroforestry Center International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics iron deficiency anemia International Fertilizer Development Center International Food Policy Research Institute Institute of Medicine Intensive Outpatient Programs Integrated Pest Management Integrated Pest Management Collaborative Research Support Program Interpersonal Psychotherapy

Abbreviations ITQs IUCN IUU IWMI LOS LSRO LTRAS MET MMSD MRL MSC NAWQA NGOs NHANES NHLBI NPDES NPS NRI NSLP OCD OMB OMB Watch OPEC PACE PCBs PDS PEDS PES POPs PSC QSR rBGH REACH RFMOs SAN SANREM CRSP SSA TBL TDR TMDL UNDP UPA USAID USDA USGS VAT WFC

xxiii individual tradable quotas International Union for Conservation of Nature illegal, unregulated, and unreported [fishing] International Water Management Institute United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty Life Sciences Research Office Long-Term Research on Agricultural Systems Motivational Enhancement Therapy Madison (Wisconsin) Metropolitan School District maximum residue level Marine Stewardship Council National Water-Quality Assessment nongovernmental organizations National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System nonpoint source pollution National Resources Inventory National School Lunch Program Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Office of Management and Budget Office of Management and Budget Watch Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries Purchase of Agricultural Easements polychlorinated biphenyls positive depressive symptoms Parent’s Evaluation of Developmental Status payment for environmental services persistent organic pollutants Pediatric Symptom Checklist quick-serve restaurants recombinant bovine growth hormone Responsive Education for All Children regional fisheries management organizations Sustainable Agricultural Network Sustainable Agriculture and Resource Management Collaborative Research Support Program Sub-Saharan Africa Triple Bottom Line Transfer of Development Rights total maximum daily load United Nations Development Program Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture Alliance U.S. Agency for International Development U.S. Department of Agriculture U.S. Geological Survey value added tax World Fish Center

xxiv WFP WHO WIC WPA WWF

Abbreviations United Nations World Food Programme World Health Organization Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children Works Progress Administration World Wide Fund for Nature

PART I Environment


1 Water and Land-Use Policies in the United States Laurel E. Phoenix All of us need a place to live, water to drink, and food to eat. Because these are the most critical items for survival, land-use and water-use issues are most fiercely contested or assiduously avoided, resulting in fragmented or nonexistent management structures. In the United States, land-use regulation tends to be created and enforced in most states at the local level, and water allocation law is promulgated at the state level. Underenforced water-quality regulations flow from the federal level. Laws regarding ownership and use of land and water vary across regions and rarely incorporate concerns about the externalities, such as water and soil contamination caused by poor management practices—agricultural or otherwise. This lack of coherent policy over land and water use can affect where and how food is grown, with consequential repercussions on land, water, animals, and people. Land and water policy arenas are not to be confused with agricultural policy, which is reauthorized roughly every five years at the federal level with no thought given to local land use or water issues. Thus, the United States has policies and laws regarding land, water, and food, each of which are created in a vacuum—that is, at different levels by different interest groups with no thought to the interconnections between these systems. This chapter briefly introduces the effects of agrifood production on land and water in the United States, focuses on how land-use regulations or water laws inadvertently affect food production, and offers suggestions for improvement.

EFFECTS OF FOOD PRODUCTION Agriculture is concentrating in fewer and much larger farms. Increased mechanization, coupled with the few dominant agrifood corporations, has turned the majority of farming into factory farming—creating many of the same problems that factories have: polluting air, water, and soil while reducing the quality of the finished product. This brief selection of industrial farm impacts on soil and land use, water quality, and water loss provides a preface and counterpoint to the chapter’s focus on how land use and water policies affect agriculture.

4

Environment, Agriculture, and Health Concerns

Effects on Soil and Land Use Soil is permanently damaged by industrial farming. As machinery, wind, and water erode topsoil, nutrients, micronutrients, and organic matter are lost. The micronutrients are not replaced by chemical fertilizer applications, and the organic matter is never replaced. Without these, soil biota, needed for breaking down and recycling these constituents, are lost. As soil is compacted by heavy farming equipment, soil pores are permanently reduced, making it harder for roots, oxygen, and water to penetrate the soil. Moreover, this compaction not only increases surface runoff from the fields, exacerbating erosion and flooding, but also prevents water from infiltrating down past the root zone to recharge the aquifer. Soils can build up toxic quantities of agrochemicals. Industrial farming with its monoculture crops requires repeated applications of new pesticides to make up for the lack of resilience to pests in monoculture cropping. Pesticides, some listed as Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPS), can linger in the soil for decades, as the longevity of DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) can attest. Whether long or short-lived, pesticides are often indiscriminate in the range of biota they kill, resulting in soil virtually void of organisms that can break down nutrients and aerate the soil. Lead arsenate pesticides commonly used in cherry and apple orchards leave high levels of arsenic in the soil. Landspreading of animal manure from Concentrated Animal Feed Operations (CAFOs) typically overloads soil with too much nitrogen, thus altering or killing soil biota. Landspreading of fly ash, sewage sludge, or other industrial wastes adds more than beneficial nutrients to the soil. Studies have shown these practices to add polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and a variety of heavy metals to the soil, some of which are taken up by the crops.1 In hot and dry regions of the interior U.S. West where crops must be irrigated, salts are drawn up through the soil and left in the root zone as soil surface evaporation draws the soil water up. These salts can build up to levels that are toxic to plant roots, and land has been permanently abandoned because of soil salinization. Industrial farming has negative effects beyond farm land quality. The ability of industrial farming to produce a cheaper product drives smaller farmers out of business. Besides creating economic and social problems, this industrial dominance can create land-use issues if the small farmer requires rezoning to attract a buyer. The proliferation of industrial farming tends to predetermine possible uses of lands adjacent to the factory farms, since nothing other than more industrial farming is compatible. CAFOs, in particular, cause so many off-site externalities that no one wants to live near them. Although the majority of land-use plans and regulations are developed in cities, county planners are historically supportive of, and influenced by, primary extractive industries such as farming, ranching, mining, and forestry that predominate in rural locales; consequently, they will not obstruct agriculture of any size. Agricultural lobbyists pressure officials from the federal to the local level to prevent any regulation of industrial farming, thus continuing the concentration of farming in giant agribusiness corporations and the ease with which CAFOs are established on county lands. Effects on Water Quality Soil erosion transports sediments into streams and lakes, covering former gravel or sandy bottoms with silt and destroying the natural habitat for stream and lake

Water and Land-Use Policies in the United States

5

biota. Enough soil deposition on a stream or river bottom raises the riverbed, exacerbating the damage of future floods because the river can no longer hold the same amount of floodwaters within its banks. Erosion and runoff also transport nutrients from fertilizer or CAFO manure; altering chemical and biotic composition of waterbodies. The most common result is eutrophication, where the resulting algal bloom removes oxygen from the water as it decomposes. The bloom carpets the water body and prevents sunlight from reaching submerged plants, and the subsequent deoxygenation of the water kills off many aquatic animals. Too many nutrients also percolate down into the groundwater, primarily from landspreading of CAFO manure. The heavy load of nitrogen is converted in the soil to nitrate, which builds up in groundwater. Children under two years of age drinking nitrate-contaminated well water suffer from methemoglobinemia, or bluebaby syndrome, and babies under six months can die, as nitrates reduce their bloodstream’s oxygen. Moreover, the presence of high nitrate levels often indicates other contaminants likely to be in the well water. Effects on Water Quantity Most states lack tight regulation of groundwater withdrawals. This lack of regulation encourages the use of the cheapest and most inefficient irrigation methods, which use the most groundwater. Many users pumping large amounts of water inevitably lower the water tables and drain the aquifer of water faster than natural recharge can replenish it. This results in a permanent reduction of water available to the local area. If a farm operation switches to a more water-intensive crop (e.g., rice or cotton) because new subsidies or higher demand raises the profitability of those crops, even more water will be pumped from the aquifer, thus using the groundwater unsustainably and possibly dropping the water table beyond the reach of other users’ wells. Industrial farming tends to use high-capacity wells that are efficient in mining groundwater. This is true whether they are irrigating crops or pumping water for CAFO operations. In states like Colorado with its strict “use it or lose it” doctrine, farms will use their whole water allowance even though they could easily use less or install efficient irrigation. But this doctrine requires that they use the entire portion of their water right, or risk losing their water right completely. This law prevents badly needed agricultural-efficiency technologies from being employed, and theoretically prevents others from being able to buy a water right for the portion of water that could be saved. Another issue in dry western climates is that inefficient agricultural irrigation essentially removes water from a river or aquifer and exposes it more broadly to evaporative forces. Thus, some of what was local water and could have percolated back down through the soil has now floated downwind to benefit the neighboring state. Industrial agriculture has enormous effects both on and beyond property boundaries. Not only are there permanent environmental damages to soil and water, but actual and well-documented permanent losses of topsoil and groundwater as well. In addition, industrial agriculture generates economic repercussions regarding land value, land ownership, and local job availability. The next section describes selected effects of land-use decisions from the federal, state, and local levels that shape agricultural production and begins to clarify why local governments do little

6


about the negative externalities of industrial agriculture despite its effect on local citizens and the environment.

LAND USE Most counties and cities in the United States have some form of land-use regulations, although a few rural counties have none. Land-use decisions historically have been left to the local level. Some states take a more active role either in a few subject areas, such as agriculture, power plants, or mining, or take a central role by drawing up a general land-use plan that all municipalities must use as their base plan. This general land-use plan ensures that municipalities at least will be consistent with minimum state requirements. Some states contain federal land, in which case the local or state government has either little or no voice over how that public land is managed, limiting local land planning options. Typical land-use regulations flow from a local land-use plan created from urban perspectives by planners with traditional urban land-use training. Basic plans map out densities of particular land uses that are already in place or permitted in specific areas of that municipality. Simple plans may only consider the built environment, while more comprehensive plans also look at transportation, economic development, extension of city services, and a host of other topics that combine to form a particular quality of life for that area. Although land use is primarily a local prerogative, policies or laws are going to constrain local plans in some way. For this reason, this section begins with the federal level and then examines the state and local level. Federal Clean Water Act Section 404 Permits Lands defined as wetlands by the federal government require a Section 404 permit from the Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) before any dredging or filling can occur. The degree to which the ACOE permits dredging and filling then determines what lands in any state can be developed, unless the state has written a more stringent state law. Federal Lands Many types of federal lands are located across the United States, although the majority of them are found in the western states. These can include National Park, National Forest, Bureau of Land Management, or reserved lands like military bases and Indian reservations, among others. The degree to which these federal lands affect neighboring local land-use planning depends on how these lands are managed, for what purpose, and whether the local area benefits or not from their proximity. State States choose the degree to which they will control local land use and whether they do this by statutes mandating municipal compliance or by providing helpful information and guidelines that municipalities can use on a voluntary basis. The


7

most stringent state oversight is through mandating local plans consistent with the state plan. Variability between states requiring local planning is evident: ten states say local planning is optional, twenty-five states require local planning on some conditions, and fifteen states require local plans of all their municipalities.2 However, most states leave the vast majority of land-use planning and power to the local level. Local Planning Local planners develop a plan of what they would like their city (or county) to look like in twenty to thirty years. From this blueprint, municipalities create zoning ordinances (i.e., land-use regulations) that provide the framework for implementing the plan. Because much of a twenty- to thirty-year plan is based on bestcase scenario outcomes and predictions of population growth and economic growth coupled with local desires, revisions of the plan are inevitable when initial ideas do not comport with future realities. Unexpected growth in population, sudden shifts in the local or national economy, emerging political pressure, or other unforeseen events require plan revision. Although ill-advised, plan variances (e.g., changing densities or type of use) are often given. A plan by itself carries no legal mandate but is merely a document of guidance. Only local ordinances focusing on specific parts of a plan, such as the density of houses allowed in one part of town, or the specification of where certain commercial activity may occur, require compliance to that part of the plan. Thus, the existence of a written plan does not, in itself, result in logical and orderly growth of a city. Traditional Assumptions in Planning Traditional assumptions of land use, whether or not they have been clearly articulated, shape the type of plans and subsequent ordinances that are written. The undeveloped spaces outside of a city are viewed as a tabula rasa, or a blank slate, upon which many new uses can be projected. Because agricultural lands are considered undeveloped, and thus inefficiently used until converted to a more profitable use, they have suffered from this urge to turn them into something else. Another assumption is that growth is good, necessary, inevitable, and perpetual. This has justified the expansion of development into formerly low-density areas, open space, and agricultural areas. Although urban areas expanded through this century because of the amount of land available (unlike, for example, in Europe), cities are now bumping up against boundaries constraining their growth, whether they are physical (i.e., a river or mountain) or political (i.e., another city’s boundary). An interesting and currently changing assumption is that house buyers want lowdensity, single-use, suburban sprawl. Although developers have argued that they are merely building what buyers want, this justification obscures the fact that land at the edge of or outside of the city is always cheaper, gives developers more latitude in using the same formula design, and, in the case of agricultural land, is fairly flat. All of these factors raise the potential profits for the developers. If this land is outside of city limits, developers may benefit from the far-less-stringent county ordinances.

8


Aside from the space available for new buildings, assumptions about inputs to city life are overlooked and taken for granted. First, it is assumed that relatively cheap energy and materials will always be available to build the longer roads, pipelines, and electric lines and then to service these widely dispersed developments with utilities, police and firefighters, and schools. Related to this cornucopian vision of natural resources is the assumption that we will all continue to drive our own cars, thereby negating any need for walkable neighborhoods. Perhaps the most remarkable thing taken for granted is food. Zoning local agriculture out of existence has been common, as planners assume the food will just be grown somewhere else. Several factors have encouraged this assumption. Decades of cheap oil and interstate highways overcame the constraints of geography to encourage planners to rid their area of cheaper agricultural land and give it instantly increased value by zoning it for residential, commercial, or industrial use. Any local loss of food production could be replaced easily by shipping it in from another region. Similarly, because most economic production occurs in cities, states historically have given cities the prerogative to unilaterally annex adjacent county land for expansion. Consequently, cities continue to overtake surrounding countryside and push agriculture to the margins, or sometimes out of the county entirely. Pothukuchi and Kaufman explored this lack of involvement by planners in food issues, and found that planning literature does not address food systems. Moreover, when numerous planners were interviewed, seven categories of reasons were given for not doing so: • • • • • • •

It is not our turf. It is not an urban issue; it is a rural issue. The food system is driven primarily by the private market. Planning agencies are not funded to do food system planning. What is the problem? If it ain’t broke, why fix it? Who is addressing the community food system with whom we can work? We do not know enough about the food system to make a greater contribution.3

Consequently, lack of knowledge, mandates, and perspective combine to allow ongoing urbanization of agricultural land and the undervaluing of agriculture that this loss implies.

Valuing Agricultural Land Land value is derived not from the natural services it provides, but from the human economic activity that occurs on it. Once agricultural land is eyed by planners or developers for conversion, its soil fertility or groundwater recharge potential has generally been ignored. Local food security and the potential future need for that land for food production is rarely considered. Despite the fact that planners and city officials are supposed to make decisions for the long-term good of a city, it is far easier to aim for quick returns than long-term investment. Food has been relatively cheap in this country for decades, as long as cheap oil and government subsidies were able to keep food prices down. This means that agricultural acres are valued for the dollar amount of the crops grown. The sale value


9

of an acre of corn or soybeans is insignificant compared with the money garnered from one acre of developed uses. Agricultural land prices can reflect only the current value of crops, and thus tend to be priced significantly lower than industrial, commercial, or residential land. Although city planners ostensibly work from a twenty- to thirty-year plan, the current financial pressures of cities needing ever more property tax revenue causes planners to zone fewer acres as agricultural and to zone current agricultural lands for their future development potential. This is a signal for developers to pressure farmers to sell so the developers can subdivide the land for a different profitable use. In some cases, the working farms in an area have no interest in selling their land for development, and their right to continue farming as development creeps around them has been established under common law. One tactic used to drive out local agriculture is to start taxing the working farmland as though it had already been developed (i.e., taxing it on its future presumed value). This is legal as long as all agricultural property within the district is levied the same higher rate. Most farmers cannot absorb the blow of higher taxes and still keep farming.

Politics of Land Use The idea behind creating a plan and implementing it through zoning regulations implies a rational, orderly, and equitable process done in the name of the public good. However, zoning property for a particular use directly affects its market value, either limiting it to much less than the owner hoped for or increasing its value by zoning it for higher-density residential or commercial or industrial purposes. Consequently, the act of zoning confers or takes away current or future value. Because of this, planners and city officials are pressed by developers to provide variances or rezone parcels to increase the land value or the profit that can be made from higherdensity or higher-value construction. Developers are not only looking to make more profit and make more land available for construction, but also can argue that variances and rezoning will help maintain or provide new construction jobs in the area. City officials are loathe to plan or zone in ways that would slow growth, shed jobs, or shrink the flow of money through the local economy. It is this short-term growth perspective that circumvents the more rational nature of a plan and pulls planners away from long-term visions toward short-term gains.

Summary of Land-Use Policy Decisions on Agriculture Although local planners are constrained by some federal or state land uses or consistency requirements, they still have great latitude in their local planning. And despite the yearly statistics available from the U.S. Department of Agriculture on agricultural land loss through urbanization,4 planners still create plans focused on the built environment to maximize their current local benefits while leaving the externalities, especially the loss of local food supply, to fate. This “tyranny of small decisions”5 moves cities and the nation further from food security. Of course, planners are a product of their education and their professional organization. If one goes to the American Planning Association Web site, there is no listing of “Agriculture” under their “search by topic” pull-down menu. Thus,

10


even planning’s professional organization is still trapped by old and limited views of what urban planning should initially consider as primary concerns. Advocates for Change Those who have pointed out the weaknesses of urbanizing agricultural land come from a broad swath of backgrounds. Food security and farming advocates, researchers, progressive states, planners, and those concerned with sustainable living or energy concerns have all written about the need for protection of agricultural land. One group dealing directly with the issues of agriculture and land-use planning and zoning is the Food Security Learning Center.6 It not only offers specific land-planning and zoning tools to protect local agriculture (both urban and rural), but it frames the issue within the broader topic of food security. It suggests comprehensive plans that allow farmers markets and zoning agricultural properties in large enough parcels that they are unlikely to be profitably convertible to any other use but farming. The American Farmland Trust7 Web site links to examples from around the country where zoning tools can protect agriculture. Its “Farmland Protection Toolbox” explains a variety of strategies: • States can create Agricultural Districts, within which agriculture is protected from annexation or eminent domain by local municipalities. • Governors can write executive orders to direct their agencies not to institute policies or programs that will encourage farmland conversion. • States can offer Circuit Breaker tax programs or Differential Assessment tax programs in which agricultural land gets property tax credits. • Municipalities can create Agricultural Protection Zoning where zoning is very low-density and land uses incompatible with farming are not allowed. • The Purchase of Agricultural Easements (PACE) can be used where the municipality or nonprofit organization like American Farmland Trust or Trust for the Public Land can pay the farmer the difference of the higher price she could get from developers, in return for putting an easement on her land requiring it to stay agricultural. Such an easement stays in force through subsequent sales of the property. • Cities, counties, and states can use Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) programs to give incentives to developers to build at higher-than-normal densities in “receiving zones” (where planners want to direct growth) rather than in the “sending zones” (where planners want to protect agricultural areas). These voluntary or mandatory agricultural protection programs are described in Land Use in a Nutshell8 and some comprehensive plans around the country. Some academics study the big picture of American land use. Rutherford Platt,9 a prominent land-use geographer, notes that over time, the federal government’s response to agricultural acres lost to urbanization has been to encourage better soil management practices on the lands that are left, but do nothing about the fact that acreage is being lost. Others described the value of agricultural land as including two categories: (1) the capacity of the land to provide enough food and fiber, and (2) other intangible “amenity” values.10 As long as the public is unaware that


11

farmland loss is reaching a critical point, the amenity values of agricultural land will outweigh its capacity values. Oregon is a shining example of a state realizing agriculture’s importance and how to protect it. Oregon’s Department of Land Conservation and Development11 illustrates what comprehensive planning at the state level can do to actively protect agriculture. Through Oregon’s 1973 Growth Management Statute, cities were mandated to create urban growth boundaries, beyond which a city could not expand. Other areas were zoned as urbanizable or rural, with rural lands including open space, agriculture, and forest to remain low density. Reflecting the more comprehensive approach of urban and rural interrelationship, Portland has merged its Bureau of Planning and Office of Sustainable Development into the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.12 Randall Arendt, a planner looking at the strains of growth pressures on rural towns, has written Rural by Design: Maintaining Small Town Character,13 listing numerous strategies to protect local agriculture. Other “big picture” thinkers write from the perspective of strengthening local economies, sustainable growth, and peak oil constraints.14 James Howard Kunstler has long raged against the ills of suburbs and the American rationalization to grow incessantly, expect something for nothing, and consume its way into a poverty of natural resources and social capital.15 The Transition Town movement and similar groups pushing for conversion to local, sustainable living16 have recognized that communities must start functioning like ecosystems to remain viable, and that energy and food and all other inputs assumed to perpetually support us at current consumption rates will be drastically reduced without a sea change of behavior.

WATER QUALITY As is typical with other common pool resources, water-quality degradation benefits a few users with the costs shared by all. The unidirectional nature of water flow complicates incentives to keep waters clean, as states, cities, or individuals can pollute water to the detriment of downstream neighbors while feeling little of the harm. Because of this, water-quality laws tend to be promulgated at the federal level. Federal The Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA) of 1972 (hereafter referred to as the Clean Water Act [CWA]) was the first federal water-quality law that achieved significant national water-quality improvement. The CWA initially focused on point source discharges from industries (factory outfall pipes into water bodies) and cities (wastewater treatment plant outfalls). The CWA’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) was instituted to measure type and amount of pollutants being discharged into water and permit it, if the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decided this was a reasonable amount and reduced concentration of effluent from best management practices. Consequently, the EPA could tally cumulative totals of all pollutants to make sure that collectively they did not exceed the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) a water body

12


could accept without degradation. This law gave factories incentive to improve their in-house recycling of substances, such as metal-plating plants, so fewer pollutants went into the waters. In addition, a historic amount of money was made available through this bill to improve wastewater treatment plants as well, both by building wastewater plants where they did not exist and upgrading existing plants to secondary treatment. After initial improvements of waterways (i.e., no more rivers catching on fire, far less noxious sewage in the rivers), improvement stopped as more industries and wastewater plants began exceeding their NPDES permits and were still allowed to operate by the EPA. The CWA also addressed nonpoint source (NPS) pollution, emanating from diffuse sources like agriculture, mining, forestry, and urban runoff. Because this is harder to measure at the source, and even more difficult to monitor and enforce, NPS pollution was initially addressed by education programs and voluntary reductions. As they remain voluntary, polluters do not comply. Agriculture is the biggest source of NPS pollution.

Nonagricultural Requirements and Effects on Food The main pollutants serving as measures of NPS pollution are heavy metals, sediment, salinity, bacteria, and nutrients. Reduction of toxic chemicals, heavy metals, and pathogens would no doubt better protect our food supply although it is hard to find studies looking at these issues. The effects of NPS pollutants in irrigation water are not widely known. We know plants take up chemicals such as perchlorate, with perchlorate found in irrigated vegetables and milk.17 We know plants take up heavy metals, as they are studied for their efficacy in removing heavy metals from streams contaminated with mining effluent.18 We also know pathogens from untreated or incompletely treated sewage effluent can spread salmonella,19 E. coli,20 and cholera21 on food irrigated with this water.

Agricultural Requirements and Effects on Food The agricultural lobby has been successful so far in avoiding any kind of requirements under the CWA. Even the relatively new problem of CAFOs has been skillfully maneuvered by industrial farms merely writing a “Manure Management Plan” and then “voluntarily” following the plan. This results in continued water pollution with nutrients and pathogens, which can then be taken up again by the next downstream irrigators, possibly contaminating their crops. OMBWATCH,22 a watchdog over the President’s Office of Management and Budget, has long followed this disregard by the EPA of CAFO externalities. Besides manure and fertilizer runoff, farms still apply enough pesticides (some of questionable safety) that run off aboveground or are transported through subsurface flow back into waterways. At least in regard to nutrients and sediment, CWA guidelines for agricultural TMDLs for phosphorus and total suspended solids are now available to state environmental agencies, with expected compliance deadlines in 2012. Guidelines serve only as suggestions, however, so these deadlines are not enforceable.


13

State Theoretically, states must be minimally consistent with CWA requirements and enforce them through their own state environmental departments. In practice, there has long been a pronounced variability between states in regard to enforcement depending on the environmental awareness of the citizens, the wealth of the state, and the strength of the industrial, agricultural, and municipal lobbies. Local In rare instances, a city can control the water quality of its source water. If the city’s lake is its sole source of drinking water, it may regulate what activities may occur on or near the water, up to denying access to the water surface and requiring buffer zones around the lake where certain land uses, roads, or chemical applications may not occur. Similarly, if a city is sitting over the recharge zone of its own aquifer, it may place strict regulations on above- or below-ground chemical use or additional construction of impervious surfaces. Outside of these two scenarios, a city must use water of variable quality over which it has no control.

WATER QUANTITY How much water is available to any state, city, or individual depends on longterm and short-term regional precipitation, how many external or internal water sources they may draw from, the degree to which they are constrained by interstate compacts and state water law, and how many others compete for the same water. Interstate Compacts Interstate water compacts are primarily allocation agreements between states over shared rivers to prevent upriver areas from damming or diverting more than a reasonable share of the river. Like any political agreement, they reflect the relative strength of the various signatories. As of 2009, thirty-five compacts had been adopted.23 Colorado River The Colorado River Compact of 1922 resulted in the Upper Basin (Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico) and the Lower Basin (Nevada, California, and Arizona) each being allotted 7.5 million acre feet (MAF) per year of water. The Lower Basin (with a greater population) was also given a guarantee of 7.5 MAF over a ten-year rolling average.24 This gives Lower Basin cities and agriculture slightly less incentive to use water efficiently since they are guaranteed roughly the same amount each year. This is unfortunate since irrigated lands in the lower basin are hot deserts where much more irrigation water evaporates from cropland. Upper Basin states are left to share the shortage burden in drought years. Because populations are growing in all of these states, some water will move out of agriculture, since it uses 70 to 80 percent of water in these states. Cities needing more water will surely buy more water rights from agriculture. A 2008

14


book, Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What to Do About It,25 gives numerous examples of western farmers who are innovating ways to use less water as demand for water increases and cities look to agriculture to purchase water rights. State Laws State water law generally refers to how the waters of the state are allocated within the state and to what use they may be put. Historically, these laws concern only quantity and not quality issues. Moreover, nonhuman uses of water by flora and fauna are rarely considered. State water laws are not only complex, but also differ greatly between the drier and wetter regions of the country. A brief summary of the different surface-water laws and groundwater laws are given to underscore how water is so mismanaged in most areas. Prior Appropriation Prior appropriation is used in the dry inland western states. Water must be diverted from a watercourse onto that land no matter how distant it is, and it must be put to beneficial use. The initial date when each water right was developed forever remains with that water right, and the older the right, the greater priority the owner has to use her full allocation of water before anyone else on the river (upstream or downstream) who has rights junior to hers. This “first come, first served” system was developed for dry lands where drought is common. In dry times, owners with senior water rights may access their water, and the owners with junior water rights get nothing. Riparian Riparian water law is used in the wetter, eastern states and generally ties water use to land bordering water. Owners of riparian land (on lakes or rivers) automatically have a right to a reasonable use of waters, if it does not prevent other riparians from reasonable use of the waters. This implies that all will suffer equally in times of shortage, but many states using riparian law do not measure what each user takes, so they can scarcely enforce an equitable reduction in use. Regulated Riparian Regulated riparian, or hybrid states, use a mix of riparian and prior appropriation because their states are part arid and part humid. These states include the coastal western states and the lower plains states along the one hundredth meridian. There is more regulation, measurement, and oversight of water in these states than in riparian states. Groundwater Issues The laws governing groundwater use not only vary from state to state but also within states that use the same type of surface-water law. Use of groundwater can


15

range from the strict laws to “take all you want.” In Colorado, every water right is quantified, every well is metered, and water commissioners (water police) in every watershed basin monitor all wells and surface-water diversions to prevent cheating. Then, there is Texas. The Texas “rule of capture” asserts that landowners have the right to pump as much water as they can from beneath their property, even if it harms other groundwater users. Advocates for Change State water laws for the most part are extremely antiquated and hinder states from sustainably using water. One advocate for change to improve water laws is a professional organization trying to update water laws. The American Society of Civil Engineers wrote two manuals,26 the Appropriative Rights Model Water Code and the Regulated Riparian Model Water Code, to assist states with improving their water laws. In particular, they advocate conjunctive use of ground and surface waters (i.e., manage and measure both of them, not just surface water), metering all water use, and converting all riparian states to regulated riparian.

CONCLUSION To a large degree, land and water use cannot be disentangled with regard to the impacts they have on industrial agriculture and the effects they suffer from it. At the same time, the world’s population continues to grow, creating an increased demand on diminishing agricultural acres. Since land use, water use, and food production are decided and acted on by a relatively small proportion of the population, most people are unaware that the trends in each (i.e., more resource demand and less quality) are converging to a crisis point. Clearly, individuals can do many things to address these issues. At the local level, proven strategies have been implemented for protecting large-scale rural agricultural land, while encouraging the remaining agriculture within city boundaries to convert to more profitable, intensive production of vegetables and fruits. Zoning to allow farmers markets in town would link urban residents with local farms. But most planners developing the plans and regulations have a traditional planning background, which is to say there is little knowledge of larger-scale resource constraints or environmental systems. This lack of knowledge means that individuals must press their city officials to improve their planning vision. But citizens must do more than work to change local land uses. Every state has room to improve the way it allocates water, enforces federal water quality laws, or mandates stricter ones, and protects agricultural lands from sprawl while reducing or recycling the pollution they create. State legislators must be lobbied by citizen groups to debate and address these issues at the state level. The same applies to the federal level. Imagine how much cleaner our water, land, and air would be if executive and legislative branches were pressed to address food security and to realize that food security cannot be achieved without comprehensively managing land and water resources at every level. Industrial agriculture is not sustainable, and the shift toward sustainable agriculture cannot be achieved by merely purchasing organic or local food. Beyond individual behavior, citizens must reach out to teach and

16


reform every level of government. Government systems have long viewed law and policy about land, water, and food as discrete subjects. Wendell Berry spoke to the futility of such isolated pursuits when he wrote, And so I must declare my dissatisfaction with movements to promote soil conservation or clean water or clean air or wilderness preservation or sustainable agriculture or community health or the welfare of children. Worthy as these and other goals may be, they cannot be achieved alone. I am dissatisfied with such efforts because they are too specialized, they are not comprehensive enough, they are not radical enough, they virtually predict their own failure by implying that we can remedy or control effects while leaving causes in place.27

The framework to nurture sustainable agriculture is built with citizens who fight the causes of natural resource decline at every level. If you want food security, look to yourselves and your government, look to your precious lands and waters.

NOTES 1. Duff Wilson, Fateful Harvest: The True Story of a Small Town, A Global Industry, and a Toxic Secret (New York: Harper Collins, 2001). 2. American Planning Association, http://www.planning.org/growingsmart/guidebook/seven07.htm (accessed January 4, 2009). 3. Kameshwari Pothukuchi and Jerome L. Kaufman, “The Food System: A Stranger to the Planning Field,” Journal of the American Planning Association 66, no. 2 (2000): 113–24. 4. USDA Economic Research Service, “Land Use, Value, and Management,” http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/LandUse/ (accessed January 4, 2009). 5. Alfred E. Kahn, “The Tyranny of Small Decisions: Market Failures, Imperfections, and the Limits of Economics,” Kylos 19 (1966): 23–47. 6. The Food Security Learning Center, “Land Use Planning,” http://www. whyhunger.org/programs/fslc/topics/land-use-planning.html (accessed April 12, 2008). 7. American Farmland Trust, http://www.farmland.org/ (accessed December 2, 2008). 8. John R. Nolon and Patricia E. Salkin, Land Use in a Nutshell (St. Paul, MN: West Publishing, 2006). 9. Rutherford H. Platt, Land Use Control: Geography, Law, and Public Policy (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2004). 10. Pierre Crosson and R. Hass, “Agricultural Land,” Current Issues in Natural Resource Policy (Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 1982). 11. Oregon’s Department of Land Conservation and Development, http://www.lcd. state.or.us/ (accessed November 4, 2008). 12. Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, http://www.portlandonline.com/ planning/index.cfm?c=28534 (accessed November 4, 2008). 13. Randall Arendt, Rural by Design: Maintaining Small Town Character (Chicago: Planners Press, 1994). 14. Peak oil refers to the moment at which 50 percent of the known reserves of global oil have been pumped, after which there is an inevitable decline of oil production. Traditional liquid fuel production peaked in 2005. 15. James H. Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993); James H. Kunstler, The


17

Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005). 16. Pat Murphy, Plan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and Climate Change (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2008); Peter Newman and Isabella Jennings, Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems: Principles and Practices (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2008); Rob Hopkins, The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience (Foxhole, Devon, England: Green Books, 2008). 17. Environmental Working Group, Rocket Fuel (Perchlorate) Studies, http://www. ewg.org/featured/225 (accessed November 15, 2008). 18. See, for example, Monica O. Mendez and Raina M. Maier, “Phytostabilization of Mine Tailings in Arid and Semiarid Environments—An Emerging Remediation Technology,” Environmental Health Perspectives 116, no. 3 (2008): 278–83. 19. Gail Cordy et al., “Do Pharmaceuticals, Pathogens, and Other Organic Wastewater Compounds Persist When Wastewater Is Used for Recharge?” Ground Water Monitoring and Remediation 24, no. 2 (2004): 58–69. 20. Natural Resources Conservation Service, “Water Quality – Reducing Risk of E. Coli 0157:H7 Contamination” (Water Quality Technical Note No. 19, October 29, 2007), http://www.nm.nrcs.usda.gov/technical/tech-notes/water/water19.pdf (accessed November 11, 2008). 21. Dennis L. Corwin and Scott A. Bradford, “Environmental Impacts and Sustainability of Degraded Water Reuse,” Journal of Environmental Quality 37 (2008):S1–S7; Matthew McKinney, “Linking Growth and Land Use to Water Supply,” Land Lines 15, no. 2 (2003): 4–6. 22. OMBWATCH, http://www.ombwatch.org (accessed November 4, 2008). 23. Thomas Cech, Principles of Water Resources: History, Development, Management, and Policy, 2nd ed. (New York: Wiley, 2005). 24. Ibid. 25. Robert Glennon, Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What to Do About It (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2009). 26. Joseph W. Dellapenna, ed., Appropriative Rights Model Water Code (Reston, VA: ASCE, 2007); Joseph W. Dellapenna, ed., Regulated Riparian Model Water Code (Reston, VA: ASCE, 2004). 27. Wendell Berry, “In Distrust of Movements,” Resurgence Issue January/February (2000): 198; reprinted at http://thegreenhorns.wordpress.com/essays/essay-in-distrust-ofmovements-by-wendell-berry/ (accessed December 31, 2008).

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Arendt, Randall. Rural by Design: Maintaining Small Town Character. Chicago: Planners Press, 1994. Getches, David H. Water Law in a Nutshell. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing, 1997. Glennon, Robert. Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America’s Fresh Waters. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2002. Glennon, Robert. Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What to Do About It. New York: Island Press, 2009. Hopkins, Rob. The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience. Foxhole, Devon, England: Green Books, 2008.

18


Kunstler, James H. The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005. Murphy, Pat. Plan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and Climate Change. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2008. Newman, Peter, and Isabella Jennings. Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems: Principles and Practices. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2008. Nolon, John R., and Patricia E. Salkin. Land Use in a Nutshell. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing, 2006. Pothukuchi, Kameshwari, and Jerome L. Kaufman. “The Food System: A Stranger to the Planning Field.” Journal of the American Planning Association 66, no. 2 (2000).

Web Sites American Farmland Trust, http://www.farmland.org/. Local Harvest: Real Food, Real Farmers, Real Communities, www.localharvest.org. The Food Security Learning Center, http://www.worldhungeryear.org/fslc/faqs2/ria_801. asp?section=18&click=2. Smart Growth Online, http://www.smartgrowth.org/.

2 Soil Degradation and Soil Conservation Patricia E. Norris and John M. Kerr Soil degradation and conservation are inextricably linked to food production. Globally, some countries face more serious constraints to food production than others. Everywhere, though, protecting soil requires understanding soil degradation, methods for conserving soil, constraints to soil conservation investment, and policies to promote conservation. We focus on three main points. First, soil degradation takes many forms and has on- and off-site impacts. Second, discussions of soil conservation are commonly connected to controlling soil erosion. This chapter focuses largely on soil erosion, but recognizes that conservation is about controlling soil degradation more generally. Third, numerous socioeconomic factors explain why farmers may or may not adopt conservation practices to address erosion and other problems. To be effective, policies aimed at increasing the adoption of conservation must address these underlying constraints.

TYPES AND EXTENT OF SOIL DEGRADATION Soil degradation is “any change or disturbance to the soil perceived to be deleterious or undesirable” and normally connotes change or disturbance in soil quality, including soil structure and biological productivity or complexity.1 Reducing soil quality reduces its capacity “to function, within natural or managed ecosystem boundaries, to sustain plant and animal productivity, maintain or enhance water and air quality, and support human health and habitation.”2 While soil erosion is the most commonly described type of soil degradation, other physical, chemical, and biological changes in soils also reduce soil quality. More generally, physical degradation results from water or wind erosion or from changes in soil structure,3 such as compaction, crusting and sealing, or water-logging and subsidence of organic soils.4 Chemical degradation involves processes such as salinization, alkalinization, or acidification of soils, and biological degradation occurs from a reduction in soil humus, vegetation, or soil biota.5 Not all soil degradation is caused by human activities, but modern scientific and popular environmental literature

20


almost always uses the term degradation in reference to perceived decreases in natural conditions caused by changes or disturbances made by humans.6 Natural changes to soils (caused, for example, by shifts in vegetation, glaciation, and climate change) occur slowly, so that soils are able to adjust or adapt, although some natural changes do occur rapidly and with drastic results (e.g., volcanic eruptions). Most changes in soil quality are human induced, however, and are “rapid, disturb the delicate balance between soil and its environment, and lead to drastic alterations in soil properties and processes.”7 Information on the extent of soil degradation worldwide is limited. The most comprehensive assessment of global soil degradation was sponsored by the United Nations Environment Programme and was completed in 1990. The Global Assessment of Soil Degradation (GLASOD) categorized types of soil degradation according to water erosion, wind erosion, chemical degradation, and physical degradation. While extensive, GLASOD represented a gross assessment and does not necessarily assist with understanding soil degradation issues regionally or locally. Table 2.1 summarizes GLASOD’s findings. In total, human-induced soil degradation worldwide has affected 1966 million hectares, or 15 percent of total land area. The study concluded that human-induced soil degradation has affected 24 percent of inhabited land area. Values ranged from 12 percent in North America, 18 percent in South America, and 19 percent in Oceania to 26 percent in Europe, 27 percent in Africa and Central America, and 31 percent in Asia.8 In the United States, the National Resources Inventory (NRI) provides the most comprehensive look at the extent and severity of soil degradation. The NRI is a survey of land use and natural resource conditions and trends on nonfederal land in the United States, focusing primarily on soil erosion.9 In 2003, just under 41.3 million hectares of cropland in the United States (28 percent of all cropland) were eroding above soil loss tolerance rates, while 107.6 million hectares of cropland (72 percent) were eroding at or below soil loss tolerance rates. This compares to 1982 when the area eroding above soil loss tolerance rates was 40 percent Table 2.1. Extent of Soil Erosion Globally as Estimated by the Global Assessment of Soil Degradation (GLASOD) Project

Africa Asia South America Central America North America Europe Oceana World

Water Erosion

Wind Erosion

Chemical Degradation

Physical Degradation

227 441 123 46 60 114 83 1094

(million hectares) 186 222 42 5 35 42 16 548

62 74 70 7 þ* 26 1 240

19 12 8 5 1 36 2 83

Source: Adapted from L. R. Oldeman, “The Global Extent of Soil Degradation,” in Soil Resilience and Sustainable Land Use, ed. D. J. Greenland and I. Szabolcs (Wallingford, UK: CAB International, 1994). *“þ” denotes an area smaller than one million hectares.

Soil Degradation and Soil Conservation

21

(68.4 million hectares).10 A tolerance rate is a soil-specific sustainable level of erosion; soil quality and productivity can be maintained when erosion is at or below tolerance rates.11 Lal and others report the extent of water erosion on grazing land and Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) land in the United States between 1982 and 1997 using NRI data. (CRP land is retired from crop production for a specified period of time and planted with permanent vegetative cover to protect against soil erosion.) About 12.1 percent of pastureland and rangeland acres (approximately twenty-six million hectares) was affected by water erosion during the period 1982–1992. Over that time, water erosion increased slightly on areas being grazed and declined slightly on areas remaining ungrazed. Although CRP acreage increased from 5.59 million hectares in 1987 to 13.24 million hectares in 1997, the amount of CRP land affected by water erosion dropped from 12.9 percent in 1987 to 1.2 percent by 1997.12

CAUSES AND IMPACTS OF SOIL DEGRADATION Table 2.2 lists causes of soil degradation. Clearly, most causes are largely associated with agriculture, although soil degradation is observed across forestland, urban land, and developed areas. According to GLASOD, agricultural practices are the principle cause of soil degradation worldwide (see Table 2.3). However, it is not clear whether soil degradation on agricultural land is more or less damaging than, for example, soil erosion from construction sites, mining operations, or other disturbed areas. Nevertheless, the balance of this chapter focuses on the impacts of agricultural soil degradation and on conservation practices that reduce these impacts.

Table 2.2. Causes of Soil Degradation Type

Causes

Physical

Deforestation Biomass burning Denudation Tillage up and down the slope Excessive animal, human, and vehicular traffic Uncontrolled grazing Monoculture Excessive irrigation with poor quality water Lack of adequate drainage No, little, or excessive use of inorganic fertilizers Land application of industrial/urban wastes Removal and/or burning of residues No, little, or excessive use of biosolids (e.g., manure, mulch) Monoculture without growing cover crops in the rotation cycle Excessive tillage

Chemical

Biological

Source: Adapted from R. Lal et al., Soil Degradation in the United States: Extent, Severity, and Trends (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2004).

22


Table 2.3. Extent of Soil Degradation Types and Causes, Worldwide (million hectares) Causes

Types of Soil Degradation Water erosion Wind erosion Chemical degradation Physical degradation

Deforestation of Natural Vegetation

Overexploitation of Natural Vegetation

Agricultural (Crop and Livestock) Activities

Bio-industrial Activities

471 44 62

36 85 10

586 419 147

–* – 23

1

þ

80

–

Source: Adapted from L. R. Oldeman, “The Global Extent of Soil Degradation,” in Soil Resilience and Sustainable Land Use, ed. D. J. Greenland and I. Szabolcs (Wallingford, UK: CAB International, 1994). * “–” indicates none were identified. “þ” indicates area smaller than one million hectares.

Soil degradation impacts are observed in agricultural fields when soil quality is reduced and off-site when water quality, air quality, or other ecosystem functions are impaired. The principal on-site impact is reduced crop yields. In general, erosion-induced reductions in crop yields result from reduction in rooting depth, loss of plant nutrients and soil organic matter, loss of plant available water and soil water-holding capacity, and damage to young plants.13 Chemical degradation, such as the buildup of soluble salts in the root zone common in some heavily irrigated areas, reduces crop yields because of toxicity to plants or negative impacts on soil physical properties.14 For all types of soil degradation, crop yield effects will vary with soil type, crop, initial soil conditions, and severity of degradation. Declining productivity may not be realized in high-input production systems until yields are near their maximum and declining soil quality is manifested in higher input costs (e.g., fertilizer or water) rather than lower yields.15 Water and wind erosion generally move the most fertile soils. When erosion removes those soils from a field, soils of poorer structure with less available organic matter and lower water-holding capacity are left behind.16 In some regions, farmers depend on the deposition of sediment that has been washed or blown in from somewhere else, improving rooting depth and soil moisture, to maintain agricultural production.17 In other cases, crops may be damaged or even buried by waterand wind-borne sediments.18 Water- and wind-borne sediments also commonly are deposited in lakes and streams, increasing turbidity, shortening reservoir life spans, impeding navigation, and damaging fish spawning habitats.19 When runoff or eroded sediment from agricultural fields carry nutrients and pesticides, receiving waters are contaminated, nutrients accelerate the eutrophication of lakes and reservoirs, and pesticides can be toxic to fish.20 However, recent research has shown that sedimentation tends to have specific sources and sediment deposited in waterways tends to come largely from adjacent land. Soil eroded from land farther from waterways may leave the farmer’s field from which it originates but tends to be trapped by natural filters in the landscape before it can reach a waterway.21


23

Concerns about the relationship between soil erosion, atmospheric carbon, and climate change are receiving increasing attention from soil scientists and others exploring whether soil degradation plays a role in greenhouse gas emissions. Organic carbon stored within soil resources has been called the largest active pool of organic carbon, excluding fossil organic carbon.22 Thus, the role of healthy soil resources in global carbon sequestration is of interest, as is the fate of soil organic carbon when soils are disturbed, whether through tillage or through erosion and other causes of soil degradation. Lal describes two distinct schools of thought about whether soil erosion serves as a carbon sink or a carbon source and, similarly, whether soil tillage increases carbon sequestration or carbon emissions.23 He suggests that additional research is needed to determine whether more of the soil organic carbon that is moved by erosion is buried in deposition or in aquatic ecosystems and thus protected against mineralization, or if more is redistributed over the landscape, subjected to mineralization, and thus available to the atmospheric carbon pool.

SOIL CONSERVATION Soil conservation traditionally has been equated with erosion control. However, there is increasing recognition that serious soil degradation problems can occur in areas where erosion is not a problem and that soil conservation is about addressing all causes of declining soil quality. More broadly, references to soil and water conservation reflect a focus on agronomic practices that control soil degradation, reduce runoff of water from agricultural fields, and reduce water-quality problems related to erosion and other soil-related problems. A 2006 review of the benefits of conservation on cropland takes this broad view and describes conservation practices for soil, water, nutrient, pest, and landscape management.24 Not surprisingly, the authors offer a lengthy list of conservation practices. The soil management chapter alone describes eight categories comprising twenty-nine different practices.25 The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service recommends combining individual practices to maximize benefits across soil, water, and other natural resource conservation needs. This chapter reviews selected conservation practices, focusing on erosion reduction and soil quality. Residue management practices are designed to “manage the amount, orientation, and distribution of crop and other plant residue on the soil surface yearround.”26 Conservation tillage practices, for example, maintain residue cover on the soil (30 percent to 100 percent cover depending on the practice adopted). Notill is a type of conservation tillage that involves planting crops directly into narrow slots in otherwise untilled soil. Alternatively, in mulch tillage, the field is tilled but the tillage equipment leaves at least 30 percent of the soil surface covered with crop residue. Conservation tillage minimizes water and wind erosion, maintains or improves soil organic carbon, and conserves soil moisture. In 2004, no-till was practiced on 25 percent of U.S. cropland. Farmers in parts of South America use no-till much more than do U.S. farmers (45 percent to 60 percent of cropland in Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay), but no-till accounts for only about 2 percent of cropland in Africa, Asia, and Europe combined.27

24


Cover crops are another example of residue management. They are “close-growing crops grown primarily for the purpose of protecting and improving soil between periods of regular crop production or between trees and vines in orchards and vineyards.”28 Cover crops prevent erosion and help build soil organic matter. Longterm conservation cover also involves using vegetation to protect soil, although this is not technically considered a cover crop. Instead, land is fully removed from crop production and replaced by permanent vegetation. Whereas residue management and cover crops cover soil to hold it in place, other practices limit movement of soil within a field or prevent its movement across the field boundary or into water bodies. Buffer strips (vegetative barriers) are strips of permanent vegetation that buffer movement of water or wind and associated sediment or runoff. Filter strips are a special form of buffers planted along shorelines to capture sediment and runoff before it moves into water. Generally, vegetative strips of all sorts are combined with other in-field practices to maximize conservation benefits.29 Carefully arranging field rows can reduce water movement across fields. Contour planting refers to orienting tillage and planting so that rows follow along the contour of a field, rather than running up and down a slope. This type of arrangement enables individual rows to capture rainfall, maximizing water infiltration and minimizing runoff. Contour farming is not as well suited to rolling topography with irregular slopes, and generally it should be used in combination with other conservation practices to maximize conservation benefits. In many cases, contour farming has been replaced by conservation tillage and cover crops.30 To summarize, many approaches can be followed to conserve soil on agricultural land. Some of these approaches can be used jointly, and the best approach depends on the specific situation. The most drastic approach is to take land out of production altogether and protect soil with permanent vegetation.

SOCIOECONOMIC BARRIERS TO CONSERVATION PRACTICE Given the numerous practices available to prevent soil erosion and associated soil degradation, why do some farmers allow land to become degraded and fail to invest in soil conservation? Understanding which of the many possible reasons are applicable in a particular case is essential in designing project and policy interventions. A policy tool that targets the wrong constraint to investment will not work. This section summarizes several constraints; the next section reviews potential corresponding policy approaches to help overcome them. Lack of Information Researchers and program managers often assume that farmers do not invest in soil conservation because they do not understand it. Some degradation processes like sheet erosion are difficult to perceive, so the assumption that farmers are not aware of these processes is understandable and sometimes is correct. However, in countries around the world where officials believed that farmers did not understand or perceive erosion, research found that in fact they did, and other reasons


25

explained lack of investment.31 This is important, because working to make farmers aware of erosion will have little impact if real constraints to investment lie elsewhere. Off-Site Nature of Damages or Benefits of Conservation As described earlier, soil erosion can have both on-site and off-site impacts. Naturally, a farmer’s bottom line is affected primarily by on-site costs of erosion, whereas off-site costs affect other people or society in general. Research from around the world has explored the nature and location of costs of soil erosion. If the benefits of soil conservation are realized primarily off-site, a farmer who invests in soil conservation will see most of the benefit go to others. Not surprisingly, many farmers will find it difficult to justify such investments. Offsetting Productivity Enhancements Even where erosion costs are incurred primarily on-site, farmers may choose not to invest in soil conservation if they have alternative means of overcoming those costs. For example, if soil erosion reduces soil fertility, farmers can offset productivity losses by adding more fertilizer. They may choose to do this if fertilizer is a much cheaper alternative. Of course, depending on soil type and depth, continued erosion might cause greater and greater productivity losses requiring increasing amounts of fertilizer each year to offset damage. This depends heavily on soil type and depth and whether decreased productivity results from loss of fertile organic matter or loss of depth. On very deep soil, initial erosion might cause a loss of fertile organic matter that reduces productivity but fixed increases in the amount of fertilizer year after year would overcome productivity loss. If, on the other hand, productivity loss stems from reduced soil depth, the ability to offset productivity losses with fertilizer applications would be limited. As mentioned earlier, eroding soil often just moves from one place to another, and research in many places has found that farmers actively “harvest” soil that moves onto their field from another field further up the slope. A farmer who is confident in the possibility of harvesting soil deposited from up the slope may be unconcerned about losing some soil from his own field.32 Planning Horizons Soil erosion is a gradual process, and soil conservation often has gradual benefits, both in terms of on-site productivity and off-site pollution.33 A farmer with a shortterm planning horizon may be unwilling to invest in soil conservation that would yield only long-term benefits. The most likely reason for a short planning horizon is if a farmer does not expect to be on the land for very long and does not expect to be affected by erosion. This helps explain why research from around the world shows that farmers using land on short-term rental leases rarely invest in soil conservation, unless it is stipulated in rental agreements or has some short-term benefits.34 This issue is more policy relevant in developing countries than in the United States, and two main scenarios arise. First, numerous farmers in many developing

26


countries do not have formal legal title to land they farm. If they fear eviction from their lands, they certainly will have a short planning horizon, with little incentive to invest in conservation. The second scenario concerns “land to the tiller” laws found in many developing countries. They specify that someone who leases the same piece of land year after year eventually can claim ownership to it. In India and many other countries, landowners avoid leasing the same piece of land to the same farmer for more than one season, and it is unsurprising that such lands tend to suffer disproportionately from soil erosion.35 Land Prices Do Not Reflect Damage or Protection Farmers who plan to sell land soon may invest in conservation if erosion and conservation status affect the sale price. For example, if buyers of sloping land are willing to pay more for land that is protected, then a farmer planning to sell may want to invest in conservation to capture its value in the sale price. If the land will be converted to buildings or is considered valuable for real estate development, the sale price is unlikely to reward conservation investments. In such a case, the relevant aspects of the time horizon concern the likely future land use rather than the likely occupant. There is little point in allocating resources to conserve soil on agricultural land that will be paved over. Such a scenario may be part of a separate problem: land markets that do not reflect the full value of agricultural land. This problem requires its own chapter. Poverty Poverty makes it difficult to invest in soil conservation. Where costs are on-site, it will be difficult for an impoverished farmer to make an expensive conservation investment that yields only gradual benefits. Poverty can take different forms that create different kinds of constraints to investment.36 In particular, soil conservation might require cash, or labor, or both. Some farmers have little cash but plenty of family labor. Such a family would be in a good position to invest in labor-intensive soil conservation, but not in soil conservation that requires a cash outlay. A farmer with cash on hand but not much labor faces the opposite problem. Credit Constraints Where soil conservation investment requires cash, an obvious potential constraint to investment is that the farmer knows it would be profitable but the longterm payoff creates a cash flow problem. In such a case, credit is the constraint to investment, not necessarily poverty. Many countries have poorly functioning credit markets that could create such a constraint. In India, for example, farmers can easily get bank credit to invest in irrigation or to improve irrigated fields, but the same credit is not usually available for rain-fed (unirrigated) fields. Credit constraints vary between countries. Loans may not be given to farmers with land holdings below a certain size, or credit is available only for some kinds of land improvements. Government policy may stipulate that formal credit from banks be offered at below-market interest rates. This means that the lender loses money on every loan offered, so fewer loans are made.


27

Competing Objectives In much of the world, technical solutions to soil conservation are known, but resource constraints make them difficult to implement. For example, using cover crops to protect soil quality is well known, but careful management is required to plant cover crops early enough to gain sufficient biomass for soil protection and then kill them in a timely manner to retain that biomass for soil protection while not competing with the main crop. Competition for available soil moisture and time and labor taken from income-earning enterprises are also concerns. However, organizations like the Sustainable Agriculture Network in the United States are working to provide information to farmers about cover crop benefits and management needs.37 Also, as prices of nitrogen fertilizer track with petroleum prices, use of soil-incorporated cover crops to replace some or all fertilizer may increase. If a cover crop could be harvested for some gain—for example, as biomass for energy production—without sacrificing conservation benefits, then use of cover crops may grow. In India, crop residue and manure cannot be retained easily on agricultural fields because of their high value as animal feed and fuel, respectively. In addition, on rainfed land, Indian farmers rarely adopt contour farming because it interferes with other aspects of their farming systems.38 For example, in the Indian system of land inheritance, a farmer’s land is divided among all the sons in a household. On mildly sloping land in rain-fed areas, lower areas tend to have deeper and more fertile soil than land farther up the slope. A father dividing land for inheritance gives each son a mixture of land in lower and higher areas to minimize disparities in land quality. Accordingly, many Indian farms consist of steep, narrow plots that run up and down slopes. Also, because long crop rows facilitate oxen-driven farming operations, farmers orient their crop rows up and down the slope rather than along the contour. Constraints to Collective Action Where It Is Required In many cases, a soil conservation investment requires coordinated or collective action by more than one person. This can take several forms. One example concerns gully erosion, which can be controlled by planting permanent vegetation throughout the gully to bind the soil and placing barriers across the gully to intercept runoff. When a gully is large enough, it must be treated in several places to ensure that runoff water cannot gain enough momentum to breach any given barrier. Typically, the more farmers whose action is required, the more difficult it is to make the investment, because the chances are greater that at least one party will be constrained from investing for some reason. Another problem arises when land is not owned individually. This may refer to ownership by the state, by the community as a group (common property), by no one in particular (open access), or when ownership is not enforced and people treat the land as unowned. Under common property, decisions to invest in soil conservation are complicated by the challenge of convincing all the users to invest jointly. This is conceptually equivalent to the case described above of the gully that runs through several properties. Under open access, investment almost certainly will not be forthcoming. The reason is related to the case in which the costs

28


of soil erosion occur off-site—that is, those who undertake the investment would bear the cost, but they would have to share the benefits with all the others.

CONSERVATION POLICY APPROACHES Several policy approaches to encourage soil conservation have been applied to effectively address various barriers to adoption. Sometimes, the lack of conservation investment may call for unique, innovative policy tools. A common conservation policy is public investment in conservation education and technical assistance for farmers, especially when the lack of information constrains conservation investment. In the United States, for example, adoption was low when no-till was first introduced, because it contradicted centuries of farming tradition that involved clean fields and neat rows of crops. USDA agency personnel, conservation districts, and extension educators then helped farmers adapt notill to meet their needs and collaborated with companies to conduct research to develop the necessary equipment and chemicals. Education and technical assistance may not be effective when costs are incurred primarily off-site and farmers do not invest in conservation because they foresee no profit or when farmers have competing interests for the use of their scarce labor, capital, and other resources. Instead, policy approaches like regulation or, more commonly, subsidization are more likely to increase conservation. Regulations making soil conservation a legal requirement have been used widely around the world. This policy approach was found in colonial India and several British colonies in Africa.39 Even after independence, various former colonies have pursued the same approach. Some countries have land-use policies that prohibit farming on slopes above a certain grade, but such policies are difficult to enforce. Iowa authorized soil conservation districts to adopt mandatory soil erosion limits in 1973. Farmers who objected to conservation requirements questioned their constitutionality in court and, ultimately, the limits and conservation obligations were upheld by Iowa’s Supreme Court.40 Nevertheless, laws requiring investment in soil conservation need to be undertaken with care as they can create bad relationships between government and farmers. The most realistic way to encourage soil conservation where it is not profitable to the farmer or where competition exists for the resources needed for conservation is to help pay for it. Subsidizing conservation is also a consideration when poverty constrains conservation investments; poor farmers may need assistance that is specifically targeted to help them overcome labor or cash constraints. A common approach is government subsidization of soil conservation’s startup costs. However, subsidies may not overcome barriers related to long-lived customs such as the Indian land inheritance system. The U.S. CRP program is a notable effort to help farmers pay for the cost of conservation through long-term retirement of cropland. CRP was authorized to protect highly erodible land and water quality. Participating landowners are paid to retire land from crop production for a ten- to fifteen-year contract period and to plant and maintain a protective vegetative cover.41 The CRP functions like a long-term easement; participating landowners retain rights to use land subject to easement provisions that restrict uses that reduce erosion protection provided by


29

the vegetative cover. In some parts of the United States, improved wildlife habitat has been a significant benefit, and landowners have been able to lease hunting rights for additional income. Periodically, especially during periods of tight animal feed supplies, landowners have been allowed to use CRP acreage for grazing or hay production for a limited period. As of April 2008, the CRP was providing for permanent cover on almost thirty-five million acres.42 Because CRP contracts are not permanent, continuing conservation on land being released from CRP is of considerable concern. With grain prices at record levels and demand for biofuel feed stocks growing, CRP lands are converting to rowcrop production in some regions. Erosion control and soil organic matter benefits of long-term cover can be lost, depending on how the newly converted land is managed. Some suggest that the soil quality benefits of CRP can be retained if land is returned to crop production with no-till or conservation tillage,43 citing as an example the growth of soybean production in Brazil that occurred largely on native grassland converted to no-till soybeans with little or no loss of soil organic matter.44 Unfortunately, many farmers have abandoned subsidized conservation practices soon after special programs end and program officials no longer monitor compliance.45 Because ongoing government monitoring is costly, searches for effective alternatives led to an approach known as payment for environmental services (PES). The key distinction in this approach is that ongoing subsidy payments are conditional on the farmer’s compliance in maintaining the agreed-upon conservation practice. Still, the viability of PES as a policy instrument is limited because identifying and measuring environmental services and linking them to a particular land use are often difficult and costly.46 One example of PES is found in many small Latin American cities where municipal water services pay farmers living upstream to protect the water source that supplies the city.47 A small tax on water customers provides the funds for the environmental service payment. A similar situation occurred in the United States when gradual land-use change in upstate watersheds began to threaten New York City’s water quality. Faced with the prospect of spending more than six billion dollars to build and operate a water filtration plant, the city instead negotiated in upstate areas to acquire land, purchase conservation easements, and establish setbacks and buffer zones throughout the source watersheds. New York City paid land users less than one billion dollars to undertake these measures to protect water sources and make the filtration plant unnecessary.48 The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) pays farmers for land management practices that sequester carbon dioxide (that is, capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the soil). Conservation tillage sequesters carbon dioxide as does converting cropland to grassland. Depending on soil conditions, farmers are eligible to enroll with CCX to earn such payments.49 Under certain conditions, the same land can be enrolled both with CCX and CRP.50 If short planning horizons constrain farmers from investing in soil conservation, policies that help lengthen the planning horizon are appropriate where feasible. Where ownership of land is unclear, changes in land tenure rules can be made. For example, legalizing farmers’ occupation of land even though they do not hold title would help ensure that farmers have incentive to care for the land. In one Indonesian program, farmers on government land are allowed to remain there as long as they undertake conservation farming practices.51 Where land-leasing laws, such as

30


those in the “land to the tiller” scenario, discourage conservation, governments could change laws to encourage longer leases. Finally, promoting collective action is notoriously difficult. Even after decades of study, researchers have made little progress in predicting the conditions under which it will take place. For some problems, a local authority could perhaps be responsible for helping to coordinate the actions of neighboring farmers. For open access and common property situations, success of different property rights arrangements varies by situation and location, so blanket recommendations are impossible. Location-specific research and experimentation are needed to find out what kinds of property rights arrangements work.52

CONCLUSION Soil degradation comes in many forms with different degrees of severity and different measures available to correct it. Scherr concluded that soil degradation appears not to threaten aggregate global food supply by 2020, although in some regions the effects of soil degradation on food consumption by rural poor and on agricultural markets and incomes may be significant.53 Overcoming soil degradation requires understanding specific problems and their biophysical causes, but also socioeconomic causes. For policy and program interventions to be successful, they must accurately target the underlying determinants of soil degradation and recognize the capacity of farmers and other land managers to respond effectively to the threat of degradation.

NOTES 1. D. L. Johnson et al., “Meanings of Environmental Terms,” Journal of Environmental Quality 26, no. 3 (1997): 584. 2. D. L. Karlen et al., “Soil Quality: a Concept, Definition, and Framework for Evaluation,” Soil Science Society of America Journal 61, no. 1 (1997): 6. 3. R. Lal, “Soil Degradation by Erosion,” Land Degradation and Development 12, no. 6 (2001): 520. 4. L. R. Oldeman, “The Global Extent of Soil Degradation,” in Soil Resilience and Sustainable Land Use, ed. D. J. Greenland and I. Szabolcs (Wallingford, UK: CAB International, 1994), 103. 5. R. Lal, “Soil Degradation,” 520; L. R. Oldeman, “Global Extent,” 102–3. 6. D. L. Johnson et al., “Meanings,” 583. 7. R. Lal et al., Soil Degradation in the United States: Extent, Severity, and Trends (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2004), 5. 8. Ibid., 108. 9. Information on and reports from the NRI are available at http://www.nrcs.usda. gov/technical/NRI/ (accessed December 5, 2008). 10. USDA, Natural Resources Conservation Service, “National Resources Inventory, 2003 Annual NRI: Soil Erosion,” http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/technical/NRI/2003/ SoilErosion-mrb.pdf (accessed December 5, 2008). 11. R. Lal et al., Soil Degradation in the U.S., 47. 12. R. Lal et al., Soil Degradation in the U.S., 86–89. 13. R. Lal, “Soil Erosion Impact on Agronomic Productivity and Environment Quality,” Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences 17, no. 4 (1998): 329.


31

14. I. Szabolcs, “Salt Buildup as a Factor of Soil Degradation,” in Methods for Assessment of Soil Degradation, ed. R. Lal et al. (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1998), 256. 15. S. J. Scherr, Soil Degradation: A Threat to Developing-Country Food Security by 2020? (Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute, 1999), 8. 16. R. Reeder and D. Westermann, “Soil Management Practices,” in Environmental Benefits of Conservation on Cropland: The Status of Our Knowledge, ed. M. Schnepf and C. Cox (Ankeny, IA: Soil and Water Conservation Society, 2006), 3. 17. J. M. Laflen and E. J. Roose, “Methodologies for Assessment of Soil Degradation Due to Water Erosion,” in Methods for Assessment of Soil Degradation, ed. R. Lal et al. (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1998), 32. 18. R. Lal, “Soil Erosion Impact,” 333. 19. P. Crosson, “Impact of Erosion on Land Productivity and Water Quality in the United States.” in Soil Erosion and Conservation, ed. S. A. El-Swaify, W. C. Moldenhauer and A. Lo (Ankeny, IA: Soil Conservation Society of America, 1985), 231. 20. E. H. Clark, J. A. Haverkamp, and W. Chapman. Eroding Soils: The Off-Farm Impacts (Washington, DC: The Conservation Foundation, 1985), 7. 21. M. van Noordwijk, J. Poulsen, and P. Ericksen, “Quantifying Off-Site Effects of Land Use Change: Filters, Flows and Fallacies,” Agriculture Ecosystems and Environment 104, no. 1 (2004): 19–34. 22. S. V. Smith et al., “Budgets of Soil Erosion and Deposition for Sediments and Sedimentary Organic Carbon across the Conterminous United States,” Global Biogeochemical Cycles 15, no. 3 (2001): 697. 23. R. Lal, “Soil Erosion and Carbon Dynamics,” Soil and Tillage Research 81, no. 2 (2005): 137–42. 24. M. Schnepf and C. Cox, eds., Environmental Benefits of Conservation on Cropland: The Status of Our Knowledge (Ankeny, IA: Soil and Water Conservation Society, 2006). 25. R. Reeder and D. Westermann, “Soil Management,” 5. 26. Ibid., 4. 27. R. Reeder and D. Westermann, “Soil Management,” 6–7. 28. Ibid., 35. 29. R. Reeder and D. Westermann, “Soil Management,” 49. 30. Ibid., 64. 31. J. Kerr and J. Pender, “Farmers’ Perceptions of Soil Erosion and its Consequences in India’s Semi-Arid Tropics,” Land Degradation and Development 16, no. 3 (2005): 257. 32. J. Kerr and J. Pender, “Farmers’ Perceptions,” 264–65. 33. M. Schnepf and C. Cox, Environmental Benefits of Conservation on Cropland. 34. J. Kerr, “The Economics of Soil Degradation: From National Policy to Farmers’ Fields,” in Assessing Soil Erosion at Multiple Scales, ed. F. P. de Vries, F. Augus, and J. Kerr (Wallingford, UK: CAB International, 1997), 28–29. 35. J. Kerr, “The Economics of Soil Degradation,” 28–29. 36. T. Reardon and S. Vosti, “Links between Rural Poverty and Environment in Developing Countries: Asset Categories and ‘Investment Poverty,’ ” World Development 23, no. 9 (1995): 1495–1506. 37. A. Clark, Managing Cover Crops Profitably, 3rd ed. (Beltsville, MD: Sustainable Agriculture Network, 2007). 38. J. Kerr, “The Economics of Soil Degradation,” 32–34. 39. J. Pretty and P. Shah, “Making Soil and Water Conservation Sustainable: From Coercion and Control to Partnerships and Participation,” Land Degradation and Development 8, no. 1 (1997): 40–44. 40. Woodbury County Soil Conservation District v. Ortner, 279 N.W. 2d. 276 (1979).

32


41. See http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/ConservationPolicy/retirement.htm (accessed December 5, 2008). 42. Data are available at http://content.fsa.usda.gov/crpstorpt/rmepegg/MEPEGGR1. HTM (accessed December 5, 2008). 43. R. Reeder and D. Westerman, “Soil Management,” 67. 44. Ibid, 7. 45. J. Pretty and P. Shah, “Making Soil and Water Conservation Sustainable,” 45. 46. S. Wunder, S. Engel, and S. Pagiola, “Taking Stock: A Comparative Analysis of Payments for Environmental Services Programs in Developed and Developing Countries,” Ecological Economics 65, no. 4 (2008): 834–52. 47. M. Echavarrıá et al., The Impacts of Payments for Watershed Services in Ecuador (London: International Institute for Environment and Development, 2002). 48. M. Pires, “Watershed Protection for a World City: The Case of New York,” Land Use Policy 21, no. 2 (2004): 167–68. 49. See http://www.chicagoclimateexchange.com/content.jsf?id=781 (accessed December 5, 2008). 50. See http://www.iowafarmbureau.com/special/carbon/pdf/Carbon%20Brochure% 20051109.pdf (accessed December 5, 2008). 51. See http://www.worldagroforestrycentre.org/Sea/Networks/RUPES/index.asp (accessed December 5, 2008). 52. T. Dietz et al., “The Drama of the Commons,” in The Drama of the Commons, ed. E. Ostrom et al. (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2002), 25. 53. S. J. Scherr, Soil Degradation, 3.

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Clark, A. Managing Cover Crops Profitably, 3rd ed. Beltsville, MD: Sustainable Agriculture Network, 2007. Lal, R., ed. Integrated Watershed Management in the Global Ecosystem. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2000. Ostrom, E., T. Dietz, N. Dlsak, P. C. Stern, S. Stonich, and E. U. Weber, eds. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2002. Schnepf, M., and C. Cox, eds. Environmental Benefits of Conservation on Cropland: The Status of Our Knowledge. Ankeny, IA: Soil and Water Conservation Society, 2006.

Web Sites Chicago Climate Exchange, http://www.chicagoclimateexchange.com. Conservation Technology Information Center, http://www.ctic.purdue.edu/. Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Cover Crop Resources, http://www. leopold.iastate.edu/research/eco_files/cover_crops.htm. Office of Water and Watersheds, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, http://www. epa.gov/owow/watershed/. Soil and Water Conservation Society, http://www.swcs.org. USDA Economic Research Service, Agricultural Resources and Environmental Indicators, http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/arei/eib16/. USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/.

3 Integrated Pest Management, Sustainability, and Risk: Linking Principles, Policy, and Practice Michael J. Brewer and Marcia Ishii-Eiteman INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT CONCEPTS AND APPROACHES Pest occurrence and outbreaks have become more frequent and severe, coincident to anthropomorphic-driven changes in cropping patterns, transportation, pesticide use, and climate. It is broadly recognized that alternatives to broad-spectrum pesticides are needed, given concerns over their environmental and human health risk profiles.1 Confronting these challenges, integrated pest management (IPM) practitioners have taken advantage of recent advances in both ecologically based (e.g., biological control, cultural control) and input-based approaches (e.g., reduced-risk pesticides, genetically modified crops) in developing IPM tactics.2 The sustainability and risk of individual IPM tactics differ within these classifications, however, and thus raise questions regarding the underlying goals and appropriate balance required to integrate individual tactics within IPM systems. Indeed, this contemporary issue mirrors the traditional dilemma of balancing pesticide use with biological control within an IPM program.3 IPM concepts have been in development since the 1950s, driven in part by challenges of pesticide-induced resistance, pest resurgence and secondary pest outbreaks, and emerging evidence of adverse environmental and human health impacts linked to chemical pesticide use. Early constructs emphasized judicious use of pesticides to suppress pests below “economic” thresholds and reduce adverse effects.4 Regulatory and policy-based solutions to prevent or reduce harmful effects gained momentum through the turn of the twenty-first century.5 More recently, biotechnology has advanced the development of genetically modified crops to address key pest control problems.6 Meanwhile, agro-ecological sciences and innovations have contributed numerous ecologically based IPM strategies.7 In this chapter, we assess a range of promising IPM approaches and policies well situated to address sustainable pest management requirements in food systems.

34


Foundations in Building IPM Systems The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) definition for IPM focuses on the careful consideration of a number of pest control techniques that discourage the development of pest populations and keep pesticides and other interventions to levels that are economically justified and safe for human health and the environment. IPM emphasizes the growth of a healthy crop with the least possible disruption of agroecosystems, thereby encouraging natural pest control mechanisms.8

We emphasize characterization of sustainability and risk of IPM tactics to augment the more traditional approach of classification of IPM tactics by the nature of their development and deployment.9 IPM tactics within any descriptive category may differ in sustainability and risks associated with their use (see Table 3.1). For example, generalizing sustainability and risk profiles of genetically modified crops and organic-compliant IPM tactics can be controversial and misleading. Assertions include that all genetically modified crops pose no risk and all organic IPM approaches are sustainable. Biotechnology has produced four major transgenic crops (maize, soy, cotton, and canola) resistant to certain insects and herbicides (thereby allowing the use of herbicides that would kill the unmodified crop). These crops pose a lower risk of poisoning agricultural workers and consumers relative to many chemical pesticides. But this human health risk profile does not necessarily extend to ecological and socioeconomic risk—for example, concern has been increasing regarding the following: (1) cross-pollination with nonmodified plants; (2) an increase in herbicide-resistant weeds; (3) the effects on biodiversity and nontarget organisms, including pest predators; and (4) the impacts on smallscale farmers’ livelihoods, economic stability of the farm enterprise, culturally and economically important practices (e.g., women’s seed-saving), and farmers’ legal rights.10 In the case of organic-compliant IPM tactics, some may be highly sustainable, such as managing noncrop vegetation to promote natural pest control, while others may rely on inputs that are not sustainable with long-term ecosystem functions, such as sulfur for disease control. As with traditional pesticides, patterns of sustainability and risk emerge only when appropriate attributes of the tactics are known (e.g., pesticide toxicity range, reproductive capability, and host range of biological control agents) and when ecological, health, social, and economic assessments are conducted over time. Through this lens, sustainability of an IPM tactic can be measured by its (1) compatibility when using multiple tactics to synergize performance and forestall pest resistance; (2) regenerative capability or ability to be integrated into ongoing farm activities to reduce system inputs and expenditure of nonrenewable energy; (3) beneficial effects on ecosystem functioning, including the nurturing and enhancing of natural pest control; and (4) strengthening societal arrangements in its support.11 Likewise, risk assessment of an IPM tactic should consider its (1) environmental effects, (2) human health risks,12 and (3) societal consequences associated with their availability and use13 (see Table 3.1). IPM tactics grounded in ecological principles have had a renaissance in research and are likely to attain high levels of sustainability and moderate to low risk. Examples of ecological sustainability include regenerative tactics such as use

Table 3.1. Common Classifications of IPM Tactics and Associated Sustainability and Risk Classification Subclassification Biological control (biocontrol)

Applied biocontrol: classical approach

35

Applied biocontrol: augmentation and inundation

Naturally occurring biocontrol Conservation biocontrol

Chemical control (pesticides)

Broad-spectrum pesticides

Definition

Sustainabilitya, c

Riskb, c

Action of natural enemies (e.g., parasitoids, predators, phytophagous species [weed feeders]) that result in the death or suppression of pests Natural enemies added to system that provide longlasting control Natural enemies added to system that require repeated additions, unable to establish Background mortality from naturally occurring organisms Efforts to enhance the effectiveness of naturally occurring biocontrol Chemical compounds used for pest control

See subclassifications


Compatibility: Mod/Hi Regenerative: Hi Ecosystem: Low/Mod/Hi Compatibility: Mod Regenerative: Low/Mod Ecosystem: Mod/Hi

Environ: Low/Mod/Hi Human: Low Social: Low Environ: Low/Mod/Hi

Compatibility: Mod/Hi Regenerative: Hi Ecosystem: Mod/Hi Compatibility: Mod/Hi Regenerative: Hi Ecosystem: Hi See subclassifications

Environ: Low Human: Low Social: Low Environ: Low/Mod Human: Low Social: Low See subclassifications

Compounds that kill a wide range of pests and nontarget organisms

Compatibility: Low Regenerative: Low Ecosystem: Low

Human: Low Social: Low

Environ: Hi Human: Low/Mod/Hi Social: Mod/Hi

(Continued)

Table 3.1. (Continued) Classification Narrow-spectrum pesticides

Reduced-risk pesticides

Cultural control

Host plant resistance

36 Planting strategies

Mechanical

Noncrop vegetation management

Genetic (biotechnology) control

Definition

Sustainabilitya,

Compounds that kill a narrow range of pests and nontarget organisms Compounds that have reduced human health or environmental risk Reduction of pests by practices associated with standard farm practices Classical plant breeding for pest resistance

Compatibility: Low/Mod Regenerative: Low Ecosystem: Low Compatibility: Low/Mod Regenerative: Low Ecosystem: Low/Mod See subclassifications

Environ: Low/Mod Human: Low/Mod Social: Low/Mod/Hi Environ: Low Human: Low Social: Low/Mod/Hi See subclassifications

Compatibility: Low/Mod/Hi Regenerative: Low/Mod Ecosystem: Mod/Hi Compatibility: Low/Mod/Hi Regenerative: Mod Ecosystem: Mod/Hi Compatibility: Low/Mod/Hi Regenerative: Low/Mod Ecosystem: Low/Mod Compatibility: Mod/Hi Regenerative: Mod Ecosystem: Mod/Hi

Environ: Low/Mod Human: Low Social: Low/Mod Environ: Low Human: Low Social: Low/Mod Environ: Low/Mod/Hi Human: Low Social: Low/Mod Environ: Low Human: Low Social: Low/Mod



Plant strategies to disrupt pest cycle, such as crop rotations and time of planting Disruption to pest with farm implements, such as tillage Disruption of pest, such as removing plant hosts, or enhancement of natural control, such as flowers for natural enemies Pest control through action of modifying genes or gene expression in the pest or the protected plant

c

Riskb,

c

Table 3.1. (Continued) Classification Sterile insect technique

Genetically modified crops

Organic control

Definition

Sustainabilitya,

c

Mass production and release of sexually sterile pest to disrupt mating Modified crop expresses new form of pest resistance or resistance to herbicides Organic-derived control options, including most biocontrol, selected pesticides, and most cultural controls

Compatibility: Low/Mod Regenerative: Low Ecosystem: Low Compatibility: Low/Mod Regenerative: Low/Mod Ecosystem: Low Compatibility: Low/Mod/Hi Regenerative: Low/Mod/Hi Ecosystem: Low/Mod/Hi

Riskb, c Environ: Low Human: Low Social: Low/Mod Environ: Low/Mod/Hi Human: Low Social: Low/Mod/Hi Environ: Low/Mod/Hi Human: Low/Mod Social: Low/Mod

37

Sources: K. M. Maredia, D. Dakuou, and D. Mota-Sanchez, Integrated Pest Management in the Global Arena (Wallingford, UK: CABI Publishing, 2003); G. W. Norton, E. A. Heinrichs, G. C. Luther, and M. E. Irwin, Globalizing Integrated Pest Management: A Participatory Process (Ames, IA: Blackwell Publishing); R. G. Van Driesche, and T. S. Bellows. Biological Control (New York: Chapman & Hall, 1996), 156–157. Note: a. Sustainability attributes: Compatibility, when using multiple tactics, performance is synergized and pest resistance forestalled; Regenerative, capability to reduce system inputs and expenditure of nonrenewable energy; Ecosystem, potential for beneficial effects on ecosystem functioning. b. Risk attributes: it is desirable to emphasize IPM tactics that minimize environmental (Environ) and human health (Human) risks, and potential societal inequities (Social). c. Hi, Mod, and Low indicate high, moderate, and low degree of sustainability of the IPM tactic, as based on literature review. Multiple indicators reflect the range of sustainability based on nature of individual IPM tactics and differences in perspective.

38


of biological control agents that successfully establish in the system14 or integrative tactics such as managing field border vegetation to promote flowers for natural enemies.15 IPM techniques attaining moderate to low levels of sustainability include spatially and temporally heterogeneous crop rotations,16 varieties resistant to pests,17 and biological control agents that require repeated application to achieve the desired level of pest control.18 Human health risks tend to be very low, while environmental and socioeconomic risks depend on the nature of the interactions (e.g., does the biological control agent reduce native species’ vigor?) and how the tactic affects the food system (e.g., are fields rotated with crops appropriate to local use and food distribution networks?). Modern input-based tactics such as genetically modified crops and reduced-risk pesticides tend to be less sustainable (requiring repeated “application”) and vary considerably in risk. Modest sustainability may be achieved through alternating pesticides with different modes of action and integrating their use with other control tactics.19 Genetically modified crops can reduce insecticide use, although herbicide use typically increases with the use of herbicide-ready modified crops, and the impacts of herbicides and transgenic crops on biological control agents are of concern.20 These technologies are often developed to optimize use in large-scale agrifood systems that focus on commodity crops and multinational distribution networks, and less so on specialty crops for local consumption and distribution and local production of seed.21 Lastly, IPM support services are important building blocks in establishing IPM systems with desirable sustainability and risk profiles. An IPM system should utilize IPM and environmental monitoring to gauge pest status and agricultural and environmental outcomes of deployed IPM tactics.22 IPM monitoring tools are critical in IPM deployment to identify and monitor pests (or signs of presence), plant response (damage) in reaction to pest herbivory, and the effectiveness of control strategies. Use of environmental monitoring tools may complement IPM monitoring tools (e.g., weather information)23 or may be developed to assess the effects of pest management tactics on environmental quality (e.g., pesticide effects on water quality).24 Essential IPM support services also include establishment of educational, regulatory, financial, and community support structures through policy and market mechanisms. Broadly and consistent with the principles promoted in the FAO definition of IPM, a sustainability and risk focus is valuable in building an IPM system to meet twenty-first-century challenges. An IPM system should be composed of multiple ecologically based tactics that maximize sustainability within a healthy agro-ecosystem, while allowing short-term strategic insertion of low-sustainability, highinput-based tactics to address severe pest problems until more extensive system adjustments can be made. Risks of introducing low-sustainability tactics should be minimized through open, transparent participatory assessment and monitoring of human, environmental, and socioeconomic health.

POLICY OPTIONS FOR SUPPORTING IPM Public policy can guide the development, delivery, and societal acceptance of IPM. Effective public policies establish regulatory and incentive frameworks to safeguard health and public goods, support good governance over resource

Integrated Pest Management, Sustainability, and Risk

39

allocation and investment decisions, utilize innovative market mechanisms, and ensure private and public sector accountability. A conceptual framework to guide policy and investment options toward IPM systems with high sustainability and low risk can be broadly conceived as consisting of three transitional stages: (1) minimizing environmental and human health harms by decreasing reliance on hazardous chemical inputs; (2) maximizing environmental and health benefits by investing in and encouraging adoption of primarily ecologically based and more effective IPM tactics and strategies; and (3) transforming agrifood systems to achieve broader equitable and sustainable development goals—the latter are necessary to ensure the social sustainability of desired IPM systems. Consistent with this view, the United Nations–led International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) 2009 report presented policy options for a paradigm shift toward agro-ecologically based biodiverse farming that addresses the multiple functions of agriculture (i.e., its social, economic, and cultural dimensions as well as its productive, landscape, and ecosystem functions); the establishment and enforcement of effective regional and international agreements; new and equitable trade arrangements; integration of local and indigenous knowledge with formal scientific efforts; and institutional mechanisms to increase local participation in agricultural policymaking and decision-making processes.25

Stage 1. Minimizing Environmental and Public Health Harms Policy options well suited to reducing reliance on hazardous pesticides have taken the form of regulatory frameworks on pesticide use and distribution, worker protection standards, regional and international treaties and agreements, and economic policy measures such as the removal of pesticide subsidies, levying environmental taxes on pesticide use and importation (i.e., the “polluter pays” principle), and carbon and energy taxes based on integrated analysis of greenhouse gas emissions and energy costs associated with high versus low pesticide-use systems. For example, several European countries (Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden) and Canada have implemented pesticide-reduction programs with measurable benchmarks for use reduction,26 and the European Commission requires members to do the same.27 A growing number of developing countries (including Costa Rica, Ecuador, Paraguay, Thailand, and Vietnam) and China have banned pesticides classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “extremely hazardous,” and the FAO now advocates a progressive ban on highly toxic (WHO Class 2) pesticides.28 Numerous national and international protocols, agreements, and treaties that address the use, distribution, management, clean-up, and phase-out of chemical pesticides have been ratified and implemented (see Table 3.2). A current challenge for many developing countries is the lack of institutional capacity and financial resources to monitor and comply with both phytosanitary and maximum residue level (MRL) standards for pesticides.29 Tensions in national policy formation around pesticide and pest management practices can arise when countries attempt to meet international phytosanitary requirements of exported produce (which can encourage the overuse of chemical pesticides) and simultaneously not exceed MRLs. Innovative options to overcome these challenges include regional initiatives to harmonize standards, regional pooling of scientific resources

Table 3.2. Policy Instruments Affecting Pest Management National level. • Pesticide registration legislation, pesticide subsidies, use taxes, import duties, and maximum residue levels (MRLs) affect pesticide use and sales. • Publicly accessible databases on pesticide use, sales, export, residues, environmental effects, and poisonings provide useful information to inform policy-making processes. • Pesticide Use Reduction programs, Organic Transition Payments, and National IPM extension programs provide farmers with useful guidelines, targets, incentives, and extension assistance to support sustainable pest management decisions. Regional level. • The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Guidelines on Pest and Pesticide Management prioritize IPM and improved pesticide management. • The European Commission’s “thematic strategy” provides a policy framework to minimize hazards and risks of pesticide use. • The North American Commission on Environmental Cooperation (NACEC) Sound Management of Chemicals Working Group has action plans to reduce use of specific pesticides. International level. • The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides (agreed in 1985 and revised in 2002) promotes ecologically based IPM, provides guidelines on pesticide labelling and advertising, recommends banning extremely hazardous (World Health Organization [WHO] Class 1) pesticides, and provides guidance on developing national pesticide legislation. • The Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent (PIC) Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade (1998) requires that exporting countries provide notification to importing countries of bans and restrictions on listed pesticides. • The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) provides phase-out plans for nine pesticides. The nongovernmental International POPs Elimination Network (IPEN) works alongside the POPs treaty process. • The Montreal Protocol (1987) mandates the phasing out of the ozone-depleting pesticide methyl bromide. • The Intergovernmental Forum on Chemical Safety (1994) is a WHO-sponsored mechanism to develop and promote strategies and partnerships on chemical safety. • The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management articulates global commitments, strategies, and tools for managing chemicals more safely around the world. The agreement emphasizes principles of prevention, polluter pays, substitution for less harmful substances, public participation, precaution, and the public’s right to know. • The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal (1992) focuses on controlling the management, movement, and disposal of hazardous wastes, including pesticides. • The Africa Stockpiles Project brings together diverse stakeholders to clean up and safely dispose of obsolete pesticide stocks in Africa and establish preventive measures to avoid future accumulation. Source: F. Dreyfus, C. Plencovich, M. Petit, H. Akca, S. Dogheim, M. Ishii-Eiteman et al., “Historical Analysis of the Effectiveness of AKST Systems in Promoting Innovation,” International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge Science and Technology for Development: Global Report, ed. B. D. McIntyre, H. R. Herren, J. Wakhungu, and R. T. Watson, 104 (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2009).

40


41

and surveillance data, and establishment of regional regulatory programs to spread costs.30 The need for increased investment in capacity to prevent, assess risk, and control or manage invasive pest species is also gaining attention at local, national, and international levels. Full eradication requires significant resources and is difficult to achieve in most cases, whereas management plans that utilize low-risk and high-sustainability tactics are more socially acceptable and likely to succeed over the long term.31

Stage 2. Maximizing Environmental and Social Benefit through a Focus on High Sustainability and Low Risk Reducing reliance on pesticides with high risk is most effective when ecologically-based pest management options are provided. An increasing number of developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America have national IPM research, extension, and farmer education training programs.32 FAO’s Global IPM Facility and bilateral donors (e.g., Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, IPM Europe, and the United States) have promoted IPM in their technical assistance and development aid programs,33 while international institutes such as icipe (the African Insect Science for Food and Health, formerly known as International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology) and others have led effective research efforts in IPM and affiliated crop management practices. Some governments have adopted incentive-based programs that include direct payments to farmers for the provision of environmental services associated with high-sustainability pest management (e.g., pollinator conservation, improved water quality, increased biodiversity) and other financial support measures (e.g., special credit lines, crop insurance, profit and income tax exemptions for farmers adopting environmentally beneficial pest management practices).34 Public sector investment in higher education and appropriate skills training of both public and private sector agriculturalists enable innovations in ecologically based IPM systems, small-scale diversified farming practices, and the pest management practices of local and indigenous communities.35 The place-based characteristics of successful IPM systems have a social and cultural dimension as well. This requires a commitment to supporting social science research that recognizes and learns from diverse knowledge systems and alternate ontologies (i.e., conceptualizations of being). Promoting IPM systems with high levels of sustainability and low risk requires the integration of the biological and social sciences in multidisciplinary and interactive research, extension, and education.

Hindrances to a Focus on High Sustainability and Low Risk With so many options available, what is hindering more rapid progress toward the adoption of ecologically based IPM systems with high-sustainability and lowrisk profiles, and what can be done to accelerate the transition to such systems? Establishment and enforcement of pesticide regulatory restrictions is often poor.36 At the same time, most advisory and extension programs, and some lending and development agencies, have little familiarity with or confidence in ecologically

42


based approaches to pest management, and these agencies continue to promote intensification of agriculture designed to maximize short-term production output.37 Direct and indirect policy supports for chemical pesticides remain in place in many countries, including direct pesticide subsidies and other price-distorting practices such as large donor gifts of pesticides, fixed credit packages of inputs, reductions in or exemptions on import duties, value added tax (VAT) and sales taxes for pesticides, and overvalued local currencies.38 Policy efforts to reduce pesticide reliance can be further confounded by marketing and sales.39 Meanwhile, public sector funding for IPM and biocontrol has been reduced40 and private sector investments in technologically based tools have increased.41 Finally, inequitable distribution of costs plays a role: except in a few countries, farmers typically bear the upfront transaction costs and risks of conversion to more socially and environmentally beneficial pest management practices.42 These constraints point to the need to address the social and institutional sustainability requirements of IPM by means of a broader agrifood systems analysis. Stage 3. Achieving Equitable and Sustainable Development While concerted action in establishing and enforcing better regulatory frameworks and increasing investment in ecologically based IPM are fundamental conditions of change, the current global agrifood system constrains deeper transformation of pest management. Serious efforts to advance sustainable and low-risk IPM over the long term must eventually grapple with the social, political, ecological, and structural organization of trade, technology, and societal investments in globalized agrifood systems. Organization of Trade and Technologies The current global trade system and existing trade agreements tend to favor industrial agricultural production systems that externalize costs. Small-scale farmers and local food production systems are at a significant disadvantage within a structure primarily supporting globalized agrifood systems.43 Establishment of new and more democratic local, regional, and global trade rules and arrangements, increased transparency regarding the social and environmental impacts of trade in agriculture, and establishment of a fair competition policy are needed to create the necessary space for small-scale farmers to adopt sustainable and low-risk IPM tactics that support ecosystem function, ensure the viability and integrity of local food systems, and benefit the public good.44 Such a fundamental transformation of existing trade arrangements requires active engagement by the public and informed decision-making around economic, health, and environmental trade-offs associated with these decisions. Government decision-makers, the public, and other stakeholders need to be able to compare the likely or potential distribution of benefits, risks, and costs of emerging and evolving IPM tactics across different stakeholder groups and members of society. Useful mechanisms to stimulate informed debate include gender analysis (i.e., examination of how technologies and policies differentially affect women and men’s lives, including issues from health to social and economic equity), comparative assessments of technologies in terms of their immediate and long-term impacts,45 and strategic impact assessments of agricultural trade agreements as they


43

affect farmers’ production decisions, national investment priorities, and industrial and small-scale farming systems. Societal Investments in Food Systems An ecological justice approach to governance of agrifood systems invites exploring community or shared governance to address equity issues and conserve ecosystem function and public goods.46 Natural resource valuation that protects water quality, biodiversity, and ecosystem function can help create the agro-ecosystem conditions conducive to sustainable and low-risk IPM systems, such as when farming systems are reconfigured at the habitat and broader landscape level to optimize natural processes.47 This requires collective decision-making and implementation beyond individual farm fields as well as societal examination of the use of natural resources and agricultural lands. Policy options to protect natural resources, increase sustainability, and ensure equitable distribution of costs for damages include adoption of the precautionary and polluter-pays principles,48 as well as incentive programs to encourage growers to adopt techniques like IPM, with joint environmental protection and agricultural value.49 All policy options should be assessed for their capacity to effectively engage marginalized or vulnerable groups (e.g., women, farmworkers, indigenous peoples) in crafting and implementing high-sustainability solutions.50 Scaling up benefits of community governance requires writing new rules to govern—and where necessary, better balance—competing interests in local and global food systems to ensure equitable outcomes. Strong farmers’ organizations have, in many countries, been a precondition for development of a commercially viable and effective agricultural sector.51 Strengthening women’s, farmers’, and community-based organizations is a historically proven way to advance social equity and foster community action to conserve shared resources. These efforts can be supported through, for example, legal protections, investment, training, and capacity-building in participatory research and extension, accessing credit and markets, and negotiating contracts.52 Supporting policies should enable small-scale farmers to adopt high-sustainability and low-risk IPM approaches that supply nutritionally and agriculturally diverse local and regional food systems, maintain national and regional surplus food stocks, and contribute to global food distribution systems in ways that do not undermine local food production and livelihood security.

A CASE STUDY: INDONESIA’S NATIONAL IPM PROGRAM IPM is an Ecological Approach where agriculture is viewed as a complex, living system in which humans interact with land, water, plants, and other organisms.… Farmers become experts, and the central focus of the agricultural system.… Farmers determine their own needs and create solutions and practices appropriate to specific local conditions. —Decree of Indonesian Minister of Agriculture on IPM, May 199453

Never in my Wildest Dreams did I think that a program about “bugs” would bring the dawn of democracy and liberation to Indonesian villages. —Journalist and author Mochtar Lubis in The World Paper54

44


Indonesia provides an illuminating case of policy promotion of ecologically based IPM through the innovative farmer education approach, the “Farmer Field Schools” (FFS).55 FFS rely on “learning by doing” through participatory ecological field studies in crop and pest management, undertaken by farmers, government extension services, researchers, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and community-based organizations working together. Farmers are recognized as experts, trainers, researchers, strategic planners, organizers, and, ultimately, policymakers. First pioneered in Indonesia by the FAO in Indonesia, the FFS approach has been successfully adopted in countries across Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Central and Eastern Europe.56 Indonesia introduced its National IPM Program in May 1989, catalyzed by a brown plant-hopper outbreak in 1985–1986 associated with high levels of pesticide use that increased pesticide resistance and decimated the rice ecosystem’s complex food web.57 The Indonesian government declared IPM the national pest control strategy, banned fifty-seven broad-spectrum insecticides for rice, created new government posts for pest observer personnel, and removed the country’s 85 percent subsidy on the price of pesticides. After a conventional Transfer of Technology–style IPM training proved unsuccessful, the government began in-depth farmer education using the FFS approach, in which more than 1.2 million farmers and thousands of extension workers have since participated. The main driver for the policy shift was the central Indonesian government and its Finance and Planning Ministries, whose motives were stimulated by evidence supplied by the FAO regarding the high costs of pesticide use in rice and the viability of ecologically based rice IPM. Implementation The choice of government agency proved critical to the successful implementation of the new IPM policy: from 1989 to 1992, the planning agency Badan Perencanaan Pembangunan Nasional (BAPPENAS) implemented the program, rather than the Ministry of Agriculture. BAPPENAS worked with a decentralized, locally responsive agricultural training and innovation model, which gave the agency flexibility. Additionally, the agency was able to operate in relative independence from industry influence. The FAO Inter-Country Programme for IPM provided technical support and pedagogical innovations in nonformal education processes. The FAO and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contributed financial support. Within its first five years, Indonesia saw a 70 percent reduction in pesticide use; rice yields increased by 10 percent; and the government saved between $110 million and $120 million per year from cancellation of insecticide subsidies.58 Equally striking was the spontaneous manner in which enthusiastic farmer graduates of IPM field schools began to establish new field schools. Often at their own cost and with the support of senior IPM trainers, training expanded and the social drivers and political center of Indonesian IPM moved to the communities. Subsequently, responsibility for the program was shifted to the Ministry of Agriculture and a “bridging loan” was obtained from the World Bank. During this time, early successes of the IPM program dissipated, under lender-imposed program specifications, budget cuts of key training and social components of the FFS, centralized management, and the use of funds for other activities.59 Under the Directorate for Plant Protection in the Ministry of Agriculture, project administrators focused on


45

measuring farmers’ attendance and calculating economic rates of return to fulfill loan disbursement requirements, rather than on the broader social and development outcomes associated with the dynamic group learning process.60 The defining tension of Indonesian IPM in the 1990s has been described as, on the one hand, the central government and World Bank’s view that institution-building required first strengthening the existing bureaucratic structures, within which carefully defined projects could then operate, and, on the other, the proliferation of community organizations that focused on reintroducing social, political, and agro-ecological complexity and local autonomy into rural political space.61 Farmer graduates of the Indonesian FFS program recognized that the long-term sustenance of IPM in Indonesia would require institutionalization at the farm community level. Thus, farmer-led community-based IPM arose, fueled by local commitment to strengthen farmers’ organizations and empower farmers as experts and change agents. A wide array of farmer institutions has emerged, from village-level groups that have elected IPM farmers to village head positions, to province-wide “IPM Farmer Congresses” in which thousands participate. Gender analysis has revealed important opportunities to overcome social, cultural, and political barriers to women’s participation in IPM.62 Indonesia’s community-based IPM begins with “bugs”—concrete, tangible issues that farmers know intimately—and progresses towards a “sustainable livelihoods” agenda that builds local leadership and enables farmers to engage in key policy debates with decision-makers regarding, for example, trade, intellectual property, genetically modified crops, and strategies to achieve food security.63 The program quietly challenges conventional agricultural production paradigms; illuminates the complex social, political, economic, and ecological web of relationships in which farmers live; and grapples with the power dynamics deeply embedded in public policy decision-making. Assessing Impacts and Lessons Learned Extensive social, economic, health, environmental, and ecological benefits from FFS have been documented.64 Yet some economists have questioned the fiscal sustainability of FFS.65 However, these and other studies that use simple rate-ofreturn analyses do not quantify externalities—that is, the health and environmental costs of higher-risk pesticides and the noneconomic benefits of IPM (e.g., improved ecosystem function, farmers’ increased analytical skills, stronger social institutions). More comprehensive integrated impact analyses are needed to provide policymakers with empirical evidence of the savings, cost-effectiveness, sustainability, and reduced risk of farmer participatory IPM. In Indonesia, the removal of pesticide subsidies and investment in farmers’ education and knowledge processes proved a powerful stimulant to adoption of IPM. Direct and indirect pesticide price subsidies and conventional long-chain inputdelivery systems can impede the sustainability and efficacy of IPM programs.66 An important precondition to developing an integrated national IPM policy framework is the identification of interacting and conflicting policy factors through a comprehensive pesticide policy analysis that engages all stakeholders.67 “Learning from the positive” has been identified as a powerful stimulant to policy change.68 For Indonesian cabinet officials, spending a day in a rice paddy with FFS graduates and speaking with Indonesian ecologists about the rice ecosystem

46


proved to be a tipping point for gaining their support for the new approach to farmer education and extension. Indeed, policy formation rarely follows a linear path driven by preestablished targets or provision of factual information alone. More often, policies evolve in response to multiple and changing influences, dependent on the perspectives, interactions, tensions and shifting power dynamics between diverse groups of actors.69 Social sustainability of IPM requires institutional commitment and redirection of funds toward high-sustainability, low-risk endeavors. Developing a local network of progressive and influential farmers, ensuring an active leadership role for rural women, and collaborating with scientists and other actors who see the value of ecologically based community-driven IPM can sustain positive results. The emergence of farmer-driven community-based IPM in Indonesia illustrates some of the challenges and successes experienced in pursuit of advanced IPM (i.e., Stage 3) and the transformation of food and farming systems necessary to achieve broader equitable and sustainable development goals.

MOVING FORWARD IN IPM Contemporary IPM development for food systems has been affected by increasing food disruptions caused by climate change and pests, advances in biotechnology and agro-ecology, and environmental, health, and other socioeconomic equity concerns related to pesticide use and other technologies. IPM systems should encourage a level of agro-ecosystem functioning that results in pest populations maintained at low noneconomic densities while providing negligible disruption and, preferably, benefits to other components of the farm enterprise. Biological, cultural, and regulatory tactics with high-sustainability and low-risk attributes should be emphasized to complement the innate pest-suppressive qualities of well-planned farm systems at the local and regional levels. Reduced-risk pesticides and biotechnology products can be useful components of an IPM system if products are chosen and used selectively to target a key pest problem, while avoiding socioeconomic harm and reducing environmental impact. Increasing sustainability and decreasing risk requires open, transparent, participatory, and comprehensive assessment of economic, social, environmental, and human health impacts over medium- and long-term horizons. A more profound shift toward agro-ecosystem management benefits from focus on productive systems that optimize natural processes and agrobiodiversity supplemented with high sustainable and low-risk pest management approaches, with support from social institutions and policy mechanisms.

NOTES 1. Committee on the Future Role of Pesticides in U.S. Agriculture, The Future Role of Pesticides in U.S. Agriculture (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2000), 55– 89, 186–92; Jules Pretty and Rachel Hine, “Pesticide Use and the Environment,” in The Pesticide Detox: Towards a More Sustainable Agriculture, ed. Jules Pretty (London, Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2005), 1–22; Misa Kishi, “The Health Impacts of Pesticides: What Do We Know Now?” in Pretty, Pesticide Detox, 22–38.


47

2. Council for Agricultural Science and Technology, Integrated Pest Management: Current and Future Strategies (Ames: Instructional Technology Center, Iowa State University, 2003), 4–5; Robert Norris, Edward Caswell-Chen, and Marcos Kogan, Concepts in Integrated Pest Management (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003), 209–13. 3. Council, Integrated Pest Management, 11–12. 4. Norris et al., Concepts, 11–13. 5. Committee, Future, 55–89; Norris et al., Concepts, 298–310. 6. Norris et al., Concepts, 443–70. 7. Miguel Altieri, Biodiversity and Pest Management in Agroecosystems (New York: Food Products Press, 2004), 185; Pedro Barbosa, Conservation Biological Control (London: Academic Press, 1998), 396. 8. Food and Agriculture Organization, “International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides” (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2005), ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/009/a0220e/a0220e00.pdf (accessed September 1, 2008). 9. Norris et al., Concepts, 209–13; George Bird and Michael J. Brewer, “Innovative Integrated Pest Management for Sustainable Systems,” in New Social Contract: Developing and Extending Sustainable Agriculture, ed. Charles Francis and George Bird (New York: The Haworth Press Inc., 2006) 25–42. 10. Norris et al., Concepts, 459–68; Jack Heinemann et al., “Biotechnology,” in International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development: Synthesis Report, ed. Beverly D. McIntyre, Hans R. Herren, Judi Wakhungu, and Robert T. Watson (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2009), 40–45, http://www. agassessment.org/ (accessed July 30, 2008); Sheldon Krimsky, “Environmental Impacts of the Release of Genetically Modified Organisms,” in Encyclopedia of Pest Management, ed. David Pimentel (New York: Marcel Dekker, 2002), 243–46; Maria L. Zapiola, C. K. Campbell, M. D. Butler, and C. A. Mallory-Smith, “Escape and Establishment of Transgenic Glyphosate Resistant Creeping Bentgrass Agrostis stolonifera in Oregon,” Journal of Applied Ecology 45 (2008): 486–94. 11. Bird and Brewer, “Innovative,” 25–42; Council, Integrated, 120–22. 12. Committee, Future, 55–89; Norris et al., Concepts, 209–13; Roy G. Van Driesche and Thomas S. Bellows, Biological Control (New York: Chapman & Hall, 1996), 156–57. 13. Bird and Brewer, “Innovative,” 25–42; Council, Integrated, 222–24; Sean P. Keenan and Paul A. Burgener, “Social and Economic Aspects of Area-wide Pest Management,” in Area-Wide Pest Management: Theory to Implementation, ed. Opender Koul, Gerrit W. Cuperus, and Norman C. Elliott (Oxfordshire, UK: CABI Publishing 2008), 97–116. 14. Van Driesche and Bellows, Biological, 128–72. 15. David N. Ferro and Jeremy N. McNeil, “Habitat Enhancement and Conservation of Natural Enemies of Insects,” in Barbosa, Conservation, 123–30; G. M. Gurr, H. F. wan Emden, and S. D. Wratten, “Habitat Manipulation and Natural Enemy Efficiency: Implications for the Control of Pests,” in Barbosa, Conservation, 155–78. 16. Norris et al., Concepts, 422–25; Council, Integrated, 34–39. 17. Norris et al., Concepts, 451–57. 18. Van Driesche and Bellows, Biological, 178–228. 19. Norris et al., Concepts, 325–36. 20. Norris et al., Concepts, 459–68; Heinemann et al., “Biotechnology” in International Synthesis Report, 40–45; S. Krimsky, “Environmental Impacts of the Release of Genetically Modified Organisms,” in Encyclopedia of Pest Management, ed. David Pimentel (New York: Marcel Dekker, 2002), 243–46; John J. Obryki, J. R. Ruberson

48


and J. E. Losey, “Interactions between natural enemies and transgenic insecticidal crops,” in Genetics, Evolution and Biological Control, ed. L. E. Ehler, R. Sforza, and T. Mateille (Wallingford, UK: CABI Publications, 2002), 83–206; Zapiola et al., “Escape.” 21. David A. Andow and C. Zwahlen, “Assessing Environmental Risks of Transgenic Plants,” Ecology Letters 9 (2006): 196–214; C. Borowiak, “Farmers’ Rights: Intellectual Property Regimes and the Struggle over Seeds,” Politics and Society 32 (2004): 511–43; Carl Pray and Anwar Naseem, “Supplying Crop Biotechnology to the Poor: Opportunities and Constraints,” Journal of Developmental Studies 43 (2007): 192–217. 22. Norris et al., Concepts, 172–207; J. D. Carlson and Albert Sutherland, “Environmental Monitoring in Area-wide Pest Management,” in Koul et al., Area-wide, 117–41. 23. Carlson and Sutherland, “Environmental,” in Koul et al., Area-wide, 117–41. 24. Council, Integrated, 4–5. 25. IAASTD (International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development). IAASTD Global Report: Summary for Decision Makers. (Washington DC: Island Press, 2009), http://www.agassessment.org (accessed April 14, 2009). 26. G. J. Gallivan, G. A. Surgeoner, and J. Kovach, “Pesticide Risk Reduction on Crops in the Province of Ontario,” Journal of Environmental Quality 30 (2001): 798– 813; J. E. Jensen and P. H. Petersen, “The Danish Pesticide Action Plan II: Obstacles and Opportunities to Meet the Goals,” in British Crop Protection Council, ed. BCPC Conference on Weeds 2001 (Brighton, UK: Farnham, 2001), 449–54. 27. European Commission, “Thematic Strategy on the Sustainable Use of Pesticides” (Brussels European Commission, 2006), http://ec.europa.eu/environment/ppps/home. htm. 28. Food and Agriculture Organization, “New Initiative for Pesticide Risk Reduction, Committee on Agriculture, 20th Session, 25–28, April 2007,” COAG/2007/lnf.14 (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 2007), ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/meeting/ 011/j9387e.pdf. 29. M. Simeon, “Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures and Food Safety: Challenges and Opportunities for Developing Countries,” Review Scientifique Technique-Office International des Epizooties 25 (2006): 701–12. 30. Anne-Marie Izac et al., “Options for Enabling Policies and Regulatory Environments,” in International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development: Global Report, ed. Beverly D. McIntyre, Hans R. Herren, Judi Wakhungu and Robert T. Watson (Washington DC: Island Press, 2009), 472–73. 31. R€udiger Wittenberg and Matthew J. W. Cock, eds., Invasive Alien Species: A Toolkit of Best Prevention and Management Practices (Wallingford, UK: CABI Int., 2001), 228. 32. Fabrice Dreyfus et al., “Historical Analysis of the Effectiveness of AKST Systems in Promoting Innovation,” in McIntyre et al., International: Global Report, 99–107. 33. Dreyfus et al., “Historical,” in McIntyre et al., International: Global, 99–107. 34. J. Alix-Garcia et al., “An Assessment of Mexico’s Payment for Environmental Services Program” (Rome: prepared for FAO by the University of California, Berkeley, 2005), http://are.berkeley.edu/~sadoulet/papers/FAOPES-aug05.pdf; Michael J. Brewer, Robert J. Hoard, Joy N. Landis, and Lawrence E. Elworth, “The Case and Opportunity for Public Supported Financial Incentives to Implement Integrated Pest Management,” Journal of Economic Entomology 97 (2004): 1782–89; Izac et al., “Options,” in McIntyre et al., International: Global, 472–73; Dreyfus et al., “Historical,” in McIntyre et al., International, 99–107.


49

35. Dreyfus et al., “Historical,” in McIntyre et al., International:Global, 104, Box 2.9; and Beintema et al., “Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology: Investment and Economic Returns,” in McIntyre et al., International: Global, 520–26. 36. Department for International Development Agriculture and Natural Resources Team, “Concentration in Food and Retail Chains” (working paper, United Kingdom Department for International Development in collaboration with Tom Fox and Bill Vorley of the International Institute for Environment and Development, London, 2004), http://dfid-agriculture-consultation.nri.org/summaries/wp13.pdf; United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, “Tracking the Trend Towards Market Concentration: The Case of the Agricultural Input Industry” (Geneva: UNCTAD, 2006), http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/ditccom200516_en.pdf; Food and Agriculture Organizaton, “The Role of Transnational Corporations,” in Trade Reforms and Food Security: Conceptualizing the Linkages (Rome: FAO, Commodity Policy and Projections Service, Commodities and Trade Division, 2003), http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/y4671e/ y4671e00.htm. 37. Dreyfus et al., “Historical,” in McIntyre et al., International: Global, 99–107; United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, “Tracking”; Norton et al., “Pesticide and IPM Policy Analysis” in Globalizing Integrated Pest Management: A Participatory Process, ed. Norton et al. (Ames, IA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 191–210; S. Sherwood et al., “From Pesticides to People: Improving Ecosystem Health in the Northern Andes,” in The Pesticide Detox: Towards a More Sustainable Agriculture, ed. J. Pretty (London, Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2005), 147–64; S. Williamson, “Breaking the Barriers to IPM in Africa: Evidence from Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana and Senegal,” in Pretty, Pesticide Detox, 165–80. 38. G. Fleischer and H. Waibel, “Pesticide Policy and Integrated Pest Management,” in Integrated Pest Management in the Global Arena, ed. K. M Maredia, D. Dakuou, and D. Mota-Sanchez (Wallingford, UK: CABI Publishing, 2003), 49–64; Norton et al., “Pesticide and IPM,” 191–210; Williamson, “Barriers,” in Pretty, Pesticide Detox, 165–80. 39. Margaret M. Kroma and Cornelia B. Flora, “Greening Pesticides: A Historical Analysis of the Social Construction of Farm Chemical Advertisements,” Agriculture and Human Values 20 (2003): 21–35; S. Williamson, “Barriers,” in Pretty, Pesticide Detox, 165–80. 40. Dreyfus et al., “Historical,” in McIntyre et al., International: Global, 99–107; B. Jennings, “The Killing Fields: Science and Politics Berkeley, California, USA,” Agriculture and Human Values 14 (1997): 259–71. 41. B. Dinham, “Corporations and Pesticides,” in Pretty, Pesticide Detox, 55–69. 42. Michael J. Brewer et al., “The Case and Opportunity for Public Supported Financial Incentives to Implement Integrated Pest Management,” Journal of Economic Entomology 97 (2004): 1782–1789; L. Ehler, “Integrated Pest Management (IPM): Definition, Historical Development and Implementation, and the other IPM,” Pest Management Science 62 (2006): 787–90. 43. Izac et al., “Options,” in McIntyre et al., International: Global, 465–66. 44. Bird and Brewer, “Innovative,” 25–42; Council, Integrated, 120–22; Alix-Garcia et al., “Assessment”; Brewer et al., “Case,” 1782–89; Izac et al., “Options,” in McIntyre et al., International: Global, 472–73; Dreyfus et al., “Historical,” in McIntyre et al., International: Global, 99–107. 45. Clive George and Colin Kirkpatrick, “Trade and Development: Assessing the Impact of Trade Liberalisation in Sustainable Development,” Journal of World Trade 38 (2004): 441–69; Elske van de Fliert and J. Proost, eds. Women and IPM: Crop Protection

50


Practices and Strategies (Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute and IT Publications, 1999), 11–14. 46. John Byrne, Leigh Glover, and Hugo Alroe, “Globalization and Sustainable Development: A Political Ecology Strategy to Realize Ecological Justice,” in Global Development of Organic Agriculture: Challenges and Prospects, ed. N. Halberg et al. (Wallingford, UK: CABI Publishing, 2006), 49–74. 47. Michael J. Brewer, Takuji Noma, and Norman C. Elliott, “A Landscape Perspective in Managing Vegetation for Beneficial Plant-Pest-Natural Enemy Interactions: A Foundation for Area-Wide Pest Management,” in Koul et al., Area-wide, 17–41. 48. European Environmental Agency, eds., Late Lessons from Early Warnings: The Precautionary Principle 1896– 2000 (Copenhagen: EEA, 2001), http://reports.eea.europa. eu/environmental_issue_report_2001_22/en/Issue_Report_No_22.pdf (accessed September 4, 2008). 49. Alix-Garcia et al., “Assessment”; Michael J. Brewer et al., “The Case and Opportunity for Public Supported Financial Incentives to Implement Integrated Pest Management,” Journal of Economic Entomology 97 (2004): 1782–89; Izac et al., “Options,” in McIntyre et al., International: Global, 472–73; Dreyfus et al., “Historical,” in McIntyre et al., International: Global, 99–107. 50. A. Gana, T. Marina-Hermann, and S. Huyer. “Women in Agriculture,” in McIntyre et al., International: Synthesis Report, 75–80; S. Bajaj et al., “Traditional and Local Knowledge and Community-Based Innovations,” in McIntyre et al., International: Synthesis, 71–74; Norris et al., Concepts, 459–68; Heinemann et al., “Biotechnology,” in McIntyre et al., International: Synthesis, 40–45; Sheldon Krimsky, “Environmental Impacts of the Release of Genetically Modified Organisms,” in Encyclopedia of Pest Management, ed. David Pimentel (New York: Marcel Dekker, 2002), 243–46; Zapiola et al., “Escape.” 51. Izac et al., “Options,” in McIntyre et al., International: Global, 465–66. 52. Izac et al., “Options,” in McIntyre et al., International: Global, 475–80. 53. Russell Dilts, ed., Facilitating The Emergence of Local Institutions: Reflections from the Experience of the Community IPM Programme in Indonesia (Colombo: Report of the APO Study Meeting on the Role of Institutions in Rural Community Development, 1998), http://www.communityipm.org/docs/Dilts%20APO%201998.doc. 54. Quoted in Dilts, Facilitating, 3. 55. Niels R€oling and Elske van de Fliert, “Introducing Integrated Pest Management in Rice in Indonesia: A Pioneering Attempt to Facilitate Large-Scale Change,” in Facilitating Sustainable Agriculture: Participatory Learning and Adaptive Management in Times of Environmental Uncertainty, ed. Niels R€oling and M. Annemarie Wagemakers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 153–71; Ida P. G. N. J. Oka, “Integrated Pest Management in Indonesia: IPM by Farmers,” in Maredia et al., Integrated, 223–38; Gerd Fleischer and Hermann Waibel, “Pesticide Policy and Integrated Pest Management” in Maredia et al., Integrated, 49–63; Norton et al., “Pesticide and IPM,” 191–210; Williamson, “Barriers,” in Pretty, Pesticide Detox, 165–80. 56. G. Luther et al., “Developments and Innovations in Farmer Field Schools and Training of Trainers,” in Norton et al., Globalizing Integrated Pest, 147–80. 57. P. Kenmore et al., “Population Regulation of the Brown Planthopper within Rice Fields in the Philippines,” Journal of Plant Protection in the Tropics 1 (1984): 19–37; William H. Settle et al., “Managing Tropical Rice Pests through Conservation of Generalist Natural Enemies and Alternative Prey,” Ecology 77 (1996): 1975–1988. 58. R€oling et al., “Introducing,” 153–71. 59. J. R. Pincus, “State Simplification and Institution Building in a Bank-Financed Development Project: The Indonesian Integrated Pest Management Training Project,”


51

in Reinventing the World Bank, ed. Jonathan R. Pincus and Jeffrey A. Winters (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), 85–100. 60. Pincus, “State,” in Pincus and Winters, Reinventing, 85–100. 61. Pincus, “State,” in Pincus and Winters, Reinventing, 85–100. 62. Elske van de Fliert, “Women in IPM Training and Implementation in Indonesia,” in van de Fliert and Proost, Women, 11–14. 63. Dilts, Facilitating, http://www.communityipm.org/docs/Dilts%20APO%201998.doc. 64. P. Stemerding, A. Musch, and Y. Diarra, eds., Social Dimensions of Integrated Production and Pest Management—A Case Study in Mali (Rome: FAO, People’s Participation Series No. 13, 2002), http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/Y3754e/y3754e00.htm; Henk Van den Berg and Janice Jiggins, “Investing in Farmers: The Impacts of Farmer Field Schools in Integrated Pest Management,” World Development 35 (2007): 663–86. 65. Gershon Feder, Rinku Murgai, and Jaime B. Quizon, “Sending Farmers Back to School: The Impact of Farmer Field Schools in Indonesia,” Review of Agricultural Economics 26 (2004): 45–62. 66. Fleischer and Waibel, “Pesticide,” in Maredia et al., Integrated, 49–64; Norton et al., “Pesticide and IPM,” 191–210; Williamson, “Barriers,” in Pretty, Pesticide Detox, 165–80. 67. Fleischer and Waibel, “Pesticide,” in Maredia et al., Integrated, 49–64; Norton et al., “Pesticide and IPM,” 191–210; Williamson, “Barriers,” in Pretty, Pesticide Detox, 165–80. 68. Stephen Biggs, “Learning from the Positive to Reduce Rural Poverty and Increase Social Justice: Institutional Innovations in Agricultural and Natural Resources Research and Development,” Experimental Agriculture 44 (2007): 1–24. 69. Stephen Biggs and Sally Smith, “Paradox of Learning in Project Cycle Management and the Role of Organizational Culture,” World Development 31 (2003): 1743–57.

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Altieri, Miguel, and Clara Nicholls. Biodiversity and Pest Management in Agroecosystems. New York: Food Products Press, 2004. Barbosa, P., ed. Conservation Biological Control. London: Academic Press, 1998. Halberg, Niels, Hugo F. Alroe, Marie T. Knudsen, and Erik S. Kristensen. Global Development of Organic Agriculture: Challenges and Prospects. Wallingford, UK: CABI Publishing, 2006. Maredia, Karim M., Dona Dakouo, and David Mota-Sanchez. Integrated Pest Management in the Global Arena. Wallingford, UK: CABI Publishing, 2003. McIntyre, Beverly D., Hans R. Herren, Judi Wakhungu, and Robert T. Watson, eds. International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development: Synthesis Report. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2009. Norris, Robert F., Edward P. Caswell-Chen, and Marcos Kogan. Concepts in Integrated Pest Management. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003. Norton, George W., E. A. Heinrichs, Gregory C. Luther, and Michael E. Irwin. Globalizing Integrated Pest Management: A Participatory Process. Ames, IA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. Pretty, Jules, ed. The Pesticide Detox: Towards a More Sustainable Agriculture. London and Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2005.

52


R€ oling, Niels, and Annemarie Wagemakers, eds. Facilitating Sustainable Agriculture: A Participatory Learning and Adaptive Management in Times of Environmental Uncertainty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Van de Fliert, Elkse, and Jet Proost, eds. Women and IPM: Crop Protection Practices and Strategies. Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute and IT Publications, 1999.

Web Sites Community Integrated Pest Management, http://www.communityipm.org/ (accessed September 1, 2008). The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, IPM Group, http:// www.fao.org/ag/agp/agpp/IPM/Default.htm (accessed September 1, 2008). Global Farmer Field School, http://www.farmerfieldschool.info/index.php (accessed September 1, 2008). The Global IPM Facility, http://www.fao.org/ag/AGP/AGPP/IPM/gipmf/index.htm (accessed September 1, 2008). icipe: African Insect Science for Food and Health, http://www.icipe.org/ (accessed September 1, 2008). ILEIA, The Center for Information on Low External Input and Sustainable Agriculture, http://www.ileia.org/ (accessed September 1, 2008). International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), http://www.agassessment.org/ (accessed September 1, 2008). National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service, “Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas (ATTRA),” http://www.attra.ncat.org/ (accessed September 1, 2008). Online Information Service for Non-Chemical Pest Management in the Tropics, http://www.oisat.org/ (accessed September 1, 2008). Pesticide Action Network International, http://www.pan-international.org/panint/? q=node/33. (accessed September 1, 2008).

4 Agrobiodiversity Vicki L. Medland This chapter explores the two types of biodiversity inherent in agro-ecosystems: the “planned” biodiversity of domesticated agricultural species and wild species that facilitate agricultural productivity and the “associated” biodiversity of wild species using agricultural lands.1 Many methods and strategies to preserve biodiversity are the same as those used to conserve soil, protect water, and promote and preserve local communities and culture (these topics are covered in detail in other chapters). This chapter describes the important components of agrobiodiversity, incorporating examples of strategies that have been used successfully to maintain and increase agrobiodiversity and to promote sustainable agro-ecosytems and agricultural communities.

THE CONCEPT OF AGROBIODIVERSITY Types of Biodiversity Biodiversity is a concept popularized by E. O. Wilson2 to describe biological diversity: the total variety of living systems on our planet. Ecologists generally recognize three levels of biodiversity: genetic, species, and ecosystem-level diversity. Species-level biodiversity is most commonly defined as a tally of all types of organisms living in a particular area. But diversity also depends on the relative numbers of individuals within each species. Genetic biodiversity is the amount of genetic variability in a population and imparts adaptability to environmental stress and change. Ecosystem or landscape-level biodiversity is the variety of habitat types available in a given area. In agricultural ecosystems, there are two major types of biodiversity. “Planned” biodiversity, which includes domesticated crops and animals, and “associated” biodiversity, which is part of the agro-ecosystem over which humans have less control. Associated biodiversity includes species with positive effects like pollinators, with neutral effects like grassland birds, or negative effects like crop herbivores or

54


disease.3 Landscape-level biodiversity of an agro-ecosystem is a landscape mosaic that may include crop fields, field margins, pasture and rangelands, adjacent woodlands or fence rows, and ponds and streams that run through fields. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) defines agricultural biodiversity as “the variety and variability of animals, plants and micro-organisms which are necessary to sustain key functions of the agro-ecosystem, its structure and processes for, and in support of, food production and food security.”4 Obviously, agriculture is impossible without the suite of species that makes up the base of our food system. Of the thirty thousand or so edible plants, only 23 percent have been collected or grown as food, and of these, only twenty plants make up more than 90 percent of the world’s food. Maize, wheat, and rice account for more than half of all calories consumed worldwide.5 The majority of these organisms are domesticated species that are relative newcomers to the planet, developed through artificial selection some ten thousand years ago at most. But equally important are those native species that make agriculture possible, not the native plants and animals that acted as the gene stock for artificial selection, but the host of species that create and sustain fertile soil or pollinate crops. Additionally, many native (and alien) species survive because agriculture provides them with a hospitable habitat. Biodiversity has several roles to play in successful agricultural ecosystems. Traditional polyculture systems in which different crops are grown together are more economically and ecologically sustainable for small farmers. Higher crop biodiversity leads to ecosystem stability and increased ecosystem services. Studies comparing productivity and biodiversity have repeatedly shown that increased biodiversity leads to increased agricultural productivity.6 Polyculture systems are less affected by pests and have higher root development, higher soil nutrient pools and soil moisture, and less erosion.7 Traditional programs in which farmers save and trade seeds increase genetic variability of varieties by creating locally adapted seed populations. Unfortunately, the twentieth century ushered in a trend toward lower, not higher diversity, in the guise of intensified industrial agriculture. Intensified agriculture relies on high levels of nonrenewable inputs to attain greater productivity. These inputs, which generally include inorganic fertilizers, other agrochemicals and fossil fuels, hybrid and genetically modified seeds, and specialized machinery and other artificial capital, must be purchased. As a whole, intensified agriculture has resulted in decreased biodiversity of all types, including lower genetic variability as local land races of seeds are replaced by single-genotype hybrids; fewer soil-dwelling species and lower soil fertility as lands are degraded; fewer unplanned species as agro-ecosytems become more toxic; and lower landscape-level diversity as ecosystem services are lost and agrochemicals spill into neighboring ecosystems. Agricultural intensification also puts biodiversity at risk through faster and more widespread transmission of pathogens and genetically engineered transgenes across globalized and homogenous landscapes. Already in Mexico, where planting of transgenic maize is limited to research areas, key land races of maize are contaminated with transgenes.8 Intensified agricultural practices greatly weaken or prevent agro-ecosytems from functioning as sustainable ecosystems.9 Nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration, water retention, and aquifer recharge are all reduced with intensified agricultural practices, mainly because of changes in soil biodiversity.10

Agrobiodiversity

55

Agriculture has traditionally focused on managing productivity as a nonequilibrium-engineered system that ignores the interrelationships of ecosystem processes and organisms. Ecologists, on the other hand, view ecosystems as equilibrium-based systems. How the system responds to change is determined by the interactions of the biotic players and abiotic conditions. Resiliency, the ability to bounce back after change, is an important feature of stable, sustainable ecosystems. Modern agricultural systems have lost resiliency and require repeated inputs of nutrients and chemicals. Traditionally, problems in modern intensified agriculture are viewed in isolation, with only a few proposed alternative strategies. For example, a pest species outbreak is treated with pesticides without considering the causes (or often the effects) of the outbreak or the chemical control measure. The ecologist is more likely to look for a cause of the change and respond with a more benign control that would have minimal negative impacts on the ecosystem. Traditional farmers often employ responsible sustainable management programs, often as part of a tradition of indigenous knowledge that is passed from generation to generation. For example, hedgerows have been used for centuries in traditional farming as windbreaks, but they also serve as refuges for natural predators that reduce or eliminate the need for chemical pesticides.11 Farmers also leave plots or strips of native vegetation between crop rows called beetle banks that provide that same service. It is our responsibility to maintain biodiversity in agro-ecosystems not only to preserve our food supply but also to preserve cultural tradition and foster the economic stability that comes from sustainable practices. Ecosystem Services Croplands and pasturelands have become the largest terrestrial ecosystem in the world, accounting for more than one-third of the world’s terrestrial ice-free surface and 45 percent of the world’s net primary productivity.12 Agricultural landscapes cover 180 million hectares, an area nearly as large as Alaska,13 whereas the Northern Boreal Coniferous Forests, the largest natural biome, only makes up 12 percent of the world surface.14 The predicted increase of human population to 9 billion people in the next fifty years15 is expected to lead to a doubling of irrigated croplands and pasture lands by 2050, resulting in a net loss of nearly a billion hectares of natural ecosystems.16 Out of seventeen thousand large parks and natural areas dedicated to conserving wild biodiversity, almost half of these areas have at least 30 percent of their land used for agriculture. Most of the rest lie within predominantly agricultural landscapes.17 As demand for more agricultural land grows, we have an obligation to conserve currently used agricultural lands to minimize the further fragmentation and loss of wild ecosystems. An understanding of the value of ecosystem services is necessary to accomplish sustainable food production. Functional ecosystems are often undervalued or not recognized as having value because the services they provide are not directly bought and sold. Yet, the indirect economic value of functional ecosystems outweighs direct capital as land or production value, for without them life as we know it would be impossible. A functioning ecosystem is sustainable and provides essential services to itself and surrounding ecosystems. A recent classification by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment divides services into provisioning services, regulating services,

56


supporting services, and cultural services. Provisioning services include products obtained from ecosystems. The obvious ecosystem services provided by agro-ecosystems are the agricultural products they produce; food, fiber, pharmaceuticals, and other materials like rubbers, dyes, and adhesives; and the biomass used to produce fuels. Regulating services are buffers that control climate, rainfall, and species migration. Crop productivity depends on the regulating services provided by soil and climate, and also on the activities of pollinators, predators, and parasitoids that attack pest species. Supporting services are those necessary for the production of all other ecosystem services, and include nutrient cycling, carbon fixation, and oxygen production.18 Global supporting services that agro-ecosystems can provide are climate regulation, carbon sequestration, water purity, surface water flow regulation, groundwater storage and recharge, and in some cases, waste absorption and breakdown.19 Cultural services include knowledge, and the aesthetic, social, and spiritual benefits people obtain from ecosystems. In fact, domestication and its influences may be our greatest contribution to human culture.20 Only by adopting an ecosystem-based perspective will agro-ecosytems be able to contribute this natural capital, and yet farmers are not compensated for the vital nonmarket services they provide. Such ecosystem services would come at great or even insurmountable cost if humans had to create infrastructure and provide labor to replace them. Consider the ecosystem service of bee and insect pollination critical to the productivity of as much as 30 percent of the world food supply.21 Worldwide, farmers who use managed colonies of bees depend on fewer than eleven species out of the twentyto thirty thousand bee species.22 Of this, about 30 percent of pollination is provided by the domesticated honeybee (Apis mellifera). The annual value of domesticated honeybee pollination to U.S. agriculture is more than US$14.6 billion.23 A number of studies have shown that native wild bees may be as efficient or even better pollinators of domesticated plants than domesticated bees. A Maryland study showed more than 96 percent of bees trapped in agricultural fields were wild.24 Elsewhere, native wild bees increase coffee production by as much as 50 percent.25 Both domesticated and wild bees are capable of pollinating domesticated fruit and vegetables and, in some cases, native wild bees are more efficient than honeybees. Alfalfa leafcutter bees are more efficient pollinators than honeybees. One alfalfa leafcutter bee can pollinate the same acreage of alfalfa as one hundred honeybees.26 Colony Collapse Disorder was first documented in 2006 when beekeepers began noticing abandoned hives. The United States has lost 50 percent of its honeybee colonies, and additional losses have been reported in Europe, South America, and India.27 The condition is not well understood, and the extent of its effects have yet to be determined. Numerous theories about the cause have been raised, including stress, mites, and viral infections, as well as toxicity from agrochemicals. These findings have important economic implications. Farmers without access to wild bees could suffer devastating losses, requiring them to switch to crops that do not require pollinators to ensure fertility. Pollinated crops would increase significantly in price.28 More important, genetic variability of some crop species could be lost without pollinators to ensure reproduction. It is unknown whether wild bees are affected by the disease. If they are, it would have significant effects on the survival of all bee-pollinated plants.

Agrobiodiversity

57

To hedge their bets against further declines in domesticated bee populations, farmers are using strategies to attract wild pollinators. Polyculture, allowing crops like lettuce to bolt and flower, planting flowering plants in field margins, and creating wild bee nesting habitats improves the biodiversity of pollinators.29 Flowerinsectary plots—interplanted crop strips of nectar flowers for wild insect pollinators and other beneficial insects—are becoming more common, particularly in organic farms. The flower strips attract bees, as well as hover flies, which pollinate flowers as adults and prey on pest insects as larvae, and beneficial parasitic wasps that prey on agricultural insect pests. These strips also provide additional habitat for other beneficial and commensal species, especially when planted for native species like birds and spiders.30 The relationship between ecosystem function and biodiversity has been debated. Agricultural ecosystems are less diverse than the ecosystems they replace. Although in general more diverse systems have higher productivity and more stable functioning, some ecosystems with relatively low levels of biodiversity function successfully. In others, just a few dominant species often control ecosystem function.31 However, all ecosystems have thresholds in which the loss of key species impairs normal function and leads to the loss of ecosystem services (like our colony collapse example). While scientists work to identify critical species and determine necessary levels of biodiversity, we need to maintain the current biodiversity to preserve existing levels of ecosystem services. To secure sustainable management of ecosystem services in agricultural systems, we need to understand the relationship of biodiversity to agricultural land ecology. This information can then inform policies that recognize economic values of the natural capital of ecosystem services. Better economic strategies and environmental policies would ensure continued sustainable production of agricultural products, while protecting agricultural and surrounding ecosystems.32

Soil Biodiversity Most of the biodiversity in agricultural ecosystems is found within the soil. A single gram of soil may contain millions of individuals and several thousand species of bacteria, as well as hundreds of species of invertebrates like mites, nematodes, and insects.33 Agro-ecosystem soil biodiversity is usually much lower than the biodiversity of the parent ecosystem soil. For example, numbers of nematode and annelid worms in agro-ecosystems are about one-tenth that of an equivalent area of grassland or prairie soils.34 Oribatid mite communities are much less diverse in Western Australian wheat fields than in soils of neighboring native ecosystems. There are no unique agricultural soil species, because agricultural soils are modified from soils of other ecosystems and differ depending on the original ecosystem. Although much of agricultural interest in soil organisms is focused on pest species, soil organisms have important positive impacts on agricultural productivity and ecological services. These organisms are responsible for the decomposition of organic matter, nitrogen fixation, and transformation of nutrient chemicals like sulfur, iron, and nitrogen compounds into forms that are available to plants, as well as for the breakdown of toxic compounds created as a by-product of plant metabolism and added to the soil as agrochemical pesticides and fertilizers.35

58


Although decomposition and nutrient dynamics have been studied in agroecosystems and soil,36 the importance of soil biodiversity to agro-ecosystems is not well understood. This is mainly because soil biodiversity in most ecosystems is poorly documented, and relationships between soil function and aboveground agrobiodiversity are not governed by straightforward processes.37 There may be as many as 1.5 million species of soil fungi, but only seventy thousand or so described species. Only 35 percent of oribatid mites have been identified of the 150,000 or so species.38 Soil biodiversity and biomass is dominated by bacteria and fungi that are responsible for the majority of nutrient and carbon cycling in the soil and are a major food resource for other soil organisms. Algae are an important food resource for soil herbivores, but perhaps more important, they increase water capacity of soils by as much as 10 percent.39 Symbiotic associations between soil fungi and plant roots greatly increase uptake of important nutrients (phosphorus, nitrogen, sulfur, and micronutrients copper and zinc) by plants. Mycorrhizae can provide the same nutrient availability to soybeans as an application of 191 kilograms per hectare of phosphorus fertilizer in tropical agro-ecosystems. Most agricultural crops have associated mycorrhizae (an exception are the Brassicaceae or mustards). Crops with large roots and few root hairs are so dependent on mycorrhizal fungi they may not develop normally without them.40 By its nature, agriculture creates a less diverse, more homogenous ecosystem than the natural system it replaces, and soil biodiversity likewise decreases. Agricultural soils are always less diverse than the parent ecosystem soils from which they were modified.41 Chemicals and intensified agricultural practices that compact soils create stressors to soil organisms and lower soil biodiversity further, as does soil acidification from nitrogen fertilizers.42 Pesticides, especially copper-containing fungicides, have lasting negative impacts on soil biodiversity. Depending on management philosophy, managing for productivity in agroecosystems can have either positive or negative effects on soil biodiversity. Many agricultural programs have focused on the view that specific limiting factors affect ecosystem-level productivity. To increase productivity, chemicals are used to increase soil nutrients or decrease pest damage. The misuse of these chemicals reduces soil biodiversity and leads to the loss of soil productivity, surface and groundwater contamination, and soil degradation.43 A better strategy is to manage agriculture like ecologists manage ecosystems: as complex dynamic systems, in which productivity changes occur as the systems move out of equilibrium.44 Although more research is needed to achieve optimal management of agro-ecosystems, we already have enough understanding of the ecology of these systems to begin to manage soil biodiversity that maximizes soil fertility and sustainability and ensures optimal crop productivity.45 Several examples exist to support this idea. Both natural fertilizer and no-tillage strategies increase the diversity of beneficial soil mites and collembola (springtails) as opposed to chemical fertilizer and plowed fields. Increased soil biodiversity in some cases has provided disease resistance, ecological resilience after disturbance, and increased recycling of organic waste and nutrient cycling.46 The total annual contribution of nitrogen fixation by soil microorganisms in both agricultural and natural ecosystems has been estimated to be at least seventy million tons of nitrogen, valued at about US$45 billion per year.47

Agrobiodiversity

59

No-till and reduced tillage agro-ecosystems, in which 30 percent or more of the crop debris is left on the soil surface, have significant effects on nutrient cycling and biodiversity in agricultural soils. It is generally accepted that crop debris left as litter on the soil surface reduces soil erosion and soil surface temperature and increases soil moisture content. It can significantly reduce the amount of fuel, labor, equipment, and fossil fuels needed. It can also result in greater soil biodiversity that leads to the creation of a long-term nutrient pool. In a comparison of conventional tillage and no-tillage systems in Georgia, significant changes in nutrient availability were tied to changes in soil biodiversity and nutrient cycling.48 In conventional till systems where plant residues are plowed under the soil, most of the decomposition is carried out rapidly by bacteria, sometimes leading to nitrate leaching out of the soil and into surface or groundwater. No-till systems are dominated by a fungal food web in which mites, collembola and earthworms are more abundant. Microarthropods and earthworms are important in increasing the fragmentation and decomposition of litter. Increased numbers of microarthropod predators maintain the fungal food web by controlling populations of fungal grazers. These predators decline with intensive application of agrochemicals, and the system shifts back to a bacterial-dominated system.49 While slower nutrient cycling might seem antagonistic to the needs of aboveground plants, it actually enhances plant growth by limiting nitrogen leaching and spreading out available nitrogen over the growing period and creating long-term nutrient pools that ensure long-term soil fertility.50

STRATEGIES TO PRESERVE AGROBIODIVERSITY Unlike other ecosystems, in which human activity is the greatest threat to biodiversity, agricultural biodiversity prospers and suffers because of human activity. Biodiversity-based agriculture has been studied and practiced for many years. Intercropping, multicropping, cover crops, low- and no-tillage systems, integrated pest management, as well as some organic practices are known to improve or maintain ecosystem services.51 Some biodiversity-based practices also increase food security. Intercropping is more labor intensive than growing monocultures, but it provides protection against the failure of an individual crop. Intercropping usually ensures improved nutrition when several different crop species are grown for subsistence.52 Even farmers that seem to plant monocultures, for example, maize farmers in Mexico or rice farmers in Bangladesh, plant several varieties in small adjoining fields to hedge their bets against environmental variability.53 Historically, farmers have been seen as passive recipients of agricultural technology transfer from government and science, rather than as active knowledgeable participants in agriculture. Rather than a trickledown process, Michel Pimbert argues that biodiversity-based practices will succeed only as bottom-up participatory programs.54 Evolution of agricultural technology in indigenous settings adapts the technology to local conditions and cultures. Enhancing Native Biodiversity Although agriculture leads inevitably to lower biodiversity, especially when new lands are cleared, agriculture does not have to lead to further losses. Some

60


researchers, like Jeffrey Lockwood, argue that agricultural lands provide a reservoir for native biodiversity that would otherwise be lost in increasingly fragmented landscapes.55 Other researchers argue that to preserve both agricultural and associated native biodiversity we need to preserve cultural identity within agriculture by encouraging and enriching traditional agricultural systems rather than industrial programs. An example of managing traditional agricultural practices involves the Monarch butterfly, one of the few truly migratory insects. Monarchs travel between central Mexico and the United States each year. In both countries, the Monarch has become an important cultural symbol representing nature’s fragility. In Mexico, Monarchs overwinter in dense colonies in forests close to Mexico City. These forests have become important tourist destinations for local and international visitors. In 1986, in response to international concern, Mexico set aside fifty-six thousand hectares of land as the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. However, more than two hundred thousand subsistence farmers lived within the four regions that make up the reserve.56 Even where the forests are protected, they are under great pressure from logging and agricultural operations. Without the insulating wind protection of surrounding trees, the overwintering butterflies desiccate or freeze. Forests are cleared as a cash crop and for cooking and heating. Logged areas are burned after logging to clear the land for subsistence agriculture, destroying many of the surviving butterflies. The loss of one acre of Monarch overwintering grounds may mean the loss of up to four million butterflies. While it is unlikely that Monarchs as a species will go extinct in the near future, the migration phenomenon is under threat. Some entomologists predict the Monarch migration may be over by 2030.57 A new conservation strategy developed by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is being developed to incorporate and benefit the local rural community. The program provides payouts to local community members to perform conservation activities. Payments are tied to agreements to forgo logging or land clearing within the preserve areas. The program has been successful in stopping legal logging, but illegal logging continues.58 Other strategies include donating efficient wood-burning stoves that decrease the need for firewood by half. Organic farming practices, including composting and switching from monoculture corn to polycropping vegetables with corn, have increased local incomes and decreased pressure to clear more forest.59 A critical piece of these programs is that they include the farmers in dialogues and planning within the reserve. These strategies—spearheaded by the nongovernmental organization Alternare and funded mainly through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS)—are still new, but they may help to create a sustainable agricultural community and preserve an important species. Preserving Domesticated Biodiversity Biodiversity in traditional varieties represents an adaptive history to different environmental, social, cultural, and economic conditions. Preserving this biodiversity preserves the ability of our agricultural resources to persist in a rapidly changing world. Sometimes, these adaptations are obvious and valued in local varieties; though more often they are considered inferior by agronomists who promote highyield varieties. Farmers often prefer the local varieties, because while they are lower in productivity, the trade-offs are great. Local varieties are often more

Agrobiodiversity

61

resistant to local pests and diseases, better adapted to local climatic conditions, more resilient to environmental variability, and better able to preserve local food preferences and cultural practices than imports.60 In many parts of the world, poverty limits farmers from buying pesticides or chemical fertilizers. Using local varieties is their only option. More recently, farmers are gaining added value on the global market by marketing local low-input varieties as organic. The biodiversity stored in agricultural species has great potential. Although much of the existing genetic variability has already been utilized to improve the yield and nutrition of wheat, significant improvements in corn and rice are still to be had.61 Changes in the genetic makeup of crop and livestock varieties have been investigated, and in some cases genetic variability has remained stable from the early twentieth century through today.62 In other cases, genetic variability has been seriously eroded. The FAO states that about 75 percent of global genetic diversity was lost from crop species in the twentieth century. Nearly ten thousand wheat varieties were cultivated in China in 1949, but by the 1970s, only about one thousand varieties remained. While local landraces of maize are still abundant in some parts of Mexico, varietal loss of maize is well documented. Only 20 percent of the maize varieties reported in 1930 are now known in Mexico.63 Some crops have become marginalized as they were replaced under pressure to focus on a few industrial varieties.64 Preservation of domesticated crops and animals requires continued growing and breeding programs. Seeds have only limited viability even under scientifically controlled storage. Although the occasional ancient seed germinates, most seeds will remain viable for only five to twenty years in normal conditions. Wheat seeds remain viable for about thirty years, but most vegetable seeds survive for only about ten years under ideal conditions.65 Traditional farmers have long followed sustainable practices to preserve the genetic variability of crop seeds. Central Mexico is the center of origin for the domestication of maize and supports the highest diversity of maize varieties in the world.66 Farmers develop landraces that are adapted to local conditions, yield needs, and cultural preferences. Some farmers select for a wide range of morphological and agronomic traits.67 Central Mexican farmers often grow several local and improved varieties of maize in a season. Because they usually eat what they grow, their planting preferences are influenced by both economic gain and by food quality.68 And because fields are small and near to each other, pollen usually drifts between fields, which increases diversity. Farmers follow strict programs of seed saving that follow local practices, and many farmers save seed from hybrid as well as open pollinated varieties.69 Farmers in different regions also practice an extensive trade in seed. Farmers may collect seed from other communities to enhance local landraces (recognizably distinct types), or they may need to acquire fresh seed after crop failures. All of these practices increase the diversity and gene flow between populations of maize and ensure that landraces are maintained over many generations.70 Farmers follow similar practices for other crops, including potatoes, sorghum, rice, beans, and livestock.71 Food as culture has been a mainstay of European agricultural systems and recently has gained a following in other industrial countries where people want to preserve foods related to their familial and ethnic ancestry. Food diversity has increased greatly in developed countries as ethnic diversity from immigration has

62


expanded palates and interest in new and traditional foods. Some foods that were unavailable to urban consumers thirty years ago in the industrial world, like mesclun salad greens, are now widely available and often locally grown. It is now possible to buy relatively obscure foods like okra leaves at farmers markets (used in Hmong and African cuisines) that previously were grown only for home consumption. Global markets have reduced costs to transport unusual fruits like durian (although it remains to be seen whether the long-distance transport of foods is a sustainable option). A great number of self-named “foodies” in Europe and the United States have begun experimenting and promoting new foods and renewing a culture of food and agriculture. Inherent in this new genre are promoters of healthful eating cultures and sustainable practices. Some programs like Slow Food’s Foundation for Biodiversity are focused solely on preservation of food species.72 Other organizations like the Seed Savers Exchange trade and sell seeds and plants to the public in an attempt to increase seed populations. Seed fairs and other trading programs are important ways to preserve seed flow and genetic variability in developing countries.73 In Japan, the International Food and Life Association has employed marketing strategies to reintroduce the public to a healthful traditional staple that has fallen out of favor, millet.74 In Africa, demand is increasing in urban areas for indigenous crops, as people from rural areas seek out familiar repasts. Leafy green species like cowpeas (kunde), African nightshade (managu), and amaranths (mchicha) are now in major supermarkets and restaurants. Some of these species were close to extinction before nutrition- and culture-based marketing by nongovernmental organizations helped to increase their production. Most East African farmers cultivated these vegetables for their own use, but did not see them as a cash crop, and instead had switched to growing crops like broccoli and cabbage for export to Europe. In a turnaround farmers are now exporting African indigenous greens to Great Britain and to Asia as demand for unique species increases. Farmers are being encouraged to intercrop these drought-tolerant vegetables to maximize productivity.75 Many developed countries have centralized gene bank facilities for the storage of crops and wild plants. For example, the National Plant Germplasm System, coordinated by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) in the United States, keeps more than 450,000 accessions of cultivated plant material. As part of this effort, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) maintains more than 2,500 varieties of apples at its Geneva, New York, facility, including many varieties from Eastern Europe and Asia.76 Although more than fifteen hundred crop gene banks exist throughout the world, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is perhaps the most ambitious program to preserve agricultural genetic diversity. Seeds are stored 130 meters inside three large caverns built into the permafrost in the Norwegian Arctic island of Svalbard. The vault can hold almost five million seed samples stored at 18° C. All the seeds stored within the vault are duplicate sets from other seed banks throughout the world. Although this facility provides the space to store a huge amount of genetic biodiversity, the material is limited to seeds only.77 Not all agricultural biodiversity can be maintained as seeds. The International Potato Center in Lima, Peru, manages the world’s largest collection of tubers, comprising forty-five hundred different varieties, including three thousand from Peru. These tubers are grown in test tubes or kept in cold chambers and must be grown out periodically in small field plots to preserve viability.78

Agrobiodiversity

63

Maintaining animal gene banks is much more complicated and expensive. Breeding stocks must be maintained in carefully controlled breeding herds, and eggs and sperm must be frozen to preserve unique breeds. The genes from only six breeds of cattle account for more than 90 percent of cattle raised in industrial countries. Many ancestral breeds have been largely abandoned and are at or near extinction. The FAO has estimated that more than 70 percent of the remaining livestock diversity is contained in developing countries where local varieties are still preferred over the higher-maintenance breeds favored in industrial countries.79

STRATEGIES FOR THE FUTURE: THE DIVERSITAS PLAN DIVERSITAS was established in 1991 as a nongovernmental organization that would focus on answering scientific questions about the decline in global biodiversity. Its science agenda embraces strategies based on understanding and valuing ecosystems as natural capital and ecosystem services as interest on that capital. DIVERSITAS recognizes agrobiodiversity as important but understudied and recently formulated a plan specifically designed to promote the science of agricultural biodiversity. Its plan represents a change in traditional agricultural science because it treats agricultural systems as natural capital and values indigenous as well as scientific knowledge of crops and agro-ecosystems as part of proposed solutions.80 The goals are to quantify economic and ecosystem goods and services provided by agrobiodiversity at all levels of diversity and to determine culturally relevant and socially responsible economic options for the sustainable use of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. It is working to develop standards to monitor agrobiodiversity and create meaningful biodiversity indicators that can be used and understood by policymakers and that will help scientists to identify those crops and ecosystems that are most in need of conservation to preserve local biodiversity. The plan is unique because it will evaluate the success of differing management strategies and work to create sustainable systems that are socially and economically viable solutions for communities and that preserve aboveground productivity as well as belowground ecosystem function.81 To be successful, these plans must include farmers as well as scientists. The International Institute for Environment and Development, working with the Association for Nature and Sustainable Development (ANDES)—an organization based in Cuzco, Peru—and in agreement with the International Potato Center (Centro Internacional de la Papa, CIP), has developed a unique biodiversity-based program. This program is the first to include indigenous growers in preserving biodiversity, which is representative of DIVERSITAS and International Association of Agricultural Development (IAAD) strategies. In the program, potato varieties will be “repatriated” back to the Quechua communities whose ancestors were responsible for the original domestication and improvement of the potato. The potatoes will be grown in a conservation “potato park” in southern Peru. The park was created out of the landholdings of six different indigenous communities that will communally grow and manage the varieties. Of the twelve hundred varieties already grown by the communities, more than two hundred varieties have been

64


reestablished through donations from CIP, and the goal is to create a bank of all three thousand open-pollinated varieties of potatoes known to Peru. The program is unique because it allows local farmers to play a role in the maintenance of local biodiversity. In addition to managing the potato park, the local communities are restoring native forest and are eager for the area to become recognized as a protected conservation park.82

CONCLUSION By 2050, the world’s farmers will need to feed nine billion people. To meet demand, agricultural yields will need to double and 18 percent more land will need to be converted to agriculture, resulting in a projected loss of ten billion hectares of wild lands. Intensified agriculture, where a small number of specific products have high value, is a threat to agrobiodiversity and its attendant ecosystem services, but it remains the dominant choice made based on traditional economic analyses of markets and the perceptions of increased management efficiency.83 Agrobiodiversity is natural capital that should be valued. Sustainable agricultural practices that promote agrobiodiversity provide capital, including more and better quality foods, chemicals, and other products for a growing human population, while protecting biodiversity and ecosystem services of neighboring wild ecosystems. They also promote the social well-being of farming communities and society as a whole. It has been suggested that an investment portfolio strategy is necessary to foster an understanding of the importance of preserving biodiversity in agro-ecosystems.84 The agroportfolio should include all levels of biodiversity (genetic, species, and landscape) to maintain a sustainable return in the flow of ecosystem services that promotes human well-being and that is resilient to environmental change. The tools to create sustainable agricultural practice exist, and new ecosystem programs can succeed if properly nurtured.

NOTES 1. M. J. Swift et al., “Biodiversity and Agroecosystem Function,” in Functional Roles of Biodiversity: A Global Perspective, ed. J. H. Cushman et al. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Press, 1996), 261–98. 2. E. O. Wilson, ed., Biodiversity (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences/ Smithsonian Institution, 1988), 1–8. 3. M. J. Swift et al., “Biodiversity and Agroecosystem Function,” 261–98. 4. FAO, “Agricultural Biodiversity,” Multifunctional Character of Agriculture and Land Conference, Background Paper 1 (Maastricht, Netherlands: FAO Press, 1999), 1–9. 5. E. O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life (Harvard, MA: Belknap/Harvard, 1999), 287–88. 6. Judith Thompson et al., “Biodiversity in Agroecosystems,” in Farming with Nature: The Science and Practice of Ecoagriculture, ed. Sara J. Scherr and Jeffrey A. McNeely (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2007), 46–60. 7. Jon K. Piper, “Natural Systems Agriculture,” in Biodiversity in Agroecosystems, ed. W. W. Collins and C. O. Qualset (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1999), 179–83. 8. Mauricio R. Bellon and Julien Berthaud, “Traditional Mexican Agricultural Systems and the Potential Impacts of Transgenic Varieties on Maize Diversity,” Agriculture and Human Values 23 (2006): 3–14.

Agrobiodiversity

65

9. R. A. Robinson and W. J. Sutherland, “Post-War Changes in Arable Farming and Biodiversity in Great Britain,” Journal of Applied Ecology 39 (2002): 157–76. 10. David C. Coleman, Deryee A. Crossley Jr., and Paul F. Hendrix, eds., Fundamentals of Soil Ecology (Amsterdam: Elsevier Academic Press, 2004), 408. 11. Alan MacLeod, et al., “Beetle Banks as Refuges for Beneficial Arthropods in Farmland: Long-Term Changes in Predator Communities and Habitat,” Agricultural and Forest Entomology 6 (2004): 147–54. 12. Erle C. Ellis and Navin Ramankutty, “Putting People in the Map: Anthropogenic Biomes of the World,” Frontiers in Ecology 6 (2008): 439–47. 13. OECD-FAO, “Agricultural Outlook: 2006–2015,” Industry, Services & Trade 2006 (2006): 55–90. 14. Bellon and Berthaud, “Traditional Mexican Agricultural Systems,” 3–14. 15. United States Census Bureau, http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/. 16. Charles Perrings et al., “Biodiversity in Agricultural Landscapes: Saving Natural Capital without Losing Interest,” Conservation Biology 20 (2006): 263–64. 17. Sara J. Scherr and Jeffrey A. McNeely, “Reconciling Agriculture and Wild Biodiversity Conservation: Policy and Research Challenges of ‘Ecoagriculture,’ ” in Conservation and Sustainable Use of Agricultural Biodiversity (Manila, Philippines: CIPUPWARD, 2003), 48. 18. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2005), 3–9. 19. Scott M. Swinton et al., “Ecosystem Services from Agriculture: Looking Beyond the Usual Suspects,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 88 (2006): 1160–1166. 20. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Ecosystems, 3–9. 21. Edward E. Southwick and J. R. L. Southwick, “Estimating the Economic Value of Honey Bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae) as Agricultural Pollinators in the United States,” Journal of Economic Entomology 85 (1992): 621–33. 22. A. M. Klein et al., “Importance of Crop Pollinators in Changing Landscapes for World Crops,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B-Biological Sciences 274 (2007): 303–13. 23. Roger A. Morse and Nicholas W. Calderone, “The Value of Honey Bees as Pollinators of U.S. Crops in 2000,” Bee Culture, 128 (2000): special pullout supplement. 24. Annette Meredith, “Conserving Pollinators: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Evaluating the Ecological, Economic and Cultural Value of Native Bees in Mid-Atlantic Sustainable Agriculture” (PhD dissertation, University of Maryland, 2008). 25. David W. Roubik, “Tropical Agriculture: The Value of Bees to the Coffee Harvest,” Nature 417 (2002): 708. 26. Texas A&M University, “Native Bees Could Fill Pollinator Hole Left By Honeybees,” Agricultural Communications (College Station: Texas A&M University, 2006). 27. D. Van Engelsdorp et al., “An Estimate of Managed Colony Losses in the Winter of 2006–2007: A Report Commissioned by the Apiary Inspectors of America,” American Bee Journal 147 (2007): 599–603. 28. Edward E. Southwick and Lawrence Southwick Jr., “Economic Value of Honey Bees,” Journal of Economic Entomology 85 (1992): 621–33 29. Thompson et al., “Biodiversity in Agroecosystems,” 46–60. 30. D. A. Landis, S. D. Wratten, and G. M. Gurr, “Habitat Management to Conserve Natural Enemies of Arthropod Pests in Agriculture,” Annual Review of Entomology 45 (2000): 175–201.

66


31. John Philip Grime, “Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function: The Debate Deepened,” Science 277 (1997): 1260–61. 32. Claire Kremen and Richard S. Ostfeld, “A Call to Ecologists: Measuring, Analyzing, and Managing Ecosystem Services,” Frontiers of Ecology and Environment 3 (2005): 540–48. 33. James B. Nardi, The World Beneath Our Feet: A Guide to Life in the Soil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 28. 34. Ibid., 19–20. 35. Else K. B€unemann, Graeme D. Schwenke, and Lukas van Zwieten, “Impact of Agricultural Inputs on Soil Organisms—a Review,” Australian Journal of Soil Research 44 (2006): 379–406. 36. Paul F. Hendrix, David C. Coleman, and Deryee A. Crossley Jr., “Using Knowledge of Soil Nutrient Cycling Processes to Design Sustainable Agriculture,” Journal of Sustainable Agriculture 2 (1992): 63–82. 37. Lijbert Brussaard, Peter C. de Ruiter, and George G. Brown, “Soil Biodiversity for Agricultural Sustainability,” Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 121 (2007): 233–44. 38. Coleman, Crossley Jr., and Hendrix, Fundamentals of Soil Ecology, 408. 39. Nardi, The World Beneath Our Feet, 45–46. 40. Rosa M. Muchovej, “Importance of Mycorrhizae for Agricultural Crops,” Document SS-AGR-170 (Gainsville: University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences 2001), 1–5. 41. Brussaard, de Ruiter, and Brown, “Soil Biodiversity,” 233–44. 42. Ibid. 43. P. A. Sanchez, et al., “Soil fertility replenishment in Africa: An investment in Natural Resource Capital,” in Replenishing Soil Fertility in Africa, ed. R. J. Buresh, P. A. Sanchez, and F. Calhoun (Madison, WI: Soil Science Society of America Special Publication No. 51, 1997), 1–46. 44. David C. Coleman, ed., “Ecology, Agroecosystems, and Sustainable Agriculture,” Ecology 70 (1989): 1590–1602. 45. Paul Hendrix, Deryee A. Crossley Jr., and David C. Coleman, “Soil Biota as Components of Sustainable Agroecosystems,” in Sustainable Agricultural Systems, ed. C. A. Edwards et al. (Ankeny, IA: Soil and Water Conservation Society, 1990), 637– 54. 46. Owen Olfert et al., “Use of Arthropod Diversity and Abundance to Evaluate Cropping Systems,” Agronomy Journal 94 (2002): 210–16. 47. Brussaard, de Ruiter, and Brown, “Soil biodiversity,” 233–44. 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid. 51. Thompson et al., “Biodiversity in Agroecosystems,” 46–60. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid. 54. Michel Pimbert, Towards Food Sovereignty: Reclaiming Autonomous Food Systems, Program at the International Institute for Environment and Development (London: IIED Press, 2008), 43–54. 55. Jeffrey A. Lockwood, “Agriculture and Biodiversity: Finding our Place in this World,” Agriculture and Human Values 16 (1999): 365–79. 56. Carlos Galindo Leal and Eduardo Rendon Salinas, Danaidas: las Maravillosas Mariposas Monarca (Mexico, D.F., Mexico: WWF Mexico Telcel, 2005), 1–82.

Agrobiodiversity

67

57. Lincoln P. Brower, Linda S. Fink, and Peter Walford, “Fueling the Fall Migration of the Monarch Butterfly,” Integrative and Comparative Biology 46 (2006): 1123–42. 58. Monica Missrie and Kristen Nelson, “Direct Payments for Conservation: Lessons from the Monarch Butterfly Conservation Fund” (working paper, Research Summary Paper No. 8 College of Natural Resources, University of Minnesota 2005), 1–48. 59. G. del Rio et al., “Participacion y Organizacion Comunitaria, Un Requisitio Indispensable en la Conservacion de los Recursos Naturals, El Caso de los Ecosistemas Templados de Monta~ na,” Alternate White Paper (2004): 1–38. 60. Thompson et al., “Biodiversity in Agroecosystems,” 46–60. 61. OECD-FAO “Agricultural Outlook,” 55–90. 62. M. M. Manifestoa et al., “Quantitative Evaluation of Genetic Diversity in Wheat Germplasm Using Molecular Markers,” Crop Science 41 (2001): 682–90. 63. OECD-FAO “Agricultural Outlook,” 55–90. 64. Thompson et al., “Biodiversity in Agroecosystems,” 46–60. 65. Forest Preserve District of Cook County, “Viability of Seeds,” Nature Bulletin No. 507 (Chicago, 1973). 66. Bellon and Berthaud, “Traditional Mexican Agricultural Systems,” 3–14. 67. B. Edgar Herrera-Cabrera et al., “Diversidad del Maiz Chalque~ no,” Agrociencia 38 (2004): 191–206. 68. Bellon and Berthaud, “Traditional Mexican Agricultural Systems,” 3–14. 69. Michael L. Morris, Jean Risopoulos, and David Beck, “Genetic Change in Farmer-Recycled Maize Seed: A Review of the Evidence” (working paper 99–07, CIMMYT Economics, Mexico, 1999). 70. Bellon and Berthaud, “Traditional Mexican Agricultural Systems,” 3–14. 71. Thompson et al., “Biodiversity in Agroecosystems,” 46–60. 72. The Slow Food Foundation, http://www.slowfoodfoundation.com/. 73. Patrick Mulvany and Rachel Berger, “Agricultural Biodiversity: Farmers Sustaining the Web of Life,” in Conservation and Sustainable Use of Agricultural Biodiversity (Manila, Philippines: CIP-UPWARD, GTZ, IDRC, IPGRI and SEARICE, 2003), 17. 74. Yumiko Otani, “Revival of Millets as Gourmet Food in Japan: An Approach to Conservation,” in Conservation and Sustainable Use of Agricultural Biodiversity (Manila, Philippines: CIP-UPWARD, GTZ, IDRC, IPGRI and SEARICE, 2003), 621–26. 75. Africa Science News Service, “African Indigenous Vegetables a Hit in Urban Centres,” http://africasciencenews.org/. 76. Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, http://www.nysaes.cornell.edu/. 77. Svalbard Global Seed Vault, http://www.nordgen.org/sgsv/. 78. International Potato Center, http://www.eseap.cipotato.org/. 79. Barbara Rischkowsky and Dafydd Pilling, eds., “Structured Breeding Programs,” in The State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 2007), 235–41. 80. DIVERSITAS Science Committee, “DIVERSITAS Science Plan 2002–2003,” DIVERSITAS Report No. 1 (Rome: DIVERSITAS, 2003), 1–37. 81. Charles Perrings et al., “Biodiversity in Agricultural Landscapes,” Conservation Biology 20 (2006): 263–64. 82. Michel Pimbert, “Transforming Knowledge and Ways of Knowing for Food Sovereignty and Bio-Cultural Diversity” (London: International Institute for Environment and Development, 2007) 6–7. 83. Swift et al., “Biodiversity and Agroecosystem Function,” 261–98. 84. Perrings et al., “Biodiversity in Agricultural Landscapes,” 263–64.

68


RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Gliessman, Stephen R. Agroecology: The Ecology of Sustainable Food Systems. New York: CRC Press, 2006. Jarvis, D. I., C. Padoch, and H. D. Cooper, eds. Managing Biodiversity in Agricultural Ecosystems. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Scherr, Sara J., and Jeffrey A. McNeely. Farming with Nature: The Science and Practice of Ecoagriculture. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2007. Wood, D., and J. M. Lenne, eds. Agrobiodiversity: Characterization, Utilization and Management. New York: CABI Publishing, 1999.

Web Sites DIVERSITAS, http://www.diversitas-international.org/. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAO Agricultural Biodiversity, http://www.fao.rg/biodiversity/biodiversity-home/en/. International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, http://www. planttreaty.org/. Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1290.

5 Energy Conservation in Agriculture and Food Transport David Pimentel Oil, natural gas, and coal provide the United States with nearly all of its energy needs at a cost of $700 billion per year.1 Since more than 90 percent of its oil deposits have been depleted, the United States now imports more than 66 percent of its oil at an annual cost of $200 billion.2, 3 The American food supply is driven almost entirely by these nonrenewable energy sources. In total, each American requires approximately two thousand liters per year in oil equivalents to supply their food, which accounts for about 19 percent of the total energy use in the United States. Farming and production, along with food processing and packaging, consume 14 percent, while transportation and preparation use 5 percent of total energy in the United States.4 Global usage of oil and natural gas has peaked at a time when oil and gas reserves are predicted to last about forty years.5, 6 As oil supplies rapidly decline, there will be a greater dependence on coal and gas as energy resources. Currently, coal supplies are capable of providing the United States with fifty to one hundred more years of energy.7 Yet, the U.S. population is projected to increase from 327 million to 1 billion in about one hundred years, further exacerbating strains on coal and oil supplies.8 This study will illustrate how an adequate food supply can be maintained, while reducing U.S. food energy transport by 50 percent.

FOOD CONSUMED BY AMERICANS The average American consumes 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) of food per year containing an estimated 3,747 kilocalories (kcal) per day (see Table 5.1).9 A vegetarian diet of an equivalent 3,747 kcal per day requires 33 percent less fossil energy than the average American diet.10 The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends an average daily consumption of 2,000 to 2,500 kcal a day, much less than provided by the typical American diet. Simply reducing calorie intake to this more reasonable level would reduce the energy used in food production significantly.

70


Table 5.1. Current U.S. Food Consumption versus Recommended Food Consumption without Junk Foods in Either Diet Reduced Consumption Diet (2,503 kcal per day)

Current Diet (3,747 kcal per day) Food Grains Starchy roots Sweeteners Nuts Fats & oils Vegetables Fruits Meat Fish Milk Eggs Total

kcal/day

kg/year

% reduction

kcal/day

kg/year

1,509 136 282 15 581 80 126 526 28 403 61 3,747

157 63 140 2 86 131 124 94 21 241 17 1,076

15 15 65 0 65 0 0 50 50 40 0

1,283 116 100 15 203 80 126 263 14 242 61 2,503

133 54 49 2 30 131 124 47 11 145 17 743

Source: FAOSTAT, “Food Balance Sheets” (Rome, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2004), http://faostat.fao.org/site/554/default.aspx.

LAND More than 99.7 percent of the global human food supply (calories) comes from the land, while less than 0.3 percent comes from aquatic ecosystems.11 At present, food production should be increasing to meet human nutrition needs, yet the per capita availability of world cropland declined by 20 percent in the past decade.12 The production of biofuels, especially corn ethanol, is reducing the amount of cropland required to produce food.13 This is increasing malnutrition in the world, as well as increasing food prices 10 to 30 percent. More than ten million hectares of valuable cropland are degraded and lost each year because of wind and water erosion.14 Another ten million hectares are abandoned annually because of severe salinization, which is a result of irrigation.15 Approximately 75 billion tons of topsoil erodes each year.16 Soil erosion occurs on average cropland at rates ranging from ten tons per hectare per year in the United States and Europe up to thirty tons per hectare per year in Africa, South America, and Asia.17 Loss of soil is insidious; one rain or wind storm can remove one millimeter of topsoil and nearly fourteen tons of total soil per hectare. This one millimeter of erosion can easily go unnoticed by farmers. Available cropland is declining due to rapid population growth as well as the aforementioned impacts of soil erosion and salinization.18 Numerous reports indicate a loss in cropland caused by soil erosion and salinization totaling twenty million hectares per year.19, 20 The world population sixty years from now is projected to have more than twice as many people as it has today (6.7 billion), or about 13 billion. Considering a World Health Organization report, which states that worldwide there are

Energy Conservation in Agriculture and Food Transport

71

currently more than 3.7 billion malnourished humans, we should expect food shortage problems to continually worsen.21 This is the largest number of malnourished people ever in the history of the Earth (~60 percent of world population). While the number of malnourished people increased worldwide over the past two decades, the per capita grain production declined simultaneously.22 Many factors contributed to this decline in grain production, including the following: a rapidly growing world population,23 a 20 percent decline in cropland per capita in the last decade,24 a 10 percent decline in irrigation,25 and a 17 percent decrease in per capita fertilizer use.26 Cereal grains make up 80 percent of the world’s food supply.

MECHANIZATION AND MACHINERY Raising corn and most other crops by hand requires about twelve hundred hours of labor per hectare (nearly five hundred hours per acre).27 With modern mechanization, however, we can raise a hectare of corn with a labor input of only eleven hours, or 109 times less than the on-farm labor for hand-produced crops.28 Mechanization requires significant energy for the production and repair of machinery (about 333,000 kcal per hectare) plus the diesel and gasoline fuel used for operation (1.4 million kcal per hectare).29 About one-third of the energy used to produce a hectare of crops is invested in machine operation.30 Mechanization generally reduces labor significantly, but it does not contribute to increased crop yields. Organic corn production requires 30 percent less fossil fuel but 30 percent more labor.31 A similar amount of mechanization is required in organic systems to that of conventional systems.32 Economies of scale are still possible with more labor and the use of smaller tractors and other implements. Reports suggest that equipment quantity and size is often in excess for the required tasks. Reducing the number and size of tractors will help increase efficiency and conserve energy.33 Another proposal has been to return to horses and mules. One horse can contribute to the management of 10 hectares (25 acres) per year.34 Each horse requires 1 acre of pasture and 1.5 acres of cropland to produce five hundred pounds of corn grain. Another 1.5 acres of hayland is necessary to produce the roughly eight hundred pounds of hay needed to sustain each animal. In addition to the labor required to care for the horses, labor is required to drive the horses during tilling and other farm operations. The farm labor required per hectare probably would increase from eleven hours to between thirty and forty hours per hectare using draft animal power.

TRANSPORT OF FOOD Food in the United States travels an average of 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles) before it is consumed (see Table 5.2). This transport of food is energy intensive (see Table 5.3). A head of lettuce produced in California and shipped to New York demonstrates the energy demand of transportation. For instance, a head of lettuce weighing 1 kilogram has 110 kcal of food energy and is 95 percent water.35 To produce the head of lettuce in California using irrigation requires about 750 kcal of fossil

72


Table 5.2. Annual Energy Inputs for the Transportation of Food within and to the United States Transport per Year Per person within the United States Total United States Per person imported food Total United States

Energy Input in kcal

Energy Input/Food/kcal

2 106

1.4

6 1012 6,000 1.8 1012

— 4 —

Source: CUESA, “How Far Does Your Food Travel to get to Your Plate?” (Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture, 2008), http://www.cuesa.org/sustainable_ag/issues/ foodtravel.php (accessed May 30, 2008). Note: — = not available. Foods transported within the U.S. average 2,400 km (CUESA 2008). Foods transported to the United States from foreign countries average 4,200 km (see Table 5.3; truck transport = 0.32 kcal/kg/km and air transport = 6.36 kcal/kg/km).

energy.36 To transport the 1 kilogram head of lettuce from California to New York City, using a refrigerated truck (transport costs plus refrigeration costs), requires 4,140 kcal of fuel.37 This fuel cost is one reason it is expected that the export of vegetables and fruits from the western and southern United States will decline. Fruit and vegetable production will likely shift to the midwestern and eastern United States. The types and varieties of produce also will change. For example, 1 kilogram head of cabbage produced in New York State requires only 400 kcal to produce.38 Cabbage has far more nutrients than lettuce, including vitamins A and C and protein.39 In addition to reducing transportation costs, the cabbage can be stored all winter long (which is not possible with lettuce). An energy-intensive part of the American diet is the large quantity of fruits and vegetables that are transported by aircraft. The amount of energy required to ship 1 kilogram of food by aircraft is 6.36 kcal per kilometer. Shipping by rail is only 0.15 kcal per kilogram per kilometer.40 Additional evidence concerning the large amount of energy used in the transport of food comes from the transport of food from the supermarket. For example, consider a 1-pound (455 grams) can of sweet corn transported from the market Table 5.3. Energy Inputs Required to Transport a Kilogram of Food for 1 Kilometer in the United States Transport Method Waterway, ship Rail Truck Aircraft Source: David Pimentel, “Food Transport Energy Use,” unpublished.

kcal/kg/km 0.08 0.15 0.32 6.36

73


home (see Figure 5.1).41 The average shopper shops twice per week, travels roundtrip ten miles each time, and brings home approximately 9 kilograms of food goods.42 Assuming 14.5 kilometers per liter (twenty miles per gallon), then it takes about 311 kcal to transport the one pound of sweet corn home, or almost as much fossil energy as the food energy in the can. As illustrated in Figure 5.1, 158 kcal of transportation energy also was spent in getting the can to the distributor, after the processing and packaging of the sweet corn. This confirms that significantly more energy was invested in the can of sweet corn than in the sweet-corn food.

REDUCING ENERGY INPUTS IN THE FOOD SYSTEMS BY REDUCING TRANSPORTATION AND OTHER INPUTS It has been estimated that the amount of fossil energy used in the food system could be reduced by about 50 percent with changes in production, processing, packaging, transport, and consumption.43 Using corn production as a model crop, it is estimated that total energy in corn production could be reduced by more than 50 percent with the following changes: (1) using smaller machinery in the field and thus less fuel;44 (2) replacing the commercial nitrogen used with legume cover crops and livestock manure; and (3) reducing soil erosion in corn production through alternative tillage and conservation techniques, which could reduce the phosphorus, potassium, and lime application to 33 percent of current levels.45 The average American consumes 3,747 kcal of food per day, and based on preliminary data, the average person consumes 33 percent of their total calories in junk food.46 Reducing the junk food intake from 33 percent to 10 percent of the

Production

450

Processing

316

Packaging

1006

Transportation

158

Distribution

340

Shopping

Total 3065 kcal

311

Home

457 0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

Figure 5.1. Energy Inputs for a 455 g (375 kcal) Can of Sweet Corn Source: David Pimentel and Marcia Pimentel, Food, Energy and Society, 3rd ed. (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group, 2008), 250.

74


current level would reduce caloric intake to 2,826 kcal. This would still be 326 kcal above the suggested level for males or 826 kcal for females. Some of the current foods consumed per person per year are listed in Table 5.1. It is suggested that the amounts of meat and dairy products consumed could be reduced by 50 percent, while still maintaining the necessary quality and quantity of nutrients. This would be especially true if the amounts of cereal grain, fruits, and vegetables were increased.47 This dietary improvement could reduce the amount of fossil energy input by approximately 50 percent. Especially important is the long distance that U.S. food is transported. The average distance that food is transported before being consumed by the average American is 2,400 kilometers, which requires about 2 million kcal per year per person. This is 1.4 times the energy in food consumed per person. Although a relatively small percentage of fruits and vegetable are transported by air cargo into the United States, large quantities of fossil energy are required for this transport. The energy input per 1 kcal of fruits and vegetable for transport is 4 kcal. Increased consumption of local foods should be a major goal for energy savings.

CONCLUSION Energy input in U.S. transport is enormous, representing four times the energy contained in the fruit and vegetable produce being transported. This large amount of energy could be reduced substantially by purchasing more locally produced food items.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT This research was supported in part by the Podell Emeriti Award at Cornell University.

NOTES 1. United States Census Bureau (USCB), Statistical Abstracts of the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2007). 2. Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage (Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001). 3. USCB, Statistical Abstracts. 4. David Pimentel, Emily Rochon, Jennifer Gardner, Claire Horan, Ximena Garcia, Julie Grufferman, Emily Walling, Julia Schlenker, and Adam Bonnifield, “Energy Efficiency and Conservation for Individual Americans,” Environment Development and Sustainability (2008), http://www.springerlink.com/content/v15316142l265437/ (accessed May 30, 2008). 5. Richard C. Duncan and Walter Youngquist, “Encircling the peak of world oil production,” Natural Resources Research 8, no. 3 (1999): 219–32. 6. Deffeyes, Hubbert’s Peak. 7. USCB, Statistical Abstracts. 8. Virginia D. Abernethy, “Census Bureau Distortions Hide Immigration Crisis: Real Numbers Much Higher” (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, 2006).


75

9. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Statistics (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2007). 10. David Pimentel and Marcia Pimentel, Food, Energy and Society, 3rd ed. (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group, 2008), 133–34. 11. FAOSTAT, “Food Balance Sheets” (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2004), http://faostat.fao.org/site/554/default.aspx (accessed December 15, 2006). 12. Worldwatch Institute, Vital Signs 2001 (New York: W.W. Norton Company, 2001). 13. David Pimentel and Tad W. Patzek, “Ethanol Production Using Corn, Switchgrass, and Wood; Biodiesel Production Using Soybean and Sunflower,” in Food, Energy and Society, 3rd ed., ed. D. Pimentel and M. Pimentel (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group, 2008), 319. 14. Rachel F. Preiser, “Living within our Environmental Means. Natural Resources and an Optimum Human Population” (2006), http://dieoff.org/pages50.htm (accessed November 5, 2006). 15. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “The Use of Saline Waters for Crop Production” (Rome: FAO Corporate Documentary Repository, 2006). 16. Bruce H. Wilkinson and Brandon J. McElroy, “The Impact of Humans on Continental Erosion and Sedimentation,” Geological Sciences Association Bulletin 119, no. 1–2 (2007): 140–56. 17. David Pimentel, “Soil Erosion: A Food and Environmental Threat,” Environment, Development and Sustainability 8, no. 1 (2006): 123–24. 18. Ibid., 132. 19. Preiser, “Living within our Environmental Means.” 20. FAO, “The Use of Saline Waters.” 21. World Health Organization, “Malnutrition Worldwide” (2005), http://www. mikeschoice.com/reports/malnutrition_worldwide.htm (accessed January 3, 2007). 22. FAOSTAT, “World Cereal Grain Production, Food and Agriculture Organization 1961–2006” (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2008). 23. Population Reference Bureau, World Population Datasheet (Washington, DC: Population Reference Bureau, 2007). 24. David Pimentel and Anne Wilson, “World Population, Agriculture, and Malnutrition,” World Watch September/October (2004): 22. 25. Sandra Postel, Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity (New York: W.W. Norton Company, 1997). 26. David Pimentel, Rachel Doughty, Courtney Carothers, Sonja Lamberson, Nirali Bora, and Katherine Lee, “Energy Inputs in Crop Production: Comparison of Developed and Developing Countries,” in Food Security and Environmental Quality in the Developing World, ed. R. Lal, D. Hansen, N. Uphoff, and S. Slack (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2002), 145. 27. David Pimentel, “Feeding the World,” interview by Jackie May, Earthbeat, Radio National, 20 July 2002, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/earth/stories/s611400.htm (accessed May 19, 2008). 28. Pimentel et al., “Energy Efficiency for Americans.” 29. Pimentel and Patzek, “Ethanol Production,” 312–13. 30. Pimentel et al., “Energy Inputs in Crop Production,” 129–51. 31. David Pimentel, Paul Hepperly, James Hanson, David Douds, and Rita Seidel, “Environmental, Energetic and Economic Comparisons of Organic and Conventional Farming Systems,” BioScience 55, no. 7 (2005): 573–82.

76


32. Ibid., 573–82. 33. Robert Grisso and Robert Pitman, “Gearing Up and Throttle Down – Saving Fuel” (2001), http://www/ext.vy.edu/pubs/bse/442-450/442-450.html (accessed October 25, 2006). 34. F. B. Morrison, Feeds and Feeding: A Handbook for the Student and Stockman (Ithaca, NY: The Morrison Publishing Company, 1946). 35. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Nutritive Value of American Foods, Agricultural Handbook No. 456 (Washington, DC: Agricultural Research Service, 1976). 36. Edward J. Ryder, “Lettuce,” in Handbook of Energy Utilization in Agriculture, ed. D. Pimentel (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1980), 191 Radio National 194. 37. Pimentel et al., “Energy Efficiency for Individual Americans.” 38. Pimentel et al., “Energy Inputs in Crop Production,” 143. 39. USDA, Nutritive Value of American Foods. 40. David Pimentel, Food Transport Energy Use, unpublished. 41. Pimentel and Pimentel, Food, Energy and Society, 250. 42. Chris Muir, “Examining Local Food,” (Real Environment, Economic and Scientific Investigations of Environmental Issues, 2008), http://realenvironment.blogspot. com/2006/12/examining-buying-local.html (accessed March 14, 2008). 43. David Pimentel, Sean Williamson, Courtney E. Alexander, Omar GonzalezPagan, Caitlin Kontak, and Steven Mulkey, “Reducing Energy Inputs in the U.S. Food System,” Human Ecology 36 no. 4, 459–71 (2008). 44. Grisso and Pitman, “Saving Fuel.” 45. Pimentel et al., “Reducing Energy in Food System.” 46. Sarah Yang, “Nearly One-third of the Calories in the US Diet Come from Junk Food,” (UC Berkeley News, 2004), http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/06/ 01_usdiet.shtml (accessed November 3, 2006). 47. Pimentel et al., “Reducing Energy in Food System.”

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Deffeyes, Kenneth S. Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001. Duncan, Richard C., and Walter Youngquist. “Encircling the Peak of World Oil Production.” Natural Resources Research 8, no. 3 (1999): 219–32. Pimentel, David. “Soil Erosion: a Food and Environmental Threat.” Environment, Development and Sustainability 8, no. 1 (2006): 123–24. Pimentel, David, Paul Hepperly, James Hanson, David Douds, and Rita Seidel. “Environmental, Energetic and Economic Comparisons of Organic and Conventional Farming Systems.” BioScience 55, no. 7 (2005): 573–82. Pimentel, David, and Marcia Pimentel. Food, Energy and Society. 3rd ed. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group, 2008. Pimentel, David, Emily Rochon, Jennifer Gardner, Claire Horan, Ximena Garcia, Julie Grufferman, Emily Walling, Julia Schlenker, and Adam Bonnifield. 2008. “Energy Efficiency and Conservation for Individual Americans.” Environment, Development and Sustainability (in press). Available at http://www.springerlink.com/content/ v15316142l265437/ (accessed May 30, 2008). Pimentel, David, and Anne Wilson, “World Population, Agriculture, and Malnutrition.” World Watch (September/October 2004): 22–25.


77

Wilkinson, Bruce H., and Brandon J. McElroy. “The Impact of Humans on Continental Erosion and Sedimentation.” Geological Sciences Association Bulletin. 119, no. 1–2 (2007): 140–56.

Web Sites Leopold.iastate.edu, “Food, Fuel, and Freeways,” http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs/ staff/ppp/food_mil.pdf. Globalsubsidies.org, “Biofuels—At What Cost? Government Support for Ethanol and Biodiesel in the United States,” http://www.globalsubsidies.org/files/assets/pdf/ Brochure_-_US_Report.pdf. International Forum on Globalization, “False Promise of Biofuels,” http://www.ifg.org/ pdf/biofuels.pdf.


PART II Agriculture and Fisheries


6 Sustainable Agricultural Practices in the United States and Other Postindustrial Countries Daniel A. Cibulka To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves. —Mahatma Gandhi1

Along with fisheries, agriculture must provide food for 1.30 billion people in industrial countries. A world population of this magnitude places incredible stress on the Earth’s natural resources, including arable land. This chapter will examine how the United States and other postindustrial countries may use sustainable agriculture as a way to feed their populations, yet do so in a manner that reduces the stress placed on the natural resources providing their sustenance.

CONVENTIONAL AGRICULTURE From the moment humans began planting seeds in the Middle East ten thousand years ago until the early 1700s, little changed within the practice of agriculture. Of course, the process of agriculture did evolve. Wood tools turned to stone, and then stone tools to metal. Ox-drawn four-wheeled carts for pulling plows through a field were a familiar sight in northern India in 2,000 B.C.E. New crops became popular over the ages as well, with grapes and wine first mentioned in Egyptian literature around 2,900 B.C.E. In Europe, rye and oats were introduced around 1,000 B.C.E. Irrigation systems evolved in China and the Middle East, which allowed more land to be placed into production. However, it was not until the early 1700s that agriculture experienced a “revolution” of sorts. Agriculture and science then merged to produce more food on less land, while using less labor. And mechanically driven farm machinery, likely the most groundbreaking development to affect agriculture, was introduced during the Industrial Revolution. Thomas Jefferson once referred to small family farmers as “America’s most valuable and most virtuous citizens.”2 In the early 1800s, farmers accounted for 90 percent of the labor force in the country. Today, Jefferson’s numerous “cultivators of the earth” and their humble farm homes have been replaced by 530-horsepower tractors and

82


combines, large industrial farms, chemical fertilizers, and harmful pesticides. Colossal agroindustry giants have overtaken the numerous small farms that once dotted the landscape, and U.S. farmers now make up less than 2.5 percent of the population.3 Unfortunately, with the arrival of conventional (or industrial) agriculture came numerous problems that are beginning to act as roadblocks to this industry’s future. Conventional agriculture primarily uses monoculture (one plant species), as this allows for standardized mechanical planting and harvest. As monoculture crops can create the ideal situation for pests, the need for pesticides increases on these fields. However, the very pesticides that protect our food soon run off into nearby ground and surface waters. From 1992 to 2001, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) undertook a nationwide assessment of pollutants in U.S. waters called the National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA). The study found that at least one pesticide was detected in water from all streams studied. Even more troubling findings were that agricultural pesticides were detected throughout most of the year in water from streams with agriculture (97 percent of the time), urban (97 percent of the time), or mixed-land-use watersheds (94 percent of the time).4 Erosion of topsoil has become another primary issue in modern agriculture. When plants are removed from the land, little residue is left to hold soil particles intact. Large machinery has compacted soils, leaving them less able to absorb rainfall and, consequently, increased runoff. With rainfall, the soil rows between monoculture plots can act as conveyors for soil-laden water, moving the soil from its original position. Ultimately, these forces result in the erosion of fertile soils. Recent studies at Cornell University suggest that U.S. topsoil is being washed off of the landscape ten times faster than it is being replenished.5 This problem of soil erosion leads to critical losses of water, nutrients, organic matter, and soil biota, as well as to health and aesthetic issues concerning soil and dust particles that are swept into rivers and streams or carried into the air. Salinization of soils has become a critical issue in many parts of the world. Through “broadcast irrigation,” the ground is saturated with more water than plant roots can absorb. The excess water percolates down to layers of salty soil. This continuous column of water allows salts to diffuse upward to the surface or into groundwater to be carried to nearby streams. When vegetation is removed from a landscape, a similar action is seen in which rainwater that was previously sequestered by the plants is allowed to percolate in continuous columns toward the deeper salty soil layers. This is called “dryland salinization.” In either scenario, the topsoil becomes too saline to support many crops, or plants in general. In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond describes how salinization of soils has rendered 9 percent of all cleared land in Australia useless.6 Furthermore, several areas within the country have groundwater salt concentrations three times that of the ocean. Arguably, the most pressing concern for conventional agriculture is that of capital depletion. Investment in conventional agriculture includes massive inputs of water through irrigation, chemical- and often petroleum-based fertilizers, and pesticides to replace depleted soil nutrients and prevent pests, and also includes a reliance on nonrenewable fuels such as gas and oil to operate heavy machinery. This heavy reliance on external inputs has created a form of agriculture that cannot sustain itself. Hirsch, Bezdek, and Wendling explain the future of oil resources by recounting the development of the “Peak Oil” theory.7 In 1956, petroleum geologist M. King Hubbert created a model to accurately predict when what he termed “Peak Oil” would occur. The resulting “Hubbert Curve” is a bell-shaped curve that shows

Sustainable Agricultural Practices in the United States

83

U.S. oil production peaking sometime between 1965 and 1970, and then declining due to reduced supply and loss of economic viability of extraction. As it happens, oil production in the continental United States did peak in 1970–1971. Later in life, Hubbert predicted a global oil peak between 1995 and 2000. Although this has yet to be confirmed, fifty-four of the sixty-five largest oil-producing countries in the world have passed their peak production and are now on the decline. Furthermore, many oil experts believe global peak production will occur within twenty years of Hubbert’s prediction.8 Complicating matters of supply, it is becoming more expensive to mine for oil. To make business more profitable, oil companies have continuously extracted the shallowest oil reserves, the pressurized reserves, and generally the easiest-to-reach reserves first. As supply dwindles, the only oil supplies left eventually will be those located so deep in the Earth (under land or sea) or those so high in by-product (such as sulfur) that it simply will not make financial sense to drill for them. Modern industrial agriculture is fossil fuel intensive—the machinery requires diesel gasoline and oil, the process to make chemical fertilizer is energy intensive, and many herbicides and pesticides require the use of oil and gas in their production. Walter Youngquist stated in the Post-Petroleum Paradigm that “[a]pproximately 90% of the energy in crop production is in oil and natural gas … 1/3 of this to reduce labor input and 2/3 for production, of which 1/3 of this is for fertilizers alone.”9 What will happen now that we are on the downward slope of the Hubbert Curve, and when our primary energy source becomes too expensive or short in supply to fuel the equipment, produce the fertilizers, and truck the product to feed the people of the industrial world? Industrial agriculture faces an uphill struggle in assisting the developed world to cope with a booming population and reduce the extent of environmental degradation. The good news, however, is that models of sustainable agriculture are being developed in postindustrial nations. Let us discuss these examples and examine the biological, political, social, and economic context behind the sustainable practices.

SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE AS A SYSTEM An unsustainable system, by definition, is any system that simply cannot continue to operate as it currently does. Agriculture may be thought of as a complex system involving many inputs and outputs, and globally about 6.756 billion people depend on this system. Agriculture’s inputs and outputs must be managed in a way that allows future generations to harvest food from the same land to feed the population for generations to come. This is the essence of sustainable agriculture. In 1990, the U.S. Congress addressed sustainable agriculture in the Farm Bill (Food, Agriculture, Conservation, and Trade Act of 1990).10 Under the Farm Bill, Congress defined sustainable agriculture as an integrated system of plant and animal production practices having a site-specific application that will, over the long term:

• satisfy human food and fiber needs; • enhance environmental quality and the natural resource base upon which the agricultural economy depends;

84


• make the most efficient use of nonrenewable resources and on-farm resources and integrate, where appropriate, natural biological cycles and controls;

• sustain the economic viability of farm operations; and • enhance the quality of life for farmers and society as a whole.11 Sustainable agriculture has two primary components. The first includes biophysical aspects such as the effects of agricultural management on the soil and crop productivity as well as the ability to produce nutritious food. A truly sustainable plot of land must ensure that the soil will always be rich in nutrients, organic matter, and organisms that break down waste material. The land must be farmed in a way that does not result in the pollution of nearby waters or the air, and the produce coming from the land must be healthy and nutritious. The second component of sustainable agriculture addresses socioeconomic aspects, such as the ability of farmers to obtain system inputs, manage resources, and produce affordable food for the public. Both components must be considered along with the underlying concept of thinking in the long term. To do otherwise, endangers the agricultural system for future generations.

APPROACHES TO SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE With the erosion of fertile topsoil being one of the critical issues in agriculture, much research has been done on agricultural practices, such as intensive tilling, which are responsible for this loss. Historically, fields were tilled to remove weeds, which compete with crops for space, water, and nutrients. Conservation tillage is a more sustainable way of dealing with weeds in a less mechanical manner. The process refers to a number of strategies for establishing crops within the previous crop’s residues. Through conservation tillage, soil erosion is reduced, organic matter and moisture content improved, air pollution reduced, and wildlife habitat created. Moreover, tractor use is reduced by half, thus reducing fuel consumption, labor, and maintenance costs. Conservation tillage is performed in several ways. One popular technique is called ridge tillage. Using this method, permanent ridges are carved into the land on which row crops are grown. A special planter places new seed in the top of the ridge after pushing last year’s crop residue out of the way. The ridge-tillage planter is a multipurpose device that not only plants seeds and removes residue, but also rebuilds ridges and removes weeds. This process keeps weeds under control, allowing the farmer to restrict herbicide use. No-till is another conservation tillage approach. This method utilizes a special planter to place seed directly into the previous year’s crop residue, with only a double disc opener to place the seed at the correct depth. No-till offers excellent soil erosion control and greatly reduces the number of tractor trips across the field. In the past, no-till was criticized because in its early stages, chemical herbicides were the only means of weed control with this method. However, newer technology (the “no-till cultivator”) permits herbicide to be applied in bands between rows, reducing the overall amount of herbicide used. Conservation tillage has quickly become one of the most effective methods of retaining soil in the United States, and has slowly been adopted in other industrial


85

nations. In 2004, the number of U.S. acres under conservation tillage broke 40 percent for the first time.12 American farmers have gained some administrative support for conservation tillage through the Farm Bills of 1985, 1990, and 1996. In more recent installments of the Farm Bill (2002 and 2008), the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) was created to offer financial and technical assistance to farmers for using conservation tillage, among other conservation techniques. Along with the United States, other industrial nations such as Australia and Canada have been steadily increasing the use of conservation tillage, while Europe lags well behind.13 According to the European Conservation Agriculture Federation, conservation agriculture has been slower to catch on in European countries because of heavy subsidies (less need to take “risks”), a lack of technology and the ability to transfer this technology from scientific researchers to farmers, and a lack of institutional support.14 The use of cover crops (or green manure) has also been shown to assist in making agriculture sustainable. A cover crop is a monoculture crop planted to improve soil conditions and prevent soil erosion. The use of legumes (nitrogen-fixing plants such as alfalfa, soybeans, and sweetclover) increases levels of nitrogen, while all cover crops assist in the production of other essential minerals, such as phosphorous, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and sulfur. Other benefits of cover crops include enhancing the organic matter content of soils, soil microbial activity, weed suppression, and water conservation. Following are several types of cover crops: • Winter cover crops planted in late summer or fall • Summer cover crops, which occupy the land for a portion of the growing season • Living mulch, which is interplanted with primary crops • Catch crops used to fill a niche in a crop rotational schedule • Forage crops that also allow for pasturage of grazing animals15 The sustainability of agricultural land also must address the animals that forage the land. When livestock graze the land without constraint, problems occur. They will likely forage on the tastiest plants first, leaving less desirable species dotting the landscape. If these plants are repeatedly foraged upon, their roots will not have enough time to recover and the result will be a field of only undesirable plants. Given enough time, some herds will clear a landscape of all vegetation. This “overgrazing” can result in serious environmental issues such as soil erosion, increased dust in the air, and desertification of a previously vegetated landscape. With rotational grazing, livestock are moved from pasture to pasture, which creates rest periods for the plant species. The soil in the fields will also enjoy the rest period from compaction. Additionally, the animal’s health will improve with more exercise and constant fresh, preferred food sources. Parasite cycles can also be broken by rotating foraging species in a specific sequence. Finally, nearby waters will benefit when livestock are no longer defecating near water sources and the soil has enough vegetation to reduce erosion of soils. Some carbon sequestration can occur, as has been demonstrated by the Polyface farm.16 Rotational grazing can be a relatively inexpensive technique in the growing number of sustainable agricultural strategies. Fencing is the primary requirement

86


for managing animal herds. To make efficient use of water sources, the pasture plan should be designed carefully to reduce piping and portable water container expenses. With a more even distribution of animal manure, rotational grazing can decrease pasture fertilization costs. While livestock are foraging elsewhere, farmers may even allow pastures enough rest so that hay, alfalfa, or other food crops can be grown. These crops may then be harvested and stockpiled, instead of being purchased. Typically, conventional grazing does not allow this opportunity.

LOCAL AND ORGANIC CROPS A critical part of sustainable agriculture relies on the choices consumers make. The demand for both organic and locally grown foods has increased in the past few years. The U.S. market for organic foods has grown from $1 billion in 1990 to $20 billion in 2008, according to the Organic Trade Association.17 In 2007, wordsmiths at the Oxford American Dictionary gave their support of the local food movement by making “locavore” (n.: a person who attempts to eat only foods grown locally) the word of the year.18 In London, a recent poll shows two-thirds of consumers are attempting to buy more locally, and seasonally as well.19 Organic food is grown according to certain government standards. Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, and the United States have all established certification procedures for organic foods. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is responsible for certifying organic produce in the United States. Their crop standards include the following: • Land without prohibited substances applied in the last three years • Use of conservation tillage and cultivation practices, crop rotations, and cover crops • Fertilized only with animal and crop waste materials • Biological and physical or other natural controls for pests only • Use of genetic engineering, ionizing radiation, and sewage sludge prohibited20 Organic foods are often touted for their land conservation ethics and healthy, chemical-free produce. Organic farms typically sustain more diverse ecosystems (with many serving as sanctuaries for wildlife), consume less energy, and produce less waste than conventional farms. While it is true that organic methods of agriculture should be commended as “more sustainable,” the origin of the food relative to where it is sold should be considered by people who wish to eat environmentally friendly foods. The local food movement is gaining attention, partly due to concerns over energy consumption. Food that is trucked in from the far side of the country has more “food miles” than the food grown nearby, and therefore more energy has been used in the transport. When purchasing locally, a consumer also has a better opportunity to understand where their food comes from and how it is produced. Many farmers will conduct tours of their farm to promote closer relationships with customers. Although local food is not always organic, many small farms are likely to include other sustainable growing methods in their operation. The demand for local food also provides economic support as residents learn of its importance to


87

the local economy. When food is purchased from across the nation (or even across seas), local economies do not receive the benefits of that transaction. Spending a dollar with local farmers or businesses reinvests that dollar regionally, in effect keeping economic prosperity in your region.

FARM SIZE In 1900, there were 5.7 million farms in the United States, with an average farm size of 146 acres; now there are 2.1 million farms averaging 441 acres each. As farmers switched from biologically diverse practices to monocultures, the average number of commodities produced per farm decreased as well, from 5.1 to 1.3.21 Massive government subsidies have perpetuated this process. In the past five years, the U.S. government has paid $95 billion in agricultural subsidies.22 In the European Union, agricultural subsidies make up more than 40 percent of the total budget.23 Although these governments are allocating funds to large farms and agricultural corporations, studies are beginning to show that large farms are less efficient than smaller ones. Smaller farms that produce polycultures (more than one crop) are actually more productive when compared with monocropping larger farms on a basis of total produce per acre.24 While smaller farms tend to generate wealth and create jobs in local rural areas, large industrial farms are more mechanistic; they tend to incorporate more large machinery in their processes that takes the place of hard-working farmers. As a result, large industrial farms have been criticized for exporting farm income from the community and offering fewer job opportunities. The USDA acknowledges the differences between small and large farms. A 1998 report by the National Commission on Small Farms highlighted the fact that small farms were invaluable to vibrant rural communities. The report recommended new regulations that would increase federal funds to small family farms, along with enforcing fair and competitive markets between small farms and their larger counterparts.25

SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE SYSTEMS Natural Systems Agriculture Numerous types of agricultural systems have employed sustainable techniques. Natural systems agriculture is a method of food production in which “nature is mimicked rather than subdued and ignored.”26 Scientists at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, believe that agriculture can become resilient, economical, and ecologically sound by examining native biological communities in a region. After years of study, they have discovered that the only communities that persist through evolutionary time are those that achieve the following: • • • •

Maintain or build their ecological capital Fix and hold their nutrients Adapt to periodic stress, such as drought and fire Manage their weed, pest, and pathogen populations27

88


Much of the research that is taking place at the Land Institute focuses on the Great Plains region of the United States. In this region, the dominance of herbaceous perennials had persisted over millennia, until the introduction of annual plants that modern agriculture prefers. Research at the Institute has shown native perennial crops hold and build soil more efficiently, increase plant diversity within a field, promote nutrient recycling, and retard the spread of pathogens and pests. In addition, the harvest of perennials is less energy intensive, as yearly replanting is no longer required. Since 1976, the Land Institute has enjoyed success with numerous, native perennial grains. It has discovered the potential perennial wheat varieties, intermediate wheatgrass, grain sorghum, and the Illinois bundleflower—a native prairie legume that fixes atmospheric nitrogen and produces protein-rich seed. Besides research, the Land Institute has obtained enough financial support to sponsor short courses on perennial agriculture and also finance student fellowships. In 2009, eighteen graduate students conducted research through its fellowship program.28 Through continued research, experimentation, and living examples, the Land Institute hopes to revolutionize the way farmers and consumers currently think about agriculture. Hydroponics Problems with soil fertility, soil loss, and soil pollution have been a reoccurring theme in this chapter. It was only a matter of time before someone solved these issues by simply not using soil to grow food. Hydroponic systems are a method of growing plants in a mixture of water and fertilizers, requiring no soil whatsoever. At the Hamakua Springs in Pepe’ekeo, Hawaii, the Ha family grows numerous varieties of fruits and vegetables using a hydroponic system that is powered by an annual average of 130 inches of rainfall.29 Because they are not using a soil medium to grow their crops, they do not need to worry about many of the weeds or soil-borne pests that traditional farmers experience. As a result they use few pesticides and herbicides. They have eliminated the need for tractors or other harvesting equipment, because they have no soil to till. This reduces energy inputs. To support the booming tourism industry, Hawaii reduced sugarcane and pineapple production by 70 and 42 percent, respectively.30 In contrast to these losses, the Ha family farm now has reached its 30th year of business and supplies produce to many restaurants and supermarkets throughout the Hawaiian Islands. For an island chain that currently imports 90 percent of its food and has only a seven-day supply of perishables, local farms such as Hamakua Springs will likely proliferate as it becomes more expensive to import food.31 Permaculture and the Philosophies of Masanobu Fukuoka In 1975, Australian ecologist Bill Mollison and his student David Holmgren developed a sustainable type of agriculture supported by a lifestyle that promotes ecological balance and reduces societal reliance on industrial systems. Permaculture, a term which blends permanent agriculture to permanent culture, has been the focus of numerous books and pamphlets written by these two research scientists.32 The core concept is the design of an ecological landscape that produces food, but permaculture embraces much more than food production. The holistic


89

design of the landscape incorporates energy-efficient buildings, wastewater treatment, recycling of nutrients and wastes, and land stewardship. Often, societal development is emphasized as well through the process of co-housing projects and ecovillages. Organic practices are encouraged to reduce pesticide and chemical fertilizer use. Permaculture is not a system of mass agricultural production. Rather, it is a land-use and community planning philosophy. And, because it is a site- and culture-specific system, by incorporating flexible ideas and design into its methodology, this form of self-sustaining agriculture can be used in different regions. Farmer and philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka was another pioneer in the field of permaculture. Trained as a microbiologist and soil scientist in Japan, Fukuoka soon began to doubt what he called “scientific” farming. At age twenty-five he returned to his family’s farm to devote his life to developing a unique, small-scale organic farm that operated on four principles: no cultivation, no (engineered) fertilizer, no weeding, and no pesticides. Fukuoka favored the addition of a deep layer of organic matter and incorporation of trees into the garden as opposed to working the soil with tools. He writes: [A]s the farmer turns the soil with his hoe, this breaks the soil into smaller particles which acquire an increasingly regular physical arrangement with smaller interstitial spaces.… The result is a harder, denser soil.… With the addition of organic humus and trees, the roots reach down into the earth, and air and water penetrate into the soil with the roots. As these wither and die, many types of microorganisms proliferate. Earthworms appear and moles begin burrowing through the soil. The soil lives of its own accord and plows itself. It needs no help from man.33

After years of developing his method, he found he could produce crop yields at least equal to or better than those yields grown under industrial farming. The Fukuoka method utilized only a fraction of the labor and other costs of more intensive farming, and produced no pollution. Additionally, the philosophies of Fukuoka (and permaculture in general) have given agriculture a spiritual basis that is lacking from modern practices. Fukuoka claimed that natural farming proceeds from an individual’s spiritual health. “The healing of the land and the purification of human spirit is one process. Natural farming is not just for growing crops, it is for the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”34 Even after Fukuoka’s passing, Japanese farmers still use his methods in their communities. Kiyokazu Shitara oversees the Permaculture Center Japan in the Kanagawa mountain town of Shinobara. With smart design and a garden of biologically symbiotic plants and animals, the Center has become a thriving institute, both agriculturally and educationally. In the courses Shitara teaches at the Center, he explains the intricacies of his system: “The marigolds eliminate microorganisms that cause disease. They also get rid of insects from the eggplants and tomatoes. Onions get rid of kabi (mold).”35 The Center uses fruit trees not only for their fruit, but also for their ability to block wind from other crops. Cows are kept upslope so that rain and gravity distributes their natural fertilizers down to the gardens. The slopes are also used to collect excess nutrient-rich water to use later for irrigation. Shitara’s chickens and ducks roam free, picking insects off of the crops and eating weeds between the crop rows. The motorized hand plow his neighbors gave him in 1995 still sits next to the chicken shed.

90


Organizations around the globe have adopted the teachings of permaculture, including some in the industrial world. The Circle School36 in Richmond, Virginia, is a vegetarian families’ cooperative that provides invaluable education for students, as well as work-study opportunities for teaching students from the nearby Virginia Commonwealth University. By working with the local Department of Parks and Recreation, the school developed an area of nearby parkland under the principles of the Fukuoka way of agriculture. Instead of a typical short-grassed park that contains broadleaf weed-killer and wasteful spending on maintenance and labor costs, this section of the park, called Wildflower Walk, is now a beautiful environment in which food is grown, cafeteria spoils are recycled, and students actively participate in observing the biological relationships the park harbors. Sustainable Agriculture and the Triple Bottom Line Many people are familiar with the movement to reduce environmental impacts in agriculture, but they do not know where to start to make changes themselves. This offers a ripe opportunity for the entrepreneurial spirit. Kris August saw this and decided to offer expertise on sustainable practices to the farmers who wished to change their ways. The New Zealand Farmsure37 program now coaches farmers on the principles of food safety, animal welfare, and sustainable resource management, based upon meeting goals of the “Triple Bottom Line (TBL).” The TBL was first discussed in 1994 by John Elkington, and today is a phrase used to capture the values and criteria for measuring organizational success in three areas: economic, ecological, and social.38 The New Zealand Farmsure program encompasses the ideology of the TBL through three plans. The Animal Management Plan seeks to maximize animal welfare and animal health through sustainable practices. The Land Management Plan provides assistance to farm managers on soil health, water quality, shelter and shade, pasture, biodiversity, biosecurity (from pests and pathogens), and a gas budget to monitor greenhouse-gas emissions. Finally, the Social Responsibility Plan covers issues of training staff, committing to a sustainability pledge, integrating with community, and learning the values of local heritage. Through these plans, Farmsure program farmers have access to knowledgeable professionals to sustainably increase their yields, ensure happy and healthy livestock, keep the land ecologically sound, and create market opportunities within the regional economy.

CONCLUSION This chapter described a selection of the types of sustainable agriculture approaches taken in the industrial world. Which are most effective? Which will be the most realistic? Is one more sustainable than the other? Clearly, these approaches demonstrate that sustainable forms of agriculture are being practiced in postindustrial countries. However, public interest to move from conventional agriculture to something more holistic has not gained enough momentum to achieve greater support from national agricultural policies. We have discussed numerous problems with conventional agriculture that will shape and define our transition to a more sustainable way of obtaining food. Environmental


91

degradation, health concerns, and energy consumption will likely be the motivation behind a shift from large-scale, industrial agriculture to smaller, ecologically sound, community-based agricultural structures. We can learn from our ancestors and these contemporary trailblazers to select the strategies best suited for our communities. In the meantime, we must seriously start to think not only about how we acquire our food, but also about how future generations will acquire theirs.

NOTES 1. John Broomfield, Other Ways of Knowing: Recharting Our Future with Ageless Wisdom (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1997), 204. 2. Paul Thompson, “Agrarianism and the American Philosophical Tradition,” Journal of Agriculture and Human Values 7, no. 1 (1990): 3–8, 4. 3. M. Grunwald, “Why Our Farm Policy Is Failing,” TIME, November 2, 2007. 4. U.S. Geological Survey, “Pesticides in the Nation’s Streams and Ground Water, 1992–2001—A Summary,” NAWQA Fact Sheet 2006–3028 (Washington, DC, 2006). 5. David Pimentel, “Soil Erosion: A Food and Environmental Threat,” Journal of Environment, Development and Sustainability 8, no. 1 (2006): 119–37. 6. Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (New York, Penguin Books, 2006). 7. R. L. Hirsch, R. Bezdek, and R. Wendling, Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management (Washington, DC: Department of EnergyNational Energy and Technology Laboratory, 2005). 8. Ibid. 9. W. Youngquist, “The Post-Petroleum Paradigm—and Population,” Population and Environment: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 20, no. 4 (1999): 297–315. 10. Food, Agriculture, Conservation, and Trade Act of 1990, Public Law 101—624, Title XVI, Subtitle A, Section 1603. Subchapter I: Findings, Purposes, and Definitions, U.S. Code, Title 7, Chapter 64, Agricultural Research, Extension and Teaching (1990). 11. Ibid. 12. D. Peterson, “Land & Water: Conserving Natural Resources in Illinois,” University of Illinois Extension Bulletin 6 (2005), 1. 13. CIRAD—Agricultural Research for Developing Countries, “Conservation for greater sustainability,” http://www.cirad.fr/en/actualite/communique.php?id=472. (Accessed April 19, 2009). 14. Garcia-Torres, L., Martinez-Vilela, A., Holgado-Cabrera, A., and E. G onzalezSanchez, “Conservation agriculture, environmental and economic benefits,” Workshop on Soil Protection and Sustainable Agriculture Summary (Soria Spain 15–17 May 2002): 5–6. 15. Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas (ATTRA), “Overview of Cover Crops and Green Manures,” http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/PDF/covercrop.pdf (accessed January 20, 2009). 16. Polyface Farm, http://www.polyfacefarms.com (accessed January 29, 2009). 17. Organic Industry Overview Fact Sheet (Organic Trade Association, 2008). 18. M. Nizza, “Oxford’s Word of the Year, and Runners-Up,” The New York Times, November 13, 2007. 19. Sustain Web, “The Value of Seasonal Food,” http://www.sustainweb.org/page. php?id=360 (accessed January 29, 2009).

92


20. USDA, “Organic Production and Handling Standards,” Agricultural Marketing Service Factsheet-2008 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2008). 21. C. Dimitri and A. Effland, “Milestones in U.S. Farming and Farm Policy,” USDA pamphlet, Amber Waves, 3, no. 3 (2005). 22. D. Morgan, G. Gaul, and S. Cohen, “How to Spend an Extra $15 Billion,” The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/interactives/farmaid/ (accessed January 29, 2009). 23. European Commission, “Financial Programming and Budget,” http://ec.europa. eu/budget/budget_glance/what_for_en.htm (accessed January 29, 2009). 24. B. Halweil, “Where Have all the Farmers Gone?” Worldwatch Institute (September/October 2000): 11–28. 25. USDA, “Small Farms: A Time to Act,” http://www.csrees.usda.gov/nea/ag_systems/in_focus/smallfarms_if_time.html (accessed January 28, 2009). 26. Quote used by Land Institute and their publications, http://www.landinstitute. org/ (accessed January 27, 2009). 27. The Land Institute, http://www.landinstitute.org/ (accessed January 27, 2009). 28. Ibid. 29. Alternative Hawaii, http://www.alternative-hawaii.com/agriculture/index.htm (accessed January 30, 2009). 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Bill Mollison and Reny Mia Slay, Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual (Tasmania: Tagari Publications, 1997). 33. The Fukuoka Farming Web site, http://fukuokafarmingol.info/fover.html#toc (accessed January 28, 2009). 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. The Circle School, http://fukuokafarmingol.info/fglist.html (accessed January 28, 2009). 37. The Farmsure Program, http://www.nzfarmsure.co.nz/ (accessed January 28, 2009). 38. Elkington, J. “Towards the sustainable corporation: win-win-win business strategies for sustainable development,” California Management Review, 36, no. 2 (1994): 90–100.

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Readings Heinberg, Richard. Peak Everything: Waking up to the Century of Declines. British Columbia, Canada: New Society Press, 2008. Mollison, Bill. Introduction to Permaculture. 2nd ed. Tasmania: Tagari Publications, 1994. Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma. New York: Penguin Books, 2007. Saroja Raman. Agricultural Sustainability: Principles, Processes, and Prospects. Philadelphia: Haworth Press, 2006.

Web Sites Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, http://casfs.ucsc.edu. National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service, http://attra.ncat.org/.

Sustainable Agricultural Practices in the United States New Zealand Farmsure, http://www.nzfarmsure.co.nz/index.html. Sustainable Table, http://sustainabletable.org. The Land Institute, http://www.landinstitute.org/. The Meatrix, http://www.themeatrix.com/inside/. Polyface Farms, http://www.polyfacefarms.com/. U.S. Department of Agriculture, http://www.usda.gov.

93


7 Sustainable Agricultural Development in Developing Countries Richard H. Bernsten and Sieglinde Snapp Since the early 1970s, the international community has recognized the limitations of conventional development strategies and the need to promote sustainable development, encompassing three interrelated themes: sustainable economic, environment, and community development. Since the convening of the United Nations Environmental Summit (Stockholm, 1972), many meetings and reports have focused on sustainable development-related issues—including the Brundtland Commission Report (1987), the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), the World Summit on Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995), the United Nations Millennium Summit (2000), and the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg, 2002). Although these forums focused broadly on sustainable development, in most instances, the agenda included agricultural sustainability, given agriculture’s key role in the economies of developing countries. Today, it is widely recognized that the world’s food system, especially in poor countries, is facing a crisis. Several trends illustrate the magnitude of the crisis. First, while most Asian and Latin American countries have dramatically increased food production, in many African countries, food production per capita is below the 1960 level. Second, despite the worldwide decline in the fertility rate (i.e., number of children a woman has in her lifetime), in many African countries, the population continues to grow—forcing farmers to cultivate marginal land, resulting in soil degradation. Third, success in increasing food production—especially in Asia—has been due to farmers’ adoption of high-yield rice and wheat varieties and the application of high levels of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. However, intensive use of these inputs has polluted water supplies, and the misuse of pesticides has led to insect resistance and now threatens farmers’ health. Fourth, as a result of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, many families in eastern and southern Africa no longer have sufficient labor to cultivate their farms. Fifth, recent evidence indicates that global warming will have a major impact on agricultural production. According to the United Nations, by “2025, Africa could lose as much as two-thirds of its

96


arable land, compared with 1990,”1 and low-lying areas in Asia will increasingly be threatened by flooding, due to rising sea level and increasingly intense typhoons. Sixth, with growing urban and agricultural demand for water, many countries are projected to face severe water shortages in the near future. Seventh, the rapid increase in energy costs has raised the price of fertilizer. According to the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), world fertilizer prices doubled in 2007 and continued to soar in 20082—making it too expensive for poor farmers, especially those in Africa, to purchase fertilizer. Finally, as a result of the increase in oil prices, the United States has sought to achieve energy independence by producing ethanol from corn. In response, farmers have converted land previously planted with wheat and soybeans to corn fields—thereby contributing to record-level wheat, soybean, and corn prices. In developing countries that rely heavily on food imports to meet shortfalls in domestic production, these price increases are having a severe impact on the food security of the poor. Recognizing that these problems must be addressed for poor countries to ensure the food security of future generations and protect the environment from degradation, development specialists, agricultural scientists, donor agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and government policymakers in both rich and poor countries are beginning to place high priority on identifying strategies to promote sustainable agricultural development.

WHAT IS SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT? Agricultural development is broadly defined as a process that takes place over time and leads to the transformation of the agricultural sector, resulting in a decline in the relative contribution of agriculture to a country’s gross national product and the sector’s percentage share of employment. For example, in the United States, only approximately 3 percent of the population live on a farm. In developed countries, this transformation has been achieved by investments in public and private sector–funded research to develop new technologies that have increased yields (e.g., higher-yielding crop varieties, chemical fertilizers, pesticides), reduced labor costs (e.g., using energy-intensive farm machinery), and increased infrastructural investments (e.g., dams, transportation, communications, marketing systems). In addition, developed countries have invested heavily in farmer education through extension systems that introduce new technologies to farmers and help them to diagnose problems and identify appropriate solutions. Until the recent rise in oil prices, these investments enabled the United States and other rich countries to produce more food on less land and deliver it to consumers at an increasingly lower cost. Drawing on the success of developed countries, conventional wisdom suggested that to modernize their agriculture, developing countries should follow the example of developed countries. Until recently, little attention was paid to the negative impacts of this input-intensive, high-energy-based agricultural development strategy, including its impact on the environment and its sustainability over time. While there is widespread agreement as to the need to develop more sustainable agricultural systems, there is considerable debate regarding the definition of

Sustainable Agricultural Development in Developing Countries

97

and approaches for achieving this agricultural sustainability. Furthermore, definitions of sustainable agriculture are heavily value laden and generic. Paul Thompson argues that “current usage reveals two substantive approaches, resource sufficiency and functional integrity, as well as the widespread non-substantive usages intended to promote social action.”3 The resource sufficiency paradigm focuses (1) on measuring the “rate at which a given production or consumption practice deletes or utilizes resources,” (2) estimating the “stock or store of resources available,” and (3) assessing the relative sustainability of a practice “by predicting how long it may be continued, given the existing stock of resources.” The functional integrity paradigm defines a practice as unsustainable if it “creates a threat to the system’s capacity to reproduce itself over time.” Finally, nonsubstantive sustainability refers to its use as a mild “way of conveying approval or disapproval in an inoffensive way” or using sustainability as a banner “to unify political and social causes.” Both the U.S. Congress and the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) have proposed complementary definitions of sustainable agriculture. In the 1990 Farm Bill,4 the term sustainable agriculture means an integrated system of plant and animal production practices having a site-specific application that will, over the long term:

• satisfy human food and fiber needs, • enhance environmental quality and the natural resource base upon which the agricultural economy depends,

• make the most efficient use of nonrenewable resources and on-farm resources and integrate, where appropriate, natural, biological cycles, and controls,

• sustain the economic viability of farm operations, and • enhance the quality of life for farmers and society as a whole. The CGIAR5 is a leading player in international agricultural research. In recent years, the CGIAR’s research agenda has evolved from a commodity (crop) focus to incorporating concepts of sustainability, the ecoregion, and integrated natural resource management. In 1988, the CGIAR recognized sustainability as a part of its research portfolio, describing it as a dynamic concept: “Sustainable agriculture would involve the successful management of resources for agriculture to satisfy changing human needs while maintaining or enhancing the quality of the environment and conserving natural resources.”6 Recognizing that the ecoregion, which combines the physical, biological, and socioeconomic dimensions of the production environment, represents a more logical level of hierarchy of systems to deal effectively with resource management problems than the farm level, in the early 1990s several CGIAR centers introduced the ecoregional approach as a means of integrating resource management with productivity concerns (i.e., the production of biological and economic goods and ecosystem/ecological services per unit of resources used). Finally, in 1997, the CGIAR System Review recommended that the Consultative Group (CG) adopt an integrated natural resource management approach “as a way of doing development-oriented research that aims to simultaneously reduce poverty, increase food security, and achieve environmental protection.”7

98


SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE: EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPT The rich history of sustainable agriculture has two discernable threads in the evolution of the term: (1) ecological agriculture and (2) stability of agricultural systems. An ecologically informed agriculture, which has also been termed biological or regenerative agriculture, has close links with the history of organic agriculture and started with a focus on holism (as opposed to reductionism). A detailed history of ecologically based agriculture is presented by Harwood.8 Initially, in the 1930s and 1940s, connections between soil health and biologically robust farm systems were made by such thinkers as Lady Eve Balfour, Sir Albert Howard, and J. I. Rodale. Compost making, the “humus farming” concept, and an integrated approach to promoting health in soil, plants, animals, and human were central tenets during this period. Principles of ecological agriculture were developed based on observations about natural systems and drew on examples from traditional systems of farming. In recent decades, theory and practice in ecological agriculture have been furthered by the works of such authors as Miguel Alteri and Steve Gliessman, building on examples from traditional farming systems of Central America and innovations by North American alternative farmers. A second view of sustainable agriculture has emerged in the second half of this century with a focus on longevity of practice, environmental impact, and resilience. This view grew out of and in response to the Green Revolution of the 1960s. The Green Revolution research approach targeted specific technologies that improved productivity (notably, new wheat and rice genotypes that markedly improved irrigated production systems under high input management) and focused on practices that could be linked to market incentives. In most cases, this strategy relied heavily on large doses of external inputs. In the early 1970s with the emergence of the first energy shortage caused by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) embargo, this narrow focus on productivity at any cost was questioned. A shift occurred toward improving efficiency of input use and understanding the long-term consequences of agricultural production practices. A vision of sustainable agriculture evolved that explicitly considered externalities (e.g., the impact on the environment from pesticides and other agricultural chemicals) and the stability of production over a long time period. In keeping with the sustainable development movement, efficiency of conversion between input and output, the stability of return over the long term, and resource-intensive requirements also were considered.9 In the 1970s, an integrated pest management (IPM) approach developed out of this second sustainable agriculture theme and has continued to evolve. IPM initially focused on mitigation and economic threshold approaches to address the virulent environmental problems associated with pesticide use and abuse, as publicized by Rachel Carson and others. However, an important aspect of IPM from its inception has been attention to biology and promotion of knowledgebased management, substituting for reliance on inputs. Promotion of farmer experimentation and learning about natural systems has been fostered by the Farmer Field School (FFS) movement, which successfully taught ecology-based IPM and integrated crop management to millions of farmers in Southeast Asia. Recently, FFSs have been instrumental in promoting experimentation for sustainable


99

agriculture and have improved understanding of ecological management among smallholder farmers in Africa.10 A recent theme in sustainable agriculture has been to broaden the scope of sustainable management, optimize ecosystem services across rural landscapes, and take into account diverse livelihood strategies.11 Sustainable practices are essential to ensure such ecosystem services as climate regulation, regeneration of clean air and water, disease regulation, and soil protection, in addition to the provisioning of food, energy, and foraged products. The foundation for agricultural development in a sustainable manner is the science of agro-ecology. That is, the study of agricultural ecosystems and their components, as they function within themselves and in the context of the landscapes that contain them. Application of this knowledge can lead to the development of more sustainable agricultural ecosystems in relationship to the larger ecosystem, ecoregion, and social and political context. Ecological principles of particular relevance to understanding sustainable systems are the concepts of system stability, resistance, and resilience. Resistance describes the likelihood that a system will not be affected by a disturbance, such as climate change or pest outbreaks. Conversely, resilience relates to the ability of an agricultural system to compensate rapidly for a disturbance or major stress. For a system to exhibit stability over the long term, both resistance and resilience are important attributes. A whole-systems approach to sustainable agriculture considers all of the products of agriculture, including the food, feed, and fiber production, and considers these in the balance with environmental soundness, social equity, and economic viability. An even broader view is that sustainability is a concept that extends not only over space, but also indefinitely in time, and to all living organisms including humans. For a wide range of production systems and approaches, farmers and agricultural advisors aim to meet goals of stewardship and profitability, as well as quality of life for current and future generations. One well-known approach, but by no means the only one, is the system of farming called organic farming, which follows specific recommended practices that recently have been codified through an organic certification program in the United States and abroad.

STRATEGIES Definitions of sustainable agriculture articulate concepts and principles that give direction to research, agricultural development projects, training and extension efforts, and national policies that are designed to achieve a variety of sustainability-related goals, such as increasing production, increasing productivity, insuring food security, protecting the environment, insuring gender equity, and increasing farmers’ income. The limitations of conventional agriculture and the goals of sustainable agriculture have been articulated by many, but it is far less clear how to achieve these goals. Thus, to date, efforts to develop more sustainable agricultural systems that can be adopted by farmers and communities in developing countries have focused on conducting research. This research would be used to identify possible strategies and interventions for relaxing constraints to agricultural sustainability and promoting their use in developing countries.

100


As discussed previously, scientists associated with the CGIAR’s agricultural research centers are now using an integrated natural resource management approach to develop sustainable agricultural systems that are appropriate for priority ecosystems. Since the early 1970s, the U.S. government has supported agricultural research and capacity building in developing countries through the Collaborative Research Support Programs (CRSPs).12 Administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), these programs are designed to strengthen the capacity of U.S. land-grant universities to carry out agricultural research, in collaboration with partners in developing countries, and strengthen the capacity of scientists in developing countries. As was the case of the CGIAR, in the early years, the CRSPs followed a commodity approach, focusing on a variety of crops and animal species (e.g., sorghum, millet, common beans, cowpeas, peanuts, small ruminants). Subsequently, additional CRSPs were created that focused on soil management, global livestock, aquaculture and fisheries, broadening access and strengthening input systems, integrated pest management (IPM CRSP), and sustainable agriculture and resource management (SANREM CRSP). While all of the CRSP now include sustainable agricultural development as a goal, the research agendas of the IPM CRSP and SANREM CRSP focus most explicitly on sustainable agricultural development. The IPM CRSP utilize a systems approach to reducing damage caused by pests to an acceptable level without harming the environment. IPM includes the adoption of pest-resistant varieties of crops; biological and physical control methods; environmental modification; biopesticides; and when absolutely necessary, non-residual, environmentally-friendly and low mammalian-toxic chemical pesticides.13

The SANREM CRSP utilizes a “nested landscape systems approach beginning with field level systems, building through farm, enterprise, and watershed systems nested in broader ecological, governance and policy systems.”14 The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) also supports efforts to improve the sustainability of agriculture in developing countries. “Recognizing that responsible natural resource management is key to attaining sustainable agricultural and rural development,” in 2007 FAO strengthened its commitment to this goal by creating a new Natural Resources Management and Environment Department, which replaces it Sustainable Development Department.15 The new department focuses on supporting environmental services, to promote sustainable management and use of land, water, and genetic resources, and to strengthen agricultural research and extension services and take the lead in the areas of bioenergy, climate change issues, land and water management, land tenure issues, biodiversity for food and agriculture, and research and extension.

STATE-OF-THE-ART SOLUTIONS Many technologies exist (e.g., IPM, contour plowing, terracing, crop rotations, animal manure and compost as a substitute for inorganic fertilizer, rotating grains and legumes, pest- and disease-resistant crop varieties) that have the potential to increase the sustainability of agricultural systems in poor countries and increase


101

farmers’ incomes. To date, many of these technologies have been adopted by some farmers in some countries in some ecosystems. Whether or not farmers throughout the developing world will adopt these technologies depends on many factors, including their performance in a given ecosystem, their profitability, labor requirements, the availability of the required inputs, access to extension services, and government policies. Thus, “adaptive research” is required to determine how a given technology must be fine-tuned to fit the ecological, socioeconomic, and policy environment of a specific watershed, community, and country. Approaches to promoting sustainable agriculture include research-driven, market-driven, and extension-driven strategies. Research-driven strategies first carry out technical and socioeconomic diagnostic studies to identify constraints to sustainability, after which research is conducted to assess various interventions for relaxing these constraints. Interventions are assessed with respect to sustainability goals (e.g., improve food security, reduce poverty, support gender equity, enhance biodiversity, and reduce resource degradation). Lessons learned are incorporated into methodological guidelines to conduct similar research in other locations and to scale up and promote the uptake of the technologies to other communities. Research-driven strategies typically utilize participatory methods, draw on indigenous knowledge, and are implemented in collaboration with international and local partners, including NGOs, national agricultural research systems, universities, farmers, communities, and government officials. At each stage, priority is given to building capacity among farmers, communities, and local researchers through, for example, FFSs, workshops, farmer associations, training guides, and extension brochures. In addition, research-driven strategies identify changes in government policies that are needed to facilitate the adoption of promising interventions. In contrast, extension-driven strategies are most commonly utilized by NGOs, which draw on available research results to identify technologies that they can extend to farmers and communities. Finally, market-driven strategies provide small farmers an opportunity to receive premium prices by exporting to industrial countries crops certified as fair trade, organic, or produced using sustainable agricultural practices.

CGIAR Strategies Research-driven strategies being implemented at CGIAR centers are documented in a recent report, which describes seven promising broad-based natural resource management approaches.16 In Asia, a project led by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), in collaboration with its partners in six countries (Indonesia, the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos, Nepal, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam), focused on identifying sustainable integrated land and water management interventions. Recognizing that land degradation, including soil erosion, is driven by socioeconomic factors, the project involved farmers and other stakeholders in developing and promoting sustainable and socially acceptable community-based land management options that conserve resources and improve food security. Promising land management options for reducing soil erosion in marginal upland catchments included hedgerow cropping technology (natural vegetative strips), fodder banks combined with livestock production, cover crops, crop rotations, and improved fallows.

102


In Latin America, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and its partners in Colombia, Peru, and Central America developed decisionsupport tools that considered the opinions of local stakeholders and were geared toward informing decision-making processes at the local level. These tools enable poor communities to improve hillside production systems, maintain more sustainable landscapes, strengthen organizational processes for natural resource management, and enable communities to better assess options for managing hillside watersheds. In East Africa, the sustainability of Lake Victoria is threatened by eutrophication, due to soil erosion and nutrient runoff. The World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) and its partners around the Lake Victoria basin (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda) provided new information, methods, technologies, and approaches for improving land productivity while enhancing the environment. Several improved land management techniques (e.g., agroforestry, water management, improved fallows, striga [a parasitic weed of corn] control, grazing exclusion) have been identified that reduce soil erosion and nutrient runoff and improve the farm resource base and household food security. In East Kalimantan, Indonesia, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and its partners developed strategies to reduce forest loss—due to inappropriate harvesting, which reduces biodiversity, regrowth of valuable species, and water quality. While the project demonstrated the cost-effectiveness of reducedimpact logging, various factors limited implementation of the innovation, including the diversity of stakeholders, their overlapping interests, and policies of the Indonesian government. In low-rainfall areas of the Near East, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and their partners in eight countries improved the barleylivestock production systems in marginal areas through the development of technological, institutional, and policy options for farmers and communities. Successful technologies included improved barley varieties, multinutritional feed blocks, forage legume-barley rotations, improved sheep fertility and reproduction, and the rehabilitation of degraded rangelands. In the Andean high plateau between Peru and Bolivia, the International Potato Center (CIP) and its partners implemented an action plan that increased farmers’ incomes and protected the environment through the introduction of value-added products, improved marketing, supervised credit, and new technologies (e.g., methods to conserve soil and water, legume crops to improve fallow, improved potato varieties, the reintroduction of virus-free local varieties, improved pasture management practices). Finally, in India’s Adasha watershed, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and its partners reduced water runoff and soil loss, improved productivity, and increased farmers’ income by introducing cost-effective soil-water-nutrient practices (e.g., the construction of water storage structures, contour plowing, planting a leguminous tree on a field bund [a soil mound to trap soil and water and encourage water infiltration] as a source of nitrogen-rich organic matter, afforestation, vermicomposting as a microenterprise to generate incomes for poor women, biological pest control measures, pest-tolerant crop varieties).


103

SANREM CRSP’s Strategies Similar to the CGIAR centers, SANREM CRSP’s research-driven strategies focus broadly on sustainable agriculture and natural resource issues in five projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.17 Initiated in 2006, these five-year projects are in the early stages of implementation. In many countries, recent decentralization and property rights reforms are having a major impact on the forestry sector. Failure to consider the impact of these policies at the farm, field, and forest levels often results in policies that do not promote sustainable natural resource management or improve local livelihoods. In Bolivia, Kenya, Mexico, and Uganda, the SANREM CRSP and its partners are assessing the motivation for decentralization and its implications for various groups (including women and the poor) and the implications of forest decentralization policies for resource conservation, biodiversity, and ecological stability. In addition, the project will identify public policies that will improve both the ecological sustainability of the forests and the livelihood of communities that depend on them. In Zambia, the SANREM CRSP is working to preserve biodiversity and improve food security in partnership with Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO), a local NGO that has established community trading centers and food-processing facilities in the Luangwa Valley. The project focuses on evaluating the economic sustainability of COMACO’s agribusiness model, the potential for integrating new technologies, and the extent to which the model provides selfsustaining institutions and meaningful roles for participants. In addition, the project is evaluating the impact of the model on biodiversity and watershed conservation. Initiatives to increase villagers’ income include expanding the trade centers’ potential for selling crops in domestic and export markets, training local staff in food-processing practices required to earn export certification, and training villagers in poultry and goat production. The introduction of more sustainable production methods should lead to wiser use of natural resources, and reduced deforestation should improve soil retention and reduce downstream flooding. In Ecuador and Bolivia, the SANREM CRSP and its partners are working to “improve farm families’ lives and incomes by finding alternatives, identifying constraints to adopting these alternatives, and encouraging genetic diversity in crop selection.” Project initiatives include evaluating soil conservation techniques (e.g., contour plowing), assessing IPM techniques, and testing alternative crops for their potential to increase a family’s income. Interventions found to have high economic returns and protect the environment include low-cost soil conservation methods, reduced agrochemical application (especially IPM for potatoes), and growing medicinal plants. In the Andean highland communities of Bolivia and Peru, smallholder production systems are threatened by climate, economic, and social changes. The SANREM CRSP and its partners are working to strengthen the capacity of local farmers, communities, and institutions to conduct research and develop strategies to adapt to change, reduce vulnerability, and enhance biodiversity in highland agro-ecological systems. Interventions being assessed include in situ conservation of cultivars and crops, new opportunities for marketing traditional crops, the introduction of technologies and new crop varieties to mitigate weather-related risks, and strategies to enhance soil organic matter.

104


In Southeast Asia, the forest, soil, and water resources in many forest and vegetable-producing watersheds are being degraded. The SANREM CRSP and its partners are working to improve the quality of life of small-scale farmers by developing “economically viable and ecologically sound vegetable-agroforestry systems and to quantify the economic and environmental benefits of these systems.” In Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines, the project is evaluating several interventions, including high-value medicinal plants and vegetables, cash-crop trees, drip irrigation, reduced tilling methods, pest management, the reintroduction of indigenous vegetables, and soil enhancement.

IPM CRSP’s Strategies Research-driven strategies supported by the IPM CRSP are directed at improving the sustainability of cropping systems.18 Because the IPM CRSP global mandate is limited to pest and disease management, these efforts focus on controlling specific pests and diseases that threaten important food and cash crops. In Jamaica, where the tobacco Etch virus greatly reduces hot pepper yields, the IPM CRSP and its partners have introduced methods for controlling the insecttransmitted virus that reduce or eliminate the need to apply pesticides. In Asia, the IPM CRSP and its partners in India are developing strategies for controlling thrips, a major vector for diseases that reduce vegetable yields. In Bangladesh, women farmers have been trained to graft high-yielding eggplant varieties onto wilt-resistant rootstock—thereby reducing pesticide use and increasing farmers’ yields and incomes. Farmers in Mali grow mangos, tomatoes, and green beans that are exported to the European Union. To ensure that these exports meet the European Union’s stringent standards for pesticide residuals, the IPM CRSP and its partners have trained Mali scientists how to use a new, effective, and inexpensive method for analyzing pesticide residuals on fruits and vegetables and have hosted FFSs to teach farmers how to safely use pesticides. In Honduras, mites greatly reduce strawberry yields. The IPM CRSP and its partners have developed techniques for controlling mites, which eliminate the need to apply pesticides. In Ecuador, the CRSP developed IPM-based techniques for controlling pests and diseases that reduce potato yield—which increased farmers’ yield and greatly reduced their pesticide and fungicide costs. Finally, in Albania, olives are a major export crop, but weed, disease, and pest are major constraints to higher yields. The introduction of IPM-based technologies has enabled farmers to reduce the use of chemicals and increase their yields and income. In addition, farmers are now able to grow olives organically and export organic extra virgin olive oil to Europe.

Extension-Driven Strategies Extension-driven strategies include FFSs and NGO-led training initiatives. For new agricultural technologies and resource management strategies to have widespread impact, they must be adopted by farmers and communities. Historically, national extension services have had the mandate to introduce new technologies


105

to farmers. However, in many poor countries, public extension systems are either ineffective or have been disbanded because of a lack of funds to support them. In 1989, FAO introduced FFSs as a strategy to promote rice IPM in Indonesia. FFSs represent an alternative to the tradition extension approach, which “expected farmers to adopt generalized recommendations that had been formulated by experts from outside the community.”19 In contrast, FFSs utilize a “group learning process that brings together concepts and methods from agro-ecology, experiential education, and community development.” Since the early 1990s, many governments, NGOs, and international agencies adapted the FFS approach to other crops and utilized it as a strategy to introduce new technologies to farmers. In Latin America, a similar strategy is being used to empower farmers and help them identify appropriate technologies to address various production constraints. With the assistance of NGOs and supported by agricultural scientists, farmers form community-based associations (CIALs), which identify research themes, conduct adaptive research, and analyze the results. In addition, many grassroots NGO-led initiatives are working with farmers and communities to promote sustainable agricultural development and protect the environment. When established in 1977 by Wangari Maathai, the Greenbelt Movement focused on encouraging communities in Kenya to plant trees. Today, the Greenbelt Movement is active in many African countries and has broadened its agenda from planting trees to include “environment conservation, community development, and capacity building.”20 Since 1977, the movement has been responsible for “planting over 30 million trees and training 30,000 women in forestry, food processing and bee-keeping, and other trades that help them earn income while preserving their lands and resources.” A “push-pull” approach to promoting sustainable development is illustrated by the soil, food, and healthy communities project in Northern Malawi.21 This NGO-led, long-term education effort on family nutrition has generated a “push”— that is, empowering farmers to improve their situation by experimenting with legume intercrops, improved integrated crop management practices, and recipes to promote incorporation into local diets. Over time the “pull” has grown—that is, supporting new markets for selling legume products and increasing demand for legumes to feed children and other members of the family. More than four thousand smallholder families are now growing crops following more sustainable practices, and more than seventy thousand families are reached through the project’s outreach efforts. This type of integrated approach holds promise, as it pays simultaneous attention to local capacity building, education, and experimentation in agro-ecology, building the conditions that promote agroinnovation. Taking projects such as this to the next level, scaling up and reaching the majority of smallholders, remains the biggest challenge in sustainable agriculture.22

Market-Driven Strategies Market-driven strategies based on third-party certification provide an opportunity for farmers to increase their income and reduce the impact of agriculture on the environment. Since the late-1990s, the Rainforest Alliance, “under the auspices of the Sustainable Agricultural Network (SAN), has worked with farmers to

106


ensure compliance with SAN standards for protecting wildlife, wild land, workers’ rights and local communities.”23 These standards require farmers to implement practices to reduce water pollution, soil erosion, threats to environmental and human health, destruction of wildlife habitat, waste, and water use; and to improve efficient farm management and working conditions for farm labor. Farms that comply with SAN standards are awarded the Rainforest Alliance Certified Seal. Farmers awarded certification can sell their crops to markets in industrial countries at premium prices. While the program currently focuses on forest products and cash crops (including coffee, cocoa, bananas, mango, pineapple, and tea), it is being extended to include staple food crops. Similarly, the growing demand for fair trade and organic products in industrial countries has been a catalyst for small-scale farmers to adopt environmentally friendly farming practices and receive premium prices. Farmers wishing to sell their crops as fair trade or organic products must first obtain certification by a third party, typically a local or international NGO that has been authorized to certify the product. Fair trade certification assures consumers that these products (e.g., coffee, cocoa, rice) are produced by small-scale farmers who are members of democratically organized associations and are marketed with minimal reliance on intermediaries. Organic certification assures consumers that these products comply with the U.S. Department of Agriculture organic standards, which prohibit the use of chemical fertilizers and inorganic pesticides. Farmers whose products are certified as fair trade or organic receive a premium price when exported to markets in industrial countries. In recent years, several major U.S. food retailers have responded to the preferences of ethical consumers by offering certified food products. For example, Wal-Mart/ Sam’s Club is now the largest U.S. retailer of fair trade (Rainforest Alliance certified) coffee. Recently, Whole Foods Market established its Whole Tradeä Program, which provides market access to small farmers in developing countries who meet the program’s stringent food quality, environmental, and labor standards.

PROSPECTS FOR ACHIEVING SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT The challenge of developing more sustainable agricultural systems is daunting. Clearly, the international community finally recognizes the threats posed by failures to address these challenges. After decades of reductions in international funding for agricultural research, it appears that this trend will be reversed. Recognizing the importance of agriculture in developing countries, the theme of the World Bank’s annual Development Report in 2007 was agriculture for development.24 Considerable progress has been made in conceptualizing the problems and developing potential technologies and strategies for creating more sustainable agricultural systems. However, much more remains to be done to develop additional new strategies and technologies, further refine interventions that have already been developed, and scale up successful technologies and strategies to reach the billions of smallholders in developing countries. Context is key to envisioning new sustainable production systems. The environment involves both biophysical and social dimensions that constrain the resources available to maintain fertility and that provide incentives. Human


107

capacity building can address constraints to an extent, as knowledge of processes can increase efficiency and substitute for some external inputs. However, biophysical constraints such as temperature and moisture regimes will determine the length of the growing season and the condition and quality of soil and water resources, as well as the options available for maintaining soil fertility. This in turn will define sustainable options for agricultural production. In a similar manner, access and connectivity to markets for both inputs and outputs will condition production options and long-term sustainability. In mesic climates, where rainfall and temperature are moderate most of the year, soil resources can be regenerated through biological processes, such as growing green manure plants; in turn, this will support rapid plant and animal growth, and efficient use of inputs such as fertilizer. By contrast, in more extreme environments there are limited windows in which life can be harnessed for agriculture. Thus, large energy inputs, such as fixed nitrogen in fertilizer or extensive systems that utilize large areas of land, are necessary preconditions for maintaining productive agriculture. An upcoming challenge is that a large proportion of arable land is predicted to be subjected to extreme weather events with global warming under way.

NOTES 1. Brad Knickerbocker, “Global Warming May Uproot Millions,” The Christian Science Monitor, June 21, 2007. 2. IFDC, “World Fertilizer Prices Soar As Food and Fuel Economies Merge,” http:// www.ifdc.org/i-wfp021908.pdf. 3. Paul B. Thompson, “Agricultural Sustainability: What It Is and What It Is Not,” International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability 5 (2007): 5–16. 4. Food, Agriculture, Conservation, and Trade Act of 1990 (FACTA), Public Law 101–624, Title XVI, Subtitle A, Section 1603, 16 U.S.C. (1990). 5. Established in 1971, the CGIAR is a strategic partnership with sixty-four members, including twenty-one developing and twenty-six industrial countries, four cosponsors, and thirteen other international organizations. It supports fifteen international agricultural research centers, which work in collaboration with many hundreds of governments, civil society organizations, and private businesses around the world. CGIAR, http://www.cgiar.org/. 6. R. H. Harwood, A. H. Kassame, H. M. Gregersen, and E. Fereres, “Natural Resource Management Research in the CGIAR: The Role of the Technical Advisory Committee,” Experimental Agriculture 41 (2005): 1–19. 7. R. R. Harwood and A. H. Kassam, eds., Research towards Integrated Natural Resource Management: Examples of Research Problems, Approaches and Partnerships in Action in the CGIAR (Rome: Interim Science Council, Centre Committee on Integrated Natural Resources Management, 2003). 8. R. R. Harwood, “A History of Sustainable Agriculture,” in Sustainable Agricultural Systems, ed. C. A. Edwards, R. Lai, P. Madden, R. H. Miller, and G. House (Ankeny, IA: Soil and Water Conservation Society, 1990). 9. M. Dover and L. M. Talbot, To Feed the Earth: Agro-ecology for Sustainable Development. (Washington, DC: World Resources Institute, 1987). 10. V. Morrone, “Outreach to Support Rural Innovation,” in Agricultural Systems: Agroecology and Rural Innovation for Development, ed. S. S. Snapp and B. Pound (Burlington, MA: Academic Press, 2008).

108


11. S. S. Snapp, “Designing for the Long Term: Sustainable Agriculture,” in Agricultural Systems: Agroecology and Rural Innovation for Development, ed. S. S. Snapp and B. Pound (Burlington, MA: Academic Press, 2008). 12. Collaborative Research Support Programs (CRSPs), http://crsps.org/crspdirs.htm. 13. Integrated Pest Management, http://www.oired.vt.edu/ipmcrsp/IPM_2008/draft_ home.htm. 14. Virginia Tech Office of International Research Education and Development, “SANREM CRSP,” http://www.oired.vt.edu/sanremcrsp/. 15. FAO, http://www.fao.org/. 16. R. R. Harwood and A. H. Kassam, eds., Research Towards Integrated Natural Resource Management: Examples of Research Problems, Approaches and Partnerships in Action in the CGIAR (Rome: Interim Science Council, Centre Committee on Integrated Natural Resources Management, 2003). 17. Virginia Tech Office of International Research Education and Development, “SANREM CRSP,” http://www.oired.vt.edu/sanremcrsp/. 18. Virginia Tech Office of International Research Education and Development, “Integrated Pest Management,” http://www.oired.vt.edu/ipmcrsp/IPM_2008/draft_home.htm. 19. Wikipedia, “Farmer Field Schools,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmer_Field_Schools. 20. Wikipedia, “The Green Belt Movement,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_ Belt_Movement. 21. Soils, Food and Healthy Communities, http://soilandfood.org/. 22. R. Tripp, Self-sufficient Agriculture: Labor and Knowledge in Small-Scale Farming (London: Earthscan, 2006). 23. Rainforest Alliance, http://www.rainforest-alliance.org/. 24. World Bank, World Bank Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007).

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Conway, G. The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for All in the 21st Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997. Harwood, Richard R. “A History of Sustainable Agriculture.” In Sustainable Agricultural Systems, ed. Clive A. Edwards, Rattan Lai, Patrick Madden, Robert H. Miller, and Gar House. Ankeny, IA: Soil and Water Conservation Society, 1997. Harwood, Richard, and Amir H. Kassam, eds. Research Towards Integrated Natural Resource Management: Examples of Research Problems, Approaches and Partnerships in Action in the CGIAR. Rome: Interim Science Council, Centre Committee on Integrated Natural Resources Management, 2003. Snapp, S. S., and B. Pound, eds. Agricultural Systems: Agroecology and Rural Innovation for Development. Burlington, MA: Academic Press, 2008. Tripp, Robert. Self-Sufficient Agriculture: Labor and Knowledge in Small-Scale Farming. London: Earthscan, 2006.

Web Sites Center for Information on Low External Input and Sustainable Agriculture, http:// www.leisa.info/index.php?url=index.tpl.

8 Urban Agriculture Jim Bingen, Kathryn Colasanti, Margaret Fitzpatrick, and Katherine Nault It is forbidden to live in a town which has no garden or greenery. —Persian Proverb1

For the first time in history, the world’s urban population exceeds that of rural areas, and the United Nations projects that in fewer than twenty-five years twothirds of the world’s people will live in cities. The urban farming campaign, Food for the Cities, launched by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in early 2007, testifies to both the immediacy of the need to supply these rapidly urbanizing populations with fresh food and to the growth of the urban and peri-urban agriculture movement.2 In the 1970s and 1980s, the back-to-the-land and alternative agrifood movements in North America and Europe stimulated wide-ranging debates over the structure and sustainability of farming and food distribution in industrialized societies.3 Similarly, today’s twenty-first-century “quiet revolution”4 of urban farmers, marketers, and their supporters may be generating similar shifts in thinking about the relationships among farming, food, and cities around the world. This chapter seeks to contribute to this rethinking by discussing critical issues in urban agriculture as well as the strategies and solutions to address these issues. Urban agriculture refers to the production, processing, marketing, and distribution of fresh food and other products by individuals, families, groups, cooperatives, or commercial enterprises on private or public land in and around cities. To frame and identify the critical issues surrounding farming and marketing in cities, we start with the observation that urban agriculture is first and foremost distinguished from rural agriculture by being embedded in an urban or largely built ecology, and is closely tied to the public and private institutions, culture, history, and economy of specific urban places.5 This observation draws our attention to three sets of questions that arise in discussions of the issues in urban agriculture. First, the history of urban agriculture shows that city farms and gardens have not been subject to the same process of increasing capital intensity that

110


characterizes most of rural farming in industrial countries.6 On the contrary, city farming and gardening tends to be labor intensive, even while benefiting from specific but small-scale capital investments such as unheated greenhouses (hoop houses) to extend the growing season, or water tanks and facilities for aquaculture. Nevertheless, many of the issues confronted by urban farmers and gardeners, marketers, and their supporters arise directly from the consequences of capital investment or disinvestment in our cities. Capital flight from cities created the vacant lots, as well as both the challenges and opportunities for many urban agriculture programs, and today’s headlines remind us that new capital investments back into cities may now threaten the viability of some of these agriculture initiatives. How, then, are urban farm and garden activities both shaped by, and active in shaping, instances of disinvestment or investment in cities? Second, urban agriculture involves a range of government, corporate, and social actors who have focused historically on the functioning of cities. As these actors add urban agriculture to policy, program, and planning agendas, will there be opportunities for city farmers, marketers, and other urban agriculture actors to sit at the policy tables and contribute to the urban agendas for urban food and farming activities? Do urban agriculture activities and programs create the conditions for grassroots and neighborhood groups and coalitions to emerge in defense of urban agriculture in public policymaking and planning? Third, urban agriculture, like its rural counterpart, is place based. Specific urban farming and gardening activities are defined by particular vacant lots, housing developments, public plots, and schools where farms and gardens are located. But these places are more than simply spaces. They carry their own history and memories and become part of the history and culture of the people that continue to define these places. This singular distinct identity, or “autonomy of diversity,”7 represents an important source of strength for each urban garden or farm. How might these individual programs create alliances, coalitions, or networks to address shared concerns or issues without compromising their particular identities? Can such collective relationships become part of political strategies for defining a politics of place, for empowerment and for change in the structure of food and farming in cities? With these questions in mind, this chapter discusses three sets of closely related topics in urban agriculture: the where and how of city farms and gardens; policy, planning, and politics; and valuing multiple agendas. The chapter concludes with a brief note on next steps for broadening the urban agriculture policy agenda.

THE WHERE AND HOW OF CITY FARMS AND GARDENS If you have control over the land and the water, if you can feed yourself, you can really transform society.… But these communities don’t have any of those things, so how can you have a just society? —Erika Allen, Growing Power8

Michael Ableman’s observation about urban agriculture as a “revolution … taking place in small gardens, under railroad tracks and power lines, on rooftops, in farmers’ markets, and in the most unlikely of places”9 captures a distinguishing feature of farming and gardening in cities: it depends in part on the availability of land,

Urban Agriculture

111

and in part on the ability to “create land” or places to grow crops in pots, boxes, rooftops, and parking lots.

Land Availability Many North American cities have documented the number of vacant lots that could be available for urban agriculture. In 2000 Martin Bailkey and Joe Nasr referred to “the large inventories of vacant land in American cities” and observed that urban agriculture might be “a viable, albeit partial solution to the vacant land problem.”10 Outside of North America, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) reported “there is seldom a lack of space [or] land … to farm in urban areas. The problem lies in gaining legal access and secure tenure to farm this land.”11 Growing Power in Wisconsin and Fairview Gardens in Southern California illustrate how private ownership of land is one option. A more common practice involves various city and nonprofit programs or individuals that seek permission to use vacant lots or other public spaces. These programs represent a significant portion of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Community Food Projects Program.12 Nevertheless, government, nonprofit, or foundation-funded urban agriculture projects do not necessarily protect the tenure rights of urban farmers and gardeners. Capital reinvestment in cities often trumps policies that support urban gardening. Witness the destruction of the Esperanza Garden, once one of the six hundred gardens in New York City’s Green Thumb Program, or the politically contested community gardens in Loisaida on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.13 More dramatically, the East London Manor Garden Allotments was bulldozed in late 2007 to make way for the 2012 Olympic games, despite the fact that it had been cultivated for more than one hundred years.14 In short, even with long-standing government commitments, urban agriculture remains vulnerable to changing capital investment opportunities in the world’s cities. National and local nonprofit land trusts offer one strategy to provide public access to, and sometimes tenure of, vacant and unused land in cities by offering the means to purchase land. The Madison Area Community Land Trust’s support of Troy Gardens in Madison, Wisconsin,15 and the Neighborhood Gardens Association/Philadelphia Land Trust’s work to preserve community-managed gardens illustrate two cases of successful land trust programs.16 Public land banks can purchase, hold, or develop vacant land instead of allowing tax-foreclosed land to be purchased at public auctions or default to municipal ownership. The Adopt-A-Lot Program in Flint, Michigan, through the Genesee County Land Bank allows continued access without tax or other financial burdens for community groups who were gardening on vacant lots, as well as the option to purchase the property.

Creating the Land Because of past industrial use or other types of pollution, many vacant lots, or brownfields, that might be available for urban agriculture are unsafe for growing food and require some type of soil remediation. While the extent and type of soil pollution is site specific, experience shows that most physical or biological remediation requires significant and multiple public and private sources of capital and

112


technical support that exceeds the organizational capacity of most neighborhood or community groups.17 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Brownfields Federal Partnership Action Program can help communities leverage the resources needed to clean up and reuse brownfields for urban agriculture.18 The small-scale and intense production practices that characterize urban agriculture encourage the use and adaptation of several technologies that are within reach of both individual and collective or neighborhood-level investments. In fact, one of the broader policy promises of urban agriculture may lie in showing how small-scale, grassroots capital investments, and not large-scale investments, are the key to fostering the technological innovations needed to address the ecological challenges of growing in cities. In doing so, such investments may transform the way we think about urban food production. In 1998, Greensgrow Farm Inc. pioneered with such an investment to create a brownfield urban farm using hydroponics to grow lettuce on the site of a former galvanized steel plant in Philadelphia.19 More recently, the youth group Added Value worked with the New York City Parks Department to establish Red Hook Farm in 2003 on an abandoned three-acre asphalt ball field by using raised beds and an acre of compost two feet deep on top of the asphalt.20 In addition to these biointensive efforts to overcome specific types of urban ecological challenges, other initiatives adapt gardening to uniquely urban spaces. Mole Hill Lane in Vancouver landscapes with food as part of the growing attack on urban front lawns,21 and rooftop gardens are literally sprouting in cities around the world. Chicago has planted or negotiated the construction of more than two million square feet of rooftop gardens, and Beijing’s urban plan calls for gardens on three million square meters of roof space over the next ten years.22 Two other technologies, vermicomposting and aquaculture, offer additional opportunities for grassroots investments to connect urban agriculture to the life of a city by recycling food waste into valuable agricultural resources.23 Vermicomposting, or using worms to compost food waste, is an increasingly popular, low-cost technology to reduce urban waste flows and enhance garden soils.24 The City of Vancouver has offered worm bins and composting instructions to residents since 1991,25 and vermicomposting has become integral to other publicly sponsored urban agriculture programs such as those in Buenos Aires and Havana. Growing Power in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is nationally recognized for its program to source food wastes from local grocery stores and restaurants to produce worm compost for farm fertilization and to sell in dried compost tea bags. In collaboration with Heifer International, Growing Power has also led the way in urban aquaculture, routing water from hydroponic production through tilapia fish tanks, and then into a filtering system for farm irrigation.26 This recycling process is now used to raise tilapia for sale.

Urban Livestock The incorporation of aquaculture into urban agriculture raises the question about (re)incorporating livestock into cities. Outside of North America and Europe, livestock are integral parts of city life.27 Several U.S. cities—Ann Arbor, Spokane, Boise, Portland, Seattle, and Missoula—now permit residents to keep small numbers of backyard chickens.28 Heifer Project International was a pioneer

Urban Agriculture

113

in diversifying urban agriculture through several projects, such as East New York Farms! and the Field to Table’s Urban Bees Project in Toronto. Based on these initiatives and others, the emerging urban livestock movement may represent a major opportunity for urban agriculturalists to revitalize and diversify urban farming. Grassroots Capital Investment In stark contrast to these grassroots investments, models of vertical farms, or “living towers,” incorporate crop production into the design and functioning of city buildings. As a twenty-first-century version of the hanging gardens of Babylon, it is suggested that a thirty-story “tower of food” could feed fifty thousand people.29 Such visions remind us that only our imagination limits the ways to connect fresh food production and the layout and design of our cities. But beyond the architectural possibilities and the debate over the real estate realities of such farms, these plans raise two important socioeconomic and political questions. First, do these ideas represent a path toward a more capital intensive urban agriculture that will mirror the industrialized structure of agriculture around the world? Second, do these architectural visions for urban agriculture allow for grassroots capital investments, and would they generate the kind of neighborhood revitalization that urban agriculture now promises?

POLICY, PLANNING, AND POLITICS From the ancient cities in the Middle East, China, and pre-Columbian America through the biointensive steam-heated greenhouses in nineteenth-century Paris, we’ve always farmed in cities.30 But as our societies industrialized, cities throughout Europe and North America dissociated food production from city planning and life. Changes in sewage systems precluded the use of wastewater for agricultural irrigation, and health regulations made urban livestock production illegal. As a result, our concept of urban became defined in opposition to agriculture.31 With the notable exception of the Garden City Movement,32 the ideals of city planning left out productive landscapes. However, after a “seven-year odyssey,” urban food and farming is back on the planning table in North America.33 The 2007 American Planning Association (APA) Policy Guide on Community and Regional Planning identifies urban agriculture as one of several efforts to build more self-reliant and sustainable community and regional food systems.34 The guide encourages mixed-use neighborhood design and redevelopment, including community gardens and small farms, the development of vegetable gardens, and edible landscaping on publicly owned lands.35 This policy guide represents an important step in creating and strengthening a North American urban agricultural movement. First, the guide acknowledges the increasing breadth and depth of urban agriculture in many of the world’s cities. Cuba’s eight thousand urban gardens, for example, provide a significant source of fresh produce to the country’s urban and suburban populations.36 More than 40 percent of the residents of Vancouver, British Columbia, have some type of garden plot, and in May 2006 the Vancouver City Council adopted a motion to increase

114


the number of food-producing garden plots to 2,010 by 2010. The city also suggests that developers should include 30 percent shared gardening space in high-density residential developments without access to private garden spaces.37 A growing number of North American cities now make urban agriculture part of their development policy. In Braddock, Pennsylvania, urban agriculture, including biofuel production, represents one approach to revitalize the “rust belt city’s” economy and integrate farming with urban development. Somerton Tanks Farm also illustrates the importance of political commitment and partnership between a public utility, the Philadelphia Water Department, and the nonprofit Institute for Innovations in Local Farming to model the economic viability of “environmentally sound sub-acre farming” within a major U.S. city.38 Other cities around the country are revising their planning documents and zoning ordinances to establish, maintain, or preserve community gardens.39 In Rhode Island, the Providence Urban Agriculture Policy Task Force recognizes the diversity of urban farming types and recommends planning that matches the types and scales of agriculture to different zoning areas as well as the development of model regulations to facilitate mutual benefits between hand-tended farms and urban neighborhoods.40 Second, at least two conferences in 2008 provided an opportunity for diverse public, private, and professional actors in urban planning and agriculture to address issues raised in the guide. A symposium at Ryerson University (Toronto) brought together architects, landscape architects, designers, and engineers with other actors in urban food and agriculture systems to examine the physical aspects of urban food provision and distribution, and urban design and architecture.41 Similarly, the Urban Agriculture Conference in Milwaukee convened “a wide range of often disconnected stakeholders … to address the most important and controversial issues of poverty alleviation, environmental and waste management, local economic, social and community development, and global warming.”42 Third, the orientation of the APA policy guide toward community and regional food planning and the strengthening of local and regional economies stimulates new conversations and initiatives that (re)link our towns and cities with the livelihoods of surrounding small family farms. This renewed attention to city-farm connections echoes Kropotkin’s call for new relationships between the cities and the peasantry43 as well as Wendell Berry’s reminder that cities “exist within agriculture.”44 The regionalized perspective in the policy guide appeals to diverse groups concerned about local food, eating seasonally, maintaining viable family farms and the full range of alternatives to our global and industrialized food system. The guide encourages discussions about sites for farmers’ markets and farm stands, the development of more regional food-processing facilities, regionalized food distribution centers, incentives for reinvestments in neighborhood groceries that carry fresh produce, and the kind of infrastructure and transportation needed to support these initiatives. The “Food and Agriculture Precinct” concept proposed by the Southlands Community Planning Team from the South Delta in the Vancouver region provides one example in which citizens have articulated this type of broad vision for urban agriculture.45 As urban agriculture becomes a legitimate part of city political and planning agendas, it will be critical for city planners and local government agencies to facilitate dialogue, mediate divergent interests, empower residents, and champion established practices and resource networks.46 Just as the technological appeal of

Urban Agriculture

115

“food towers” overlooks the contribution of grassroots economic, social, and political investments, new agriculture agendas may easily, but mistakenly, assume that the politically mobilized citizen groups, who successfully promoted and protected urban agriculture gardens, are no longer needed.47 Continuing reports of “guerrilla” initiatives confirm that in the absence of deliberate and open public policy discussions, city residents are willing to take “garden action” into their own hands. From freeway off-ramp plantings to vacant lot gardens in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, Montreal, or London, a new generation of activist gardeners brings to mind a level of political engagement reminiscent of an earlier era.48 Guerrilla gardeners are replacing “flower power” with the call of “Let’s fight the filth with forks and flowers.”49

VALUING MULTIPLE AGENDAS The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution. —Paul Cezanne50

The United States has a long history of relying on urban agriculture in response to social and economic crises. From the Potato Patches in the late 1800s, through the Liberty, Relief, and Victory Gardens spanning the period from World War I, through the Great Depression and World War II, community gardening has carried numerous banners and reflected multiple socioeconomic agendas. Detroit Mayor Pingree’s allotment gardening following the Panic of 1893 sought to assimilate immigrants and provide them with a healthful occupation. Urban reformers from the early 1900s through the 1920s promoted school gardens to help young people reestablish contact with nature while inculcating work habits. During World War I, the National War Garden Commission organized a U.S. School Garden Army and called for “soldiers of the soil” to dig in vacant lots.51 The objectives of the World War II–era National Victory Garden Program are easily adapted to our current concerns with energy use, climate change, and safe food, which explains the renewed references to this program found regularly in today’s popular press.52 Multifunctional agendas continue to characterize the growing number of urban gardening and farming initiatives involving a wide diversity of public, private, and nonprofit actors in the United States. The USDA Community Food Project grant program represents the premier federal source of funding, but support from numerous private foundations, nonprofit groups, and local agencies has created an “extensive but largely disjointed patchwork of individuals, organizations and institutions” in urban agriculture.53 For a wide variety of political and economic reasons it may be neither feasible nor desirable to create a national urban agriculture program or office to give more attention to this multiplicity of grassroots efforts. As environmentalist and entrepreneur Paul Hawken might argue, the creation of such a governance structure would be looking to the past and would jeopardize the opportunity to stimulate discussions leading to new forms of democratic governance.54 Perhaps the new North American Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture (UPA) Alliance may provide an opportunity to encompass and give voice to the wide and culturally diverse actors in urban agriculture.55 Such an alliance should address at least three broad sets of sociocultural and economic agendas: (1) preserving and enhancing cultural heritages, and creating community;

116


(2) promoting food security; and (3) improving the health of and offering educational opportunities to urban residents. Celebrating Cultural Heritage and Creating Community Many urban gardens in North America are inspired by the rich agricultural traditions brought by immigrants to once-booming cities. By growing their own food, they helped to preserve important cultural practices. For older generations as well as today’s generation of immigrants, these gardens offer a place to revive or recreate cultural heritage through celebrations, events, and intergenerational knowledge sharing.56 Klindienst’s stories57 of fifteen gardens across the United States illustrate the ways in which these gardens preserve ethnic heritages, embody a restorative ecology, and offer an ongoing process of cultural exchange and evolution.58 Hynes’ chronicle shows how gardening can restore America’s inner cities by bringing nature and hope back to communities in environmentally degraded urban neighborhoods.59 As the stories of gardeners in Flint, Michigan, reveal, community garden involvement creates new opportunities to participate in positive community change.60 Promoting Food Security, Health, and Education Under a broad food security umbrella, most urban agriculture projects throughout North America address the interrelated themes of health and education, while seeking to promote “access to culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate food through local, non-emergency sources at all times.”61 Many of these projects (e.g., the Food Project in Boston, City Sprouts in Omaha, Our Roots in Holyoke, Green Guerrillas in New York City, or the Capuchin Soup Kitchen in Detroit, to name just a few) have gained national attention. The innovative People’s Grocery in West Oakland promotes enterprise development to create meaningful and healthful jobs and develop fresh food distribution channels to address the reality of those living in urban food deserts.62 Others, such as urban youth garden and school garden programs, focus more on influencing dietary behaviors and enhancing environmental awareness and appreciation. The Edible Schoolyard program represents one high-profile program “to create and sustain an organic garden … wholly integrated into the school’s curriculum and lunch program.”63 An increasing number of studies argue convincingly for stronger public policies in support of urban gardening to improve public health. Lautenschlager and Smith’s study in Minneapolis-St. Paul found that garden participants were more willing to eat nutritious food and try ethnic and unfamiliar food than those not in the program.64 Based on their review of trends in urban agriculture in the United States, Brown and Jameton suggest that urban gardening offers one means to integrate three important elements of twenty-first-century urban public health policy: food security through local sources, urban greening, and environmentally efficient employment. They conclude that while the urban public health achievements of the twentieth century were based on water and sewer systems, the twenty-first-century achievements “will depend on our ability to coordinate complex, materially modest networks of human activity such as gardening to support simple and healthy ways of life.”65 The California Healthy Cities and Communities (CHCC) programs may offer one such approach to incorporating gardens into urban public health policy.66

Urban Agriculture

117

In contrast to these relatively recent public health concerns, school gardens have been a part of the urban agriculture agenda since the early 1900s. Gardens as cultivated ecosystems offer a way to understand ecological processes and the practical techniques of growing food.67 Gardens reintroduce nature into cities and thereby contribute to the healthy development of children. They represent an accessible way to strike a balance between our built city environments and natural processes.68 Equally important, a school garden in which students, teachers and parents participate “becomes not only a dynamic and participatory tool, but also a highly cooperative social unit in which people of all ages can work together toward practical ends.”69 Gardens can serve as outdoor laboratories to enhance academic performance in terms of meeting standard, statemandated learning objectives.70 They may also create learning communities that emerge from the practice of science in the garden.71 These diverse projects raise three broad issues that are critical to the future of the North American urban agriculture movement. First, it will be important to identify and discuss how these types of projects are being framed and incorporated into broader sets of urban agriculture and food policy agendas. The Toronto Food Policy Council’s multipronged action program embodied in the city’s Food Charter72 provides one such approach to framing and supporting discrete, yet related, activities. The philosophy of Toronto’s FoodShare aptly summarizes the move from a project focus to a broader policy orientation toward food production, distribution, and consumption.73 Similarly, the new W. K. Kellogg Foundation Food and Fitness Initiative seeks to link healthy eating with locally grown food and living in an environment that supports family and community health.74 Second, networking across multiple community and neighborhood groups as well as government agencies creates the foundation for moving from a projectspecific orientation to one in which projects are integral and related parts of a broader urban and food policy perspective and program. Connecting and networking needs to come front and center as both a strategy for building urban community gardens and for building community through gardens. Grassroots networks, such as From Our Roots (in Spanish, Nuestras Raıćes) in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and the “neighborhood cluster groups” at the base of The Garden Resource Program Collaborative in Detroit, are important organizational tools and also form the base for a broader collaborative alliance among several urban programs. Third, to advance an urban agriculture agenda, it will be important to examine how urban agriculture projects shape new political spaces and opportunities. Do these projects create the conditions for city farmers and garden activists to influence urban food and agriculture policy? Will these projects generate a new generation in defense of urban agriculture in public policymaking and planning? As Antonio Roman-Alcala, a former garden guerrilla in San Francisco, says, “approach [urban farming] to win, not to cause a ruckus.”75

NEXT STEPS Urban agriculture still needs conceptual maturity,76 but this is more than an ivory tower academic exercise. It is fundamental to creating a grassroots national collaborative movement for reshaping the political landscape of our cities and our food system. The new North American UPA Alliance captures what is required to create such a collaborative movement. By forming an alliance of culturally diverse

118


actors and stakeholders involved in urban and peri-urban agriculture in North America, we may see the beginnings of what Paul Hawken calls a new form of community that ultimately changes how we govern and organize ourselves.

NOTES 1. Cited in Santosh Ghosh, “Food Production in Cities,” Acta Horticulturae 643 (2004): 233–39, 237. 2. “Urban Farming Against Hunger,” http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2007/ 1000484/index.html (accessed June 20, 2008). 3. Patricia Allen, Together at the Table: Sustainability and Sustenance in the American Agrifood System (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, published in cooperation with the Rural Sociological Society, 2004). 4. M. Ableman cited in Katherine H. Brown, “Urban Agriculture and Community Food Security in the United States: Farming from the City Center to the Urban Fringe. Prepared by the Urban Agriculture Committee of Community Food Security Coalition” (Venice, CA: Report from Community Food Security Coalition, 2002), 3. 5. Henk de Zeeuw, “Introduction,” in Annotated Bibliography on Urban Agriculture, ed. SIDA and ETC Urban Agriculture Programme (Leusden, The Netherlands: ETC Urban Agriculture Programme, 2001), 7–20; Luc J. A Mougeot, “Urban Agriculture: Definition, Presence, Potentials and Risks,” in Growing Cities, Growing Food. Urban Agriculture on the Policy Agenda, ed. Nico Bakker, Mari€elle Dubbeling, Sabine G€ undel, Ulrich Sabel-Koschella, and Henk de Zeeuw (Feldafing, Germany: DSE, German Foundation for International Development, 2000), 1–42. 6. David Goodman, Bernardo Sorj, and John Wilkinson, From Farming to Biotechnology: A Theory of Agro-Industrial Development (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987). 7. Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest. How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming (New York: The Penguin Group, 2007), 18. 8. Erika Allen cited in Phoebe Connelly and Chelsea Ross, “Farming the Concrete Jungle,” In These Times (2007): 20–24, 24. 9. Ableman cited in Brown, “Urban Agriculture,” 3. 10. Martin Bailkey and Joe Nasr, “From Brownfields to Greenfields: Producing Food in North American Cities,” Community Food Security News (Fall 1999/Winter 2000), Special Issue, Growing Food in Cities: Urban Agriculture in North America (2000): 7. 11. UNDP, Urban Agriculture. Food, Jobs and Sustainable Cities (New York: United Nations Development Program, 1996), 104. 12. Tracie McMillan, “Urban Farmers’ Crops Go from Vacant Lot to Market,” New York Times, Dining & Wine, May 7, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/dining/ 07urban.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin (accessed May 7, 2008). 13. Karen Schmelzkopf, “Urban Community Gardens as Contested Space,” Geographical Review 85, no. 3 (1995): 364–81. 14. See National Public Radio, “London’s Gardens: Allotment for the People,” http:// www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91805611 (accessed July 18, 2008). 15. Martin Bailkey, "Combining Agriculture, Nature and Housing: Madison’s Troy Gardens" (paper presented at Symposium on the Role of Food and Agriculture in the Design and Planning of Buildings and Cities, Ryerson University, Toronto, 2008). 16. See Neighborhood Gardens Association, http://ngalandtrust.org/ (accessed July 24, 2008).

Urban Agriculture

119

17. Physical remediation methods include excavation, geotextiles, soil washing, and soil vapor extraction; biological remediation techniques involve microbial remediation, phytoremediation, fungal remediation, and composting. 18. See Brown Fields and Land Revitalization, http://www.epa.gov/brownfields/ index.html. 19. See Greensgrow Farms, http://www.greensgrow.org/. 20. McMillan, "Urban Farmers.” 21. See Edible Estates Regional Prototype Gardens, http://www.edibleestates.org. 22. Brian Halweil and Danielle Nierenberg, “Farming the Cities,” in 2007 State of the World. Our Urban Future, ed. Molly O’Meara Sheehan (New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007), 48–65; See a partial list of these cities at City Farmer, “Urban Agriculture Notes, Rooftops and Urban Agriculture,” http://www.cityfarmer. org/subrooftops.html. 23. Alexandra Woodsworth, “Urban Agriculture and Sustainable Cities” (Urban Agriculture Notes, 2001), http://www.cityfarmer.org/alexandraUA.html. 24. Luc J. A. Mougeot, Agropolis. The Social, Political and Environmental Dimensions of Urban Agriculture (Ottawa, London: International Development Research Centre and Earthscan, 2005). 25. See Urban Composting, Garbage Delight, http://www.garbagedelight.com/. 26. See Growing Power, http://www.growingpower.org; Heifer Project International has been instrumental in supporting aquaculture in a wide variety of urban agriculture projects in the U.S. See http://www.heifer.org/site/c.edJRKQNiFiG/b.734899/. 27. FAO, “Livestock Keeping in Urban Areas. A Review of Traditional Technologies Based on Literature and Field Experience” (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2001). 28. See The New West, “Urban Livestock: A Tender Issue,” http://www.newwest.net/ magazine/article/urban_livestock_a_tender_issue/C555/L555/ (accessed July 10, 2008). 29. Bina Venkataraman, “Country, the City Version: Farms in the Sky Gain New Interest,” New York Times, July 15, 2008; Also see the recent discussion of a SkyFarm in Toronto, The Toronto Star, http://www.thestar.com/News/Ideas/article/468023 (accessed July 28, 2008). 30. Mougeot, Agropolis. 31. Kameshwari Pothukuchi and Jerome L. Kaufman, “Placing the Food System on the Urban Agenda: The Role of Municipal Institutions in Food Systems Planning,” Agriculture and Human Values 16, no. 2 (2000): 212–24. 32. In the late 1890s, Ebenezer Howard published “Garden Cities of Tomorrow” presenting his vision of small garden cities that would be planned for the “convenience of the community as a whole,” preserve natural beauties, and embody the “utmost degree of healthfulness.” Cited in Ewart G. Culpin, The Garden City Movement Up-to-Date (London: The Garden Cities and Town Planning Association, 1913), 1. 33. Jerry Kaufman, “Food in Planning: A Seven Year Odyssey from Off the Planning Table to On the Planning Table” (paper presented at the Symposium on the Role of Food and Agriculture in the Design and Planning of Buildings and Cities, Ryerson University, Toronto, 2008). 34. American Planning Association, “Policy Guide on Community and Regional Food Planning” (report from the American Planning Association, 2007). 35. In 2007, the U.S. Conference of Mayors acknowledged the contribution of green roofs and green spaces to climate protection strategies (The U.S. Conference of Mayors, 2007).

120


36. Miguel A. Altieri, Nelso Companioni, Kristina Ca~ nizares, Catherine Murphy, Peter Rosset, Martin Bourque, and Clara I. Nicholls, “The Greening of the ‘Barrios’: Urban Agriculture for Food Security in Cuba,” Agriculture and Human Values 16, no. 2 (1999): 131–40. 37. See City Farmer, “Urban Agricultural Notes,” http://www.cityfarmer.org (accessed July 25, 2008). 38. See Somerton Tanks Farm, http://www.somertontanksfarm.org/about/pwd_iilf. shtml (accessed June 30, 2008). 39. Richard D Felsing, “How Community Gardens Are Treated in the Planning Documents and Zoning Ordinances of Selected Cities” (report from The Madison AdHoc Committee on Community Gardens, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2001). 40. Benjamin Morton, “Planning for Appropriately Scaled Agriculture in Providence” (report from Providence Urban Agriculture Policy Task Force, Providence, RI, 2006). 41. This symposium built on work started in 1996 by the Community Food Security Coalition to broaden the debate about the contribution of urban agriculture to community economic development, neighborhood revitalization, public health, and ecological sustainability. The authors thank Kami Pothukuchi for bringing this to our attention. “The Role of Food & Agriculture in the Design & Planning of Buildings & Cities” (report from symposium, Department of Architectural Science, Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario, May 2–4, 2008), http://architecturefood.googlepages.com/home (accessed July 18, 2008). 42. See Pollinating Our Future, Urban Agriculture Conference, http://growurban. org/about.shtml (accessed June 30, 2008). 43. Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread (New York: Vanguard Press, 1926). 44. Wendell Berry, “When Cities and Farms Come Together,” in Radical Agriculture, ed. Richard Merrill (New York: New York University Press, 1976), 14–25, 18. 45. Southlands Community Planning Team, “Southlands: A Vision for Agricultural Urbanism” (report from the Southlands Community Planning Team, 2008), 10. 46. Kameshwari Pothukuchi and Jerome L. Kaufman, “The Food System—a Stranger to the Planning Field,” Journal of the American Planning Association 66, no. 2 (2000): 113–24. 47. Gail Feenstra, Sharyl McGrew, and David Campbell, “Entrepreneurial Community Gardens. Growing Food, Skills, Jobs and Communities” (report from the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, Davis, 1999). 48. Deena Kamel, “Guerrilla Gardening,” Toronto Star, June 2, 2008; Joe Robinson, “Guerrilla Gardeners Dig In,” Los Angeles Times, May 29, 2008. 49. See Guerilla Gardening, http://www.guerrillagardening.org (accessed May 20, 2008). 50. Cited on the home page of The Edible Schoolyard, http://www.edibleschoolyard. org. 51. Thomas J. Bassett, “A Brief History of Community Gardening in America,” Brooklyn Botanic Garden Record Plants and Gardens 35, no. 1 (1979): 4–6. 52. Ibid. 53. Joe Nasr, James Kuhns, and Martin Bailkey, “The North American Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture Alliance” (report from Toronto and Madison, November, 2007). 54. Hawken, Blessed Unrest. 55. Nasr, et al., “The North American Urban.”

Urban Agriculture

121

56. Laura Saldivar-Tanaka and Marianne E. Krasny, “Culturing Community Development, Neighborhood Open Space, and Civic Agriculture: The Case of Latino Community Gardens in New York City,” Agriculture and Human Values 21, no. 4 (2004): 399–412. 57. Patricia Klindienst, The Earth Knows My Name. Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic Americans (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006). 58. Sam Bass Warner, To Dwell Is to Garden. A History of Boston’s Community Gardens (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987). 59. Patricia H. Hynes, A Patch of Eden: America’s Inner-City Gardeners (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 1996). 60. Katherine Alaimo and David Hassler, eds., From Seeds to Stories, the Community Garden Storytelling Project of Flint (Flint: Prevention Research Center of Michigan, University of Michigan School of Public Health, 2003); also see Ruth Landman, Creating Community in the City. Cooperatives and Community Gardens in Washington, DC (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1993). 61. Katherine H. Brown and Anne Carter, “Urban Agriculture and Community Food Security in the United States: Farming from the City Center to the Urban Fringe” (a primer prepared by the CFSC’s North American Urban Agriculture Committee, Venice, CA, 2003), 4. 62. Samina Raja, Changxing Ma, and Pavan Yadav, “Beyond Food Deserts,” Journal of Planning Education and Research 27, no. 4 (2008): 469–482; Anne Short, Julie Guthman, and Samuel Raskin, “Food Deserts, Oases, or Mirages?” Journal of Planning Education and Research 26, no. 3 (2007): 352–64. 63. Cited on the home page of The Edible Schoolyard, http://www.edibleschoolyard. org/mission.html (accessed July 15, 2008). 64. Lauren Lautenschlager and Chery Smith, “Beliefs, Knowledge, and Values Held by Inner-City Youth About Gardening, Nutrition, and Cooking,” Agriculture and Human Values 24, no. 2 (2007): 245–58. 65. Katherine H. Brown and Andrew L. Jameton, “Public Health Implications of Urban Agriculture,” Journal of Public Health Policy 21, no. 1 (2000): 20–39, 36. 66. Joan Twiss, Joy Dickinson, Shirley Duma, Tanya Kleinman, Heather Paulsen, and Liz Rilveria, “Community Gardens: Lessons Learned from California Healthy Cities and Communities,” American Public Health Association 93, no. 9 (2003): 1435–38. 67. Warren Pierce, “Polyculture Farming in the Cities,” in Radical Agriculture, ed. Richard Merrill (New York: New York University Press, 1976), 224–56. 68. Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005). 69. Pierce, “Polyculture,” 225. 70. Emily J. Ozer, “The Effects of School Gardens on Students and Schools: Conceptualization and Considerations for Maximizing Healthy Development,” Health Education & Behavior 34, no. 6 (2007): 846–63. 71. Dana Fusco, “Creating Relevant Science through Urban Planning and Gardening,” Journal of Research in Science Teaching 38, no. 8 (2001): 860–77. 72. Toronto’s Food Charter, http://www.toronto.ca/food_hunger/pdf/food_charter. pdf; For the Toronto Food Policy Council, see http://www.toronto.ca/health/tfpc_ index.htm. 73. See FoodShare, http://www.foodshare.net/whoweare05.htm. 74. See W. K. Kellogg Foundation, “Overview: Food and Fitness,” http://www. wkkf.org/default.aspx?tabid=75&CID=383&NID=61&LanguageID=0 (accessed July 28, 2008).

122


75. Matthew Green, “Guerrilla Gardeners: When Push Comes to Shovel,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 29, 2008. 76. Mougeot, “Urban Agriculture.”

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading American Planning Association. “Policy Guide on Community and Regional Food Planning.” 2007. Bakker, Nico, Mari€elle Dubbeling, Sabine G€undel, Ulrich Sabel-Koschella, and Henk de Zeeuw, eds. Growing Cities, Growing Food. Urban Agriculture on the Policy Agenda. Feldafing, Germany: DSE, German Foundation for International Development, 2000. Brown, Katherine H., and Anne Carter. Urban Agriculture and Community Food Security in the United States: Farming from the City Center to the Urban Fringe. A Primer Prepared by the Community Food Security Coalition’s North American Urban Agriculture Committee. Venice, CA: Community Food Security Coalition, 2003. Halweil, Brian, and Danielle Nierenberg. “Farming the Cities.” In 2007 State of the World. Our Urban Future. Edited by Molly O’Meara Sheehan New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007, 48–65. Hynes, H. Patricia. A Patch of Eden: America’s Inner-City Gardeners. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 1996. Klindienst, Patricia. The Earth Knows My Name. Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic Americans. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2006. Mougeot, Luc J. A., ed. Agropolis. The Social, Political and Environmental Dimensions of Urban Agriculture. Ottawa and London: International Development Research Centre and Earthscan, 2005. SIDA, and ETC. “Annotated Bibliography on Urban Agriculture.” Leusden, The Netherlands: Swedish International Development Agency; ETC-Urban Agriculture Programme, 2001 (2003). UNDP. Urban Agriculture. Food, Jobs and Sustainable Cities. New York, NY: United Nations Development Program, 1996. Van Veenhuizen, Rene. “Introduction.” In Cities Farming for the Future—Urban Agriculture for Green and Productive Cities. Edited by Rene van Veenhuizen. RUAF Foundation, IDRC & IIRR, 2006.

Web Sites Michael Levenston, Executive Director of City Farmer, “Urban Agriculture Notes,” City Farmer, http://www.cityfarmer.info/. Community Food Security Coalition, http://www.foodsecurity.org/. Genesee County Land Bank, “Adopt-A-Lot Program,” Genesee County Land Bank, http://www.thelandbank.org/default.asp. Growing Power, Inc., http://www.growingpower.org/. Grow Pittsburgh, http://www.growpittsburgh.org/growpittsburgh/. Oakland Based Urban Gardens (O.B.U.G.S.), http://www.obugs.org/#Home. People’s Grocery, http://www.peoplesgrocery.org. The Edible Schoolyard, http://www.edibleschoolyard.org/homepage.html. Earthworks Boston, “Outdoor Classroom Overview,” Earthworks Projects Inc., http:// earthworksboston.org/page/outdoor. The Youth Farm and Market Project, http://www.youthfarm.net.

9 Achieving Sustainable Fisheries: All Hands On Deck! Tracy Dobson Fish and other aquatic living resources hold a critical position in human nutrition, livelihoods, local and national economies, and ecosystem health. They also provide recreation through fishing and fish viewing. Consequently, reduction and loss of fish stocks has gained increasing attention as a significant public policy concern. This chapter provides readers with a brief overview of global fisheries and critical issues related to their management. The remainder of the chapter highlights a representative sample of the broad array of approaches that have been pursued by those either responsible in some way for fisheries management or who are otherwise concerned enough to take action to halt and reverse the downward trends of the past few decades. In addition to identifying salient Web sites and readings, this information provides encouragement to those who would like to participate in the quest for sustainable fisheries. Key fish stocks have been in precipitous decline in many fisheries. Recent studies of fisheries abundance indicate that this is a global and not merely a local issue.1 Indeed, many marine species are now considered threatened.2 As one species is fished beyond commercial viability, another takes its place, only to be similarly depleted.3 A frequently cited example from North America is the commercially important Atlantic cod for which commercial fishing was closed in Canada in 1992.4 Ransom Myers and Boris Worm report that 90 percent of large predatory fish are gone from the oceans.5 In 2006, Worm and colleagues reported in Science that unless appropriate action is taken soon, the nation’s marine fisheries may face collapse by 2050.6 These losses can be attributed to two main causes: overfishing and habitat degradation and loss. At the same time that these trends escalate, growing human populations demand more fish for food and other purposes, causing more and more fishing pressure on decreasing stocks. Alien species invasions are a significant driving force in fish stock decline. This chapter will discuss the causes in some detail. The right set of management tools, including stock assessments and other relevant scientific information, fishing quotas of one type or another guided by “optimum

124


sustainable yield,” fishing gear restrictions, written management plans, and sufficient staff can result in sustainable fisheries. Unfortunately, these critical management tools are missing in many fisheries, contributing to stock decline, damaged habitats, and inequities in allocation of fishing opportunities. Among many examples is the Indian Ocean, where only 50 percent of fisheries are considered “managed in some way,” and for most of these, no formal management documents exist.7 It should be noted, however, that stocks are decreasing even where management resources are relatively plentiful. Historically, the majority of fish catches came from oceans. Today, aquaculture production, both land-based and within aquatic habitats, is overtaking annual marine catch quantities that in the 1980s reached and stabilized at their peak, in terms of tons caught (although which species make up the catch shifts over time). Fish harvests from rivers and lakes continue to grow, but reduced catches from overfishing, loss of critical habitat through development, global warming, and exotic species invasions loom on the horizon. At the same time, contamination of fish through agricultural runoff and toxic chemicals diminishes fish quality and suitability for human consumption. Fish trade is an important component of global fisheries. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), fish and fish products account for the most traded food in the world.8 Roughly 38 percent of fish production, including live and processed fish and fish meal, was exported from developing and industrial countries in 2004. For developing nations, fish trade is a significant source of foreign currency earnings, along with providing employment and enhancing food security.9 In response to concerns about fisheries in decline in a context of increasing human demand for fish and fish products, a variety of organizations have developed strategies aimed at creating sustainable fisheries. International organizations, governments, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have developed a number of approaches that it is hoped will maintain capture (as opposed to farmed) fisheries harvests (both marine and inland), preserve ecosystems, and improve aquaculture’s safety and environmental record to provide sufficient quantities of fish for human consumption.

FISH STOCKS DECLINE: CAUSES AND IMPACTS Habitat change plays a key role in the loss of fish species and populations. Focusing on changes in the United States as a case study, the Pew Oceans Commission10 reports that more than half of U.S. citizens reside in the coastal zone, and it projects that twenty-seven million more will live in this zone before 2020. Coastal zone population density is five times that of the country’s interior. Typically wealthier, residents in coastal areas consume more land, boat more, drive more, and generally consume at a higher level than other citizens, imposing greater burdens on fish habitat. Densely populated and rapidly expanding U.S. urban areas also contribute significantly to aquatic habitat change. In addition to the obvious direct impact through alteration or removal (such as filling wetlands), growth in impervious surface area has repeatedly been implicated in aquatic habitat decline. Once that surface achieves 10 percent of a watershed’s acreage, aquatic system health begins to deteriorate.11

Achieving Sustainable Fisheries: All Hands On Deck!

125

Economic activity can cause significant water quality damage, with the side effect of negatively affecting fish. Runoff of agricultural chemicals and animal waste from large-scale animal farming has been a major factor and continues to degrade fish habitat. For example, phosphorous overload in the 1960s brought about the eutrophication of Lake Erie, wreaking havoc with commercial and recreational fish stocks there.12 More recently, an 18,000-square-kilometer hypoxic (oxygendepleted) region in the Gulf of Mexico developed through the increased input of nitrogen-bearing chemicals in the Mississippi River watershed.13 Deprived of oxygen, fish cannot survive in this large area. Another example of critical fish habitat shrinking and suffering degradation through expansion and intensification of human activities is the once most productive estuary in North America. Chesapeake Bay has experienced extensive eutrophication and explosive growth of toxic microbe populations primarily from suburban and agricultural runoff,14 as well as a loss of commercially important seafood species. In response, many of the multijurisdictional government, business, NGO, and other stakeholders joined together to rescue this significant resource, and remediation is under way.15 A recent report suggests that this complicated effort has made little progress over its twenty-five-year history.16 Dams have had serious negative effects on fisheries while providing hydropower and flood control for businesses and homes and irrigation for agriculture. In the United States, some small dams have been removed in part to promote fisheries, but in general dam construction continues to expand worldwide.17 While dams provide these important services, they also kill fish and act as obstacles to their passage to spawning grounds. Dams in China, for example, have caused the extirpation of important fish species whose habitat has been altered and whose access to upstream breeding waters is forever blocked.18 Manufacturing and transportation-caused air pollution also brings about significant fish habitat degradation. Airborne pollutants from car and truck exhaust and utility power plants pollute aquatic habitats around the globe. In the Laurentian Great Lakes, rain-borne mercury and PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) have so contaminated fish that government-issued advisories urge consumers to limit fish consumption (especially children and pregnant women and women of childbearing age). Moreover, studies showed children’s fish consumption there resulted in reduced intelligence and other neurological damage.19 Introductions of exotic fish species come in two varieties, intended and incidental. Both types can result in problems for ecosystems, including negative impacts on indigenous fish species. Predation and competition, genetic contamination through interbreeding, disease transmission, and habitat alteration are the primary negative effects. The FAO database on Introductions of Aquatic Species contains information on more than four thousand introductions and yet is incomplete.20 The arrival of the sea lamprey through the Welland Canal early in the twentieth century led to the near demise of the top predator and highly desirable food fish, lake trout, in the Laurentian Great Lakes.21 One hundred years later, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission continues efforts to thwart its ongoing negative impacts. In Lake Victoria, bordering Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, the intentional introduction of the Nile perch in the 1960s to provide an export commodity caused the collapse of the food web as the perch consumed the indigenous cichlids on which local people depended for their food and livelihoods.22

126


A key and well-documented cause of reduced fish stocks globally is unsustainable fish harvesting. Fisheries scientists have published and written extensively on the grim state of fish and fishing around the world.23 Constant and systematic overharvesting is driven primarily by too many boats chasing a diminishing stock of fish.24 The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas estimates that western North Atlantic blue fin tuna populations, for example, have been reduced by 97 percent since 1960 (and the size and age of those caught has concomitantly reduced), much of it by Japanese long line fishing.25 In Malawi, loss of the prized chambo from Lake Malombe due to overfishing in the 1980s and early 1990s26 led the Fisheries Department to revamp its management strategy. Along with overcapitalization, many modern fishing methods that in effect scour the ocean, lake, river, or pond clean of fish have contributed to the fisheries crisis. Most significant in this category are the enormous factory ships that can catch and process tons of fish while at sea,27 but even at the artisanal fishing level, small mesh nets that drag the bottom leave no room for fish to escape and also degrade the benthic habitat. The relentless quest for more and more fish is motivated by desires and needs for food and profit, and it ignores the long-term consequences of this behavior. Some intensive fishing impacts are only now coming to light. Christian Anderson and colleagues recently provided “strong evidence” for the idea that selective stock harvesting may result in population booms and busts that “can precede systematic declines in stock levels.”28 In addition, removal of older, larger fish leaves younger fish that may not yet be ready to reproduce or, if they do reproduce, the survival rates of their offspring are lower than offspring of larger fish.29 Thus, the long-employed strategy of harvesting the most mature fish does not augur well for species strength and survival. Also, variability in a particular species caused by fishing may be caused by the effects of fishing on linear dynamics (which are rapidly reversible) or on nonlinear dynamics (which are only slowly reversible or irreversible) in cases in which a species is susceptible to the latter. The nonlinear kind can predispose to extreme booms and busts in the abundance of such a species. Species with particular kinds of population dynamics may be susceptible to nonlinear fluctuations.30

LOSS OF BIODIVERSITY Overwhelming fishing pressure and habitat degradation ultimately results in smaller and fewer fish to feed humans, shrinking biological diversity, and reduced ecosystem vitality and resilience. This is true in the fishing communities of the eastern United States as well as the lakeshores of Malawi, where fish historically accounted for 70 percent of dietary animal protein. That percentage diminished to 30 percent in 2005. FAO reports widespread concern about this worrying trend. Other outcomes include shifting human consumption down the food chain to prey fish as top predators disappear, exacerbating the problem by reducing prey fish populations on which the remaining predators depend.

THE CURRENT STATUS OF FISHERIES The information presented in this section of the chapter is the best available and yet is incomplete. The contributions of subsistence fishing, for example, are


127

not taken into account. Additionally, one-third of African countries did not supply data for the FAO report that provides much of the statistical information relied on here. Furthermore, the data are used generally in the aggregate to keep the discussion reasonably brief. This necessarily ignores significant variations across local areas and larger regions. Capture Fisheries According to the FAO’s 2006 report, recent world capture fisheries stand between eighty-five million and ninety-five million tons per year, fluctuating because of periodic variations in the quantity of Peruvian anchoveta caught.31 Inland fishing accounted for a little over nine million tons in 2004, with nearly 95 percent coming from China32 and other developing countries.33 Fifty-two percent of fisheries are fully exploited, while 25 percent are overexploited, depleted, or recovering from depletion. The remaining 23 percent could be expanded, according to the FAO.34 Many high-value species stand precariously among those that are the most depleted, while a number of those for which additional exploitation might occur are less valuable for human consumption. Furthermore, those exploitable fish species may be important prey for species of use to humans, creating potential problems for the aquatic food chain if their harvest is expanded. To complete the picture of capture fisheries production and its impact on stocks, issues such as bycatch (nontarget species) and other discards, border losses, and illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing must also be taken into account. Capture of nontarget species that are discarded, or catch of juveniles or quantities beyond the allowed amount that are discarded, lay waste to large quantities of fish as they are removed and killed but not used. Moreover, while they may not be of interest to the capturing vessel, they are likely ecologically important.35 FAO reported, for example, that bycatch for the Bangladesh finfish industry amounted to 80 percent.36 Shipments of fish that are delayed at international borders account for another significant quantity of fish that are wasted when they spoil before border disputes can be resolved.37 Good data for the amount of fish and other captured marine resources falling within the IUU category do not exist, but the number is believed to be large.38 Moreover, IUU fishing stands as one of the most significant threats to the future of fisheries globally.39 Aquaculture’s Contribution The other main component of global fisheries production is aquaculture (farming of fish). Large scale and widespread by 2008, aquaculture has been promoted to meet escalating demand for fish, and it has seen dramatic expansion over the last half century. Fish are farmed primarily in ponds, lakes, and increasingly in ocean pens. Production grew from less than one million tons in 1950 to more than 59 million tons in 2004,40 providing 43 percent of fish for human consumption.41 In that year, 91.5 percent of quantity and 80.5 percent of aquaculture value came from the Asia Pacific region.42 Thus, as capture fisheries have leveled off, aquaculture production is experiencing a rapid rate of growth. This additional production may help to meet the increasing demand for fish that is mostly associated with human population growth and increased affluence pushing up demand.

128


Aquaculture offers opportunities for developing countries to expand protein production through integrated farming and fish production systems. Accompanying its remarkable expansion, however, aquaculture faces numerous challenges because of its negative impacts on wild fish and the environment. Rebecca Bratspies succinctly summarizes the many issues plaguing, most notably, industrial fish farming in coastal waters.43 Seen as a replacement for capture fisheries, they in fact put additional pressure on stressed fisheries because high-market-value farmed species consume two to five kilograms of wild fish as food to produce one kilogram of farmed fish. Seemingly, this is an inefficient and unsustainable system. Farming also modifies coastal habitats to the detriment of threatened species such as Atlantic salmon. It can negatively affect humans when mangroves are removed to further shrimp aquaculture. Indian communities where mangroves were removed sustained significant damage from the catastrophic 2004 tsunami. Where the mangroves had not been cut down, damage was significantly less.44 Another concern is fish escaping their pens. The inevitable escapes of farmed fish can overwhelm wild populations. In short, their reduced suitability for the wild does not translate to a lack of breeding success, so that in the future, if they replace wild populations, they may not thrive, resulting in no populations in the longer term. Other threats from industrial aquaculture include the rapid spread of disease in large, crowded populations, and the introduction in water bodies of waste streams from the farmed fish and the pharmaceuticals used to keep them healthy. In the United States, standards regulating these aquaculture operations are not rigorous and not well enforced.45 Finally, transgenic fish, species “improved” through transfer of genetic material from other organisms to grow more quickly and larger, are not well regulated. Escape of these organisms poses environmental risks to ecosystems and wild populations that at this point are little understood.46 An additional good source of information on aquaculture is the World Resources Institute Report, “Environmental Impacts of Aquaculture.”47 Another necessary component of any overview of global fisheries is its importance as a human food source. Seventy-five percent of fish harvested are used for food, and 25 percent for other purposes.48 Generalizing, fish provide about 20 percent of per capita dietary protein,49 highlighting their significance for human subsistence around the globe. In contrast to a trend of increasing fish consumption in many countries, however, the amount has shrunk significantly in some developing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, from 9.9 kilograms per capita in 1982 to an estimated 7.6 kilograms in 2006. This trend may reflect the failure of aquaculture to gain recognition and the consequences of overfishing, while human population continues to expand, even taking into account the HIV/AIDS pandemic.50 Fisheries are a significant source of employment. Forty-one million people (thirteen million in China) work in the capture and aquaculture industries. This number includes those engaged in fishing, fish processing, gear manufacture, fish trade, and other support areas. It does not take into account the less-well-documented number of people engaged in subsistence fishing.51 In 1994 in Malawi, a government report estimated this number to be forty-two thousand,52 suggesting that it is likely a significant sector, especially in developing nations. Although this important source of employment is shrinking where fisheries have collapsed (e.g., the U.S. Atlantic cod fishery, which closed in the late 1970s and again in 1994, and


129

then reopened in 2001), it is expanding in aquaculture, so that fishing and fish product production remain significant livelihood activities.53 Equity among fishing sector participants, in fishing and elsewhere in employment related to the fishing industry, presents significant issues at all levels of governance that need resolution to bring about food security and fisheries sustainability. These issues are critical because, without fundamental fairness in which ethical behavior is preferred and encouraged, widespread poverty and unsustainable fisheries (and other food systems) will persist globally. To create a world in which all people have an abundant, nutritionally adequate, and safe food supply, achieving equity in the fisheries domain is essential. In fisheries sector employment, equity can be addressed so that all participants have the opportunity to provide for themselves and their families. In fact, sustainability will not be achieved in the absence of a fair production system. IUU fishing, for example, will continue among those excluded from allocations sufficient to meet their basic needs. Regarding U.S. coastal fishing, for instance, problems of fairness in fishing opportunity allocation have risen as significant political issues addressed in 2006 amendments to the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act. This is a global issue, as large corporate fleets compete with smallscale fishers, especially in coastal waters but also on the high seas, with the more marginal operators typically losing out.54 As these small-scale fishers suffer the loss of livelihood or sustenance, they are pushed into engaging in IUU activities. The seemingly never-ending bounty of the seas led to the expansion of fishing fleets of many nations after World War II, to levels that the fisheries ultimately could not support. In the end, they reached a state of “overcapitalization,”55 and many countries instituted regulations on fleet growth. Such restrictions may have led to a reduction in the number of vessels. However, this restriction pushed producers to employ fewer but larger ships, resulting in no reduction in fish catches.56 Recent fuel price increases may help control fishing efforts. Even as more energy-efficient ships are built, skyrocketing petroleum costs nonetheless could dampen fishing activity.57 Rights distribution systems vary around the globe, but those that seem to work well are based on long-lasting, divisible, transferable, and exclusive fisheries rights. Also, full community participation in deliberations and decisions on rights allocation principles and allocation is more likely to result in durable and accepted arrangements.58 Dialogue at all levels that engages all affected and interested parties is essential to successful rights systems, including marginalized groups such as women and the poor. And, because fisheries resources are inadequate to meet demand, policymaking must create alternative systems that meet everyone’s needs, whether they include compensation for reduced fishing opportunities, training for new livelihood pursuits, or other options. Certain marginalized groups are particularly vulnerable to exclusion and loss in natural resources allocation schemes. Women typically fall into the marginalized category. Millions of women play key roles primarily in small-scale fishing operations in near-shore waters, fishing, processing, and trading fish. They are also wage laborers in large-scale processing operations. In addition, they labor in all phases of aquaculture activity, principally outside of industrial operations.59 Unfortunately, available statistics do not permit a complete description of the number of women participants, but it is clear that when new policies and institutions are proposed, these women often are left out of planning discussions and programs developed to

130


address allocation issues. For example, increasing exports from developing to industrial countries for processing have resulted in a reduction in employment for women, typically middle-age women with little education, in the exporting nation.60 With little power in typically patriarchal communities, women are most often victimized by the HIV/AIDS crisis. The prevalence rates in fishing communities are four to fourteen times greater than the national average for adults ages fifteen to forty-nine.61 With limited options, they may be forced to provide sex for food (in this case, fish), resulting in disease transmission from mobile fishers who sustain high rates of infection. In addition, as caregivers in the home, their essential livelihood activities may be curtailed as they are needed to care for dying relatives. Thus, the pandemic results in less food, fodder, fuel, and water for the household and reduced fish industry participation. This unfortunate disease expansion has been slowed and even halted in situations in which women achieve greater societal equity, permitting them life choices beyond childbearing.62 This brief overview of global fisheries highlights several key issues: • Unsustainable overfishing and bycatch result in the loss of significant fish stocks in many locations around the globe • Significant damage to fish habitat results in additional losses for fisheries • Some aquaculture production practices are unsustainable and incompatible with wild fisheries’ survival • Better management arrangements that lead to sustainability are needed • Greater fishing rights equity, including the right to food security and livelihood access, and policies fair to marginalized populations are needed Although the discussion and analysis of the problem of global fish stock decline and fish habitat degradation has recently intensified, much remains to be learned.

RESPONDING TO PROBLEMS AND AIMING FOR SUSTAINABILITY Bringing science, including risk assessment, into the policy process should contribute to fish conservation. But, science must be made more accessible if it is to gain wider acceptance. Moreover, calls are increasingly made to strengthen the knowledge-creation process through greater transparency.63 Despite these concerns, scientists are hard at work learning about the state of the stocks and evaluating conservation measures, including promising data regarding the use of individual tradable quotas (ITQs) as a way to limit catch.64 Many actions have been taken by international organizations, national governments, NGOs, and others to respond to concerns about past, present, and future decreases in capture fisheries and aquaculture. Once research data revealed the dimensions and configurations of the key issues, strategies creating new governance policies and institutions began to emerge. These policies and institutions often offer opportunities for participation and input; thus, an understanding of the overall scheme of organizations and approaches will be useful to those who want to affect a transformation to sustainable fisheries. And, these opportunities are abundant. Such opportunities are described below.


131

International Organizations Individuals and NGOs can and do participate in international forums and the work of international agencies, principally by attempting to influence government actors or by working with participating NGOs. The FAO and its many subsidiary fisheries-focused bodies are important actors in international arenas. Along with its Committee on Fisheries (COFI), the FAO has established a number of regional commissions, with subcommissions focused on particular fishery issues. For example, the European Inland Fisheries Advisory Commission oversees four subgroups that in turn are composed of a number of “working parties” focused on such issues as introductions and stocking, fish disease, aquaculture, and recreational fishing.65 The FAO also operates in the realm of fishery policy development. In 1995, it issued its Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries.66 The Code sets out a framework for a regulatory approach and guiding principles that are designed to bring about fisheries sustainability. It calls on countries to establish and enforce rules emphasizing a precautionary approach and to engage in extensive public education so that all citizens will be enabled to participate in appropriate fish and fish habitat conservation while continuing to enjoy the multiple benefits of fish harvest and production. Studies undertaken to gauge awareness of the Code, however, indicate that further dissemination is needed.67 Moreover, a number of developing country governments reported that they have inadequate resources to implement the Code’s provisions.68 As IUU activity continues to pose an enormous threat to fisheries, in 2007, 131 FAO member nations agreed to the creation of a legally binding instrument to force countries with ports to take stronger action.69 The agreement is now in preparation. The 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty (LOS)70 requires participating coastal nations to negotiate in good faith regarding the management of shared transboundary fish stocks. It rapidly became clear to policymakers that this provision of the LOS was ineffective in managing stocks as negotiations did not result in agreements. Discussions launched at the Earth Summit in 1992 culminated in the 1995 agreement for management of straddling and highly migratory fish stocks, which went into force in 2001.71 This agreement called for creation of regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) to bring about collaborative management of transboundary fish stocks. Assessments had shown (unsurprisingly) that management without cross-border collaboration was largely ineffective. To date, several RFMOs have been formed to share management across global regions, with varying degrees of success.72 As they continue their efforts to operationalize the 1995 agreement, they are striving to employ the precautionary approach. Another major issue for these organizations is determining how to allocate fishing opportunities to new entrants while reducing overall effort. Failure to resolve this issue will likely result in increased IUU activity.73 Regional Bodies Regional bodies responding to more localized concerns are also working to address fish stock declines. In North America, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission (GLFC), founded jointly by the United States and Canada in 1955, promotes research and collaborative management as well as control of the invasive sea

132


lamprey.74 It was created in response to the crash of the lake trout in 1948, which was brought about primarily by overexploitation and sea lamprey predation. In response to slumping trout populations, much of the lakes’ commercial fishing industry was replaced with recreational fisheries supported by stocking. The commission operates with a small staff, an advisory board of technical experts, and management and technical committees for each of the five lakes in the basin. Funded by the two countries, the GLFC annually makes grants for pertinent research. Because of the dispersed nature of management authority in considering issues of biological and policy concern, the commission not only must work through issues of joint governance between two nations, but also must deal with eight states, two provinces, and a number of Native American tribes and First Nations. The nonbinding 1981 Joint Strategic Management Plan for Great Lakes Fisheries, signed by all entities with legal management authority, guides governance activities in the basin.75 The Commission is advised by a large panel of knowledgeable members of the public (appointed “citizen advisors”), especially on issues of quota recommendations.

National Politics In response to key wild fish stocks plummeting, many nations also created new policies and institutions designed to rein in overharvesting. Within a particular country, it is possible to participate in fisheries policymaking and implementation through available political avenues such as voting, contacting lawmakers and regulators, and affiliating with appropriate NGOs. In Malawi, for example, important inland fish stocks were overexploited, threatening livelihoods and food security.76 Recognizing the insufficiency of government regulatory resources and the detrimental effect of the uncooperative relationship between the Fisheries Department and fishing peoples, Parliament enacted a new approach in the Fisheries Conservation and Management Act of 1997, which had been tried on a pilot basis beginning in 1993.77 The act authorizes the creation of management partnerships between local fishing communities and the government.78 Beach Village Committees (BVCs) may be organized to manage local fisheries, ideally establishing a sense of ownership and hence an enhanced desire to conserve fisheries for the future.79 To date, the BVCs have not fulfilled this promise.80 Operating on a larger scale in the United States, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act created eight regional fishery management councils to better manage stocks within the country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ).81 Once the United States closed its EEZ in 1991, it was believed that pressure on stocks would be reduced with the exclusion of foreign fishers. Fishing in U.S. waters is now limited to vessels constructed in the United States.82 Data indicate that this regulation has not appreciably reduced harvests, however, as U.S. fishers replaced those excluded.83 Critics have claimed that, since their creation, the councils—dominated by industry—disregarded relevant scientific information, authorized overfishing, and ignored warning signs of fishery decline, resulting in more fishing and less conservation.84 In fact, U.S. coastal fisheries have faced growing challenges as stocks diminished. In an effort to reverse downward fish stock trends, 2006 statutory


133

amendments were passed specifically to strengthen the role of science in management.85 They require the government to attack IUU fishing in a more forceful manner, to advocate the creation of vessel databases for monitoring and enforcement, and to address the issue with all international organizations to which the United States belongs. The legislation mandates greater sharing of fishing opportunity allocation, especially among small operators who previously had limited opportunities.86 In a promising new development, The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, with a jurisdiction over nine hundred thousand square miles of water off Alaska, in agreement with fishers, concluded an unprecedented agreement to close expanding Arctic waters to commercial fishing. Thawing sea ice could have provided substantial new fishing grounds. Following a precautionary approach, the signatories agreed to protect the Arctic’s abundant fisheries.87 Special Interests The fishing industry, environmental groups, and consumer groups have also taken action to conserve. Consumer product labeling is one approach employed to achieve sustainability. Working in cooperation, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Unilever established the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) in 1997 (it became independent in 1999). MSC promotes fisheries sustainability by the use of its blue ecolabel. Only those products that meet rigorous standards for fishing in a sustainable manner, without significant impact on the marine environment, and employing a sustainable management system, will be rewarded with the MSC’s mark of environmental stewardship. Independent bodies approved by MSC certify fisheries under the MSC standards.88 Retailers, restaurants, and consumers participate by limiting their purchases to ecolabeled products. Traceability via the blue label thus facilitates the protection of threatened fisheries and ecosystems. MSC offers other sustainability-focused services such as its education Web site for children.89 The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood WATCH offers another way for individuals to exert influence through their purchasing power. Seafood WATCH provides widely distributed regional guides that alert U.S. consumers to sustainable choices for fish consumption. Downloadable guides list those fish found to be “best choices” because they come from sustainable capture fisheries or aquaculture farms. Fish fall on their “avoid” list if they belong to overfished stocks or are caught or farmed in ways that harm the environment.90

NGOs AND POLICY ENGAGEMENT The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is a large international NGO focused broadly on biological diversity conservation.91 Some of its extensive advocacy and policy development activity focuses on fisheries globally and in particular countries. It typically works in partnership with other international and local NGOs in promoting its conservation agenda. Engaging in research, fisheries project development, and partnership building, the World Fish Center (WFC), formerly International Centre for Living Aquatic

134


Resources Management (ICLARM), operates in twenty-five nations in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. One WFC focus is vulnerable populations. In Malawi, working with World Vision, they are assisting HIV/AIDS-afflicted women and orphan-headed families to establish agriculture and aquaculture operations. This approach has increased family protein intake and provided income to purchase antiretroviral drugs.92 Greenpeace’s reputation for confrontational marine-living resource advocacy is well known, but the organization is also gaining a reputation as a policy advocate. Greenpeace’s 1996 “Principles for Ecologically Responsible Fisheries” emphasize low-impact, ecologically sound fisheries that employ a precautionary approach.93 It has mounted an education campaign on the subject of the devastation caused by trawl fishing on delicate, species-rich seamount habitats.94 Like coal mining via mountaintop removal in Appalachia, the damage caused to these habitats by trawling is presumed to be long-lived, driving indigenous species to extinction. Reducing or banning altogether harmful fishing gear is yet another approach that can make a significant contribution to fisheries conservation and sustainability. Initiatives led by Greenpeace and other NGOs are targeting trawling and long lines.95 For example, gear mesh size restrictions preserve juvenile fish by enabling them to pass through fishing nets. The NGO Project Seahorse, housed at the University of British Columbia, is taking a different approach. As its name suggests, the organization’s initial concern and activity was focused on the overharvest of some species of seahorse, especially as bycatch, and on habitat destruction that threatened the existence of these place-based animals.96 More recently, the project has broadened its scope to include issues of bycatch, marine protected areas, sustainable livelihoods, and community-based management, to name a few. While working in communities, conducting research, and providing volunteer opportunities,97 its staff team and its volunteers strive for marine conservation. A number of scientific societies focus on fish resources. The American Fisheries Society (AFS), for example, encourages scientific exchange on topics of importance to fisheries scientists and managers. AFS publishes a monthly journal and organizes annual meetings, providing a forum for discussion and debate. Its Web site offers information and access to experts as well as its extensive list of publications. Local NGOs also play important roles in fisheries conservation. For example, as a dispute between fishers and a sugar company simmered, an official of the Malawi Wildlife and Environment Society98 stepped in to facilitate the creation of the Dwangwa fish sanctuary that not only reserved most of the company-owned lakeshore, but also permitted fishing (and siting of fishing villages) on either end of the sanctuary. Although this is a recent development, thus far it appears to have provided a promising resolution for the company while simultaneously promoting fisheries sustainability. No discussion of fisheries sustainability initiatives would be complete without mention of aquatic protected areas. The Convention for Biological Diversity, an international treaty, calls for 10 percent of oceans being reserved in Marine Protected Areas.99 These protected areas also are used in lakes such as the Laurentian Great Lakes. Where they are honored by fishers, reports indicate that protected areas are effective in rebuilding stocks by protecting breeding and nursery


135

grounds.100 These areas typically are established by governments, but NGO advocacy often is a crucial factor in their creation. Some protected areas have been created by fishers. Early reports suggest that Malawi’s new fish sanctuaries, created by local fishers in response to plummeting stocks, have met with success.101 Concerns about the potential threats of aquaculture to wild species have stimulated research, commentary, and activism as described by Bratspies.102 COFI reported a 1997 initiative of twenty-five conservation NGOs requesting governments to take steps to eliminate unsustainable aquaculture.103

CONCLUSION In addition to their ecological significance, fisheries provide critical food resources to humans. Currently, capture fisheries everywhere are in peril. Aquaculture, if pursued in an environmentally sustainable manner, may continue to replace a significant portion of capture fisheries, allowing them the time and space to recover from human harvesting. The threats to fisheries are widely recognized by governments, scientists, and environmental NGOs, but wider citizen support will be necessary to overcome the political might of industrial fishing operations. Aid to subsistence fishers must be provided to allow them to reduce their fishing effort. Also essential is education to alert the citizenry to the fisheries crisis and its implications for food and ecological sustainability. As they say in a boating emergency, we need all hands on deck.

NOTES 1. Daniel Pauly and Maria-Lourdes Palomeres, “Fishing down Marine Food Web: It Is Far More Pervasive Than We Thought,” Bulletin of Marine Science 76 (2005): 197– 211; Ransom A. Myers and Boris Worm, “Rapid Worldwide Depletion of Predatory Fish Communities,” Nature 423 (2003): 280. 2. World Conservation Union, 2003 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (Gland, Switzerland: IUCN, 2003). 3. Pauly and Palomeres, “Fishing down.” 4. C. T. Taggart et al., “Overview of Cod Stocks, Biology, and Environment in the Northwest Atlantic Region of Newfoundland, with Emphasis on Northern Cod” (publication from International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, Marine Science Symposium 198, St. John’s, NF, Canada, 1994): 140–57. 5. Myers and Worm, “Rapid Worldwide.” 6. Boris Worm et al., “Impacts of Biodiversity Loss of Ocean Ecosystem Services,” Science 314 (2006): 787–90. 7. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (Rome: FAO, 2006), 127. 8. Ibid., 88. 9. Ibid., 44. 10. Pew Oceans Commission, American’s Living Oceans: Charting a Course for Sea Change (Philadelphia, PA: Pew Charitable Trust, 2003). 11. Ibid., 56. 12. Margaret Beatty Bogue, Fishing the Great Lakes: An Environmental History 1783– 1933 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000).

136


13. Gregory F. McIsaac et al., “Nitrate Flux in the Mississippi River,” Nature 414 (2001): 166–67. 14. Daniel Pauly and Jay MacLean, In a Perfect Ocean (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003), 19. 15. Chesapeake Bay Commission, “Policy for the Bay,” http://www.chesbay.state.va. us/history.html (accessed June 28, 2008). 16. Tom Horton, “Growing! Growing! Gone! The Chesapeake Bay and the Myth of Endless Growth” (prepared on a grant from The Abell Foundation, 2008), http://www. abell.org/pubsitems/env_Growing_808.pdf. 17. FAO, World Fisheries 34 (2006): 110–11. See also Jessica Seares et al., “Effects of Globalization on Freshwater Systems and Strategies for Conservation,” in Globalization: Effects on Fisheries Resources, ed. William W. Taylor, Michael S. Schechter, and Lois G. Wolfson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 81–83. 18. Songguang Xie et al., “Fisheries of the Yangtze River Show Immediate Impacts of the Three Gorges Dam,” Fisheries 32, no. 7 (2007): 343–44. 19. Chris Bright, “The Nemesis Effect,” World?Watch May/June (1999): 12–23. 20. FAO, World Fisheries, 82. 21. Gerald R. Smith, Fishes of the Great Lakes Region, rev. ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 56. 22. Tony J. Pitcher and Paul J. B. Hart, Impact of Species Changes on African Lakes (London, New York: Chapman and Hall, 1995); F. Witte, J. H. Wanink, M. KisheMachumu, “Species Distinction and the Biodiversity Crisis in Lake Victoria,” Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 136 (2007): 1146–59. 23. Christian N. K. Anderson et al., “Why Fishing Magnifies Fluctuations in Fish Abundance,” Nature 457 (2008): 835–39; See also, Pauly and MacLean, In A Perfect Ocean; In addition, numerous scholarly articles can be found via the University of British Columbia Fisheries Centre Web site, http://www.fisheries.ubc.ca. 24. FAO, World Fisheries, 29–37 (overharvesting), 5–6, 25–26 (overcapitalization). 25. National Geographic News, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/07/ 060724-bluefin-tuna.html (accessed October 10, 2008). 26. Simon J. Bland and Steve Donda, Management Initiatives for the Fisheries of Malawi. Fisheries Department Report (Lilongwe: Government of Malawi, 1994). 27. Dag Standal, “The Rise and Fall of Factory Trawlers: An Eclectic Approach,” Marine Policy 32 (2008): 326–32; David Helvarg, “Full Nets—Empty Seas,” The Progressive Magazine, November (1997), http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Environment/FullNets_EmptySeas.html (accessed on October 10, 2008). 28. Anderson et al., “Fluctuations in Fish Abundance,” 835–39. 29. S. J. Rowland, “Overview of the History, Fishery, Biology and Aquaculture of Murray Cod (Maccullochella peelii peelii)” (statements, recommendations, and supporting papers from workshop on Management of Murray Cod in the Murray Darling Basin by MDB Commission, Canberra, Australia, June 3–4, 2005), http://www.mdbc.gov.au/data/page/ 641/5 Stuart J. Rowland.pdf (accessed on December 20, 2008); Steven A. Berkeley, Colin Chapman, and Susan M. Sogard, “Maternal Age as a Determinant of Larlval Growth and Survival in a Marine Fish, Sebastes melanops,” Ecology 85, no. 5 (2004): 1258–64. 30. “Linearity” refers to quantitative aspects of particular processes or dynamics of some systemic entity that can be described reasonably accurately using old-fashioned mathematics, such as arithmetic in particularly simplistic cases. “Nonlinearity” refers to other systemic processes or dynamics for which old-fashioned mathematics don’t work; electronic computer methods may be helpful as in trial-and-error iteration of


137

hypothetical solutions with models that incorporate feedbacks, bifurcations, or systemic flips, and so on. 31. FAO, World Fisheries, 8. 32. Many scientists question the accuracy of Chinese fishing data, for example, Daniel Pauly, in his talk, “Maritime Biodiversity: Evaluation of Major Threats,” July 19, 2005, Brasilia. A more oblique reference to this issue is found in FAO, World Fisheries, 5. 33. FAO, World Fisheries, 15. 34. Ibid., 34. 35. Ibid., 119. 36. Ibid., 120. 37. Ibid., 136. 38. Ibid., 75. 39. Ibid., 75. 40. Ibid., 16. 41. Ibid., 38. 42. Ibid., 16. 43. Rebecca M. Bratspies, “Can Transgenic Fish Save Fisheries?” in Globalization: Effects on Fishery Resources, ed. William W. Taylor, Michael S. Schechter, and Lois G. Wolfson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 472–80. 44. F. Dahdouh et al., “How Effective Were Mangroves as a Defence against the Recent Tsunami?” Current Biology 15, no. 14 (2005): 1337–38. 45. Bratspies, “Can Transgenic,” 479. 46. Ibid., 485–86. 47. United Nations Atlas of the Oceans, “Environmental Impacts of Aquaculture,” http://www.oceansatlas.org/world_fisheries_and_aquaculture/html/issues/ecosys/envimpactfi/ aqua.htm (accessed May 27, 2008). 48. FAO, World Fisheries, 34. 49. Ibid., 38. 50. Ibid., 154. 51. Ibid., 22. 52. Simon J. R. Bland and Steven J. Donda, Common Property and Poverty: Fisheries Co-Management in Malawi, Fisheries Bulletin no. 3 (1995): 3. 53. FAO, World Fisheries, 22–24. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid., 26; Susan Hanna, et al., Fishing Ground: Defining a New Era for American Fisheries Management (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2000), 53. 56. FAO, World Fisheries, 26. 57. Ibid., 133. 58. John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa, Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999). 59. FAO, World Fisheries, 25. 60. Ibid., 114. 61. Ibid., 94. 62. See e.g., Amartya Sen, “Population: Delusion and Reality,” in The Gender Sexuality Reader: Culture, History, Political Economy, ed. Roger Lancaster and Michaela di Leonardo (New York: Routledge, 1997), 91–106. 63. Sheila Jasanoff, “Technologies of Humility,” Nature 450 (2007): 33. 64. Geoffrey Heal and Wolfram Schlenker, “Sustainable Fisheries,” Nature 455 (2008): 1044–45.

138


65. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, description of its organization may be found at http://www.fao.org/unfao/govbodies/statbod_en.htm (accessed May 25, 2008). 66. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries” (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 1995). 67. S. M. Nazmul Alam et al., “Compliance of Bangladesh Shrimp Culture with FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries: A Development Challenge,” Ocean & Coastal Management 48 (2005): 2, 177–88. 68. FAO/COFI, Progress Report on the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries and Related International Plans of Action, FAO Fisheries Report No. 665 (Rome: FAO, 2001); Janet G. Webster and Jean Collins, Fisheries Information in Developing Countries: Support to the Implementation of the 1995 Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, FAO Fisheries Circular No. 1006 (Rome: FAO, 2005). 69. FAO, Committee on Fisheries, Subcommittee on Fish Trade (Rome: FAO, 2008). 70. 1833 UNTS 3; 21 ILM 126, 1982. 71. “1995 Fish Stock Agreement, The United Nations Agreement for the Implementation of the Provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea Relating to the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks,” December 10, 1982 (in force as of December 11, 2001). 72. FAO, World Fisheries, 52–57. 73. Ibid., 54–55. 74. Great Lakes Fishery Commission, Joint Strategic Plan for the Management of Great Lakes Fisheries, rev. ed. (Ann Arbor, MI: GLFC, 1997). 75. Great Lakes Fishery Commission, Strategic Vision of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission for the First Decade of the New Millennium (Ann Arbor, MI: GLFC, 2001). 76. Tracy A. Dobson and Kristine D. Lynch, “As Nearshore Stocks Drop, Malawi Begins a Return to Local Fisheries Management,” Journal of Great Lakes Research 29, no. 2 (2003): 232–42, 236. 77. Ibid., 239. 78. Fisheries Conservation and Management Act, Government of Malawi, 1997. 79. Ibid., Part III, Local Community Participation. 80. Aaron J. M. Russell, Tracy Dobson, and John G. M. Wilson, “Fisheries Management in Malawi: A Patchwork of Traditional, Modern, and Post-Modern Regimes Unfolds.” in International Governance of Fisheries Ecosystems, ed. William W. Taylor, Michael S. Schechter, and Nancy Leonard (Bethesda, MD: American Fisheries Society, 2008). 81. Title III, Sec. 302 and 90 Stat. 347. 82. Hanna et al., Fishing Ground, 30. 83. FAO, World Fisheries, 26. 84. Hanna et al., Fishing Ground, 87–98. 85. Fisheries Office of International Affairs, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, “Overview of International Provisions in the Magnuson-Stevens Act Reauthorization Act Fact Sheet” (Silver Spring, MD: NOAA, 2007). 86. Ibid. 87. Janet Raloff, “Arctic Warming Chills Interest in Fishing,” Science News October (2008), http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/37352/title/Arctic_warming_chills_ interest_in_fishing. 88. Marine Stewardship Council, http://eng.msc.org/ (accessed May 24, 2008). 89. Fish and Kids, http://www.fishandkids.org (accessed May 26, 2008).


139

90. Monterey Bay Aquarium, http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/SeafoodWatch/web/sfw_ regional.aspx?region_id=6 (accessed May 24, 2008). 91. International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), http://www.iucn.org (accessed May 26, 2008). 92. “Relief for HIV Victims Through Integrated Agriculture-Aquaculture,” http:// www.worldfishcenter.org/v2/ourwork-health-hiv-aq.html (accessed June 26, 2008). 93. Greenpeace, “Principles for Ecologically Responsible Fisheries,” http://www. greenpeace.org/usa/news/principles-for-ecologically-re (accessed May 20, 2003). 94. Greenpeace, “Seamount Protection Campaign,” http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/ oceans/solutions/saving-the-mountains-under-the-sea (accessed November 17, 2008). 95. FAO Committee on Fisheries, “Initiatives of Non-Governmental Organizations Regarding Sustainable Resource Use and Environmental Protection in Fisheries” (paper from Rome, Italy, March 17–20, 1997). 96. Amanda C. J. Vincent, A. D. Marsden, and U. R. Sumaila, “Possible Contributions of Globalization in Creating and Addressing Sea Horse Conservation Problems,” in Globalization: Effects on Fisheries Resources, ed. William W. Taylor, Michael G. Schechter, and Lois G. Wolfson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 191. 97. Project Seahorse, http://seahorse.fisheries.ubc.ca/index.html (accessed May 24, 2008). 98. Russell et al., “Fisheries Management,” 81–82. 99. 1760 UNTS 79; 31 ILM 818, 1992. 100. Craig Leisher, Pieter van Beukering, and Lea M. Scherf, Nature’s Investment Bank: How Marine Protected Areas Contribute to Poverty Reduction (Canberra, ACT, Australia, The Nature Conservancy, 2007); P. Christie, A. White, and E. Deguit, “Starting Point or Solution? Community-Based Marine Protected Areas on the Philippines,” Journal of Environmental Management 66 (2002): 441–54. 101. Russell et al., “Fisheries management,” 82–83. 102. Bratspies, “Can Transgenic.” 103. FAO Committee on Fisheries, “Initiatives of Non-Governmental Organizations Regarding Sustainable Resource Use and Environmental Protection in Fisheries and Urging Governments to Ban Unsustainable Aquaculture” (report from the 22nd Session, Rome, Italy, 17–20 March, 1997).

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture. Rome: FAO, 2006. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries. Rome: FAO, 1995. Goldburg, R. J., M. S. Elliott, and R. L. Naylor. Marine Aquaculture in the United States: Environmental Impacts and Policy Options. Arlington, VA: Pew Oceans Commission, 2001. Hollister, David C. Public Policy Primer: How to Get Off the Sidelines and Into the Game. East Lansing, MI: Institute for Educational Leadership, 2007. Available at http:// www.iel.org/pubs/publicpolicy.pdf. National Research Council. Sustaining Marine Fisheries. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999.

140


Ostrom, Elinor, et al. eds. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2002. Pauly, Daniel, and Jay Maclean. In a Perfect Ocean: The State of Fisheries and Ecosystems in the North Atlantic Ocean. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003. Pew Oceans Commission report, 2003. Taylor, William T., Michael S. Schechter, and Lois G. Wolfson, eds. Globalization: Effects on Fishery Resources. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Webster, D. G., and Oran R. Young. Adaptive Governance: The Dynamics of Atlantic Fisheries Management. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.

Web Sites American Fisheries Society, http://www.fisheries.org. Fisheries and Aquaculture Department, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, http://www.fao.org/fisheries. Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia, http://www.fisheries.ubc.ca. Great Lakes Fishery Commission, http://www.glfc.org. Indigenous Peoples Restoration Network, http://www.ser.org/iprn/default.asp. Marine Stewardship Council, http://www.msc.org. Greenpeace International, http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/oceans. National Marine Fisheries Service, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/ia/intlagree/. World Fish Center, http://www.worldfishcenter.org. World Resources Institute, http://www.wri.org.

PART III Health


10 Food Security and Food Insecurity in the United States and Their Consequences for Child Health John T. Cook Food is at the foundation of what psychologist Abraham Maslow called the “hierarchy of human needs.”1 Along with oxygen, water, and regulated body temperature, it is a basic necessity for human survival. But food is much more than the nutrients it contains, and its availability and consumption affect human health and well-being in ways far beyond its nutritional characteristics. Food is also at the heart of humans’ conceptions of nurturance and abundance. Moreover, food is the focus of many social activities, from sharing a drink or cup of tea, to celebrating important life-cycle passages such as weddings, or major holidays like Thanksgiving, Passover, Ramadan, or Christmas. Food security—access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life—is one of several conditions necessary for a population to be healthy and well nourished. Food insecurity, in turn, refers to the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, or to limited or uncertain ability to acquire food in socially acceptable ways.2 Food security can be measured at many different levels, including individual, household, community, regional, national, and even global. This chapter deals primarily with household-level food security in the United States.

MEASURING FOOD SECURITY The conceptual framework on which U.S. food security measures are based is part of a broader framework for nutritional indicators laid out by an Expert Panel convened by the Life Sciences Research Office (LSRO) of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) in 1990.3 Three dimensions of food security were articulated by the Expert Panel as amenable to measurement: (1) the quantity and quality of food that is available, (2) its accessibility, such as physical accessibility in terms of grocery store location and transportation systems, and (3) affordability or price relative to community residents’ resources.4

144


Lack of access to adequate food by U.S. households resulting from constrained household financial resources has been measured by questions assessing “hunger,” “risk of hunger,” “food insufficiency,” and most recently “food insecurity.”5 In 1990, the LSRO Expert Panel developed the following conceptual definitions of food security, food insecurity, and hunger:6 • Food security: “Access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life. Food security includes at a minimum: (1) the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and (2) an assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (e.g., without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing, or other coping strategies).” • Food insecurity: “Limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways.” • Hunger: “The uneasy or painful sensation caused by a lack of food. The recurrent and involuntary lack of access to food. Hunger may produce malnutrition over time.… Hunger … is a potential, although not necessary, consequence of food insecurity.” The Expert Panel approved these conceptual definitions, and an interdisciplinary research team developed a scale to measure these operational conditions at the household level in the U.S. population.7 Consisting of eighteen questions, the U.S. Food Security Scale (FSS) is administered annually by the Census Bureau in its Current Population Survey (CPS) with results reported by the USDA’s Economic Research Service.8 These recurring administrations of the FSS provided a twelve-year time-series of data on food security, food insecurity, and hunger in the U.S. population for 1995–2007.9 Recently, a Children’s Food Security Scale (CFSS) consisting of the eight child-referenced items in the larger eighteen-item FSS was validated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS).10 The CFSS can be scored and scaled to more directly depict the food security status of children in a household, and yields higher prevalence of child hunger when administered separately than is obtained from the FSS.11 The eighteen-question FSS is shown in Table 10.1, with the eight items that make up the CFSS in the lower section. Thresholds for the various household and child food security categories are also indicated. USDA’s ERS implemented recent changes in FSS report terminology used to label the most severe levels of deprivation measured by the household and children’s scales, replacing the term “hunger” with “very low food security.”12 Because this change is relatively recent, and not uniformly accepted by either scientists or advocates, this chapter uses the term “hunger,” where appropriate.

RELATIONSHIP OF FOOD INSECURITY TO POVERTY Food insecurity and hunger, as measured by the FSS, are specifically related to limited household resources. Thus, they are referred to as “resource-constrained” or “poverty-related” conditions. The official definition of poverty for the U.S. population is based on historical estimates of the portion of an average household’s

Table 10.1. Questions Comprising the U.S. Food Security Scale with Child Food Security Scale Questions in the Lower Section 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7. 8. 9.

10.

“We worried whether our food would run out before we got money to buy more.” Was that often, sometimes, or never true for you in the last 12 months? “The food that we bought just didn’t last and we didn’t have money to get more.” Was that often, sometimes, or never true for you in the last 12 months? “We couldn’t afford to eat balanced meals.” Was that often, sometimes, or never true for you in the last 12 months? In the last 12 months, did you or other adults in the household ever cut the size of your meals or skip meals because there wasn’t enough money for food? (Yes/No) (If yes to Question 4) How often did this happen— almost every month, some months but not every month, or in only 1 or 2 months? In the last 12 months, did you ever eat less than you felt you should because there wasn’t enough money for food? (Yes/No) In the last 12 months, were you ever hungry, but didn’t eat, because you couldn’t afford enough food? (Yes/No) In the last 12 months, did you lose weight because you didn’t have enough money for food? (Yes/No) In the last 12 months, did you or other adults in your household ever not eat for a whole day because there wasn’t enough money for food? (Yes/No) (If yes to Question 9) How often did this happen— almost every month, some months but not every month, or in only 1 or 2 months?

Household Food Secure

Household Food Insecure without Hunger

Household Food Insecure with Hunger

(Questions 11–18 are asked only if the household included children age 0–18) 11. “We relied on only a few kinds of low-cost food to feed our children because we were running out of money to buy food.” Was that often, sometimes, or never true for you in the last 12 months? 12. “We couldn’t feed our children a balanced meal, because we couldn’t afford that.” Was that often, sometimes, or never true for you in the last 12 months? 13. “The children were not eating enough because we just couldn’t afford enough food.” Was that often, sometimes, or never true for you in the last 12 months? 14. In the last 12 months, did you ever cut the size of any of the children’s meals because there wasn’t enough money for food? (Yes/No) 15. In the last 12 months, were the children ever hungry but you just couldn’t afford more food? (Yes/No) 16. In the last 12 months, did any of the children ever skip a meal because there wasn’t enough money for food? (Yes/No)

Child Marginally Food Secure

Child Food Insecure without Hunger

Child Food Insecure with Hunger

(Continued)

145

146


Table 10.1. (Continued) 17. (If yes to Question 16) How often did this happen— almost every month, some months but not every month, or in only 1 or 2 months? 18. In the last 12 months, did any of the children ever not eat for a whole day because there wasn’t enough money for food? (Yes/No) Source: Nord, M., Andrews, M., Carlson, S. Household Food Security in the United States, 2007. ERR-66, USDA Economic Research Service. November 2008.

income required to purchase a “minimally nutritious diet” (about 30 percent in the early 1960s). Poverty thresholds—set at three times the amount needed to buy such a diet on the basis of the 1960s’ overall average proportion of income spent on food—represent the amounts of money estimated by the government to approximate levels of necessity for families of different size and composition (i.e., number of people in the household, and number of children or elderly). Although the cost of living (especially housing and food costs) varies from state to state and region to region, the official government poverty thresholds do not vary geographically. They are updated annually for inflation using the Consumer Price Index (CPI), a broad national index of overall increases in aggregate consumer prices.13 However, although an average U.S. family currently spends only about 12 percent of its total annual expenditures on food, implying a poverty threshold closer to eight times (100 percent ‚ 12 percent) the cost of a minimally nutritious diet instead of three times, this “multiplier” has not been updated since its conception in the early 1960s. The official 2007 (the latest year for which data are available) poverty threshold for families of four people, two adults and two children, was $21,027.14 Both the definition of poverty and the poverty thresholds have been criticized on grounds that they do not accurately reflect families’ true financial resources, nor the amount of money families actually need to be economically self-sufficient.15 Empirical estimates of minimum income levels required for families to achieve basic economic self-sufficiency range from two to three times the official federal poverty thresholds.16 Based on these official poverty definitions, in 2007, 37.3 million people (12.5 percent) lived in households with incomes below the poverty thresholds in the United States. Of these, 13.3 million were children under eighteen years old, and 5.1 million were children under six years old. Subpopulations with highest prevalence of poverty (see Figure 10.1) are people in female-headed households with no spouse present (28.3 percent), blacks (24.5 percent), Latinos (21.5 percent), and children under age six years old (20.8 percent).17 From 2000 to 2004, the poverty rates for all major ethnic groups increased steadily, although they declined slightly from 2005 to 2006 and increased in 2007. Although the populations affected by poverty and food insecurity in the United States overlap, they are not identical. Not all poor people are food insecure, and food insecurity extends to people with incomes above the federal poverty level. In 2007, 36.2 million people in the United States (12.2 percent) lived in foodinsecure households, 24.3 million lived in households without hunger, and

147

Food Security and Food Insecurity 25% 20%

All Races Hispanic Non-Hispanic Black Non-Hispanic White

15% 10% 5% 0% 2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

Figure 10.1. Proportion of U.S. Families with Incomes Below Poverty by Race and Ethnicity, 2000–2007a Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, various years. Note: a. Includes households with and without children.

11.9 million lived with hunger (see Figure 10.2). Of the 36.2 million food-insecure people in the United States in 2006, 12.4 million were children under age eighteen. As with poverty, subpopulations with the highest prevalence of household food insecurity (HFI) are blacks (22 percent), Latinos (22.3 percent), people in households with children under six years old (17.7 percent), and single-mother households (30.4 percent). In 2007, 39.9 percent of all people in the United States with incomes below the poverty thresholds were food insecure. Averaging data over the years 2005–2007, USDA ERS calculated state-level estimates of the proportion of food insecure households in each state over this period. The lowest state-level HFI prevalence was 6.5 percent in North Dakota; the highest was 17.4 percent in Mississippi. In 34 states, more than 10 percent of all households were food insecure. The prevalence of food insecurity with hunger was lowest in North Dakota at 2.2 percent and highest in Mississippi at 7 percent. 25% 20% All Races Hispanic Non-Hispanic Black Non-Hispanic White

15% 10% 5% 0% 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Figure 10.2. Proportion of U.S. Households That Are Food Insecure by Race/Ethnicity: 1999–2007* *Includes households with and without children. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, various years.

148


Seven states had an average prevalence of food insecurity with hunger at 5 percent or higher over this period.18 In 2008, state-level child food insecurity prevalence estimates (at any severity level, both with and without hunger) were produced using a similar averaging approach with state-level FSS microdata from the CPS for children living in food-insecure households during 2004–2006. Those estimates are reproduced in Table 10.2.19

FOOD INSECURITY, CHILD HEALTH, AND DEVELOPMENT Food insecurity influences health and development through its impacts on nutrition and as a component of overall family stress. The condition of food insecurity includes both inadequate quantities and quality of nutrients. At less severe levels of food insecurity, household food managers (usually mothers) trade off food quality for quantity to prevent household members, especially children, from feeling persistently hungry. Overall, less-expensive, more filling foods are more energy-dense and nutrientsparse, and often contain large amounts of starches, sugar, salt, and fats. Nutrientdense, energy-sparse foods, by contrast, are usually more expensive. This inverse relationship between food prices and food quality has implications for micronutrient deficiencies at all ages and could be a potential factor in the widespread emergence of obesity in adults and possibly in older children.20 Early Childhood: Birth to Three Years A relatively large number of studies have examined associations between food insecurity and child health and development in the birth to three age-group, many conducted by the Children’s HealthWatch (previously the Children’s Sentinel Nutrition Assessment Program, C-SNAP) at Boston Medical Center. C-SNAP has conducted household-level surveys and medical record audits at seven central-city medical centers since 1998. Primary adult caregivers accompanying children from birth to three years old seeking care are interviewed by trained interviewers in private settings at primary-care clinics or emergency departments during waiting periods. This age-group was chosen for sampling because its special vulnerability makes it a sentinel population for adverse health outcomes in pediatric populations that are related to constrained household resources and changes in social policies and economic conditions. Children’s weight and, if possible, length are recorded at the time of the interview. The C-SNAP survey instrument is composed of questions on household characteristics, children’s health and hospitalization history, maternal health, maternal depressive symptoms, participation in federal assistance programs, energy insecurity, and changes in benefit levels. In addition, the interview includes the U.S. FSS and the Parent’s Evaluation of Developmental Status (PEDS) scales.21 Food Insecurity and Adverse Health Outcomes in Young Children By 2003, studies examined adverse health and development outcomes associated with malnutrition in young children, and food insufficiency (a precursor to

Table 10.2. Estimated Number and Percent of Children Food Insecure by State, Based on Three-Year Average of Estimates from the Current Population Survey Food Security Scale for 2004–2006

US AK AL AR AZ CA CO CT DC DE FL GA HI IA ID IL IN KS KY LA MA MD ME MI MN MO MS MT NC ND NE NH NJ NM NV NY OH OK OR PA

Average Number of Children in State 2004-2006

Average Number of Children Food Insecure 2004–2006

Average Percent of Children Food Insecure 2004–2006

77,550,276 195,221 1,144,315 725,629 1,674,152 10,030,581 1,220,103 880,688 114,489 212,323 4,274,726 2,468,824 317,372 732,707 406,187 3,391,496 1,683,883 730,193 1,044,097 1,120,289 1,565,732 1,443,002 304,274 2,684,870 1,324,281 1,485,531 797,328 218,828 2,235,404 155,573 465,002 314,572 2,285,425 528,632 661,357 4,779,467 2,944,382 912,948 910,481 2,998,420

13,527,196 33,662 171,469 115,520 364,482 1,823,347 217,391 100,500 23,104 29,227 666,087 471,338 38,391 119,432 77,132 521,628 245,452 121,487 197,643 211,221 167,670 220,837 60,393 471,912 163,564 257,533 182,006 32,493 448,696 16,076 64,311 27,947 277,169 115,004 106,763 720,401 594,647 192,808 183,448 509,341

17.4% 17.2% 15.0% 15.9% 21.8% 18.2% 17.8% 11.4% 20.2% 13.7% 15.6% 19.0% 12.2% 16.3% 19.0% 15.4% 14.6% 16.7% 18.9% 19.0% 10.7% 15.3% 19.8% 17.5% 12.3% 17.3% 22.8% 14.7% 20.1% 10.4% 13.8% 8.9% 12.1% 21.8% 16.1% 15.1% 20.2% 21.2% 20.2% 17.0% (Continued)

149

150


Table 10.2. (Continued) Average Number of Children in State 2004-2006 RI SC SD TN TX UT VA VT WA WI WV WY

261,980 1,094,884 197,926 1,487,628 6,723,289 795,714 1,964,741 137,438 1,586,338 1,370,207 421,182 126,164

Average Number of Children Food Insecure 2004–2006 40,984 219,838 29,573 307,825 1,584,266 157,425 216,631 19,500 286,664 217,633 63,296 22,030

Average Percent of Children Food Insecure 2004–2006 15.6% 20.1% 14.9% 20.7% 23.6% 19.8% 11.0% 14.2% 18.1% 15.9% 15.1% 17.4%

Source: Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, Food Security Supplement, 2004, 2005, 2006. Data accessed via the Federal Datanet using Data Ferret.

the food security measures), hunger, and risk of hunger related to poor health in children (less than eighteen years old), but none had yet focused on birth to three years old using the new FSS. A C-SNAP study found food-insecure children more likely to have fair or poor health and be hospitalized more often than similar children in food-secure households.22 Also, higher odds of “fair or poor” health correlated with higher food insecurity. Receipt of food stamps was found to attenuate the effects of food insecurity on this outcome, but did not eliminate it. Child Food Insecurity Intensifies Adverse Effects of Household Food Insecurity If households with children are categorized by the FSS as food insecure at the household level, this does not show specific evidence of child food insecurity per se. Typically, adult caregivers in food-insecure U.S. households ration food to spare children from suffering the feeling of hunger, although this often results in detrimental overall reductions in the quality and variety of foods available in the household.23 A C-SNAP study24 found that out of 17,158 caregiver-child dyads interviewed over six years, 10 percent reported HFI only, and 12 percent reported household and child food insecurity (H&CFI), with child food insecurity measured by the CFSS (see Table 10.1). Compared with food-secure children, those with only HFI had significantly higher odds of fair or poor health and being hospitalized, while those with both H&CFI experienced even more extraordinary adverse effects (100 percent greater odds of fair or poor health and 23 percent higher odds of hospitalization respectively). Food Stamp Program (FSP, recently renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP) participation modified the effects of food insecurity on

Food Security and Food Insecurity

151

child health status (odds of fair or poor health), reducing, but not eliminating, them. In these cases, children in HFI households had odds of experiencing fair or poor health 24 percent lower than those in similar non-FSP households, while children in H&CFI households had adjusted odds of experiencing fair or poor health 42 percent lower than those in non-FSP households. These results, like previous ones, indicate the adverse effects of food insecurity worsen as its severity increases. They also suggest that food stamps, like a therapeutic drug prescribed in inadequate doses, appear to attenuate but not fully reverse this association. Child Food Insecurity and Iron Deficiency Iron deficiency, and iron deficiency anemia (IDA), are the most prevalent nutritional deficiencies in the United States and worldwide. Iron deficiency in early life has been linked to concurrent and persistent deficits in cognition, attention, and behavior even after treatment. There is a higher prevalence of IDA in children of high-risk subpopulations in the United States. One study found that joint or separate participation in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and FSP reduced the risk of iron deficiency.25 The link between these child nutrition programs and iron deficiency confirms a recent study examining associations between food insecurity and IDA in children ages six months to three years.26 Children in food-insecure households had adjusted odds of having IDA 140 percent greater than food secure children.27 Food Insecurity, Maternal Depression, and Child Health Maternal depression can affect child development in a variety of ways, including reduced ability to provide needed care, impaired mother-child interaction and attachment, and child neglect and abuse.28 A recent study examined associations among mothers’ positive depressive symptoms (PDS), food insecurity, and changes in benefits from federal assistance programs.29 Out of 5,306 mother-child dyads, mothers with PDS had odds of reporting household food insecurity 169 percent greater, fair or poor child health 58 percent greater, and child hospitalizations 20 percent greater than mothers without PDS. In addition, mothers with PDS had odds of reporting decreased welfare support 52 percent greater and odds of reporting loss of food stamp benefits 56 percent greater than mothers without PDS.30 These results suggest that maternal depression may be an indirect pathway by which household food insecurity exerts a negative influence on child health and development. School-Age Children and Adolescence The past decade’s research has examined the influence of food insecurity on physical and mental health and academic, behavioral, and psychosocial functioning of preschool and school-age children. Using different measures, these studies find adverse effects of food insecurity on physical and mental health, academic performance, and behavioral and psychosocial problems in preschool and schoolage children.

152


Examining associations between household food sufficiency and children’s health, school performance, and psychosocial functioning, one study found food insufficiency associated with higher prevalence of fair or poor health and iron deficiency, and with greater likelihood of experiencing stomachaches, headaches, and colds in children one to five years old.31 Another found that six- to eleven-yearold children in food-insufficient families had lower arithmetic scores, were more likely to have repeated a grade, to have seen a psychologist, and to have had more difficulty getting along with other children, than similar children whose families were food sufficient. This study also found teenagers from food-insufficient families more likely than food-sufficient peers to have seen a psychologist, been suspended from school, and had difficulty getting along with other children.32 A third study showed that fifteen- to sixteen-year-olds from food-insufficient households were significantly more likely to have had dysthymia (a form of depression), thoughts of death, and a desire to die, and to have attempted suicide.33 Another set of studies examined associations between hunger and physical and mental health in school-age children. The first study found children under twelve years old categorized as hungry or at-risk of hunger were twice as likely as not-hungry children to be reported as having impaired functioning by either a parent or the child themselves. Teachers reported significantly higher levels of hyperactivity, absenteeism, and tardiness among children categorized as hungry or at-risk of hunger.34 A second study had parents of children ages six to twelve years complete a Pediatric Symptom Checklist (PSC). This study found children categorized as hungry by the Community Childhood Hunger Identification Project (CCHIP) scale more likely to have clinical levels of psychosocial dysfunction on the PSC than either at-risk or not-hungry children. Analysis of individual items from the PSC found most behavioral, emotional, and academic problems more prevalent in hungry children, and that aggression and anxiety had the strongest degree of association with hunger.35 The third study found that severe hunger was a significant predictor of chronic illness among both preschool-age and school-age children, and significantly associated with internalizing behavior problems, while moderate hunger was a significant predictor of health conditions in preschool children. Severe hunger was associated with higher reported anxiety and depression among school-age children.36 Finally, some studies examined associations of food insecurity with health, growth, and development after the first three years of life. A recent study from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS) included data from the kindergarten and third-grade administrations in a longitudinal assessment of how food insecurity over time is related to changes in reading and mathematics test performance, weight and body mass index (BMI), and social skills in children.37 This longitudinal study found food insecurity in kindergarten associated with lower mathematics scores, increased BMI and weight gain, and lower social skills in girls at third grade, but not in boys. The authors found that children from persistently foodinsecure households (food insecure at both kindergarten and third grade) had greater gains in BMI and weight than children in persistently food-secure households, although these effects were only significant for girls in stratified analysis. Also among girls, but not boys, persistent food insecurity was associated with smaller increases in reading scores over the period than for persistently foodsecure girls.38


153

For households that transitioned from food security to food insecurity between kindergarten and third grade (i.e., became food insecure), dynamic models showed that the transition was associated with significantly smaller increases in reading scores for both boys and girls compared with children from households remaining food secure between kindergarten and third grade. For children transitioning from food insecurity to food security (i.e., becoming food secure), the transition was associated with larger increases in social skills scores for girls, but not for boys. Similarly, in difference models when children from households that became food insecure were compared with children who became food secure, becoming food insecure was associated with smaller increases in reading scores for both boys and girls, although they were significant only for girls.39 In gender-stratified difference models examining BMI, weight, and social skills, becoming food insecure was associated with significantly greater weight and BMI gains for boys, but not for girls. Becoming food insecure was also associated with greater declines in social skills scores for girls, but not for boys.40 These results provide the strongest empirical evidence to date that food insecurity is linked to developmental consequences for girls and boys, although these consequences are not identical across gender groups. Particularly strong associations are found between food insecurity and impaired social skills development, reading performance, and increased BMI and weight gain for girls. The effects on BMI and weight gain, however, appear to differ depending on whether the girls are persistently food insecure or their status changes over time. Food insecurity in the early elementary years thus has developmental consequences that may be both nutritional and nonnutritional.41

CONCLUSION Taken together, the studies summarized in this chapter offer solid evidence that food insecurity is associated with a range of adverse health, growth, and development outcomes in children from birth to eighteen years old, although these relationships are complex and vary from study to study. Age, ethnicity, gender, and other factors all contribute to this variability. Food insecurity, even at the least severe household levels, is a highly prevalent risk to growth, health, cognitive, and behavioral potential in America’s poor and near-poor children. Threshold levels of severity for adverse effects of food insecurity on health and development in young children occur before the appearance of readily identifiable clinical markers, such as being underweight. Research indicates that the effects of food insecurity worsen as its severity worsens, and that child food insecurity and hunger are associated with more severe consequences than household food insecurity alone. Even at the lowest levels of severity, however, data suggest that, for babies, household food insecurity is an established risk factor for health and development. This leads to the troubling conclusion that for infants and toddlers food insecurity is an “invisible epidemic” of a widely prevalent and serious condition known to pose serious risks to child health and development. Although the remedy to this food insecurity is well understood and cost effective, it is being withheld from those at greatest risk. Food insecurity can occur and inflict harm at any or all phases of the life cycle. However, the particular vulnerability of infants and toddlers from birth to three

154


years who are undergoing especially rapid physical growth and neurocognitive development provides a special opportunity for protecting and positively influencing the remainder of the life cycle. Moreover, the apparent heightened susceptibility of older girls to the negative impacts of food insecurity in multiple domains suggests that it is particularly urgent to decrease this risk among those who will become mothers of the next generation of children. Of the many interlocking forms of deprivation experienced by poor and nearpoor children in the United States, food insecurity is one of the most readily measured as well as one of the most rapidly remediable by policy changes. The United States, unlike many other nations, is clearly capable of producing and distributing sufficient healthful food to all its inhabitants, constrained only by political will.

NOTES 1. A. H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1970). 2. M. Nord, M. Andrews, and S. Carlson, Measuring Food Security in the United States: Household Food Security in the United States, 2007 (Economic Research Report No. 66, USDA Economic Research Service, Washington, DC, November 2008), http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err66/ (accessed December 6, 2008). 3. S. A. Anderson, ed., “Core Indicators of Nutritional State for Difficult-toSample Populations,” Journal of Nutrition 120, no. 11S (1990): 1557–1600. 4. Ibid. 5. Nord, Andrews, and Carlson, Measuring Food Security in the United States: Household Food Security in the United States, 2007; S. A. Anderson, ed., “Core Indicators of Nutritional State for Difficult-to-Sample Populations” 1557–1600; W. L. Hamilton et al., “Household Food Security in the United States in 1995: Technical Report,” (Alexandria, VA: prepared by Abt Associates, Inc., for U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Consumer Service, 1997); G. W. Bickel, M. S. Andrews, and B. W. Klein, “Measuring Food Security in the United States: A Supplement to the CPS,” in Nutrition and Food Security in the Food Stamp Program, ed. D. Hall and M. Stavrianos (Alexandria, VA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Consumer Service, 1996). 6. S. A. Anderson, ed., “Core Indicators of Nutritional State for Difficult-toSample Populations.” 7. W. L. Hamilton et al., “Household Food Security in the United States in 1995: Technical Report"; Bickel, Andrews, and Klein, “Measuring Food Security in the United States: A Supplement to the CPS.” 8. Nord, Andrews, and Carlson, Measuring Food Security in the United States: Household Food Security in the United States, 2007; W. L. Hamilton et al., “Household Food Security in the United States in 1995: Technical Report.” 9. Nord, Andrews, and Carlson, Measuring Food Security. 10. M. Nord and H. Hopwood, “Recent Advances Provide Improved Tools for Measuring Children’s Food Security,” Journal of Nutrition 137 (2007): 533–36. 11. Ibid. 12. Bickel, Andrews, and Klein, “Measuring Food Security in the United States: A Supplement to the CPS.” 13. U.S. Census Bureau, “How the Census Bureau Measures Poverty—Official Measures,” http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/povdef.html#1 (accessed June 25, 2007).


155

14. U.S. Census Bureau, “Poverty Thresholds,” http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/ poverty/threshld.html (accessed June 25, 2007.) 15. Constance F. Citro and Robert T. Michael, eds., Measuring Poverty: A New Approach (Washington, D.C., National Academy Press, 1995). 16. Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, Defining Success in the New Economy: Self-Sufficiency as a Benchmark for Workforce Programs (Boston, MA: prepared for the Commonwealth Corporation, 2001). 17. C. DeNavas-Walt, B. D. Proctor, and J. C. Smith, Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2007, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P60-235 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2008). 18. Nord, Andrews, and Carlson, Measuring Food Security in the United States: Household Food Security in the United States, 2007. 19. J. T. Cook, Child Food Insecurity in the United States: 2004–2006 (Chicago, IL: Feeding America–formerly America’s Second Harvest, The Nation’s Food Bank Network, 2008). 20. A. Drewnowski and S. E. Specter, “Poverty and Obesity: The Role of Energy Density and Energy Costs,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 79 (2004): 6–16; W. H. Dietz, “Does Hunger Cause Obesity?” Pediatrics 95, no. 5 (1995): 766–767; C. M. Olson, “Nutrition and Health Outcomes Associated with Food Insecurity and Hunger,” Journal of Nutrition 129 (1999): 521S–524S; M. S. Townsend et al., “Food Insecurity is Positively Related to Overweight in Women,” Journal of Nutrition 131 (2001): 1738– 45; E. J. Adams, L. Grummer-Strawn, and G. Chavez, “Food Insecurity is Associated with Increased Risk of Obesity in California Women,” Journal of Nutrition 133 (2003): 1070–74. 21. G. Bickel et al., Measuring Food Security in the United States: Guide To Measuring Household Food Security, rev. ed. (Alexandria, VA: USDA, Food and Nutrition Service, Office of Analysis, 2000); F. P. Glascoe, Collaborating with Parents: Using Parents’ Evaluation of Developmental Status to Detect and Address Developmental and Behavioral Problems (Nashville, TN: Ellsworth and Vandermeer Press, Ltd., 1998). 22. J. T. Cook et al., “Food Insecurity Is Associated With Adverse Health Outcomes Among Human Infants and Toddlers,” Journal of Nutrition 134, no. 6 (2004): 1432–38. 23. S. A. Anderson, ed., “Core Indicators of Nutritional State for Difficult-toSample Populations"; DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, and Smith, Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2007; U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P60–235 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2008); J. T. Cook, Child Food Insecurity in the United States: 2004–2006 (Chicago, IL: Feeding America– formerly America’s Second Harvest, The Nation’s Food Bank Network, 2008); A. Drewnowski and S. E. Specter, “Poverty and Obesity: The Role of Energy Density and Energy Costs,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 79 (2004): 6–16; W. H. Dietz, “Does Hunger Cause Obesity?” Pediatrics 95, no. 5 (1995): 766–67; C. M. Olson, “Nutrition and Health Outcomes Associated with Food Insecurity and Hunger,” Journal of Nutrition 129 (1999): 521S–524S. 24. J. T. Cook et al., “Child Food Insecurity Increases Risks Posed by Household Food Insecurity to Young Children’s Health,” Journal of Nutrition 136 (2006): 1073–76. 25. B. J. Lee, L. Mackey-Bilaver, and M. Chin, Effects of WIC and Food Stamp Program Participation on Child Outcomes (Contractor and Cooperator Report No. 27, USDA Economic Research Service, Washington, DC, December 2006). 26. A. Skalicky, A. F. Meyers, W. G. Adams, Z. Yang, J. T. Cook, and D. A. Frank, “Child Food Insecurity and Iron Deficiency Anemia in Low-Income Infants and Toddlers in the United States”, Maternal and Child Health Journal 10, No. 2 (March 2006).

156


27. Ibid. 28. M. C. Lovejoy et al., “Maternal Depression and Parenting: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Clinical Psychology Review 20, no. 5 (2000): 561–92. 29. P. Casey et al., “Children’s Sentinel Nutritional Assessment Program Study Group: Maternal Depression, Changing Public Assistance, Food Security, and Child Health Status,” Pediatrics 113, no. 2 (2004): 298–304. 30. Ibid. 31. K. Alaimo et al., “Food Insufficiency, Family Income, and Health in U.S. Preschool and School-Aged Children,” American Journal of Public Health 91, no. 5 (2001): 781–86. 32. K. Alaimo, C. M. Olson, and E. A. Frongillo Jr., “Food Insufficiency and American School-Aged Children’s Cognitive, Academic, and Psychosocial Development,” Pediatrics 108, no. 1 (2001): 44–53. 33. K. Alaimo, C. M. Olson, and E. A. Frongillo Jr., “Family Food Insufficiency, but Not Low Family Income, Is Positively Associated with Dysthymia and Suicide Symptoms in Adolescents,” Journal of Nutrition 132, no. 4 (2002): 719–25. 34. J. M. Murphy et al., “Relationship Between Hunger and Psychosocial Functioning in Low-Income American Children,” Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 37, no. 2 (1998): 163–70. 35. R. E. Kleinman et al., “Hunger in Children in the United States: Potential Behavioral and Emotional Correlates,” Pediatrics 101, no. 1 (1998): E3. 36. L. Weinreb et al., “Hunger: Its Impact on Children’s Health and Mental Health,” Pediatrics 110, no. 4 (2002): E41. 37. D. F. Jyoti, E. A. Frongillo, and S. J. Jones, “Food Insecurity Affects School Children’s Academic Performance, Weight Gain, and Social Skills,” Journal of Nutrition 135 (2005): 2831–39. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid.

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Cook, J. T. et al. “Food Insecurity Is Associated with Adverse Health Outcomes among Human Infants and Toddlers.” Journal of Nutrition 134, no. 6 (2004): 1432–38. Jyoti, D. F., E. A. Frongillo, and S. J. Jones. “Food Insecurity Affects School Children’s Academic Performance, Weight Gain, and Social Skills.” Journal of Nutrition 135 (2005): 2831–39.

Web Site Children’s HealthWatch, http://www.childrenshealthwatch.org/.

11 Food Security in Developing Countries John M. Staatz, Duncan H. Boughton, and Cynthia Donovan The term “food security” is like a blank screen. Each author seems to project her own meaning on the term, despite the efforts of such organizations as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to develop standard definitions. For some, food security means national or local food self-sufficiency—an argument to protect local farmers against outside competition and an argument against production of cashcrops for export; for others, it is equated with emergency famine relief. With its multitude of meanings, “food security” is invoked to justify all sorts of actions, some of which are detrimental to the well-being of the hungry. The purposes of this chapter are to provide a systematic definition of food security, focusing on its different dimensions; examine the nature and magnitude of the different dimensions of food insecurity in developing countries; discuss the difficult trade-offs that policymakers face in trying to address food security’s multiple dimensions simultaneously; and explore promising new approaches to address food insecurity. The geographic focus is on Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where the majority of the world’s food-insecure people live.

DEFINING FOOD SECURITY The FAO defines food security as follows: “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” Definitions used by the USDA, the World Bank, and the U.S. Agency for International Development are similar.1 This definition, while seemingly straightforward, has several important implications. The authors acknowledge with gratitude the financial support of the United States Agency for International Development, Bureau of Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade, through the Food Security III Cooperative Agreement (award number GDG-A-0-02-0000021-00) with Michigan State University. The view expressed are solely those of the authors.

158


Access and Availability First, food security requires that all people have access to sufficient food. Having access to food requires that the food be available, but availability does not guarantee access. Thus, a focus on trying to ensure food security simply through increasing food production is incomplete at best, and in some circumstances, actually can worsen access to food by pricing the poor out of the market if local production takes place at high cost. Access involves having both physical access to a place where food is available and economic access—that is, having a socially legitimate claim to that food—what Amartya Sen calls an “entitlement to food.”2 This entitlement can come about through owning the food a person has produced himself, having the purchasing power to buy it in the market, or having some other recognized claim to the food, such as being a family member entitled to a share of household resources or being included in a relief agency’s list of those qualifying for food aid. Sen notes that at a most fundamental level, people are hungry because they do not own enough food; thus, to understand hunger, one needs to study the structure of ownership in society.3 Food security in a given locale is thus inextricably linked to the fundamental rules of that society—everything from land tenure to gender roles to where international borders are drawn. The food insecure are hungry ultimately not because their villages or countries produce too little food, but because the hungry do not own enough rights in society to command that an adequate diet be produced (either through their own efforts or those of others) and ceded to them. In this fundamental sense, food insecurity is a question of poverty. For the majority of the people in the world, including the majority in lowincome countries, access to food comes at least partially through the market— through having the income necessary to purchase an adequate diet rather than produce it entirely oneself.4 Having sufficient income to purchase an adequate diet depends not only on the amount of money one earns but also on the price of food. Here is where the availability and the access dimensions of food security become inextricably linked. Availability reflects the supply side of the food security equation, while access reflects effective demand, with food prices linking the two sides of the equation.5 In low-income countries, where the poor may spend up to 70 percent of their cash incomes on food, the price of food determines in large part the poor’s real income (i.e., what goods they can obtain with their earnings) as well as wage rates for unskilled labor, and thus nonfarm employment opportunities. The price of food, in turn, depends on the cost at which the food can be made available, either through local production, commercial imports, or aid. It is the cost of food to the consumer relative to her income, not the physical availability per se, that is crucial in determining food security. Mountains of high-priced food do little to help the poor who have no claim on that food. For example, the Bangladesh famine of 1974, in which between twenty-six thousand and one hundred thousand people perished, occurred in a year in which food grain availability per capita actually was higher than it had been in any of the preceding three “normal” years. The famine was triggered by floods that destroyed the earning opportunities of landless rural workers, so that even though food was available, it was too “expensive” relative to their very low incomes.6

Food Security in Developing Countries

159

The real cost of food to consumers depends not only on farm-level productivity (which determines farm-level cost of production), but also on productivity throughout the food system—the set of activities that runs from “seed to table,” including agricultural input markets, assembly markets, processing, wholesaling, and retailing. Frequently, in poor countries, postharvest operations account for more than 50 percent of the cost to the consumer of even relatively unprocessed products, such as grains, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, where transport costs are high. Productivity is the key concept here rather than production. Productivity refers to the efficiency with which resources (e.g., farm labor, fertilizer, and seeds) are converted to desired outputs (e.g., food). Production simply refers to the level of output, which can be raised in many ways. Some ways can be costly, such as the heavy use of subsidies; these drain resources from other productive uses in society, for example, the financing of health care, agricultural research, and expanded education, many of which are critical inputs to long-term food security. Thus, initiatives that simply seek to increase food production with little regard to improving the productivity of the food system ultimately contribute little if anything to food security. Because the food system is a major employer of the poor in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (either as farmers, farm laborers, or in marketing and processing activities), increasing productivity of this system (an aspect of “food availability”) is linked in another important way to food access. Increasing productivity in the food system increases incomes of these workers, improving their ability to access food through the market. Broad-based growth of agriculture and the rest of the food system is thus critical to improving food security, but its impact on raising the incomes of the food insecure is at least as important as its impact on increasing local food availability. Utilization The FAO definition of food security speaks of “sufficient, safe and nutritious food for an active and healthy life.” An active and healthy life requires, at the cellular level, that the person’s body be able to extract and use the nutrients in the food consumed. Thus, how the food is prepared (which affects its nutritional value) and the state of health of an individual (which affects the body’s ability to absorb and use the nutrients) affect food security. Diarrhea, intestinal parasites, and a host of diseases can compromise the body’s ability to benefit from the food ingested.7 Efforts to provide safe drinking water; control, treat, and prevent disease (e.g., through vaccinations and oral rehydration therapy); and offer improved nutrition education all contribute to food security through improving food utilization, and, in some cases, may contribute more to food security than increasing local food production. Transitory versus Chronic Food Insecurity People become food insecure when the availability of food, their access to it, or their ability to utilize it are disrupted, either on a transitory or a chronic basis. For example, hurricanes or wars can wipe out crops, livestock, and roads, temporarily disrupting both food availability and access, leading to transitory food insecurity. The most extreme example of transitory food insecurity is famine, in which thousands or millions of people are pushed to starvation by such disruptions. Given the

160


great improvements in emergency relief procedures in the second half of the twentieth century, no major famines since the late 1970s have been caused by natural disasters, such as droughts, alone. All the major famines since the 1980s have had human disruptions, typically war and civil strife, as major contributors. Famine is the most visible manifestation of food insecurity. As real and as painful as images of famine are, however, it represents just the tip of the iceberg of food insecurity. In a given year, famine may affect a few million people worldwide. Yet chronic food insecurity, reflecting long-term inadequate access to food and the ability to utilize it (due to poor health) affects nearly one billion people per year.8 This chronic food insecurity is a silent killer that increases morbidity and mortality (especially among children), saps the energy of large elements of the population, reduces the cognitive ability of malnourished children, and slows economic growth. Its root causes are poverty (which results in inadequate access to food), slow productivity growth throughout the food system (which affects both the real cost of food to consumers and the incomes of those working in the food system), and poor health and nutritional knowledge (which affect the body’s ability to utilize the food consumed). Addressing the problem of chronic food security represents one of the most important yet stubborn challenges of the twenty-first century. Just as food access and food availability are linked and cannot be analyzed independently, so too are transitory and chronic food insecurity. Coping strategies provide the conceptual link between the two. As poor households attempt to cope with transitory food insecurity, they frequently sell off assets (farm equipment, draft animals, and in the extreme, their seed for next year’s planting), compromising their ability to produce food or income in subsequent periods, plunging them into chronic food insecurity. Such a transition is referred to as a poverty trap.9 One of the challenges in responding to acute food insecurity crises, particularly when relief responses are limited, is how to target relief to those households that absent assistance are most likely to fall into such poverty traps. Magnitude and Location of Food Insecurity in the World The FAO estimates that as of early 2009, 963 million people suffered from undernourishment, which it defines as chronic hunger.10 While the number of undernourished in the world grew by eighty million between 1990–1992 and 2008, the percentage of the population in developing countries suffering from undernourishment fell steadily from 1990–1992 through 2006, from 20 to 16 percent, reflecting impressive progress in poverty reduction in Asia over the period, particularly in China and India. During the period 1997–2006, the rate of undernourishment fell by more than 3 percent per year in East Asia and by 1.7 percent in South Asia.11 But the global incidence of undernourishment, or chronic food insecurity, reversed its long-term decline in 2007–2008, as the worldwide food price increases reduced the poor’s economic access to food. As shown in Table 11.1, South Asia is home to the largest number of the food insecure (314 million in 2003–2005; 21 percent of the region’s population), but Sub-Saharan Africa has the largest incidence of undernourishment (30 percent of the population, for a total of 212 million people). Sub-Saharan Africa remains the part of the world where food insecurity seems most intractable, as evidenced by high, and in some cases increasing, rates of undernourishment. These high rates are

161

Food Security in Developing Countries Table 11.1. Prevalence of Undernourishment in the World, 2003–2005

Region World Developing Countries Asia and the Pacific East Asia China Southeast Asia South Asia India Latin America and Caribbean Near East and North Africa Sub-Saharan Africa Central Africa East Africa Southern Africa West Africa

Total Population (millions)

Undernourished Population (millions)

Percent of Total Malnourished

6,406.0 5,141.0 3,478.6 1,930.6 1,312.4 544.5 1,468.4 1,117.0 544.2

848.0 832.2 541.9 218.7 122.7 86.9 313.6 230.5 45.2

13 16 16 11 9 16 21 21 8

420.0 698.6 93.1 242.4 99.2 263.7

33.0 212.1 53.3 86.0 36.8 36.0

8 30 57 35 37 14

Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008 (Rome: FAO, 2008), 48–49.

frequently associated with disruption of the food system and collapse of incomes caused by current or recent wars (e.g., the rate of undernourishment in 2003–2005 was 76 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 68 percent in Eritrea). Yet even in Africa, as shown in Table 11.1, the rates are highly variable by region, with the countries of West Africa that were not involved in civil strife generally having the subcontinent’s lowest rates of chronic food insecurity. Ironically, even though food in developing countries is overwhelmingly produced in rural areas, a disproportionate share of the food insecure live in these areas, where incomes, and hence economic access to food, are much lower than in urban areas.12 Yet with rapid urbanization in most developing countries, urban food insecurity is a growing problem. A common feature of many of the food insecure in both urban and rural areas is their reliance on markets to obtain most of their food. While the urban poor’s reliance on food markets is widely recognized, it is less well known that the majority of the rural food insecure, including not only the landless but frequently the majority of small farmers, are net buyers of basic staples.13 Thus, improving the efficiency of both urban and rural food markets to drive down the real cost of food to poor consumers needs to be a central element of any strategy to reduce chronic food insecurity. Approaches to Improving Food Security Given the broad definition of food security, covering food availability, access, and utilization, it is not surprising that a wide range of projects and programs claim

162


to improve either transitory or chronic food security. Efforts aimed at dealing with transitory food insecurity have focused on all three dimensions of food insecurity: availability (e.g., through the creation of food reserve stocks), access (e.g., through distribution of emergency rations), and utilization (e.g., through distribution of oral rehydration kits to control diarrhea). Efforts to reduce chronic food insecurity have focused mainly on improving food availability. These efforts have included (1) development of improved agricultural technologies through conventional and transgenic plant and animal breeding and better farm equipment; (2) improved postharvest handling, processing, and marketing technologies; (3) expansion of the quantity and quality of farmland available, including expansion of irrigation; and (4) access to agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and improved seeds. On a global level, increases in agricultural productivity are essential to allow food availability to grow apace with demand, which is driven by population growth, higher incomes, and increasing demands for nonfood uses of the products (e.g., biofuels). Yet on a country and local level, a single-minded focus on the availability side of food security may be counterproductive for three reasons: (1) local food self-sufficiency may be a costly way of achieving food security, (2) the pattern of resource use to achieve agricultural growth is at least equally important for improving food security as the rate of agricultural growth, and (3) some efforts to expand food availability through increased production may hurt food utilization. Self-Sufficiency as a Costly Path to Food Security Self-sufficiency refers to producing most or all of the food one consumes oneself—at the household, national, or regional level. Advocates of a “food first” approach14 argue that food-insecure countries should give first priority to producing staple foods for their own populations and eschew production of export crops, which is seen as using the resources of the poor to feed rich overseas consumers (or fill the fuel tanks of the rich with biofuels). The shortcoming of this approach is that it focuses only on the impact of agricultural production on food availability and ignores economic access to that food. If the poor can participate in a remunerative way in the production of export commodities (either through producing the products themselves, as is the case in smallholder cocoa and coffee production in West Africa; or through employment elsewhere in the value chain), and if staple food markets work well, the poor may be able to assure themselves much greater access to food by participating in the export production and using their earnings to buy food produced by others (e.g., rice farmers in Vietnam). A self-sufficiency approach foregoes the potential gains from comparative advantage and trade, which historically have been major factors in improving the welfare of the poor in much of the world.15 However, lack of access by the poor to remunerative participation in export production (e.g., due to insecure land tenure, highly stringent grades and standards, and weak labor laws) and poorly functioning international and local food markets can undermine these potential gains from a trade-based approach to food security. For example, export restrictions imposed by many Asian and African food-exporting countries during the food crisis of 2007–2008 led many countries to move away from trade-based approaches to food security, seeking instead either to increase their food self-sufficiency or to acquire access to overseas


163

land where they could produce food to export to their own countries.16 These developments highlight the need for international agreements aimed at ensuring reliable, open international markets for food if countries are to avoid costly second-best approaches to ensuring food security.

The Pattern of Agricultural Growth Efforts to expand agricultural production through large-scale mechanized farming in low-income areas of Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa fall into the same trap as the Food First approaches—they focus solely on increasing food availability, with little attention to whether the projects generate the broad-based income growth essential to improving the poor’s access to food. Frequently, such large-scale approaches use capital-intensive, labor-saving equipment such as large tractors and combines that are economically efficient in high-income countries where labor is expensive and capital is relatively cheap but that are not efficient in the low-wage economies of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Few such projects for the production of staple foods have been sustainable in these areas without substantial subsidies.17 Moreover, such approaches, by concentrating the returns to farming in a few hands of large landowners, fail to generate the broad-based mass of purchasing power necessary for sustained growth of both agricultural and nonagricultural incomes that are at the core of ensuring improved access to food.18

Potential Conflicts between Agricultural Expansion and Other Contributors to Food Security Poorly designed efforts to expand agricultural production can lead to unintended negative effects on food security by compromising food utilization. For example, expanded agricultural production may increase demands on women’s time for agricultural tasks, which can lead mothers to devote less time to child care (resulting in poorer child health). Irrigation schemes may result in more standing water and consequently growing populations of disease vectors, such as mosquitoes and schistosomiasis-bearing snails, and agricultural workers may face greater exposure to pesticides. In each case, the resulting poorer health can lead to poorer food utilization and hence greater malnutrition. The solution is not to eschew agricultural growth, but to recognize that food security is determined by factors broader than just agricultural production; consequently, efforts to expand agricultural production need to consider these other factors. These considerations notwithstanding, increasing broad-based agricultural production is critical to improving long-term food security in most low-income countries, not only to increase food availability, but also to increase incomes of the poor (both in agriculture and related nonagricultural enterprises) in order to increase their economic access to food and to provide the economic growth necessary to finance the education and health services critical to improving food utilization.19 The central challenge is to do so in a way that fosters improved food access, availability, and utilization in the long run and is consistent with responding to short-run crises of food insecurity.

164


The Central Challenge: Designing Approaches That Simultaneously Address Transitory and Chronic Food Insecurity The central challenge in dealing with food insecurity is to design approaches that deal with short-term (transitory) food crises in ways that do not undermine the long-term productivity growth that is critical to overcoming chronic food insecurity. Many traditional ways of dealing with food crises, such as distribution of emergency food aid, imposition of price controls, and bans on food exports, depress food prices and thereby undermine incentives for farmers, traders, and processors to invest in the types of productivity-enhancing innovations critical to reducing chronic food insecurity. The challenge arises because of what Timmer, Falcon, and Pearson have termed the food price dilemma.20 The dilemma arises because food prices play a dual role in the economy: they create incentives for farmers, traders, and processors to invest in productivity-enhancing innovations in the food system (the higher the prices, the greater the incentive); and they are major determinants of the real income of the poor, and hence their access to food (the lower the prices, the greater the access). This dual role of food prices makes “getting prices right” to promote food security a complex task, as one needs to ask “right for whom and over what time period?” The long-term solution to the food price dilemma is increased productivity throughout the food system, which allows food to be produced and delivered to consumers at lower real prices (by lowering costs), while maintaining sufficient profitability in the system to induce ongoing private investment. The problem is that in the short run, many people still face food insecurity, and their coping strategies may lead them to disinvest (sell off or eat their assets, such as livestock), which undermines productivity growth. Thus, efforts to spur productivity growth over the longer term must be accompanied by shorter-term measures to protect those most vulnerable to both transitory and chronic food insecurity. Timmer, Falcon, and Pearson’s recommended solution for transitory food insecurity is targeted food subsidies to the poor. The notion of targeting is crucial because the cost to a country of generalized subsidies (either explicit budgetary subsidies to reduce the price of food, or implicit subsidies, such as those that result from price controls) is high. The cost is high in terms of budgetary outlays or in terms of the opportunity cost of resources that could be used either to increase productivity in the food system or invest in other activities, such as improved health systems or nutrition-education programs. Ideally, what one seeks are targeted subsidies that actually enhance rather than discourage the long-term investments necessary to improve productivity throughout the food system. Examples include food-for-work programs that build infrastructure that reduces marketing costs for food, and child feeding programs that keep children in school, thereby expanding investment in the human capital needed to spur broad-based income growth. Targeting such assistance is difficult, however, in economies characterized by pervasive poverty and where the administrative capacity to identify “the deserving poor” from the “undeserving” is weak. We now turn to operational approaches to address the food-price dilemma, focusing on ways to increase productivity in the food system and reduce transitory food insecurity in ways that are mutually reinforcing.


165

WAYS FORWARD: OPERATIONAL APPROACHES Improving Food System Productivity Increases in productivity of the food system require increases in productivity on the farm (as well as off the farm so that agricultural inputs can reach the farm) and require farm produce be delivered to consumers more cheaply. Increases in the productivity of food systems require capital investments. And given two decades of underinvestment in agriculture in food-insecure countries, there is a lot of catching up to do.21 Bonnen identifies four types of capital necessary for rural development: physical, biological, human, and institutional. The mix of these types of capital will vary over time and space according to the natural and economic endowments of a particular food system, but all four types of capital must be engaged.22 Physical capital investments lower the cost of food by increasing the productivity of labor and management in both the on- and off-farm parts of the food system. Massive investments in irrigation were the foundation of Asia’s Green Revolution. With water control established, modern varieties could express their full yield potential with little risk of crop failure. The higher financial profitability of irrigated production led to a second round of investments in equipment, such as mechanical threshers and power tillers. Physical capital investments also took place off the farm, in primary and secondary road networks, and crop storage and marketing facilities. While capital investments like irrigation may contribute to reducing food insecurity, they are not a panacea. They are costly investments and require high levels of management and expensive maintenance, and water is also becoming an increasingly scarce resource. For example, only 3.5 percent of SubSaharan Africa’s arable land is irrigated, less than a fourth that of India in 1961, at the dawn of its Green Revolution. Increasing the percentage of irrigated land up to the level India had in 1960 would cost approximately US$114 billion, more than fifty-five times the annual official development assistance allocated to African agricultural development in the early 2000s.23 Biological capital refers to ecosystem resources, such as soil, plant life, forests, aquifers, and wildlife, as well as investments in genetic modification to increase the biological and economic productivity of plants and animals. The importance of biological capital is receiving greater attention because of concerns about loss of biodiversity, as well as the potential to earn income through trading carbon credits. In many food insecure countries, particularly in Africa, soil biological capital has become severely degraded.24 The increased real cost of chemical fertilizers makes investment in improved, biologically sustainable production systems— together with conservation farming techniques that make better use of limited rainfall—a high priority. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs), often painted as a threat to biodiversity in industrial countries where they were developed to tolerate specific herbicides or resist pests, may have a key role to play in achieving food security in the future. Examples of GMOs include varieties of drought-resistant corn, parasitic weed-resistant sorghum, vitamin A–enriched rice and cassava, aflatoxin-resistant peanuts, and insect-resistant pulses. Human capital investment is essential for increased productivity on the farm, for diversification into nonfarm income sources, and for making the transition to full-time employment in nonagricultural sectors.25 Human capital investment

166


involves, primarily, education and improved health. Indeed, the effectiveness of investment in education requires complementary investments in health and nutrition. On the farm, education in literacy and numeracy provides the foundation for learning about improved production and storage technologies. It also facilitates membership in farming organizations and the ability to use market information. Education is also correlated with the ability to diversify into nonfarm activities that use off-season labor.26 Nonfarm activities both increase total households income and provide an important shock absorber when farm income is reduced by climatic or disease problems. Education is essential to the transition from employment in the agricultural to nonagricultural sectors, which often is accompanied by migration from rural to urban areas. When migration takes place without adequate investment in education, the result can simply be a transfer of rural food insecurity to urban food insecurity, and even greater levels of political instability. Institutional capital is the “invisible hand” that enables markets to work. Institutions define ownership of resources and the rules by which they can be exchanged. In addition to laws concerning property rights, and the mechanisms to enforce them, a broad range of institutional “software” is needed to enable food systems to function effectively, such as food policies (including trade policy), grades and standards, rules governing commodity exchanges, biosafety frameworks for the development and testing of GMOs, and agricultural statistics and market information systems. The creation and maintenance of this economic software is costly, involving investments such as the development and retention of trained researchers and analysts, and investment in land-titling programs to enable assets to be used as collateral. An important subset of institutions relates to the management of production and exchange risks at different levels of the food system— household, community, national, and global. While the specific mix and form of each type of capital will vary, all are needed to achieve improvements in food security. Two key issues for development policy are (1) who should be responsible for identifying and making the investments (public versus private versus community investments), and (2) what policy framework will best facilitate private investment? There is high degree of interdependence between public, private, and community investments in the four types of capital necessary for the promotion of food security over time. A particular challenge to policymakers is the high degree of heterogeneity in capital resource endowments within rural communities, as well as across communities (i.e., spatially). For example, the majority of smallholders in Africa are net buyers of food staples; and even among those with a surplus, the majority of sales come from just a small minority of households.27 Thus, trade policy and marketing investments that lead to higher prices for sellers in a given location may hurt net buyers in the same location (even if net buyers somewhere else are better off as a result). Recognizing and understanding heterogeneity in resource endowments is essential to developing strategies and programs with the appropriate mix and form of capital investments to avoid “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” Decentralized approaches to local food security planning, such as those adopted recently in Mali, where local communities develop their own priorities, which then guide public (including local) and nongovernmental organization (NGO) investments to improve food security, are one way to address such heterogeneity.28


167

Addressing Transitory Food Insecurity in a Way That Reduces Chronic Food Insecurity When evaluating ways to address transitory food insecurity, a critical step is to seek solutions that address short-term food needs of the vulnerable and simultaneously support (or at least do not damage) long-term improvements in food security. Selecting food aid commodities and distribution systems that do not undermine local production incentives is one of the key decisions highlighted in the literature, but there are many other areas in which interventions to meet short-term needs actually can support long-term improvements. Saving lives by improving transitory food security, especially during emergencies with the risk of famine, has been the focus of international organizations such as the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), as well as nongovernmental organizations and national governments. While past emergency response efforts have not always been closely coordinated with long-term development programs, new approaches seek to meet immediate food needs while building assets and improving future prospects for achieving long-term food security, at individual, household, community, and market levels. These interventions may address food availability issues, such as improving agricultural production or lowering transport costs, or they may improve access by increasing incomes of food-insecure households. Food-for-work and cash-for-work programs have been in use for decades, including during the Great Depression of the 1930s in the United States and during crises in India since the 1960s and in Bangladesh in 1975 and 2000–2001, helping to build infrastructure while providing income to impoverished workers. In these programs, participants receive much-needed income in the form of cash or food, while the roads built or forests planted contribute to long-term growth or sustainability for society as a whole. For success in meeting the short-term needs, there must be labor availability in the households with greatest need. For example, if the most food-insecure households are made up of the aged and infirm, such programs will not be effective in raising their incomes. Also, the program must be designed to attract those households with the greatest need and not draw labor from other productive activities. In food-for-work programs, the selection of foods used to pay the workers can mean the difference between households eating the food or selling the food to obtain other types of food, pay debts, or use the receipts in other ways. Cash transfers, whether conditional (e.g., in exchange for sending children to school) or unconditional (given simply as payments to those deemed most foodinsecure) are one type of intervention being used more frequently in recent years as an alternative to delivery of food aid directly to households. As with the foodand cash-for-work schemes, the design of the programs and the targeting aspects are essential to ensure that the needs of the food insecure can be met. Unconditional cash transfers to food-insecure households or individuals are designed to help provide the means to purchase the food in local markets. As an alternative to free food distribution, this approach aims to (1) give the household greater choice in the type of food obtained and (2) rely on the private marketing system, rather than relief agencies, to deliver the food, thereby increasing incentives to local farmers and traders to invest in food production and distribution. Since cash is fungible, however, cash transfers enable households to make their

168


own decisions on the use of the funds, whether for health needs, food, school fees, or other needs. Although some may see use of the money on nonfood items as a “leakage” of a food-security program, funds spent on health care, for example, may increase food security by improving food utilization. Although donors have expressed concern about how the funds will be used, program monitoring in several pilot schemes indicates that the fears of misuse by recipients (to buy alcohol or “luxury” items) may be exaggerated.29 Many safety-net programs use cash transfers, especially in urban environments where the markets for consumer staples are functioning and can respond to increased demand caused by the income transfer. Key to this intervention is the idea that the cash inflow will assist the household in retaining productive assets (including human health) that enable the household to survive and avoid falling into a poverty trap. Such programs are not, however, suitable for emergency situations in which markets have been severely disrupted and in which the injection of increased purchasing power by the poor will likely lead to increased food price inflation. In such situations (which are usually temporary), direct distribution of food is frequently more effective in addressing transitory food insecurity. Conditional cash transfers are funds that are available to an individual or a household if specific actions are taken. For example, households may be given cash if their daughters attend school. The current income supplement encourages building the human capital of girls, which is known to bring about improvements in health and welfare over time in rural communities where girls are not attending school.30 Another example is vouchers that have value when used for the purchase of seeds or other agricultural inputs. In this case, the transfer encourages agricultural investments that are designed to increase incomes within a cropping cycle, while also enabling farmers to select new technologies with less financial risk. In contrast to unconditional cash transfers, investment decisions resulting from conditional cash transfers are made by a third party that sets the conditions for the grant (e.g., a local government or an NGO), with a specific view on what will make a long-term difference while meeting the immediate food need. Innovations on the food-availability (supply) side are currently being tested. With the encouragement of several donors, the WFP is increasingly purchasing food for aid distributions within the country or region of the distributions. For example, in 2001–2005, WFP purchased maize and beans in Mozambique to distribute within Mozambique to victims of flood and drought, as well as to chronically food-insecure populations. The three key goals with this approach are (1) to meet the food needs of vulnerable populations with locally appropriate foods; (2) to lower the costs of procurement and distribution of food aid by buying locally; and (3) to increase the producer incentives for production within the country to meet those needs now and in the future. Tschirley and del Castillo evaluated WFP local and regional purchase operations and found that the first and second objectives are usually met.31 Additional research is needed to fully assess the third objective. Local and regional purchases work best when food shortages are localized or when food insecurity is primarily caused by low incomes (poor access). Purchasing relief supplies locally in the context of a widespread production shortfall can lead to further food price inflation. Related to the local and regional purchase are the efforts to increase food staple stocks in rural areas, which can be achieved by improving on-farm storage,


169

community grain banks, or market storage incentives. In Mozambique, community development funds have been used as seasonal stocking loans for private traders, such that maize, a major staple, can be sold by local farmers, and then those stocks are available for the local markets later in the year when farm stocks run low. Community cereal banks have been promoted based on the same idea, although management of such cereal banks frequently remains problematic. Food-aid decision-makers may also look to commodity selection as a key supply-side consideration. Research in southern Africa has demonstrated that by distributing maize grain rather than flour, there is increased use of local small-scale maize milling facilities in rural and urban areas, providing a low-cost staple, which is an inferior good in economic terms, but more nutritious than industrially refined flours.32 Thus, the self-targeting commodity (maize grain for whole-grain maize flour) is useful in developing local processing, while avoiding leakage of the product to nontarget populations. Local knowledge is needed to identify commodities that are self-targeting and least likely to cause problems for local producers and in local markets (e.g., rice with high percentage of broken grains, whole-grain maize meal, or cassava).

ROLES OF DIFFERENT ACTORS: WHO SHOULD DO WHAT? We now turn to the issue of organizational roles (i.e., who does what) with regard to the implementation of food-security measures. Major factors affecting the success or failure of food security initiatives are (1) the degree of organizational capacity to undertake identified roles, and (2) the ability to coordinate among organizations over time, space, and levels of aggregation. We focus primarily on Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) because of its very high incidence of food insecurity. The World Food Summit of 1996 recognized that national governments have primary responsibility for ensuring the food security of their populations.33 Indeed, the most severe food insecurity crises occur when national government fails or is overwhelmed. Governments are primarily responsible for providing the public goods to enable households to pursue food security through their economic activities. The most essential public goods are security of life and property and the rule of law. Governments are also responsible, in most cases, for ensuring the provision of investments, such as road and communication infrastructure, education, health services, crop and livestock pest and disease prevention, information services, and policy frameworks to govern resource use, markets, and trade (despite moves in recent years to support some of these services through user fees). The provision of public goods affecting food security is a complex proposition, involving multiple line ministries and multiple levels of government (local, regional, and national). The coordination challenge, even within government, let alone between government and other actors, is real and daunting. SSA nations, in particular, have found it difficult to put in place effectively coordinated national food security strategies. A 2008 U.S. Government Accountability Office report on international food security noted that fewer than half of national poverty reduction strategies in SSA adequately articulate food security as a priority despite high rates of malnutrition, and that in 2006 only seventeen of forty-eight SSA countries provided a report to the FAO office responsible for

170


monitoring the World Food Summit plan of action.34 A recent review of government responses to food crises in southern and eastern Africa found that interventions in national and regional food markets further aggravated the situation.35 As a consequence of the failure to make adequate, coordinated investments in food security, development assistance expenditure on food aid for African countries has risen dramatically over the last fifteen years, crowding out resources for investment in long-term food production growth. To encourage African governments to take greater responsibility for agriculture and food security, the Africa Union (AU) endorsed in 2003 the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program (CAADP). CAADP encourages countries to adopt annual targets for agriculture’s share of total public investment and agricultural growth of 10 percent and 6 percent, respectively, focusing on investment programs for land and water use, markets and agribusiness, food security, and agricultural technology. In 2008, the AU Ministers of Agriculture approved the Framework for African Food Security (FAFS), which provides guidance to countries on the development of national food security strategies and investment plans to improve food security risk management, increase food supply, improve dietary quality, and expand economic opportunities for vulnerable populations. While African governments, as well as governments in some smaller, very poor Asian countries such as Laos People’s Democratic Republic and Cambodia, are gradually taking more leadership for national food security policy, they clearly face major capacity constraints in terms of trained analytical capacity. As a result, functions that normally would be carried out by governments are often shared with (and in cases duplicated by) international donors and international NGOs and their local counterparts. As international prices for wheat and rice began to rise dramatically in early 2008, the WFP and FAO rapidly deployed country assessment teams in conjunction with country food-security thematic groups to assess the degree of vulnerability and response options. In some cases, the governments established their own response working groups, but without any regular consultation mechanism in place with the donor group. The role of international NGOs has expanded considerably over the past two decades from a primary focus on emergency food, medical, and disaster relief to include the delivery of a broad range of agricultural development services, including agricultural research, agricultural extension, seed multiplication and input delivery, and farmer association development. NGOs are facilitating the participation of smallholder farmers in commercial crop and livestock value chain development in partnership with private sector companies. Inevitably, the lines of responsibility between government, donors, and NGOs are blurred by government capacity constraints, and governments often find themselves in a catch-22 situation of being unable to compete with international organizations in recruitment and retention of qualified national personnel. For the vast majority of countries that adopt a market-based approach to food security, the private sector is the locomotive, and well-functioning food markets need to serve as the first line of defense against food insecurity. The private sector involves a broad range of actors, including farmers, farm organizations, input suppliers, traders at many levels, food processors and preparers, transporters, and banks. The private sector needs the support of government to provide public goods such as infrastructure, as well as transparent regulatory frameworks that safeguard


171

consumers and enable fair competition. It also needs the state to create “space” for civil society, including professional organizations for farmers and traders, which can undertake collective action to reduce transaction costs and lobby for policies to promote broad-based economic growth. Critical to effective coordination among government, the private sector, and civil society is trust, built on a foundation of understanding each other’s roles and constraints. All too often that understanding is missing, with government (and sometimes NGOs) perceiving the private sector as exploitative of farmers or consumers, or trust breaks down because regulations become a means to rent-seeking or bribery. When governments try to take over some of the functions of the private sector in response to food crises, the private sector can become “paralyzed” and the crisis becomes worse.36 Market information systems can provide a valuable communication bridge between the government and private sectors, and provide both with information needed to undertake their respective roles. Unfortunately, the rapid rise of prices on international markets in 2008, accompanied by temporary export bans, has undermined many governments’ confidence in the role of markets to achieve food security. Restoring that confidence will require careful analysis of international food market risks and risk management tools, as well as upgrading national market information systems to be able to analyze the likely impacts of international markets on domestic prices.

CONCLUSION Despite enormous progress in reducing poverty over the past twenty years, particularly in Asia, one out of every six people in the developing world suffers chronic hunger, a number that increases to one in three in SSA countries. Superimposed upon this landscape of chronic food insecurity are episodes of transitory food insecurity—crises caused by temporary disruptions of local food availability, vulnerable populations’ access to food, and their ability to utilize it. At its base, food insecurity in its different dimensions is rooted in poverty—of individuals, families, communities, and governments, as well as in a poverty of ideas and institutions. These ideas and institutions are needed to simultaneously foster the broad-based productivity growth in the food system needed to reduce chronic food insecurity in the long run and to build reliable and affordable social safety nets for both the chronically and temporarily destitute. If the various dimensions of food security—availability, access, and utilization, as well as transitory and chronic—could each be addressed independently, solutions would be much easier. But the various dimensions are inextricably linked through food prices and household coping strategies. For example, ensuring food security involves much more than just producing more food, and in some cases, concentrating single mindedly on local food production may actually undermine food security. The key challenge remains understanding how to design financially and socially sustainable strategies, policies, and programs that address the poverty and low productivity in the food system that lie at the heart of chronic food insecurity, while simultaneously addressing the very real needs of victims of transitory food crises. Improved technologies, policies, and institutions are all needed to address the challenge. All three can contribute, among other things, to making

172


food markets work better in both rural and urban areas. Such improvement needs to be a central part of any such strategy, given the huge reliance of the food insecure on such markets. But markets, by their very nature, do not serve the destitute, so complementary public policies are needed to reach those whom markets cannot serve, while not undermining the capacity of the markets to serve those who do have purchasing power. Such approaches require collaboration of the public sector, the private sector, and civil society. Building such approaches will remain one of humanity’s key challenges during the first half of the twenty-first century.

NOTES 1. FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), “Special Programme for Food Security,” http://www.fao.org/spfs/en/ (accessed December 22, 2008); U.S. Department of Agriculture and Economic Research Service, “Food Security in the United States: Measuring Household Food Security,” http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/ FoodSecurity/measurement.htm (accessed December 22, 2008); U.S. Agency for International Development and Bureau for Program and Policy Coordination, “Food Aid and Food Security Policy Paper” (Washington, DC: USAID, 1995), 7; Shlomo Reutlinger, “Policy Options for Food Security” (working paper, World Bank Agricultural Research Unit, Washington, DC, 1985). 2. Amartya Kumar Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (New York: Clarendon Press, 1982). 3. Ibid., 154–56. 4. Although the majority of the poor and malnourished in Sub-Saharan Africa still live in rural areas and are engaged in producing a significant portion of their own food, numerous surveys have shown that a very large number of these farmers, in some cases the majority, are net buyers of basic staples. Thus, the price of these staples in rural markets has a large impact on their food security. For details, see Michael T. Weber et al., “Informing Food Security Decisions in Africa: Empirical Analysis and Policy Dialogue,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 70, no. 5 (1988). 5. Effective demand is need backed up by purchasing power. For a discussion of the role of food prices in linking access and availability, see C. Peter Timmer, Walter P. Falcon, and Scott R. Pearson, Food Policy Analysis (Baltimore, MD: Published for the World Bank by Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983). 6. Sen, Poverty and Famines, 137–38. 7. The utilization of the food also depends on the safety of the food—it being free of chemicals and pathogens that could cause illness. Issues of food safety, while very important, are beyond the scope of this chapter. 8. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that soaring food prices in 2007 and the first half of 2008 increased the number of foodinsecure people in the world from 848 million in 2003–2005 to 963 million in 2009. This illustrates how food prices critically affect the poor’s access to food and hence their food security. See FAO, “FAO Newsroom: Number of Hungry People Rises to 963 Million,” http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/8836/icode/ (accessed January 10, 2009); FAO, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008 (Rome: FAO, 2008). 9. Michael R. Carter and Christopher B. Barrett, “The Economics of Poverty Traps and Persistent Poverty: An Asset-Based Approach,” Journal of Development Studies 42, no. 2 (2006): 178–199.


173

10. FAO, “FAO Newsroom.” Unless otherwise indicated, the figures cited in this and the following paragraph draw from this document and from the FAO’s State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008. 11. World Bank, World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007), 47, 94. 12. World Bank, World Development Report 2008, 96. 13. FAO, State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008, 24–25; Weber et al., “Informing Food Security Policy”; T. S. Jayne, D. Mather, and E. Mghenyi, “Smallholder Farming under Increasingly Difficult Circumstances: Policy and Public Investment Priorities for Africa” (working paper no. 86, ed. Carl Liedholm and Michael T. Weber, MSU International Development, Departments of Agricultural Economics and Economics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, 2006), http://aec.msu.edu/fs2/papers/idwp86.pdf. 14. See, for example, Frances Moore Lappe, Joseph Collins, and Cary Fowler, Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1977). 15. John M. Staatz, “Conceptual Issues in Analyzing the Economics of Agricultural and Food Self-Sufficiency,” in National and Regional Self-Sufficiency Goals: Implications for International Agriculture, ed. Fred J. Ruppel and Earl D. Kellogg (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991). 16. John M. Staatz et al., “Agricultural Globalization in Reverse: The Impact of the Food Crisis in West Africa” (paper presented at the Geneva Trade and Development Forum, Crans-Montana, Switzerland, 2008), http://www.gtdforum.org/download/Agri cultural%20Globalization%20in%20Reverse_MSU_Crans-Montana%20paper.final.pdf; GRAIN, “Seized! The 2008 Land Grab for Food and Financial Security” (Barcelona: GRAIN, 2008), http://www.grain.org/briefings_files/landgrab-2008-en.pdf. The efforts of countries like the Republic of Korea and some of the Gulf States to acquire huge tracts of land in Sub-Saharan Africa to produce food for export back to these countries raises serious concerns about the impact of such projects on the food security of the African countries involved—particularly for the indigenous populations currently living in the areas to be ceded to the outside investors. 17. For a recent analysis of this issue for Sub-Saharan Africa, see World Bank, Africa Regional Office, Agriculture and Rural Development Unit, Awakening Africa’s Sleeping Giant: Prospects for Commercial Agriculture in the Guinea Savannah Zone and Beyond (Washington, DC: World Bank, forthcoming). 18. Bruce F. Johnston and Peter Kilby, Agriculture and Structural Transformation: Economic Strategies in Late-Developing Countries (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975). 19. For a full discussion of the role of broad-based agricultural growth in stimulating income growth for the poor and generating a tax base for social services, see World Bank, World Development Report 2008. 20. Timmer, Falcon, and Pearson, Food Policy Analysis. The following paragraphs draw heavily on and expand some of the ideas developed in this classic book. 21. Joachim von Braun, “The World Food Situation: New Driving Forces and Required Actions,” Food Policy Report (Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute, 2007). 22. James T. Bonnen, “Agricultural Development: Transforming Human Capital, Technology, and Institutions,” in International Agricultural Development, ed. Carl K. Eicher and John M. Staatz (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). 23. John M. Staatz and Niama Nango Dembele, “Agriculture for Development in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Background Paper for the World Development Report 2008 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007), 32.

174


24. Pedro A. Sanchez, “Soil Fertility and Hunger in Africa,” Science 295 (2002): 2019–2020; David Weight and Valerie Kelly, “Fertilizer Impacts on Soils and Crops of Sub-Saharan Africa” (working paper no. 21, Michigan State University International Development, Department of Agricultural Economics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, 1999), http://aec.msu.edu/fs2/papers/idp21textonly.pdf. 25. A significant portion, perhaps between one-third and one-half, of small farmers in developing countries, lack enough land and other assets to “farm their way out of poverty” and will likely need, over a generation, to move out of agriculture into other professions if they are to escape poverty. For an analysis of this issue, see World Bank, World Development Report 2008, 72–93. 26. Steven Haggblade, Peter Hazell, and Thomas Reardon, Transforming the Rural Nonfarm Economy: Opportunities and Threats in the Developing World (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007). 27. Jayne, Mather, and Mghenyi, “Smallholder Farming;” Weber et al., “Informing Food Security Policy.” 28. John Staatz et al., “PROMISAM (Project to Mobilize Food Security Initiatives in Mali): Final Technical Report,” Report to USAID/Mali (Bamako, Mali: Michigan State University, 2008), http://aec.msu.edu/fs2/mali_fd_strtgy/PROMISAM_final_tech nical_report_2008.pdf. 29. Hanna Mattinen and Kate Ogden, “Cash-Based Interventions: Lessons from Southern Somalia,” Disasters 30, no. 3 (2006). 30. For an example from Mozambique, see Claudio Massingarela and Virgilio Nhate, “The Politics of What Works: A Case Study of Food Subsidies and the Bolsa-Escola in Mozambique” (background paper for the Chronic Poverty Report 2008–2009, Chronic Poverty Research Center, Manchester, UK, 2006). 31. David Tschirley and Anne Marie del Castillo, “Local and Regional Food Aid Procurement: An Assessment of Experience in Africa and Elements of Good Donor Practice” (working paper no. 91, MSU International Development, Departments of Agricultural Economics and Economics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, 2007), http://aec.msu.edu/fs2/papers/idwp91.pdf. 32. In economics, a good is defined as an “inferior good” if it has a negative incomeelasticity of demand—that is, if, as an individual’s income rises, she chooses to buy less of the good (substituting a preferred good—perceived as “higher quality” to the “inferior good”). For example, in many low-income countries, whole-grain flour is perceived as an inferior good; as incomes rise, consumers tend to shift toward more highly refined flour. “Inferior good” in this sense does not refer to nutritional quality, for the whole-grain product may be superior nutritionally. Inferior goods are important in addressing food insecurity because if they exist in a particular setting, they can serve as a “self-targeting food” that can be subsidized to reach the poor, while the rich choose not to consume it. 33. FAO, FAO Corporate Document Depository, “Rome Declaration on World Food Security and World Food Summit Plan of Action,” http://www.fao.org/wfs/index_ en.htm (accessed January 15, 2009). 34. U.S. Government Accountability Office, “International Food Security: Insufficient Efforts by Host Governments and Donors Threaten Progress to Halve Hunger in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2015,” Report to Congressional Requesters (Washington, DC: GAO, 2008). 35. David Tschirley and T. S. Jayne, “Food Crises and Food Markets: Implications for Emergency Response in Southern Africa” (working paper no. 94, Michigan State University International Development, Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource


175

Economics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, 2008), http://aec.msu.edu/fs2/ papers/idwp94.pdf. 36. Ibid.

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Donovan, Cynthia, Megan McGlinchy, John Staatz, and David Tschirley. Emergency Needs Assessments and the Impact of Food Aid on Local Markets. Rome: World Food Programme, Emergency Needs Assessment Branch, 2005. http://documents.wfp. org/stellent/groups/public/documents/ena/wfp086537.pdf. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008. Rome: FAO, 2008. (This is an annual publication; check for the latest issue.) Sen, Amartya Kumar. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. New York: Clarendon Press, 1982. Timmer, C. Peter, Walter P. Falcon, and Scott R. Pearson. Food Policy Analysis. Baltimore, MD: Published for the World Bank by Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. World Bank. World Development Report 2008. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2008. Available at http://www.worldbank.org/wdr2008.

Web Sites Development Gateway Foundation, dgCommunities, Food Security Portal, http://food security.developmentgateway.org/. ELDIS, “Food Security Resource Guide,” http://www.eldis.org/go/topics/resource-guides/ food-security. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Special Programme on Food Security, www.fao.org/spfs/en/. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Committee on World Food Security, Food Security Statistics, http://www.fao.org/unfao/govbodies/cfs/indicators_ en.htm. International Food Policy Research Institute, http://www.ifpri.org/. Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics, Food Security Group, http://www.aec.msu.edu/fs2/. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, “Food Security in the United States: Measuring Household Food Security,” http://www.ers.usda.gov/ Briefing/FoodSecurity/measurement.htm. World Bank, Food Crisis, http://www.worldbank.org/html/extdr/foodprices/. World Bank, World Development 2008: Agriculture for Development, www.worldbank.org/ wdr2008. World Food Programme of the United Nations, www.wfp.org.


12 The Effect of Agricultural Practices on Nutrient Profiles of Foods Debra Pearson There is no disputing the fact that food has undergone a profound transformation, particularly in industrial countries. We’ve gone from Leave it to Beaver family dinners—a slab of meat, steamed vegetables, and mashed potatoes that June Cleaver prepared and delightfully served her family night after night—to heat-up-inthe-microwave dinner Hot Pocketsä, drive-up McDonalds Happy Mealsä or “chicken” nuggets for a quick family meal. While one can voice serious concern over the “heavy on the meat, light on the vegetables” family dinners, I am particularly hoping these images conjure up a time when one could easily recognize the animals and plants from which the dinner plate items were derived in contrast to many present-day foods that bear virtually no resemblance to that from which they came. Many of us know that this shift in our diets to more and more processed, pre-prepared, and fast foods means that our diets contain larger amounts of added salt, sugars, and fats but less fiber. We can collectively refer to these changes in our food supply as postharvest changes or to the modifications made to foods after their growth and harvest or butchering. Many of us also know that these changes combined with our sedentary lifestyles play an important role in the prevalence of diseases such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer in industrial countries, as well as their rising prevalence in the developing world. Yet on a less obvious level, the very nature of our food has undergone another transformation that is problematic. Over the past century and in particular the last fifty years, what we grow and the way we grow food has dramatically changed and consequently changed the nutrient content of our crops. Techniques of plant breeding, selection, and genetic modification; fertilizer, pesticide, and herbicide practices; and crop and livestock management have all altered the nutrient profiles of these crops and the livestock that eat them. We refer to this these collective changes as preharvest changes. It is these preharvest changes and their effect on the nutrient profiles of foods that will be the focus of this chapter. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that approximately 73 percent of all deaths in the United States are due to diseases that are largely

178


diet and lifestyle driven. Increasingly, in developing countries, we see a rising incidence of Western Hemisphere diseases for certain segments of the population alongside serious, pervasive malnutrition in other segments of these populations. Meaningful, sustainable progress in preventing these diseases will require a careful examination of the quality of food that current industrial agricultural systems deliver. In industrial countries, populations are paradoxically overfed yet undernourished. The continuing prevalence of the major diet- and lifestyle-related diseases combined with the epidemic of obesity1 makes obvious the fact that the last thing Westerners need is more “empty calories” or low-nutrient-density foods. In fact, more nutrients in fewer calories are needed. In developing countries where populations experience considerable severe micronutrient deficiencies, the need for a variety of nutrient-dense crops is important to successfully combating malnutrition. At a time when there is a need for healthy, nutrient-rich foods globally, our most common agricultural practices have been delivering the opposite—that is, foods with declining nutrient content. Research is accumulating that indicates that some aspects of modern farming techniques creating improvements in farming efficiency come at the expense of nutritional quality. This is causing many to rethink how we grow food. A careful look at how current agricultural practices have affected the nutritional quality of the world’s food supply is critical if we are to effectively modify agricultural systems to better meet the nutritional needs of humans.

THE NUTRIENT CONTENT OF EDIBLE PLANTS During the past century, several farming practices have dramatically altered the agricultural landscape and the food on our table as well. For some time, concern has been voiced over whether (1) these agricultural changes are adversely affecting the nutritional quality of the food supply and, if so, (2) what foods are being affected, (3) what specific nutrients are being affected, and (4) what specific farming practices are causing the change in the nutrient profiles of foods? Trying to reliably answer these questions has proven difficult. The difficulty lies in part with the fact that several aspects of conventional farming may be exerting an effect on the nutrient profiles of foods. Conventional farming (i.e., “modern agriculture” or “industrial farming”) has become the dominant farming system, particularly since World War II. Numerous practices come under the umbrella of conventional farming, but some key aspects include the intensive use of synthetic fertilizers, synthetic pesticides and herbicides, and the growing of monocultures that may be genetically modified to be pest or herbicide resistant and selected for high yields, or for hardy handling, storage, and transport characteristics. While an in-depth discussion of all the permutations of conventional farming is beyond the scope of this chapter, we will say a few things about certain common conventional farming practices as they relate to the nutrient content of the crops grown using these methods. This will be contrasted with what is known about the effects of organic farming on the nutritional quality of foods. Where possible, other types of sustainable farming practices will be discussed, but research is limited on practices other than that of organic farming.

The Effect of Agricultural Practices on Nutrient Profiles of Foods

179

WHICH PLANTS ARE WE GROWING? When one compares the agricultural landscape before the 1950s to that of the present we see that what is grown has changed in several ways. Two of the important changes are that (1) farming has moved from a more diverse variety of crops to monocultures, and (2) the specific varieties (cultivars) of any given crop that are grown have changed considerably over time. The crops that have come to dominate the landscape have largely been bred for one or more of the following traits: (1) high yield, (2) faster growth, (3) pest resistance, (4) herbicide tolerance, (5) postharvest handling qualities, (6) cosmetic appeal, and (7) suitability for the conventional methods of agriculture. What is conspicuously missing from this list is selection for nutritional quality. Oddly enough, up until very recently the nutrient and phytochemical profile of a food item has decidedly not been the goal of crop breeding and selection. Increasingly, researchers are identifying several aspects of the current system of cultivar selection that have inadvertently compromised the nutritional quality of our food supply. Monoculture farming fundamentally violates one of the basic tenets of nutrition: variety. Any decrease in the variety of foods consumed increases the likelihood of nutrient deficiencies.2 The Green Revolution successfully increased availability of calories from high-yielding grains. This increase in grain consumption also triggered a decrease in the diversity of plant consumption in some regions. As per capita grain consumption has increased, consumption of legumes, root crops, and other vegetables that characterized a more diverse food supply has dropped off considerably in some regions of the world,3 and this has been associated with a rise in the incidence of micronutrient deficiencies.4 Thus, international, multidisciplinary initiatives are under way with the goal of refocusing plant-breeding techniques toward selecting for nutrient density traits, not only yield, as part of a more sustainable, diverse foodbased approach to combating malnutrition in developing countries.5 The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) maintains and updates a nutrient composition database of foods available and eaten in the United States, and the same is done in many other countries. A recent systematic review of the 1950 and 1999 USDA databases was completed in which the content of thirteen nutrients in forty-three vegetables and fruits was compared to determine whether any significant changes occurred over this approximate fifty-year period.6 Significant decreases in six nutrients (protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, vitamin B2, and vitamin C) were found over this time period. Reductions in several nutrients were also reported in a study done on the United Kingdom food databases from the 1930s to the 1980s.7 A third, more recent report also examined the historical variation of the mineral content of vegetables, fruits, and nuts in the United States and the United Kingdom using these food composition databases from the 1930s to the 1980s or later.8 They, too, found significant decreases of copper, magnesium, and sodium in vegetables and decreases of copper, iron, and potassium for fruits in the United Kingdom. For the United States, they noted significant decreases of calcium, copper, and iron in vegetables and decreases of copper, iron, and potassium in fruits. What was conspicuously not seen in these three reports were significant increases in mineral or vitamin content. These reports cite several limitations to their findings, and possible reasons for the apparent decline in nutrient content. A widely cited reason for the apparent decline in some nutrients involves the

180


processes agronomists, seed companies, federal agencies, and farmers employ in plant breeding and selection. In selecting for certain traits (i.e., high yield, faster growth), we have inadvertently selected against nutrient density. The dilution effect is one explanation of what may have occurred as plants have been bred for certain traits.9 This refers to the idea that selection for one resource-requiring trait such as yield may divert plant resources away from other jobs, such as the acquisition of minerals or the synthesis of vitamins and phytochemicals. There are several examples for which higher yield is associated with lower nutrient density. Nearly all broccoli varieties currently consumed in the United States are hybrid, with the Marathon variety the industry standard and dominant since the 1990s. These commercial hybrids tend to have high head density (higher yield). In an analysis of twenty-seven commercial hybrids of broccoli a significant inverse relationship was found between calcium and magnesium content and head density (yield).10 In addition, a comparison of the calcium and magnesium levels of broccoli as reported in the USDA food composition databases since the 1950s and the newer high-yield Marathon variety indicate a trend of declining calcium levels. The researchers suggest that the ability of the plant to acquire more calcium and magnesium does not keep pace with the growth of denser broccoli heads. Wheat has been bred successfully for increased yield. From approximately 1873 to 2000, wheat harvested per acre more than tripled on a typical American farm. A recent study demonstrated a significant inverse association between yield and seed content of iron, zinc, and selenium among fourteen U.S. hard red winter wheat varieties that have spanned this time period.11 In addition, for many cereal grains, a negative relationship exists between yield and protein concentration.12 Beyond the dilution effect, there appear to be other factors that in part explain the nutrient declines in some foods. Murphy and colleagues recently compared sixty-three spring wheat varieties.13 Fifty-six of these were historical cultivars commonly grown in the Pacific Northwest from 1842 to about 1965, and the other seven were modern varieties that currently make up 69 percent of that region’s spring wheat crops. These sixty-three varieties were grown in controlled conditions and evaluated for their yield and concentration of eight minerals. The modern wheat cultivars had significantly higher yields than the historic varieties; and for seven of the eight minerals, the historical cultivars had significantly higher mineral concentrations. Given these mineral differences between the historical and modern cultivars, the researchers estimated that significantly more bread slices made from modern wheat cultivars would have to be consumed to meet a person’s minerals requirements compared with bread made from historical wheat cultivars. Although these data indicate an overall trade-off between high-yield and mineral concentration (dilution effect), the researchers also highlighted the tremendous variation in mineral concentration among the sixty-three varieties. They found some wheat varieties that had both high yield and relatively high mineral levels. They concluded that given the tremendous variability in mineral levels among wheat cultivars, “it should be possible to improve mineral concentrations in modern cultivars without negatively affecting yield.”14 Simply put, in selecting for traits such as yield, or fast growth, while ignoring nutrient profiles, agronomists have inadvertently passed over varieties with relatively high nutrient density and relatively high yield.


181

Numerous, additional examples are available of the considerable genetic variability in mineral and vitamin content among varieties of any given crop. For instance, potatoes are an important source of vitamin C in the U.S. diet and also in many developing countries where potatoes make up a large part of the subsistence diet. The range of vitamin C in potato cultivars can vary considerably. Among seventy-five North American potato cultivars, vitamin C varied by nearly threefold.15 Other studies demonstrated a more than fourfold variance in vitamin C (7.9 to 36.1 milligrams per 100 grams fresh weight).16 Only relatively recently have researchers taken steps to select potato cultivars based on their higher concentrations of vitamins such as vitamin C. Among fifty varieties of broccoli, vitamin C varied by twice as much, a-tocopherol and g-tocopherol varied by nine-fold and by sixteen-fold, respectively (a-tocopherol and g-tocopherol are two forms of vitamin E), and b-carotene and a-carotene varied by five and six times as much, respectively (these two carotenes are precursors to vitamin A).17 The authors state that “the public perceives all broccoli as a good source of vitamins and anticarcinogens. This diversity indicates that potential health benefits depend greatly on the genotype consumed.” There are also considerable genetic variations in the ability of many plants to accumulate minerals.18 Among eight potato cultivars copper concentrations differed by more than four times, and among six strawberry varieties copper concentrations differed by twice as much.19 Among five varieties of cranberries, copper differed by sixteen-fold and iron differed by nineteen-fold.20 Iron differed by eightfold among eleven varieties of plums.21 With a reorientation of plant breeding priorities combined with the genetic diversity among varieties, agronomists and farmers should be able to select for nutrient profiles that help meet human nutrition needs without severely affecting yield. In addition, a reorientation away from monocultures and toward agricultural biodiversity could ensure the availability of the wide array of nutrients necessary for human health. The preceding paragraphs have dealt with studies assessing specific vitamin or mineral levels in various foods. In fact, for several decades the focus has been largely on variability of vitamin, mineral, and protein levels depending on plant genetics and farming methods (i.e., conventional versus organic methods). As indicated above, monocultures and the high-yield plant-breeding goals that are hallmarks of conventional farming have resulted in undesirable vitamin, mineral, and protein declines in various crops. But the nutritional value of food goes well beyond its mineral, vitamin, and macronutrient content (macronutrients are the protein, carbohydrate, and fat components of foods). In comparison to the approximate forty essential nutrients (vitamins, minerals, essential amino acids, and fatty acids) that are found in food, edible plants have more than eight thousand phytochemicals. Phytochemicals are substances synthesized by plants with many exhibiting physiologic health effects. Some common phytochemicals are polyphenols, flavonoids, and anthocyanins; phytochemicals are also known as secondary plant metabolites. A growing body of research indicates that these phytochemicals play pivotal roles in human health.22 Nutrition experts have claimed for a long time that food is much more than the sum of its vitamin and mineral content. Just as vitamin and mineral content varies considerably among varieties of a given crop, so does the phytochemical content. Furthermore, researchers increasingly understand that it is the complex interactions of several components in food that

182


produce their health benefits, and these health effects are not duplicated with isolated nutrients from the food.23 Examples of the genetic variability of phytochemicals among varieties of a given crop are numerous. Intake of cruciferous vegetables (i.e., broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale) is associated with reduced risk for a number of cancers.24 The group of phytochemicals referred to as glucosinolates are concentrated in cruciferous vegetables and exhibit anticancer properties.25 Among fifty varieties of broccoli grown under controlled conditions, glucoraphanin (the predominant glucosinolate in broccoli) varied by more than twenty-seven times.26 In the same study, the level of sinigrin varied by two- to fivefold among the varieties of brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, and kale tested (sinigrin is the predominant glucosinolate in these cruciferous vegetables). This study demonstrates not only the tremendous variation in phytochemical content among varieties within one crop, but also the variability in phytochemical profiles (i.e., the different glucosinolate profiles) among the different cruciferous vegetables. This latter point highlights the value of agricultural diversity to enhance dietary diversity in obtaining a wide array of phytochemicals. Eleven varieties of blackberries varied in both their total phenolic and total anthocyanin contents by approximately twofold.27 When looking at individual anthocyanins and phenolics, the blackberry varieties varied ninefold in cyanidin 3-rutinoside (the second most abundant anthocyanin in these blackberries) and eightfold in catechin (one of the phenolics). Current agricultural practices are not taking advantage of this knowledge, as some of the blackberry varieties that have been tested are higher in anthocyanin and phenolic content than the common commercial varieties. Significant genetic variations in phytochemical content among varieties of other crops, such as pears, blueberries, and tomatoes, also have been documented.28 In general, phytochemicals tend to be concentrated in the skins and rinds of many fruits. Another goal of plant breeders has been to breed for larger varieties of fruits, and this trend has inadvertently decreased the phytochemicals. For instance, a one hundred-gram serving of large strawberries means fewer numbers of strawberries than a one hundred-gram serving of small strawberries. The smaller strawberries give more surface area and thus more total phytochemicals than the serving of larger strawberries. Recent research on cranberries illustrates a number of issues raised in the preceding paragraphs. There are more than four hundred varieties of cranberries, yet a very small number make up the vast majority of the commercial cranberries sold. Traditional medicine has touted cranberry juice for the prevention and treatment of urinary tract infections, but with no empirical proof of its efficacy. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine demonstrated that proanthocyanidins isolated from cranberries inhibit the adherence of E. coli from uroepithelial cells.29 The adherence of bacteria to mucosal surfaces, such as the lining of the bladder (uroepithelial cells), is a prerequisite to the development of most infections. A recent systematic review of clinical trials indicated that cranberry juice is indeed effective in reducing the incidence of urinary tract infections.30 In addition, research in the areas of cancer and cardiovascular disease suggests that phytochemicals in cranberries may have additional beneficial effects. The phytochemical profile varies substantially among the numerous varieties of cranberries. Indeed, for


183

many crops, the nutrient and phytochemical contents vary considerably among the varieties of any one crop. Modern agriculture has all but ignored this fact in the selection for plant varieties that have come to dominate our monoculture system of farming and the commercial market. Researchers at Rutgers University and elsewhere are now focusing their plant-breeding and selection activities on selecting for cranberry varieties with optimal phytochemical and nutrient profiles in terms of human health. The substantial variation in nutrient and phytochemical profiles that exists among all the varieties of any given crop provides a promising and as yet largely untapped resource for making wiser choices in what is grown. Nutritionists, public health officials, plant breeders, agronomists, and farmers are beginning to work cooperatively in screening the sometimes hundreds of native heirloom varieties of crops and also are breeding plants with a focus on the nutrient content of plants. Also, these specialists are reconsidering the practice of monocultures as they come to understand the nutritional value of agricultural biodiversity. These changes are already being seen at the local level with the increase in the number of farmers’ markets at which a greater variety of heirloom produce are available for sale. On the global level, international projects are trying to reestablish and increase the variety of local and traditional foods to attain agricultural biodiversity, dietary diversity, and improved health.31

HOW ARE WE GROWING OUR PLANTS? Conventional farming practices differ from sustainable practices in several aspects. Organic farming techniques are the most heavily studied among the types of sustainable practices and will be focused on in this section. Differences in these systems include the types of fertilizers used, soil management practices, and techniques used for pest and weed management. Conventional farming utilizes synthetic fertilizers, particularly fossil-fuel-derived nitrogen fertilizers, and synthetic pesticides and herbicides. These techniques particularly help to increase yield per acre and create more rapid growth, but over time they tend to compromise soil fertility. In contrast, organic farming is characterized by its use of green manure, compost, crop rotation, biological pest control, mechanical cultivation, and the exclusion or minimal use of synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides and plant growth regulators. An important goal of organic farming is its use of techniques to maintain and improve soil fertility (i.e., a high level of soil organic matter and a rich, diverse microbial population) so that the soil will yield nutrient-rich produce, now and in the future. In addition, organic farming seeks to respect and promote biodiversity and biological cycles while growing crops for human or animal consumption. These characteristics and goals of organic farming are summed up in the commonly used phrase, “healthy soils equals healthy foods equals healthy people.” In-depth discussion of all these farming practices is beyond the scope of this section, but we will explore some of these practices as they relate to their effects on the nutrient profiles of crops grown with these methods. For decades, the nutrient differences of produce grown organically versus conventionally have been contentiously debated. Yet, relatively few well-controlled studies give clarity to this debate.32 Part of the difficulty lies with the numerous

184


challenges inherent in this type of research. Many factors, if not controlled, make reliable comparisons suspect or invalid. The following factors substantially influence the nutrient profiles of produce: (1) different varieties of a crop (as detailed in the previous section); (2) the macro- and microenvironment (i.e., climate, rainfall, sunlight intensity, temperature, and so on, and insect and disease pressures); (3) year-to-year variability; (4) soil type; (5) method and timing of harvest; (6) storage and transport conditions of the crop; (7) the experience of the farmer; and (8) the length of time a field has been in organic cultivation. To reliably determine whether specific farming techniques causally affect nutrient and phytochemical profiles in crops, these factors must be matched and controlled. In addition, the level of soil organic matter and the amount and types of microorganisms change substantially over time in organically managed fields,33 and these changes in the quality of the soil over time are associated with nutrient changes in the crop.34 Thus, ideally, comparisons should be made with produce grown on fields that have been organic for a period of time. While numerous studies are inconclusive because of the lack of control of one or more of these factors, there are enough well-designed studies to suggest that indeed some nutrient differences exist between certain crops grown conventionally compared with those grown organically or sustainably. Thus far, well-designed studies indicate that the nutrient profiles of some crops may be more heavily influenced by different farming techniques than others. Organic versus conventional cultivation techniques significantly influenced phytochemical and vitamin C content in two varieties of tomatoes, but these nutrients in two varieties of bell peppers were not influenced by the farming technique.35 In this same study, three years worth of data were collected and the high year-to-year variability in the nutrient levels, which is common, highlights the need for multiple-year comparisons. For many years, minerals, a relatively small number of vitamins, and nitrates were tested in organically versus conventionally grown produce. In more recent years, several phytochemicals have also been analyzed. In the earlier research, particularly in studies in which at least some of the above-mentioned methodological problems were controlled, the most consistent findings were higher vitamin C levels and lower nitrate levels in organically produced food crops versus those conventionally grown.36 Lower nitrate levels in organically grown produce are particularly seen in leafy, root, and tuber vegetables (i.e., lettuce, spinach, cabbage, beetroot, radish, potato). The higher nitrate levels in conventionally grown produce appear to be linked to the higher availability of nitrogen from synthetic fertilizers.37 Nitrates are a negative nutrient attribute, as they are a potential precursor to the formation of carcinogenic nitroso-compounds (i.e., nitrosoamines) within the digestive tract.38 Thus, the lower nitrate levels seen in organically produced crops is a positive nutritional attribute. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizers are readily available for uptake by plants, whereas the nitrogen from organic systems is more slowly released to plants. This difference in the availability of nitrogen not only affects the nitrate content of the plant, but also may influence certain nutrient levels. The carbon-nutrient balance theory and the growth-differentiation balance theory39 suggest that the availability (or lack thereof) of nutrients (i.e., ample to excess available nitrogen in conventional


185

systems) influences where a plant will direct its resources. Ample nitrogen shunts a plant’s resources toward rapid growth and nitrogen-containing compounds, such as proteins, and away from carbon-containing compounds, such as some vitamins and phytochemicals. Organic fertilizers, such as manure and cover crops, release nutrients such as nitrogen more slowly. This may encourage a more robust, deeper root system that has greater capacity to absorb nutrients from the soil. Numerous studies of varying quality have assessed vitamin C status as a function of cultivation techniques. Although many of these studies are inconclusive, the vast majority of studies analyzing for vitamin C have either found higher levels in the organically grown produce or no difference,40 whereas only a very small number of studies have found higher vitamin C in conventionally grown produce. A welldesigned study using multiple-year comparisons of organic and conventionally grown tomatoes found 14 to 26 percent higher vitamin C in the two varieties tested.41 Likewise, three varieties of organic potatoes averaged 30 percent higher vitamin C.42 Organically grown produce does appear to have higher vitamin C, but the specific organic techniques matter as well. A study in which plums were grown with three different organic techniques as well as conventionally found that, while two of the organic techniques resulted in higher vitamin C, the third organic technique resulted in lower vitamin C as compared with the conventional method.43 Studies that have examined the mineral content of crops grown with different farming techniques have been inconclusive in part due to inadequate control of confounding factors.44 Here, too, more studies have either found higher mineral levels in the organically produced crops or no difference between organic and conventional crops, and only a small number of studies report higher minerals in conventional crops. More research is needed to clarify the effect of farming practices on mineral content, especially because certain soil constituents do influence mineral uptake, and these constituents are affected by cultivation techniques. For instance, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, one of the most common microorganisms in many soils, form a symbiotic relationship with a large number of plants. Arbuscular mycorrhizae assist the plant with mineral—copper, zinc, calcium, and particularly phosphorus—uptake from the soil.45 Some cover crops enhance and maintain the mycorrhizae content of the soil; and while cover cropping is not exclusive to organic and sustainable farming, it is more commonly used in these methods of farming. Soluble phosphorus fertilizers used in conventional farming reduce these arbuscular micorrhizae in the soil. In a recent study in Australia, wheat was grown over a few years either organically (with insoluble phosphorus fertilizer) or conventionally (with soluble phosphorus fertilizer, nitrogen fertilizer, and herbicides).46 The organically produced wheat had higher zinc (25 to 56 percent higher) and copper (16 to 58 percent higher) than the conventional wheat. The conventionally managed system had reduced soil mycorrhizal fungi. Another study correlated increased zinc uptake with increased mycorrhizal fungi in wheat and field pea crops.47 Another important aspect regarding the mineral status of produce is not only the amount of a mineral present in the plant, but also its bioavailability for the organism that eats the plant. Bioavailability refers to the ability of an organism (i.e., humans) to digest and absorb the mineral from the food for its own use. The phytate level of a plant-based food is one factor that can decrease the bioavailability of a number of minerals. By forming insoluble complexes with minerals such as calcium, copper, zinc, and iron, phytate can render these minerals less bioavailable.48

186


This phytate-mediated decrease in mineral availability appears to be partly responsible for the widespread micronutrient deficiencies in populations subsisting largely on grains and other plant-based foods, particularly in developing countries. A study examined the mineral and phytate level of sorghum grown with conventional fertilizers and herbicides or with traditional methods (no fertilizers or herbicides) in Somalia.49 The conventionally grown sorghum had 76 to 80 percent higher phytate, whereas zinc was only 37 to 41 percent higher. This creates a higher (less desirable) phytate-to-zinc ratio, which indicates less zinc bioavailability. Furthermore, when young rats were fed either the traditionally or conventionally grown sorghum, results indicated that the iron and zinc were less bioavailable to the rats. Rats fed the conventional sorghum had significantly lower iron in their tibia (leg bones) than the control rats. Zinc levels in the tibia were highest in the control rats, whereas rats fed the traditional sorghum had the next highest zinc tibia levels, and those fed the conventional sorghum had lower zinc levels. Similarly, millet grown with superphosphate fertilizer had 25 to 29 percent higher phytate and 6 to 11 percent lower zinc—a worse phytate-to-zinc ratio—than millet fertilized with crop residue.50 These studies indicate that the absolute amount of a nutrient in a crop is not the only important measure. Future research needs to consider other components in a plant that may enhance or decrease the bioavailability of a given nutrient. Perhaps the most exciting area of research is that of phytochemicals and how agronomic practices influence their synthesis in crops. Plants produce thousands of phytochemicals, and our full understanding of the health effects of these myriad plant metabolites is in its early stages. Studies increasingly suggest that it is the complex sum total of phytochemicals, vitamins, and minerals in plant-rich diets that correlate with reduced disease incidence.51 Phytochemicals (also called secondary plant metabolites) are synthesized at varying stages in a plant’s life and in response to a number of factors. They are largely responsible for the color of plants and their fruits, which is important for attracting pollinators and animals to help disperse the plant’s seeds. Numerous phytochemicals function in plant defense against pathogens, herbivores, ultraviolet-B radiation, oxidative stress, and wounding. Plants increase their synthesis in response to these stressors.52 A current theory is that the intensive use of pesticides and herbicides in conventional farming may inadvertently “make life easier for the plants,” such that plants have less stimulus to synthesize phytochemicals.53 Of the thousands of phytochemicals that plants produce, only a relatively small number have been studied relative to different farming techniques. A majority of these studies, especially well-designed studies, indicate higher phytochemical content in organic produce compared with conventional produce.54 The same variety of blueberries were grown on five organic farms and five conventional farms in New Jersey with similar soil and environmental conditions.55 Organic blueberries averaged significantly higher total and individual phenolics (68 percent higher total phenolics) and anthocyanins (59 percent higher total anthocyanins) than the conventional blueberries. Even with this difference in anthocyanin content, there was substantial variation among the organic farms. Variation in phytochemical content among different conventional farms and among organic farms is commonly seen. Thus, further research must better identify specific practices that optimize phytochemical profiles.


187

One of the more extensive studies of phytochemical profiles has come out of the Long-Term Research on Agricultural Systems (LTRAS) project at the University of California–Davis. The LTRAS project was started in 1993 and is designed to run one hundred years. Various farming systems, including organic and conventional systems, are being compared while carefully controlling for the numerous confounding factors that have plagued past research. The LTRAS project will generate numerous insights into the relationship between various farming inputs and the sustainability and quality of the agricultural products, including the nutrient content of crops.56 Tomatoes produced organically or conventionally at the LTRAS over a ten-year period were evaluated for their content of the three main flavonoids found in tomatoes: quercetin, naringenin, and kaempferol (flavonoids are one category of phytochemicals).57 Quercetin and kaempferol were significantly higher in the organic tomatoes as compared with conventional tomatoes, averaging 79 and 97 percent higher levels, respectively. Over the ten-year period, nitrogen application rates, in the form of N-P-K starter fertilizer and ammonium nitrate, remained stable in the conventional system. In the organic system, winter legume cover crops and composted manure were used for nitrogen. In the first three years, higher amounts of manure were added to the organic plots, but as the soil organic matter increased to a steady state, the amount of manure was decreased. Over the ten-year period, the quercetin and kaempferol content of tomatoes from both systems increased, with a greater rate of increase in the organic tomatoes. This coincided with a decrease in the total amount of nitrogen application on the organic field and higher soil organic matter. The form and amount of nitrogen application remained constant over the ten years on the conventional fields, and they had a consistently low level of soil organic matter. The authors contend that either the total amount of nitrogen or the behavior of different forms of nitrogen in these two systems may be influencing the flavonoid content. The tomato yields were not significantly different between these two systems over the ten-year period. In support of different forms of nitrogen (slow-release nitrogen in organic systems) affecting phytochemical synthesis, another study found that tomatoes fertilized with chicken manure or grass-clover mulch had 17 percent higher total phenolics and 29 percent higher vitamin C than tomatoes fertilized with inorganic nitrogen fertilizer.58 In the final analysis, an important reason for shifting to more sustainable or organic farming strategies is whether or not animals and humans consuming sustainably produced foods are healthier. Only a handful of studies have looked at this, with conflicting results, and a definitive answer is experimentally daunting.59 A well-designed three-generation rat study compared the effect of organic versus conventional feed on fertility.60 Pregnancy rates, birth weight, and the weight gain of offspring were not significantly different between the two groups, but there were significantly fewer stillborn offspring in the first litter and a lower number of perinatal deaths in the organically fed group. A recent study examined the effects of five varieties of strawberries on the proliferation of two human cancer cell lines—a breast cancer and colon cancer cell line.61 Extracts from the organically grown strawberries inhibited cancer cell proliferation to a greater degree than their conventional counterparts at two of the concentrations tested. In addition, this study analyzed the reduced and oxidized forms of vitamin C, ascorbic acid and dehydroascorbate, respectively, and a small

188


number of phytochemicals in the strawberries. The phytochemicals assayed were not consistently higher in the varieties of organic strawberries. In two of the organic strawberry varieties, the ascorbic acid to dehydroascorbate ratio was two times and eight times higher than their conventional counterparts. This difference in the ratio of ascorbic acid to dehydroascorbate between the organic and conventional strawberries brings up another important point. It is not enough to only assess the total amount of a nutrient. It is also important to look at the relative amounts of the various forms of the nutrient. It is the reduced form of vitamin C, ascorbic acid, that acts as a protective antioxidant. Thus, a high ascorbic acid to dehydroascorbate ratio is desirable. Another study found that two varieties of strawberries grown in soil with added compost had higher vitamin C, a higher ascorbate to dehydroascorbate ratio, and a higher reduced-to-oxidized glutathione ratio (glutathione also functions as an antioxidant).62 Although the question of the human health effects resulting from the consumption of organically versus conventionally grown produce is far from answered, the few studies to date are intriguing, suggest that there may be a difference, and strongly argue for further research. Harvesting numerous crops well before their peak ripeness is a common practice in conventional agriculture, largely because of the time and distance between farm and the dinner table that the average food item travels. It is well known that many nutrients and phytochemicals reach their maximum concentration in a plant at the fully ripe stage. For instance, total anthocyanins in two varieties of blackberries vary considerably from the underripe to the ripe to overripe stages63 (74.7 to 317 milligrams per 100 grams fresh weight and 69.9 to 164, respectively). Similarly, in raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries, the total anthocyanin and phenolic content increases with maturity.64 While not always the case, organically and sustainably grown produce is more frequently picked closer to full maturity, and the time from harvesting to consumption tends to be shorter. These factors typically favor higher overall nutrient content. The complex factors that govern mineral uptake, and vitamin and phytochemical synthesis in plants are incompletely understood, making determination of the role of various agricultural practices challenging. The evidence thus far, however, suggests a more favorable level of some nutrients in organically grown foods. With more sensitive analytical tools and a better grasp of the variables that must be accounted for, researchers more thoroughly understand the effects of agricultural practices on nutrient profiles. Indeed, a number of ongoing studies, including those at the LTRAS project, should provide more conclusive data in the near future. This area of research will benefit from being driven less by ideology and more by desired, holistic outcomes. These outcomes need to include optimizing nutrient profiles of foods, while adhering to sustainable principles regarding the environment and the social and economic health of communities on a local and global level. As research moves forward, it is important to determine which specific types of organic or sustainable soil, fertilizer, pest-management practices, and varieties optimally influence the nutrient profile of crops.

CONCLUSION The nation is on the verge of a profound paradigm shift in how we grow, harvest, process, and consume food. Growers and breeders are shifting away from the


189

largely single-minded idea of increased crop yield to a broader view of growing plants that includes as a very high priority the need to improve nutrient density. All stakeholders, from farmers, crop breeders and geneticists, and agricultural scientists, to consumers are recognizing that the overarching goal in the food system must be shifted to a focus of improving the nutritional quality of the food supply and doing so in a way that sustains the natural and human environment, both locally and globally.

NOTES 1. Physical Activity and Obesity Division of Nutrition, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, U. S. Obesity Trends 1985–2007, http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/trend/maps/index.htm (accessed July 24, 2008). 2. Emile A. Frison et al., “Agricultural Biodiversity, Nutrition, and Health: Making a Difference to Hunger and Nutrition in the Developing World,” Food and Nutrition Bulletin 27 (2006): 167–79. 3. FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), FAOSTAT Statistical Database, http://www.faostat.fao.org (object Agriculture/Production/Core Production Data, 2007). 4. Robin D. Graham, R. M. Welch, and H. E. Bouis, “Addressing Micronutrient Malnutrition through Enhancing the Nutritional Quality of Staple Foods: Principles, Perspectives and Knowledge Gaps,” Advances in Agronomy 70 (2001): 77–142; Ross M. Welch, “The Impact of Mineral Nutrients in Food Crops on Global Human Health,” Plant Soil 247 (2002): 83–90. 5. Howarth E. Bouis, “Plant Breeding: A New Tool for Fighting Micronutrient Malnutrition,” Journal of Nutrition 132 (2002): 491S–494S. 6. Donald R. Davis, M. D. Epp, and H. D. Riordan, “Changes in USDA Food Composition Data for 43 Garden Crops, 1950 to 1999,” Journal of the American College of Nutrition 23 (2004): 669–82. 7. Anne-Marie Mayer, “Historical Changes in the Mineral Content of Fruits and Vegetables,” British Food Journal 99 (1997): 207–11. 8. Philip J. White and M. R. Broadley, “Historical Variation in the Mineral Composition of Edible Horticultural Products,” The Journal of Horticultural Science and Biotechnology 80 (2005): 660–67. 9. W. M. Jarrell and R. B. Beverly, eds., The Dilution Effect in Plant Nutrition Studies, ed. N. C. Brady, vol. 34, Advances in Agronomy (New York: Academic Press, 1981). 10. Mark W. Farnham, M. A. Grusak, and M. Wang, “Calcium and Magnesium Concentration of Inbred and Hybrid Broccoli Heads,” Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science 125 (2000): 344–49. 11. D. F. Garvin, R. M. Welch, and J. W. Finley, “Historical Shifts in the Seed Mineral Micronutrient Concentration of US Hard Red Winter Wheat Germplasm,” Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 86 (2006): 2213–20. 12. N. W. Simmonds, “The Relation between Yield and Protein in Cereal Grain,” Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 67 (1995): 309–15. 13. Kevin M. Murphy, Philip G. Reeves, and Stephen S. Jones, “Relationship between Yield and Mineral Nutrient Concentration in Historical and Modern Spring Wheat Cultivars,” Euphytica 163 (2008): 381–90. 14. Ibid., 381.

190


15. Stephen L. Love et al., “Stability of Expression and Concentration of Ascorbic Acid in North American Potato Germplasm,” Horticulture Science 39 (2004): 1456–60. 16. P. Kemp and T. C. Kemp, “The Ascorbic Acid Content of Thirteen Varieties of Potato,” Proceedings of the Nutrition Society 41 (1982): 6A; J. Augustin et al., “Vitamin Composition of Freshly Harvested and Stored Potatoes,” Journal of Food Science 43 (1978): 1566–74. 17. Anne C. Kurilich et al., “Carotene, Tocopherol and Ascorbate Contents in Subspecies of Brassica Oleracea,” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 47 (1999): 1576–81, 1580. 18. Martin Broadley et al., “Phylogenetic Variation in Heavy Metal Accumulation in Angiosperms,” New Phytologist 152 (2001): 9–27. 19. Mari Hakala et al., “Effects of Varieties and Cultivation Conditions on the Composition of Strawberries,” Journal of Food Composition and Analysis 16 (2003): 67–80. 20. J. R. Davenport and J. Provost, “Cranberry Tissue Nutrient Levels as Impacted by Three Levels of Nitrogen Fertilizer and Their Relationship to Fruit Yield and Quality,” Journal of Plant Nutrition 17 (1994): 1625–34. 21. Cevdet Nergiz and Hasan Yildiz, “Research on Chemical Composition of Some Varieties of European Plums (Prunus Domestica) Adapted to the Aegean District of Turkey,” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 45 (1997): 2820–23. 22. Johanna W. Lampe, “Health Effect of Vegetables and Fruit: Assessing Mechanisms of Action in Human Experimental Studies,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 70 (1999): 475S–90S; Paul Knekt et al., “Flavonoid Intake and Risk of Chronic Disease,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 76 (2002): 560–568; Penny Kris-Etherton et al., “Bioactive Compounds in Foods: Their Role in the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease and Cancer,” American Journal of Medicine 113 (2002): 71S–88S. 23. Rui H. Liu, “Health Benefits of Fruit and Vegetables Are from Additive and Synergistic Combinations of Phytochemicals,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 78, supplement (2003): 517S–520S; David R. Jacobs and Lynn M. Steffen, “Nutrients, Foods and Dietary Patterns as Exposures in Research: A Framework for Food Synergy,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 78, supplement (2003): 508S–513S. 24. L. Kohlmeier and L. Su, “Cruciferous Vegetable Consumption and Colorectal Cancer Risk: Meta-Analysis of the Epidemiological Evidence,” The Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology 11 (1997): 369. 25. K. Faulkner, R. Mithen, and G. Williamson, “Selective Increase of the Potential Anticarcinogen 4-Methylsulfphinylbutyl Glucosinolate in Broccoli,” Carcinogenesis 19 (1998): 605–9. 26. Mosbah Kushad et al., “Variation of Glucosinolates in Vegetable Crops of Brassica Oleracea,” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 47 (1999): 1541–48. 27. T. Siriwoharn et al., “Influence of Cultivar, Maturity, and Sampling on Blackberry (Rubus L. Hybrids) Anthocyanins, Polyphenolics, and Antioxidant Properties,” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 52 (2004): 8021–30. 28. A. C. G. Sanchez, A. Gil-Izquierdo, and M. I. Gil, “Comparative Study of Six Pear Cultivars in Terms of Their Phenolic and Vitamin C Contents and Antioxidant Capacity,” Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 83 (2003): 995–1003; L. Howard, J. Clark, and C. Brownmiller, “Antioxidant Capacity and Phenolic Content in Blueberries as Affected by Genotype and Growing Season,” Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 83 (2003): 1238–47; I. Martinez-Valverde et al., “Phenolic Compounds, Lycopene and Antioxidant Activity in Commercial Varieties of Tomato (Lycopersicum Esculentum),” Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 82 (2002): 323–30.


191

29. Amy B. Howell et al., “Inhibition of the Adherence of P-Fimbriated Escherichia Coli to Uroephithelial-Cell Surfaces by Proanthocyanidin Extracts from Cranberries,” New England Journal of Medicine 339 (1998): 1085–86. 30. Ruth G. Jepson and J. C. Craig, “A Systematic Review of the Evidence for Cranberries and Blueberries in Uti,” Molecular Nutrition and Food Research 51 (2007): 738–45. 31. Frison, “Agricultural Biodiversity.” 32. Katrin Woese et al., “A Comparison of Organically and Conventionally Grown Foods - Results of a Review of the Relevant Literature,” Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 74 (1997): 281–93; Virginia Worthington, “Nutritional Quality of Organic Versus Conventional Fruits, Vegetables, and Grains,” Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 7, no. 2 (2001): 161–73; Diane Bourn and John Prescott, “A Comparison of the Nutritional Value, Sensory Qualities and Food Safety of Organically and Conventionally Produced Foods,” Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition 42, no. 1 (2002): 1–34; Ewa Rembialkowska, “Review: Quality of Plant Products from Organic Agriculture,” Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 87 (2007): 2757–62; Charles Benbrook et al., “New Evidence Confirms the Nutritional Superiority of PlantBased Organic Foods,” The Organic Center, http://www.organicenter.org/reportfiles/ 5367_Nutrient_Content_SSR_FINAL_V2.pdf (accessed May 15, 2008). 33. R. Ford Denison, Dennis Bryant, C. Kearney, and T. E. Kearney, “Crop Yields over the First Nine Years of LTRAS, a Long-Term Comparison of Field Crop Systems in a Mediterranean Climate,” Field Crops Research 86 (2004): 267–77. 34. Alyson E. Mitchell et al., “Ten-Year Comparison of the Influence of Organic and Conventional Crop Management Practices on the Content of Flavonoids in Tomatoes,” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 55 (2007): 6154–59. 35. Alexander W. Chassy et al., “Three-Year Comparison of the Content of Antioxidant Microconstituents and Several Quality Characteristics in Organic and Conventionally Managed Tomatoes and Bell Peppers,” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 54 (2006): 8244–52. 36. Bourn and Prescott, “Comparison of Organic and Conventional”; Benbrook et al., “Nutritional Superiority.” 37. Ewa Rembialkowska, “Comparison of the Contents of Nitrates, Nitrites, Lead, Cadmium and Vitamin C in Potatoes from Conventional and Ecological Farms,” Polish Journal of Food and Nutrition Science 8, no. 49 (1999): 17–26. 38. C. Oldreive and C. Rice-Evans, “The Mechanisms for Nitration and Nitrotyrosine Formation in Vitro and in Vivo: Impact of Diet,” Free Radical Research 35 (2001): 215–31. 39. Nancy Stamp, “Out of the Quagmire of Plant Defense Hypotheses,” The Quarterly Review of Biology 78 (2003): 23–55. 40. Worthington, “Nutritional Quality of Organic.” 41. Chassy, “Three-Year Comparison.” 42. Jana Hajslova et al., “Quality of Organically and Conventionally Grown Potatoes: Four-Year Study of Micronutrients, Metals, Secondary Metabolites, Enzymic Browning and Organoleptic Properties,” Food Additives and Contaminants 22, no. 6 (2005): 514–34. 43. Ginerva Lombardi-Boccia et al., “Nutrients and Antioxidant Molecules in Yellow Plums (Prunus Domestica L.) from Conventional and Organic Productions: A Comparative Study,” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 52 (2004): 90–94. 44. Bourn and Prescott, “Comparison of Organic and Conventional”; Worthington, “Nutritional Quality of Organic.”

192


45. H. Marschner and B. Dell, “Nutrient Uptake in Mycorrhizal Symbiosis,” Plant Soil 159 (1994): 89–102. 46. Megan H. Ryan, J. W. Derrick, and P. R. Dann, “Grain Mineral Concentrations and Yield of Wheat Grown under Organic and Conventional Management,” Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 84 (2004): 207–16. 47. Megan H. Ryan and J. F. Angus, “Arbuscular Mycorrhizae in Wheat and Field Pea Crops on a Low P Soil: Increased Zn-Uptake but No Increase in P-Uptake or Yield,” Plant Soil 250 (2003): 225–39. 48. E. Graf, “Chemistry and Applications of Phytic Acid: An Overview,” in Phytic Acid: Chemistry and Applications, ed. E. Graf (Minneapolis, MN: Pilatus Press, 1986), 1–21. 49. H. I. Ali and B. F. Harland, “Effects of Fiber and Phytate in Sorghum Flour on Iron and Zinc in Weanling Rats: A Pilot Study,” Cereal Chemistry 68, no. 3 (1991): 234–38. 50. A. Buerkert et al., “Phosphorus Application Affects the Nutritional Quality of Millet Grain in the Sahel,” Field Crop Research 57 (1998): 223–35. 51. Lampe, “Health Effects of Fruits and Vegetables”; Liu, “Additive and Synergistic Combinations.” 52. R. Dixon and N. Paiva, “Stress-Induced Phenylpropanoid Metabolism,” Plant Cell 7 (1995): 1085–97; R. N. Bennett and R. M. Wallsgrove, “Tansley Review No. 72: Secondary Metabolites in Plant Defense Mechanisms,” New Phytologist 127 (1994): 617–33. 53. Otto Daniel et al., “Selected Phenolic Compound in Cultivated Plants: Ecologic Functions, Health Implications and Modulation by Pesticides,” Environmental Health Perspectives 107, no. S1 (1999): 109–14. 54. Benbrook et al., “Nutritional Superiority.” 55. Shiow Y. Wang et al., “Fruit Quality, Antioxidant Capacity and Flavonoid Content of Organically and Conventionally Grown Blueberries,” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 56 (2008): 5788–94. 56. Denison et al., “First Nine years of LTRAS.” 57. Mitchell et al., “Ten-Year Comparison.” 58. Ramandeep K. Toor, Geoffrey P. Savage, and Anuschka Heeb, “Influence of Different Types of Fertilizers on the Major Antioxidant Components of Tomatoes,” Journal of Food Composition and Analysis 19 (2006): 20–27. 59. Bourn and Prescott, “Comparison of Organic and Conventional.” 60. Alberta Velimirov et al., “The Influence of Biologically and Conventionally Cultivated Food on the Fertility of Rats,” Biology, Agriculture and Horticulture 8 (1992): 325–37. 61. Marie E. Olsson et al., “Antioxidant Levels and Inhibition of Cancer Cell Proliferation in Vitro by Extracts from Organically and Conventionally Cultivated Strawberries,” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 54 (2006): 1248–55. 62. Shiow Y. Wang and Hsin-Shan Lin, “Compost as a Soil Supplement Increases the Level of Anitoxidant Compounds and Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity in Strawberries,” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 51 (2003): 6844–50. 63. Siriwoharn et al., “Blackberry Maturity and Anthocyanins.” 64. Shiow. Y. Wang and Hsin-Shan Lin, “Antioxidant Activity in Fruits and Leaves of Blackberry, Raspberry, and Strawberry Varies with Cultivar and Developmental Stage,” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 48 (2000): 140–146; Ronald L Prior et al., “Antioxidant Capacity as Influenced by Total Phenolic and Anthocyanin Content, Maturity, and Variety of Vaccinium Species,” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 46 (1998): 2686–93.


193

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Benbrook, Charles. “Elevating Antioxidant Levels in Food through Organic Farming and Food Processing.” The Organic Center, January 2005. Available at http:// www.organic-center.org/science.antiox.php?action=view&report_id=3. Benbrook, Charles, et al. “New Evidence Confirms the Nutritional Superiority of Plant-Based Organic Foods.” The Organic Center, March 2008. Available at http:// www.organicenter.org/reportfiles/5367_Nutrient_Content_SSR_FINAL_V2.pdf. Bourn, Diane, and John Prescott. “A Comparison of the Nutritional Value, Sensory Qualities and Food Safety of Organically and Conventionally Produced Foods.” Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition 42, no. 1 (2002): 1–34. Halweil, Brian. “Still No Free Lunch: Nutrient Levels in U.S. Food Supply Eroded by Pursuit of High Yields.” The Organic Center, September 2007. Available at http://www.organic-center.org/science.nutri.php?action=view&report_id=115. Jeavons, John. How to Grow More Vegetables. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 2006. Madison, Deborah. Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America’s Farmer’s Markets. New York: Broadway Books, 2002. Pollan, Michael. In Defense of Food. New York: The Penguin Press, 2008. Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma. New York: The Penguin Press, 2006. Rembialkowska, Ewa. “Review: Quality of Plant Products from Organic Agriculture.” Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 87 (2007): 2757–2762. Worthington, Virginia. “Nutritional Quality of Organic Versus Conventional Fruits, Vegetables, and Grains.” Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 7 (2001): 161–173.

Web Sites Center for Science in the Public Interest, http://www.cspinet.org/. Eat Well, http://www.eatwellguide.org/i.php?pd=Home. Harvest Plus, http://www.harvestplus.org/index.html. Local Harvest, http://www.localharvest.org/. Long-Term Research on Agricultural Systems (LTRAS) Project, http://ltras.ucdavis. edu/. The Organic Center, http://www.organic-center.org/. Quality Low Input Food, http://www.qlif.org/about/index.html. The Rodale Institute, http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/.


13 School Lunch and Breakfast Programs Sandra M. Stokes In the summer of 1981, early in President Ronald Reagan’s administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued a policy directive that would have reclassified ketchup and pickle relish from condiments to vegetables. While this reclassification was proposed as a cost-saving measure (the White House Office of Management and Budget estimated $1 billion annual savings), the ensuing widespread controversy continued to haunt the Reagan administration. One can search online for the phrase “ketchup as a vegetable controversy” even today and find that this proposed policy was never implemented because it became a political lightning rod for charges of indifference to poor children’s well-being. Very few Republicans or Democrats wanted to support what turned out to be a huge embarrassment for this Republican administration.1 Two important lessons emerge from this controversy: First, school lunches proved to be very popular with the American public, which was outraged by this attempt to “water down” meals for poor children. Because school lunches have been around for almost seventy years, this program has served millions of American citizens. Second, the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) has been the center of controversy many times since its birth in 1946, when the program emerged from the National School Lunch Act. Another important controversy regarding school lunches had to do with its transformation from a program designed to prop up food commodity prices and employ those who were without jobs to a social welfare program for poor children, a transformation that began in the 1960s. Today, the social welfare aspect of NSLP is firmly entrenched; however, subsequent controversies over funding have ensured that the program has never been well funded and eligibility requirements have proved to be a barrier for families whose children need it the most.2 Today, the present controversy over school lunches has to do with their nutritional content: while the original purpose of the NSLP was that children were undernourished because they did not get enough food, today there is a concern that children are getting too much of the wrong foods—which still leads to

196


malnutrition. Now, however, malnutrition is increasingly joined with obesity, and the diseases associated with obesity (e.g., diabetes, heart conditions). This controversy has raised questions that have to do with the original intent of the law, its wording, and how it is implemented. Those debating this issue would do well to keep in mind that school lunches have proven to be sacrosanct to the American public, as evidenced by the steady number of articles published on the topic of school lunches.

ORIGIN OF THE SCHOOL LUNCH PROGRAM The NSLP had its origins in several factors emerging in American society during and directly following the Great Depression years of the 1930s. At this time of high unemployment, it was discovered that many young people were too undernourished to serve in the military or be gainfully employed despite the existence of farm surpluses.3 During the time of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, many initiatives to reverse the economic desperation of the Depression were implemented. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) became involved with children’s nutrition by hiring workers to prepare and serve food in schools across the United States.4 The WPA’s child nutrition program had several practical goals: it put unemployed people to work; it helped farmers with food surpluses receive more money for their crops by keeping the prices higher than the market otherwise would have done; and, it helped prevent malnutrition in young people, thereby making them fit for military service and employment.5 When World War II broke out, fitness for military service became a glaring problem, which was noted in Congress. Thus, many legislators worked to make nutrition in schools a national priority.6 In 1946, the U.S. Congress voted to create the NSLP through the passage of the National School Lunch Act, which was centered on the surplus food commodities produced in the United States.7 This act has been reauthorized many times, and is now subsumed within the Child Nutrition Act of 1966; this latter act also includes the Special Milk Program, the Summer Food Service Program, the Child and Adult Care Program, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), the Migrant Legal Action Program, and breakfast programs.8 All of these programs are administered by the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Services (FNS).

THE SUCCESSES OF THE NATIONAL SCHOOL LUNCH PROGRAM The NSLP is the second largest food and nutrition assistance program (the Food Stamp Program is the largest) in the United States.9 In 2006, the NSLP was available in more than one hundred thousand public and nonprofit private schools; more than twenty-eight million low-cost or free lunches were served in 2006 to children on a typical day.10 Almost 60 percent of American children ages five to eighteen participate in the program at least once per week; almost half of all lunches served are provided free to students, with an additional 10 percent of the meals available at reduced prices.

School Lunch and Breakfast Programs

197

Perhaps the NSLP’s most important impact has been its impact on learning. A growing body of research has shown the positive impact of proper nutrition on a child’s ability to learn.11 Poor nutrition can interfere with cognitive functioning and is associated with low academic achievement.12 NSLP mandates vitamin, mineral, fat, and protein requirements in meals served in schools through the program.13 Breakfast programs have also proven to furnish children the requisite nutrition for learning to take place.14,15 One study for the USDA found that “NSLP participants consume more milk and vegetables at lunch and fewer sweets, sweetened beverages, and snack foods than nonparticipants.”16 Among middle-school students, NSLP participants were more likely to derive the recommended daily intake of vitamin A and magnesium, along with higher intakes of calcium and fiber. High school NSLP participants were more likely to receive the recommended daily intakes of vitamins A, B6, C, folate, iron, phosphorus, and thiamin as well as a higher intake of calcium and fiber than found among NSLP nonparticipants.17 There also has been financial success for American agriculture, perhaps too much success, as individual farms have been put out of business in favor of large corporations producing agricultural products for home and abroad.18 In fact, one of NSLP’s original purposes was to increase demand for agricultural commodities.19 According to a USDA study of the NSLP, the bulk of commodities given to schools are what are called entitlement commodities; this includes processed meats, cheeses, grains, and produce as well as chicken fajita strips and nuggets, taco meat, hamburger patties, turkey sausage, canned and frozen fruits and vegetables, salsa, macaroni and cheese, and other pasta. Schools can receive “bonus” commodities—that is, those that become available from surplus agricultural stock and are made available because of an oversupply of these products in the retail market.20

THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY OVER SCHOOL LUNCHES The present controversy over school lunches—in fact over all meals and food served in schools—focuses on three areas: costs and financing, content and supply, and procurement. Since 1946, every controversy has centered either on any one of these areas, or sometimes on all three of them. Costs and Financing Local education agencies participating in the NSLP receive reimbursements and donated commodities from the USDA for each meal that they serve. Furthermore, school food services must operate on a nonprofit basis, with their revenue used to support or improve the food service.21 Schools in the United States are reimbursed just under $2.50 per meal per student daily, even though more money than that is required for labor, transportation of food, utilities, and equipment.22 While school lunches have never been easy to fund, budgetary pressures on schools increased in the early 1980s, during Reagan’s presidency.23 At that time, cuts in the subsidies were made and have never been fully restored; making it even harder to fund these programs is the fact that costs of transportation and procurement associated with implementing the NSLP have risen, but the USDA reimbursement rate has not kept pace

198


with the growth in these costs.24 One of the factors that can help with the reimbursement rates is the number of eligible children served: the higher the number of children served, the higher the amount of total reimbursement a school receives.25 The problem with funding today has been exacerbated by the present state of the economy. While school districts have always been short of federal funding, the shortage has grown today because more families have found themselves qualifying for government assistance programs—among them the NSLP. Even though the USDA has promised to raise the federal reimbursement rate, the problem remains: even the increased amount of funding buys less food.26 This problem has further complicated the next area of controversy: content and supply. Generally speaking, when funding is tight, the tendency is to buy the least expensive products. This tendency, coupled with the previous inadequate supply of funding, has made it more difficult for school districts to acquire the most nutritious food, but instead easier to acquire more of the oversupply of commodities that may contribute to obesity while not furnishing much nutritional value.

Content and Supply The content of school lunches has undergone a number of changes, but has been largely built around agricultural commodity oversupplies. Indeed, as Levine says, the NSLP “was in its goals, structure, and administration, more a subsidy for agriculture than a nutrition program for children.”27 Originally, the NSLP was a welfare program for farmers and a benefit for those middle- and working-class children whose families could pay a subsidized price for their children’s meals.28 According to Levine, “[b]etween 1968 and 1972 the National School Lunch Program was transformed from being primarily an agricultural subsidy into one of the nation’s premier poverty programs.”29 When the NSLP became an antipoverty program, the number of children whose families were paying for lunch declined precipitously because of the stigma attached to participation in a social welfare program.30 Once the NSLP became a program that guaranteed poor children a free lunch, the quality of school meals also declined, mostly because the amount of money was declining as well, without the money from paying customers. Therefore, “school administrators . . . began to look to the private food service industry to keep school cafeterias afloat.”31 Unfortunately, this is a trend that has continued through the present time. Therefore, school lunches, composed largely of government surplus commodities as well as healthful items such as fruit and vegetables, were forced to compete with such fast food items as Pizza Hut pizza, McDonald’s hamburgers, and the like. The problem with this situation can be summed up as follows: Nationwide data show that about 10% of school food sold is from the cafeteria reimbursable lunch . . . [while] over 70% of school food sold are a la carte items from the cafeteria “Trend” menu, which offers . . . burgers, fries, pizza, ice cream, and other snack type foods, and from school stores; over 20% came from vending machines in the schools.32

Students have grown increasingly accustomed to fast food meals because their families are purchasing this fare for home consumption. Schools trying to serve


199

more nutritious food have found that students buy fewer lunches or do not eat the fruits and vegetables.33 Thus, schools have been stuck in an untenable situation. The more difficult it has become to have their school lunches be financially selfsustaining, the more deeply they have gotten into arrangements with such entities as fast food restaurants.34 Perhaps the most critical point of this situation can be seen in the contracts— exclusive contracts—schools have signed with soda companies. Nicola Pinson found that 75 percent of U.S. high schools, 65 percent of U.S. middle schools, and 30 percent of elementary schools have these contracts.35 What these contracts involve is obligating the school districts to purchase an extremely high amount of their products—which have no competition besides the school lunch milk—as well as giving the soda companies the right to advertise and market their products to a captive audience, one the soda companies hope will become “brand loyal.”36 Meanwhile, the food supplied to schools has increasingly become prepackaged, suitable for reheating only because kitchen equipment in many districts is largely nonexistent. Grants for replacing kitchen equipment were ended during the Reagan administration and never restored so that far too many school districts receive ready-to-serve food, which is reheated in a central kitchen and then sent to the individual schools.37 Thus, we can see that food supplied to schools has matched the prevailing philosophy of making food cheaper and producing it faster—a philosophy that has driven the fast food industry.38 Celebrated school lunch chef Alice Waters, who has been trying to obtain local, nutritious food for schools, has summed up the situation: [W]e have a set of agricultural policies that subsidize fast food and makes fresh, wholesome foods, which receive no government support, seem expensive . . . [I]ndustrial food is artificially cheap, with its real costs being charged to the public purse, the public health, and the environment.39

In theory, the agricultural commodities that the schools receive through the NSLP should be decided on by the farmers producing those commodities. In reality, though, very few farmers actually have a say because the family farm is becoming an anachronism, with large agricultural corporations controlling the marketplace. It is these companies that decide which crops the government will support when the U.S. Congress passes the farm bill every five years. Today, says author Michael Pollan, “that means . . . corn and soybeans . . . the corn providing the added sugars, the soy providing the added fat, and both providing the feed for the animals . . . [so that] the cheapest calories . . . are precisely the unhealthiest.”40 The corn and soybeans are fed to animals; these animals are then slaughtered to furnish the country—including children in schools—with food from an unquestionably unsustainable practice, which does not provide a goodly amount of nutrition. For example, pig farms use six pounds of grain for every pound of boneless meat, so that when we feed the grain to the pigs, we lose most of the nutritional value of the grain. Thus, we can see that feedlot beef is high in fat and not as nutritious as the grains themselves. This practice adds to the problem of our nation’s children becoming both obese and malnourished at the same time. In addition to the problem of unsustainable, high-fat food supplied to schools is the problem of synthetic hormones, primarily in use to produce beef, pork, and

200


chicken for consumption—all with the goal of faster production, and therefore cheaper production. This is a particularly American problem: every country in the European Union bans this practice because of research that shows that the “hormone residues in U.S. beef may be linked to high rates of breast and prostate cancer, as well as early onset of puberty in girls.”41 Producing dairy products cheaply is also a goal supplying food for school lunches, one that has proven to be lucrative for the large dairy corporations, which not only buy milk from farmers but also dictates to those farmers how their dairy cows should be treated.42 For example, Monsanto Corporation pioneered the use of recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) to increase milk production in dairy cows; this can give cows udder infections, whose pus is often captured in the milk collected. Research also shows that this hormone has been associated with breast, prostate, and colon cancer; such dangers explain why all of the European countries as well as Australia, New Zealand, and Japan have banned the production and sale of milk with rBGH.43 The problems of supply for school lunches are not insurmountable, as we will read later in this chapter. However, we first need to examine the problem that school districts have with procuring a nutritious supply of food for school lunches. Procurement Schools have had to face the problems associated with finding and keeping a reliable source of food supplies for school lunches. Associated with this problem are increasingly constrained school budgets. It is much cheaper to deal with one central supplier, or as few suppliers as possible, rather than many different ones whose economic survival is not guaranteed. In fact, Jack Kloppenburg found that institutional buyers prefer to deal with as few vendors as possible to maximize the efficiency and costs of ordering and delivery.44 Schools are required by federal law to receive as much as 80 percent of their food from one central supplier.45 Overcoming the problems of procurement is necessary if the United States will be able to change the focus of its school lunch program. This can be seen even when looking at an award-winning school—Richmond Elementary School in Appleton, Wisconsin. This school was recently found to be the fourth healthiest school in the United States by Health magazine.46 Richmond Elementary School—one of nineteen elementary schools in the school district—is situated on a corner in Appleton, Wisconsin, near Lawrence University. It has occupied much of this same space since its original building in 1887, when it was a two-story wooden schoolhouse, with a kindergarten on the first floor and first and second grades on the second floor.47 Today, Richmond Elementary is a neighborhood school with all of its 277 kindergarten through sixth-grade students walking to school. This neighborhood school draws its students from a variety of ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, with approximately 33 percent of its students qualifying for free or reduced lunch. The student population has a 17 percent minority representation, primarily Hispanic.48 Richmond Elementary, like the other elementary schools in the district, has a health education curriculum that includes nutrition for kindergarten through sixth grade. This education component is especially important in teaching the students about good and healthy foods to eat—at school as well as at home. Research also


201

Figure 13.1. Lunchtime at Richmond Elementary. Photo credit: Sandra Stokes, author.

establishes the importance of students learning about food in school; schools, say Pyles and Lobick, “can shape children’s food preferences, and therefore play an important role in helping improve children’s diets.”49 Richmond Elementary works hard to ensure that food served in the school as snacks and for celebrations is also healthy. This is especially important, because as Pyles and Lobick report, preferences for foods increase when those foods are presented as rewards.50 Support from parent participation at Richmond Elementary comes from all socioeconomic backgrounds. Parents serve on four committees aimed at school improvement: • Education for healthy living • Whole child (which includes bully prevention and character education) • Responsive Education for All Children (REACH, a collaborative effort between local school districts and Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction, designed to improve instruction for at-risk students in Title I schools) • Teaching and learning improvement51 Another home-school connection is the newsletter, the Rocket Reporter, which Principal Roberta Schmidt composes and sends home to the parents. In every issue of this newsletter, she includes suggestions for sack lunches. For example, for the first week of school, the Rocket Reporter included paragraph-size entries for each day of the week: • • • • •

Homemade sandwiches and snacks for Monday Grilled cheese pockets for Tuesday Turkey-cran tortilla bites for Wednesday Bite-size offerings with dip for dunking for Thursday Layered sandwiches for Friday52

202


These lunch suggestions are written under the heading of “Healthy Kids at Richmond”; in addition, a low-calorie recipe is included for families as well as information about healthy foods.53 The activities of Richmond Elementary School’s education for healthy living committee and a district-wide initiative designed to improve nutritional offerings in Appleton schools are illustrated in solid qualitative data that show student attitudes toward food choices are evident in the school as well as in the students’ homes. Such data were published in a report completed for the Appleton school district measuring student responses to a series of questions. To compose this report, the school district employed the services of Lawrence University, the University of Wisconsin–Fox Valley, and Appleton East High School personnel to conduct a study that grouped results under the following divisions: social influences on nutrition, the culture of food and nutrition, student diets and eating behavior, garbology, and overarching results.54 Findings from this study not only affect school lunches in Appleton, but also are likely to apply to school districts across the country. Without exposure to certain foods, children most likely will not eat them.55 Students in Appleton reported that their family was the biggest social influence on their nutritional behavior. This finding not only explains dinner choices but also explains the choices found in sack lunches. Another finding was that school lunch purchases in Appleton high schools were found to be adversely affected by students being allowed to leave their campus at lunch time; these students most often reported choosing fast food purchases for lunch.56 Other salient findings involved sugar, fat, and sodium. The study found that the majority of sugar in students’ diets was added sugar rather than the naturally occurring sugar found in milk, fruit, and fruit juices. This result led to the finding that students exceeded the USDA Food Guide recommendations for added sugars, fat, and sodium—the latter by substantial margins. In addition, fiber consumption was found to be well below established guidelines.57 The work accomplished by Richmond Elementary has now achieved widespread national recognition.58 Richmond Elementary’s Principal Roberta Schmidt and the pupil services administrator in the Appleton district serve as contact people for the Appleton Area School District’s Elementary Food Service Committee. This committee has thirteen members, eight of whom are parents. The dietitian and the district food service director are Aramark employees. Richmond Elementary has achieved this status without using a farm-toschool philosophy largely because the Appleton school district has partnered with Aramark.59 Aramark provides food services to more than 420 public and private school districts in the United States.60 According to Principal Schmidt, Aramark has proved to be cooperative in the district’s quest to offer healthy food instead of the commonly found unhealthy school lunches found in many districts. One method of changing the school lunch menu, according to Schmidt, is for Johnston Elementary School—the designated pilot school for dietary changes in the Appleton district—to test various menu items to discover which ones produce the least plate waste (the term for food that students throw away). Decisions on test items are made by the district and Aramark. Right now, a salad bar is being tested to determine its feasibility in elementary schools; a salad bar is already successfully being offered in Appleton’s middle and high schools.


203

Appleton procures its food for lunches from Sysco Corporation, located in Baraboo, Wisconsin. According to its Web site, Sysco is— seeking to respond to this consumer demand for more local and sustainable produced foods by linking the farmer with the customer through the modification of existing procurement and distribution supply chains.61

There are four grades of food available from Sysco: supreme, imperial, classic, and reliance. Appleton schools receive reliance-grade food, which Sysco defines as “economy-based products that are specified at a level equal to competitive labels for similar grades or quality.”62 Of the nine recommendations listed later in this chapter, Richmond Elementary meets seven of them. The only two recommendations not met thus far are ones that apply to the provision of food for school lunches: (1) encouraging local providers to form cooperatives that make it easier for districts to obtain locally grown food, and (2) working to lower the federal requirement that 80 percent of all meal components come from one vendor. Richmond Elementary has achieved excellent results despite the fact that the whole district has a private firm operating its food services. This arrangement across the country has garnered a great deal of criticism; however, this arrangement can clearly work. In contrast to the situation at Richmond Elementary, another effort to improve school food is known as the farm-to-school approach.

A NEW APPROACH: FARM-TO-SCHOOL PROGRAMS Nationwide, approximately four hundred farm-to-school (FTS) programs are found in twenty-two states.63 FTS programs are one initiative in the growing alternative agrifood movement that “brings fresh, local produce into schools.”64 These programs have been defined as follows: [T]he ability to connect schools with local and regional farmers to benefit both sets of participants. FTS initiatives connect school food services with local farmers in partnerships that are intended to bring healthier, fresher food to school meals programs while at the same time supporting local farmers by providing an additional source of income and a relatively secure market.65

Allen and Guthman argue that FTS programs are unique within the alternative agrifood movement because they, by definition, must work within the NSLP.66 Nationwide, schools serve some 6.5 billion meals each year to almost 30 million children.67 The first FTS program, begun in 1994, was called Farm Fresh Start and was located in Hartford, Connecticut.68 For schools, say Allen and Guthman, having multiple small vendors is a serious problem because this increases the costs of a food program due to higher costs of market intermediaries, insurance requirements, and accounting costs. This has caused some FTS programs to create intermediaries such as farmer collaborations.69 The costs of FTS programs cannot be ignored, according to Kloppenburg and Hassanein: In an era of straitened or declining budgets many parents, school boards, and state departments of education tend to see FTS programs as potential drains on resources that would best be directed to supporting performance in core academics (or sports).70

204


These authors make the same point about traditional NSLP food: “Food quality continuously degenerates as food services . . . are forced to mimic commercial fast food competitors even as they try to cut costs while embracing USDA commodity foods and pre-packaged meal items that are (literally) assembled rather than cooked.”71 To counter the cost constraints, U.S. Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa has included support for FTS in the last two farm bills.72 The support from Senator Harkin, as well as many others, is based on two concerns—the massive loss of individual family farms (which account for less than 10 percent of all farms in the United States) and the growing recognition that children’s nutritional status is problematic today.73 Most of the FTS programs are found in California, the Northeast, and Upper Midwest; fresh food for school meals and snacks—usually fruits and vegetables— from local and regional farms provide the food for these programs. FTS programs also involve either individual schools, several schools in a district, or, less commonly, multiple school districts.74 In most FTS programs: Schools may purchase a single crop such as apples or watermelons, or a much broader range of items. Occasionally, dairy products and meats are included. The food may be incorporated into existing lunch menus, presented on a salad bar, or provided to students as part of a snack program . . . [and depends] on the types of crops produced in the region and seasonal availability.75

According to Kloppenburg and colleagues, there is a vicious circle regarding the costs and supply of local food:76 “Farmers want a market before they augment production, while food services want to know there is an adequate supply before they commit to buy.”77 In fact, a study of their Madison-based Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch program found this FTS program was seriously constrained by a variety of structural features . . . [such as] the overarching food culture, the quasi-privatized character of most school food services, the degree of industrialization of many school food services, issues of price, procurement and supply and the need for processing facilities.78

In addition, other problems are associated with FTS programs. Wealthier schools are offering fresh, organic fruits and vegetables in lieu of the fast food model of school lunches typically found in inner-city schools and poor rural areas, because the wealthier schools can afford to absorb the increased costs of eating healthy food, an initiative embraced by the parents of those children.79 Meanwhile, poor children are relegated to eating the food that is provided to them, largely from surplus commodities instead of healthier foods. The American value of equality in schools is, in reality, turning out to be in contradiction to the basic need all children have for food. One further characteristic of FTS programs is an education component—from lunchroom to classroom. Education activities include in-class food tasting, field trips to farms, farmer visits to classrooms, school gardening, and the incorporation of food and farm issues into existing curricula. Without such a component, students can all too easily remain fast food customers. As an article in Rethinking Schools notes, “When so much of the food that students encounter is transported


205

over long distances, chemical-laden, shrink-wrapped, and processed, students make little connection with the foods’ origins.”80

A SAMPLE OF FTS PROGRAMS Opelika, Alabama, increased funding for school meals so that those meals can include fresh fruits and vegetables from local farms; the food typically eaten in this community includes such nutritious foods as sweet potatoes, butter cream peas, and black-eyed peas.81 This fare is all locally produced and often eaten at home. Olympia, Washington, schools have added salad bars to their cafeterias, stocked with local produce. To reduce costs, the district made a healthy decision: it stopped serving desserts and started serving fresh fruit instead.82 In fact, Olympia Elementary School has adopted the idea that food should be part of the school’s curriculum: On school grounds, one can find a “large organic garden and greenhouse; during the school year, [the] students dig, plant, weed, water, compost, harvest, and cook fresh produce. All classrooms use the garden to help teach measuring, graphing, and weighing.”83 Berkeley, California, has been a pioneer in school meal changes. The district promotes the consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables; one of its schools has a garden-to-table feature.84 Every school in Berkeley has a salad bar with ingredients including strawberries, organic chicken or turkey, sunflower seeds, fresh avocado, and other in-season items; 100 percent of the district’s food today is fresh and cooked from “scratch.” Entrees include organic sushi and organic chicken, and small local businesses supply such food as fresh tamales, muffins, and vegetable calzones.85 Six schools in the North Quabbin region in central Massachusetts have partnered with Seeds for Solidarity, a nonprofit organization that has worked with the schools to create and teach a course called Reading, Writing, and Wellness.86 Private funding has recently been playing a role, too. Belkin reports on a program called Healthier Options for Public Schoolchildren (HOPS). This program was started by Dr. Arthur Agatston, the creator of the South Beach Diet, and can be found in four of the twenty-nine elementary schools in Osceola County, Florida. The program includes small gardens at each school as well as the inclusion of lesson plans and guides for nutrition lessons to fit into math, science, and social studies curricula.87 The W. K. Kellogg Foundation is funding nine communities: Boston and Holyoke, Massachusetts; Detroit, Michigan; New York, New York; Northeast Iowa; Oakland, California; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Seattle and King County, Washington; and the Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona. The funding is intended for planning, implementing, and sustaining changes to improve the quality of life for children and families by providing money to these communities to purchase local, healthy food. Each community is building a collaborative. Foundation Food and Fitness Initiative Co-Director Gail Imig states, “The key issue is that millions of children don’t have access to fresh foods that are good for them. Their neighborhoods and communities aren’t conducive to exercise and play.”88 The Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch is an FTS program located in the Madison (Wisconsin) Metropolitan School District (MMSD). The goals of this program are “to increase the amount of locally grown foods served in MMSD cafeterias while

206


also providing meaningful educational opportunities for students.”89 The curricular programming is available on the Web site of the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems (http://www.cias.wisc.edu/education-and-training/sustainable-agriculturecurriculum-for-high-school-educators-announced/). One problem encountered by this program was little to no food preparation being performed by the MMSD food service workers; instead, meals served come from ready-to-eat, prepackaged components at a central kitchen facility. This means that the food service department requires fresh food to come in ready-touse form. Despite this barrier, locally sourced menu items include rhubarb muffins, sweet potato muffins, salad mix, yogurt/cream cheese/dill sauce, vegetarian chili, vegetarian tortilla wrap, cranberry cookies, squash bisque, and baked potatoes.90 Another difficulty encountered by this program, consistent with the research on what could improve school lunches, is that the MMSD school district is required to purchase approximately 80 percent of its food products through a national food distributor, meaning that only 20 percent of the food served in school lunches can come from local sources.91 The state of California established an initiative called the California Fresh Start Program (CFSP) to encourage and support schools to provide portions of fruit and vegetables, with an emphasis on obtaining the fruit and vegetables from local and regionally grown California produce.92 The CFSP provides a $0.10 reimbursement to districts for purchasing fresh fruit and vegetables. More large urban school districts participated in this program than did districts in rural areas. The evaluation of the CFSP found that participating districts had a 46 percent increase in the amount of fresh fruit and vegetables offered; furthermore, students more than doubled their consumption of the fresh fruit and vegetables.93 Of noteworthy attention was the fact that an evaluation of the program found that its success was far more noticeable in districts that had lower baseline levels of fruit and vegetable consumption by students.94 Nutrition education, especially regarding the consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables, was part of this program, and it is believed to have contributed to the program’s apparent success. Activities included taste testing in classrooms, cooking classes or demonstrations, and nutrition fairs.95 Barriers to success were inadequate kitchen facilities and a lack of storage space as well as inadequate time devoted to eating; these findings appear to match the findings in other FTS programs. Yet another barrier was the source of the fresh fruit and vegetables; having to locate and negotiate with multiple growers was perceived as difficult because of concerns about insurance and safety certification issues.96

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR HEALTHIER SCHOOL LUNCHES In compiling a list of recommendations, it should be kept in mind that the areas of cost and funding, content and supply, and procurement are all part of these recommendations. 1. Policies in school districts need to be developed to improve the school lunches served in America’s schools. 2. Farmers need to join together to provide a sufficient volume of products as well as to provide the food products in ready-to-use form.


207

3. Junk food available in programs, school stores, and vending machines needs to be curtailed; schools need to end the use of sweets as incentives for classroom performance. 4. Provide food that is low in fat, calories, and added sugars. Recommended are fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat or nonfat dairy foods. 5. Provide an adequate amount of time for students to eat school meals; all too many schools offer twenty-five minutes or less to eat lunch. 6. Encourage school meals that contain nutritious food and ensure that all meals meet federal nutrition standards. 7. Effective leadership from principals and food service directors needs to be obtained. 8. An education component that is age-appropriate and culturally sensitive should be included to accompany healthy school lunches. This education should help students develop the knowledge, attitudes, skills, and behaviors needed to adopt and continue healthy eating habits. 9. Drop the federal requirement that school districts must obtain 80 percent of their food from one vendor.

CONCLUSION If the United States can implement most, if not all, of these recommendations the nation will gain not only a healthier student body, but also a much healthier economy. As Susan Levine concludes, School lunch politics for American children has turned out to be more complicated than parents or policy makers ever imagined. For one thing, as nutritionists and parents know all too well, it is difficult, if not impossible, to convince people— whether children or adults—to eat what is good for them, rather than what tastes good. . . . In crafting a National School Lunch Program, legislators convinced themselves that they could subsidize agricultural markets and at the same time ensure the nutritional well-being of the nation’s children.. . . While policy makers and legislators alike boasted that the National School Lunch Program was intended to protect the nutritional health of all children, no one was willing to appropriate the funds it would take to actually carry out that goal.. . . But the idea of feeding children in school has brought together unexpected alliances and coalitions that have not always fit with the usual political categories of liberal or conservative. When it comes to children, food, and welfare, school lunch politics challenges all players—agriculture, the food-service industry, nutritionists, children’s welfare advocates, and elected officials alike—to serve up balanced meals that include substantive resources along with healthy diets.97

An examination of school lunches can be seen either as a glass half-full or as a glass half-empty. There has been much discussion recently about the problems of the food that we eat in the United States. This food comes largely from large corporations instead of from family farms and it is laden with chemicals that harm our health. The issues surrounding school lunches are but one facet of the issues of food, in general. Therefore, as we discuss and plan on creating a healthier supply

208


of food for the general population, procuring safer and healthier food for school lunches should also be improved. Recognition today of the unhealthy food habits that permeate U.S. society can lead to a change from mass-produced food grown with unhealthy methods to a supply of food that is locally grown using sustainable practices. The large corporations supplying much of the food that we eat are receiving federal government subsidies to produce and supply the food. These subsidies presently are going to a few large corporations and instead could be shifted to individual family farmers who are using sustainable practices. This shift will result in a healthier food supply for society in general, and for children eating food in schools as well.

NOTES 1. Susan Levine, School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America’s Favorite Welfare Program (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). 2. Ibid. 3. Josephine Martin, “The National School Lunch Program—A Continuing Commitment,” Journal of the American Dietetic Association 96, no. 9 (1996): 857–858. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Eileen Kennedy and Edward Cooney, “Development of the Child Nutrition Programs in the United States,” The Journal of Nutrition 131 (2001): 431S–436S. 7. Ibid. 8. Eileen Kennedy, “Public Policy in Nutrition: The U.S. Nutrition Safety Net— Past, Present, and Future,” Food Policy 24 (1999): 325–333, 343–347. 9. Katherine Ralston et al., “The National School Lunch Program: Background, Trends, and Issues,” Economic Research Report No. 61 (Washington, DC: Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2008). 10. Ibid. 11. Katherine Alaimo, Christine M. Olson, and Edward A. Frongillo Jr., “Food Insufficiency and American School-Aged Children’s Cognitive, Academic, and Psychosocial Development,” Pediatrics 108, no. 1 (2001): 44–53. 12. Lynn Parker, The Relationship between Nutrition and Learning: A School Employee’s Guide to Information and Action (Washington, DC: National Education Association, 1989). 13. Alaimo, Olson, and Frongillo Jr., “Food Insufficiency.” 14. Laura Rowell, “An Analysis of Green Bay Area Public Schools Breakfast Barriers and Its Impact on Student Nutrition and Program Revenue” (master’s thesis, Cardinal Stritch University, 2006). 15. Food Research and Action Center. “School Breakfast Scorecard 2007,” http:// www.frac.org/pdf/SBP_2007.pdf (accessed July 11, 2008). 16. Ralston et al., “National School Lunch,” 22. 17. Ibid. 18. Thomas Reardon and Christopher B. Barrett, “Agroindustrialization, Globalization, and International Development: An Overview of Issues, Patterns, and Determinants,” Agricultural Economics 23, no. 3 (2000): 195–205. 19. Ralston et al., “National School Lunch.” 20. Ibid.


209

21. Food and Nutrition Service, Office of Research, Nutrition and Analysis, “School Lunch and Breakfast Study—II: Summary of Findings,” http://www/fns.usda.gov/OANE/ menu/Published/CNP/FILES/MealCostStudySummary.pdf (accessed July 1, 2008). 22. Lisa Belkin, “The School Lunch Test,” New York Times Magazine, August 20, 2006, Midwest edition. 23. Ralston et al., “National School Lunch.” 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. Emily Gersema, “School Districts Absorb Costs As Free Lunches Soar,” Green Bay Press-Gazette, August 24, 2006, B5. 27. Levine, School Lunch Politics, 39. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid., 151. 30. Patricia L. Fitzgerald, “Decades of Dedication: The Early Years,” School Foodservice and Nutrition 2, no. 96 (October 1995): 55–60. 31. Levine, School Lunch Politics, 151. 32. Sharron Dalton, “Schools and the Rising Rate of Overweight Children: Prevention and Intervention Strategies,” Topics in Clinical Nutrition 19, no. 1 (2007): 34–40, 36. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Nicola Pinson, “Who Really Benefits from School Soda Contracts?” Rethinking Schools 20, no. 4 (2006): 48–49. 36. Leah Penniman, “Sowing the Seeds of Solidarity,” Rethinking Schools 20, no. 4 (2006): 34–38. 37. Tom Philpott, “Sucker Lunch: It’s Time to Get Serious about Reforming School Lunches,” http://www.grist.org/comments.food/2006/09/06schoolmeals/ (accessed July 11, 2008). 38. Jim Hightower, “One Thing to Do about Food,” The Nation (September 11, 2006): 21. 39. Alice Waters, “One Thing to Do about Food,” The Nation (September 11, 2006): 13. 40. Michael Pollan, “One Thing to Do about Food,” The Nation (September 11, 2006): 16. 41. Tim Swinehart, “Got a Little More Than Milk? Students Get a Glimpse into the Corporate-Controlled Food System by Looking at the Politics of Food,” Rethinking Schools 20, no. 4 (2006): 52–56. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. Jack Kloppenburg, Doug Wubben, and Miriam Grunes, If You Serve It, Will They Come? Farm-to-School Lessons from the Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch Project (Madison, WI: Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, 2007). 45. Jack Kloppenburg Jr. and Neva Hassanein, “From Old School to Reform School?” Agriculture and Human Values 23 (2006): 417–421. 46. Tracy Minkin, “America’s Healthiest Schools,” Health 22, no. 7 (2008): 142–48. 47. Personal interview with Roberta Schmidt, September 26, 2008. 48. Ibid. 49. Jennifer Pyles and Jennifer Lobick, “Examination of the National School Lunch Program,” Nutritional Anthropology 24, no. 2 (2001): 15–20. 50. Pyles and Lobick, “Examination.” 51. Roberta Schmidt interview. 52. Rocket Reporter, Richmond Elementary, Appleton, WI, September 4, 2008. 53. Ibid.

210


54. Appleton Collaborative Nutrition Project, Appleton Collaborative Nutrition Project Report (Appleton, WI: Lawrence University, University of Wisconsin-Fox Valley for Appleton School District, 2008). 55. Pyles and Lobick, “Examination,” 18. 56. Appleton Collaborative Nutrition Project. http://www.aasd.k12.wi.us/east/ APPLETON_EAST/Nutrition_Study/nutrition_title.htm. 57. Ibid. 58. Minkin, “America’s Healthiest Schools.” 59. Aramark, http://www.aramark.com/ContentTemplate.aspx?PostingID=398&Channel ID=228 (accessed November 2, 2008). 60. Ibid. 61. Sysco, http://www.sysco.com/aboutus/aboutus_buylocal.html (accessed November 2, 2008). 62. Ibid. 63. Patricia Allen and Julie Guthman, “From ‘Old School’ to ‘Farm-to-School’: Neoliberalization from the Ground Up,” Agriculture and Human Values 23 (2006): 401–415. 64. Allen and Guthman, “Old School,” 412. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid. 69. Ibid. 70. Kloppenburg and Hassanein, “From Old School,” 419. 71. Ibid. 72. Kloppenburg, Wubben, and Grunes, If You Serve It. 73. Ibid. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid. 76. Ibid. 77. Ibid., 19. 78. Ibid. 79. Allen and Guthman, “Old School,” 409. 80. Editors, “Feeding the Children,” Rethinking Schools 20, no. 4 (2006): 5. 81. Dalton, “Schools.” 82. Kathleen Vail, “School Food Revolution,” American School Board Journal 192, no. 1 (2005): 10–15. 83. Michi Thacker, “There’s No Business Like Food Business: Students Explore the Secretive Journey from Farm to Table,” Rethinking Schools 20, no. 4 (2006): 28–32. 84. Vail, “School Food Revolution.” 85. Belkin, “The School Lunch Test.” 86. Penniman, “Sowing.” 87. Belkin, “The School Lunch Test.” 88. W. K. Kellogg Foundation, “Food and Fitness,” http://www.wkkf.org/Default. aspz?tabid=90&CID=383&ItemID=5000343&NID=5010343&LanguageID=0 (accessed June 15, 2008). 89. Kloppenburg, Wubben, and Grunes, If You Serve It, 6. 90. Ibid. 91. Ibid. 92. Gail Woodward-Lopez and Karen Webb, Evaluation of the California Fresh Start Program: Report of Findings (Sacramento: California Department of Education, 2008).

School Lunch and Breakfast Programs 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.

211

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Levine, School Lunch Politics, 190–191.

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Levine, Susan. School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America’s Favorite Welfare Program. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. Philpott, Tom. “Sucker Lunch: It’s Time to Get Serious about Reforming School Lunches.” Available at http://www.grist.org/comments.food/2006/09/06schoolmeals/ (accessed on July 11, 2008.)

Web Site Food Research and Action Center, “School Breakfast Scorecard 2007,” http://www. frac.org/pdf/SBP_2007.pdf.


14 Disordered Eating and Body Image Cheryl Toronto Kalny HISTORICAL OVERVIEW In the Western Hemisphere, some of the earliest documented cases of voluntary food denial appear in Christian, Medieval Europe, and were interpreted as religious phenomenon. Young, usually unmarried women denied themselves all forms of food except for the consecrated communion wafer they consumed at daily Mass. At a time when the female was considered to be the fountainhead of evil, not only in Church doctrine but also by public opinion, these fasting girls attracted to themselves not only considerable attention, but also positive, public affirmation of their goodness.1 Although the motives and goals behind this form of “holy anorexia” were certainly different from the modern mania for excessive thinness, a number of studies have suggested surprising sociocultural similarities through the ages.2 In the Middle Ages, as today, the onset of food asceticism coincided with the onset of puberty, suggesting a fear of sexual development and an attempt to stunt or curb sexual maturation. Concurrently, these fasting habits can be seen, then and now, as a desire to exert some limited control of one’s life, if only through food intake. Young women in both time periods bemoan the inability to achieve satisfying results through strict food asceticism, hence the obsessive compulsion to fast to death. By the 1600s, the concern with fasting saints had given way to an interest in cultural ideals as well as physical symptomology. Gutierrez examines the convergence in early modern England of fasting women in fact and fiction. The pining away of Shakespeare’s Ophelia mirrors the tragic self-induced starvation of one of Queen Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting, Margaret Ratcliffe, memorialized by the poet Ben Jonson as one “whose grief was out of fashion.”3 Both women are celebrated and mourned not as saints, but as examples of praise-worthy, other-centered females. At this same time, documented cases in London and Paris began to describe illnesses in young women between the ages of fifteen and twenty consisting of diminished food intake, constipation, loss of weight, and, curiously, the patient’s unconcern with her condition. Over the next two hundred years, the severe emaciation of these patients was variously attributed to hypopituitarism, nervous consumption, or apepsia hysterica.4 Generally, it was believed that a lack of appetite was the root cause of these

214


problems, hence the term anorexia (from the Greek, “loss of appetite”) was eventually settled on by the turn of the twentieth century. Not until the post–World War II period, however, did the scientific community begin to explore the psychological causations and implications of eating disorders. Studies from the 1950s discussed the view that the anorexic patient refused food not because of a lack of appetite, but rather from a psychological condition that caused her to lose her appetite for food. During the following decade, further research began to describe features of this disordered eating in terms that continue to resonate today, such as “weight phobia” and “morbid fear of becoming fat.”5 Bruch, in particular, synthesized a forty-year study and treatment of anorexics in 1973, cautioning that although anorexics themselves focused on weight gained and lost, those treating the victims of disordered eating must resist this way of measuring their success and failure, and focus, instead, on the happiness of “the person within.”6 Disordered eating patterns were subdivided into two separate but interrelated categories by research conducted in the later decades of the twentieth century. Anorexia nervosa referred to the food restrictors, and bulimia to the vomiters.7 In 1987, the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) delineated bulimia nervosa as a separate disorder, characterized by binge eating followed by purging.8 Nevertheless, a common denominator connects these separate phenomena and suggests that these distinct disorders actually may be different reactions to the same psychological stimuli—namely, the fear of fatness. One group of disordered eaters severely restricts calories to keep from getting fat, while the other group may attempt the same strategy, but with less willpower and success—hence the occurrence of bingeing and purging.

PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ETIOLOGY Along with fear of fatness, body image, weight, and shape are central factors of concern for disordered eaters, whether bulimic or anorexic. Whether they have a distorted perception of their bodies, or a distorted experience of body weight and shape as the DSM reports, people with eating disorders often deny that they are severely emaciated.9 In fact, most would insist that they have more weight to lose, which is why they so strongly resist internal or external pressures to eat. The effects of disordered eating are specific to the disorder. For anorexics, sustained food deprivation and calorie restriction will ultimately result in lowered estrogen levels, leading to the absence of menstrual cycles, causing bone thinning and eventual osteoporosis. All of the muscles of the body diminish in size and strength, including the heart. Fatal arrhythmias are a risk, as well as life-threatening dehydration, and abnormal digestive mechanisms. For bulimics, years of vomiting produce electrolyte imbalance, low potassium levels, esophageal disorders, constipation, and irritable bowel syndrome, all of which may lead to respiratory paralysis or even cardiac arrest.10

THEORIES OF CAUSATION Despite obviously uncomfortable, even painful physical symptoms leading to dire, life-threatening consequences, disordered eaters cling fiercely to their illness and stubbornly resist the attempts at “curing” them made by concerned and

Disordered Eating and Body Image

215

well-meaning families and physicians. The psychological components of these disordered behaviors have been variously tied to developmental crises in adolescent females, problems in personal identity and competence, the cultural preference for thinness, and an inordinate desire to please, be recognized, and be rewarded on the part of young women who may have previously felt discounted, powerless, and weak. Their illness gives them not only an individual identity, but also a sense of control over not only themselves, but also over their families, friends, and even the professionals charged with their care.11 Alternate theories examine these eating disorders within a broader context, and see the refusal to eat with others as part of a wider refusal of relatedness that permeates every aspect of life.12 The manner in which anorexics negotiate relatedness in their everyday lives, from relationships with family and food to social rites of passage, their sexuality, and even their own bodies is pivotal to understanding the psychological dimensions of the disease. In effect, disordered eaters avoid and deny traditional forms of relatedness and commensality in favor of forming a relationship with anorexia. Being anorexic gives them not only a personal identity to cling to, but makes them a part of a community, “as if belonging to a secret and powerful group, a religion, or a competitive team sport.”13 Perhaps one of the most intriguing conceptualizations of the complex problem of disordered eating is to understand the illness as a “dangerous, ‘kinky’ pleasure” of young women who desire “the pleasure of no pleasure.”14 In a culture that fails to provide women with legitimate and autonomous means of fulfilling individual desire, and that portrays women as the passive object of man’s desire, the refusal of those pleasures that are allowed becomes, in itself, a pleasure. Anorexia becomes a means, a tool, for imagining and achieving pleasure, as well as for resisting socialization.15

DEMOGRAPHICS In the United States, eating disorders have been categorized by the general public as a phenomenon affecting primarily white, middle- to upper-class adolescent women. To a large extent, statistics bear out these impressions. The vast majority of anorexics are female, with only about 8 percent of those diagnosed being male, while 15 percent of bulimics are male.16 More than 89 percent of young women suffering from an eating disorder come from two-parent, double-income families, although there are some studies suggesting that bulimia, specifically, may be more common in lower socioeconomic classes.17 Similarly, the relatively few studies that have been conducted on eating disorders among minority populations, specifically of African American women, indicate a much lower incidence of anorexia and bulimia within a community that places less value on weight loss, outward appearances, and media images.18 On the other hand, the incidence of eating disorders among the Hispanic populations in the United States more closely mimics that in the white population.19 The demographics of disordered eating are quite alarming, especially considering anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are relative newcomers to the cultural and social scene. Before 1970, few cases of anorexia and bulimia were reported. Between 1970 and the end of the twentieth century, the dimensions of the problem, and the number of reported cases, increased dramatically. Initial responses to

216


this rapidly escalating “social epidemic” questioned whether this increase reflected better diagnostic techniques and greater public awareness, rather than actual increases in new cases.20 Statistics published by the American Psychiatric Association in 2005, however, show that between 1 to 2 percent of American women begin developing anorexic symptoms in early adolescence, between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, while 2 to 3 percent begin exhibiting bulimic behavior between the ages of sixteen and twenty. Complicating these statistics, however, is the belief that perhaps as high a number as 45 to 50 percent of bulimics start out as anorexics.21 Whether one considers 2 percent or 3 percent of the adolescent female population in the United States, the fact is that, conservatively speaking, eating disorders affect about seven million young American women today. Mortality rates for eating disorders are considerably higher than for any other psychiatric disorder. Desiring death, as Warin writes, is the ultimate negation of connectedness, and between 5 and 20 percent of anorexics die each year achieving their goal of being the “perfect anorexic.”22 The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa estimates that 5 to 10 percent of anorexics die within ten years of diagnosis, while 18 to 20 percent will be dead after twenty years. Only about 30 to 40 percent of anorexics can be expected to fully recover, and recovery occurs only after treatment lasting from four to seven years. Relapse remains a problem for more than 25 percent of anorexics.23 Statistics on bulimics, especially bulimic anorexics, are even more troubling. Recent studies suggest that while anorexia affects 0.7 percent of the population in Western Hemisphere nations, bulimia rates are closer to 1.6 percent and growing.24 Superimposed on the already defensive and resistant anorexic pattern is the pronounced difficulty with impulse control and self-destructive behavior of the anorexic bulimic. The intense shame over the chronic pattern of bingeing and purging often leads not only to secretive patterns, but also to suicide attempts. Bulimia remains hard to detect, with only one-tenth of bulimics being treated, and most of them have had the disorder for at least seven years before seeking help. Bulimia continues to pose significant obstacles to treatment and recovery.25 Not surprisingly, disordered eating patterns have been reported throughout the Euro-American world in countries that share Western cultural attitudes, values, and influences. In the early 1970s, a Swedish study of high school students in Stockholm found that about 50 percent of the female students felt fat and had tried a rigorous diet, while 10 percent had experienced anorexic symptoms.26 A survey of college students in England in the 1980s reported similar findings. By the early 1990s, disordered eating studies were being carried out in Australia, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Israel, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland.27 Despite cross-national differences, the findings were consistent. Thin is beautiful, and young women were willing to go to extreme lengths, suffering physical and psychological pain, to achieve the desired body image. European statistics on numbers affected, causes, effects, and mortality rates mirror those of the United States. Eating disorders in Canada received widespread and public attention in the 1980s, when it was reported that anorexia and bulimia affected one in twenty young women.28 By 2000, studies indicated approximately 10.7 per 100,000 women had sought hospital treatment for an eating disorder. The number of women treated on an out-patient basis, however, or seen in a clinic by a private physician, is not recorded. A data gap also exists in Canada for minority and immigrant women. In


217

Canada, as in every nation that currently keeps statistics on eating disorders, the largest data gap may represent those anorexics and bulimics who neither seek, nor receive, any treatment at all. In those non-Western nations that have been most strongly influenced by Western culture, particularly in the post–World War II era, it is perhaps not unexpected to find eating disorders. One of the first studies to suggest a link between westernization and disordered eating was conducted by Mervet Nasser in 1986. Nasser compared the eating patterns of female Egyptian students attending university in London and in Cairo. While 22 percent of the London group exhibited signs of an eating disorder, only 12 percent of those studying in Cairo did so. In addition, none of the Cairo group met the criteria for bulimia, while over 10 percent of the London students qualified for this diagnosis. As further corroborating evidence of a cultural link, Nasser noted that all of the young women in the London group had begun to dress in the European fashion.29 Studies in Japan, dating to the 1980s, report an incidence rate of anorexia nervosa as one in five hundred young women.30 A particularly prevalent form of binge eating in Japan is called kibarashi syndrome. Today in Japan, most urban hospitals have opened eating-disorder units and clinics.31 Similarly, studies conducted in both the Republic of Korea and Singapore in the 1990s reveal the rapid rise of eating disorders in these relatively wealthy, and westernized, Asian countries— despite the smaller body mass of these women. More than 90 percent of schoolgirls in both countries expressed dissatisfaction with their body size and felt they were overweight.32 In the Republic of Korea, especially, the rise in eating disorders has seemed to parallel the rapid increase of industrialization and urbanization after the 1970s. By the end of the twentieth century, studies indicated that while a majority of Korean school girls felt they were overweight, the average dress size for Korean women was the equivalent of an American size four.33

NON-WESTERN WORLD It had long been assumed that Western-patterned eating disorders would not be found in Asia, Africa, India, Latin America, or even socialist Europe. Economic conditions and limited food supply would seem to make it highly unlikely that many would be affected by an eating pattern dependent on voluntary food rejection and self-starvation. In addition, in many parts of the non-Western, hungry world, fatness, not slimness, is still a sign of affluence and beauty. Recent studies, however, reveal some unexpected findings. Eating disorders are on the rise in the non-Western world. If, as has been suggested by numerous studies in many parts of the globe, eating disorders are a barometer of cultural change, the political and economic changes occurring in central and eastern European countries following the collapse of Communism and the emergence of capitalism should provide fertile research fields. Unfortunately, however, disordered eating studies were rare in socialist European countries before 1989. Reports of studies conducted in Czechoslovakia and Poland revealed the existence of anorexia nervosa, but little mention was made of bulimia.34 In 1988, a comparative study of eating disorders conducted between Austria, East Germany, and Hungary showed an almost identical prevalence of

218


disordered eating in the three countries.35 While these studies suggest the existence of eating disorders in Eastern Europe before the political changes in 1989, these disorders did not receive much attention before the collapse of Communism. There has been some suggestion that given the Soviet insistence on, and rewarding of, thinness in its athletes and ballerinas, the preference for excessive thinness among Eastern Bloc women existed before the onset of Western cultural influences after 1989.36 A unique pair of studies examined and compared disordered eating patterns in central and eastern Europe before 1989, with those after the political and economic changes ushered in by the collapse of the Communist system. The eating habits of East and West Berlin school girls were surveyed in the 1980s, before unification.37 While both groups of girls had similar eating habits, those living in East Berlin had a surprisingly stronger identification with Western body ideals. When this study was replicated after Germany’s unification, both groups of school girls evidenced increased focus on, and dissatisfaction with, body image.38 Poland, also, presents an interesting case study of the rapidity of the spread of Western body ideals. Two groups of Polish women were studied in 1990: factory workers and school girls. The students scored five times higher than the factory workers on levels of eating disorders, including anorexia and bulimia. Among the general population, bulimia was largely unknown, and Polish words for bingeing and purging did not even exist.39 The school girls in this study had already been exposed to Western influences and body ideals, and by the end of that decade, the Western fashion industry had nationalized the preference for thinness in Poland. Eastern European models were beginning to appear on the covers of Western fashion magazines, and disordered eating rates in Poland were virtually indistinguishable from those in the West.40 An important study conducted in Hong Kong, China, raised questions about the assumed impact of Western culture on eating disorders and their causes and expressions.41 Sing Lee confirmed the growing number of disordered eating cases coming through his psychiatric practice in the 1980s, but observed interesting contrasts with the Western model of disordered eating. The majority of his patients were from the lower classes, and did not exhibit body image problems or a fear of fatness. In Hong Kong, as in many Asian countries, plumpness represents health and beauty. While rejection of food remains the common denominator, and seems to be a characteristic female reaction to psychological stress, Lee suggests alternate motivations to those commonly accepted in the West. Rather than an obsession with thinness, Lee’s young patients starved themselves as a way to express rebellion against their families, and to free themselves from rigid patriarchal control.42 Unfortunately, not much information exists on the prevalence of eating disorders throughout China. One survey of medical school students taken in Shanghai in the early 1990s found that approximately 1 percent self-reported bulimic symptoms. American college populations at that time were reporting ranges from 2 to 4 percent.43 Almost 80 percent of the females who participated in the Chinese study expressed fears of becoming fat or gaining weight. Because these concerns and attitudes about body image and thinness have never been part of traditional Chinese culture, it is surmised that the impact of westernization in the form of media, fast food, and consumerism—particularly in the urban areas—have had a growing impact on China.44


219

In Africa, a 1992 survey of Nigerian women revealed disordered eating problems surprisingly similar to Western society, despite traditional practices that encourage young women to fatten up before marriage.45 Even though fatness has traditionally been associated with fertility throughout Africa, bulimia, particularly, was quite common among these young Nigerian women. A study of Kenyan women in 1983 revealed this same tension between traditional practices and values and social change. Kenyan immigrant women residing in Great Britain for longer than four years were compared to women still living in Kenya. While traditional Kenyan women preferred a larger body size, those living in England valued a smaller physique—similar to British women.46 Cultural changes and tensions may, in fact, be the trigger for the development of eating disorders outside of the West. In South Africa, dominated by white culture and politics until 1994, study results differ from the black population to the white. Before the end of apartheid, eating disorders among black South Africans either did not exist, or were not recognized, treated, or recorded. Among white South Africans, disordered eating patterns had been observed and treated since the early 1980s. Rates of anorexia and bulimia among this population were virtually indistinguishable from Western societies. Since the 1990s, however, studies have shown a rise in eating disorders among black South Africans, as rigid segregation has relaxed and cross-cultural contact has increased.47 Although it is tempting to theorize that closer association with Western culture and values has been the stimulus for this rise in eating disorders across Africa, the reasons may be far more complex. Shifts of populations from rural to urban areas, along with the attendant changes in lifestyles and values, and political transformations resulting in gender role changes for African women, along with the pressures and stresses of recent empowerment of women, all contribute to a broader cultural understanding of the relatively recent emergence of disordered eating in Africa.48 Studies of eating disorders in India began to surface in the 1990s.49 While access to food is still a major problem in many parts of India, and hunger remains a public health problem the Indian government still struggles to eradicate, eating disorders are on the rise among the growing affluent and professional classes. As Richard Gordon points out, upper-class Indian women have now added weightcontrol issues to their traditional concerns of skin lightening and hair straightening.50 The influence of Western body image, as portrayed in films, magazines, and fashions, can be readily seen in these concerns. At the same time, other studies caution that an overreliance on Western-modeled, fat-phobic causation negates different and individually driven cultural diagnosis.51 Indian culture has a long tradition of admiring and encouraging self-sacrifice in women, including practices such as ritual group fasting. Indeed, a study done among young adults in Jaipur reveals that bulimia rates among this population rival those in Britain, even though these slightly built North Indians express the desire to weigh more than they presently do, not less.52 Thus, bulimia here does not seem to correlate with a fear of fatness as in the Western model. Self-starvation in India, according to Littlewood, might simply be the easiest way for young women to express general distress and attract the attention of family and loved ones in a culture where food preparation and distribution is the expected realm of women.53

220


The reported incidences of disordered eating throughout Latin America vary from place to place. Chile was the first country to report eating disturbances as early as 1982, although the cases referred to in the study dated back to the early 1970s, the same period when similar studies began to emerge in the United States.54 This was also a time of political turmoil and great social and economic change in Chile, as the Pinochet military regime overthrew the Allende government, and established a commercialized culture and capitalist economy. The transition to a global consumer economy, along with challenges to traditional cultural roles and values, often present women with contradictory and conflicting choices. It is within this milieu, some have theorized, that eating disorders arise in nonWestern nations.55 In Mexico, the predominant group affected by anorexia and bulimia has been university students living in Mexico City. As has been the case elsewhere, rapid industrialization and urbanization have affected Mexico in many ways, including the rise in eating disorders. Western media images of obsessively thin women have proliferated in Mexico, a nation that traditionally has relied on a high carbohydrate diet. The urban and professional classes have been the first to feel the effects, according to reports published in 1998.56 Argentina presents a somewhat unique and interesting study of disordered eating phenomena and causation. In a survey of seven hundred people, 79 percent of women expressed the opinion that slenderness was an important issue, 60 percent considered themselves overweight, and 71 percent were doing something to lose more weight. Numbers such as these have led some researchers to declare an epidemic of eating disorders in Argentina.57 Argentinians associate being overweight with laziness, while associating slenderness with beauty, sensuality, youth, and attractiveness. Women spend more than $90 million each year on cosmetic surgery, and another $12 million for diet drugs.58 Restrictive clothing sizes, the largest size in Argentina is the equivalent of size eight in the United States, further reinforce the national preference for slimness and the need to restrict food intake. Because Argentina has been called the most European of South American nations, it is logical to assume that Western cultural images and preferences have been responsible for Argentina’s attitudes and behaviors regarding body image. Today’s intense insistence on a culture of beauty might stem more from a reaction to the government repressions of the 1970s, than to external influences. An ongoing neurodevelopmental study by Connan, Katzman, and Treasure suggests that food regulation and emotional restriction can become interrelated adaptive coping mechanisms.59

TREATMENT IN THE WESTERN WORLD One of the first publications in the United States to examine courses of treatment for disordered eating was Hilde Bruch’s Eating Disorders. While this book was published in 1973, the case studies examined in her work reflected forty years of clinical experience as a psychiatrist specializing in the treatment of eating disorders, specifically obesity and anorexia. Her book continues to be significant, not only for its introduction of her groundbreaking beliefs about best treatment options at that time, but also because it illuminates and critiques the practices commonly in use during the decades before her publication.


221

Bruch expresses skepticism at the traditional methods of treating anorexic patients, as well as of determining the successful outcomes of that treatment. Her analysis critiques a three-pronged approach: hospitalization, medication, and psychotherapy. Of the traditional medical approach, hospitalization, Bruch wrote, Even if there is no threat to life, anorexia nervosa is such a serious, anxiety-producing condition that sooner or later the question of hospitalization will come up. There has been considerable controversy about the merits of hospitalization. A tradition has developed that it is best to treat these patients away from their families, but in my experience short-term hospitalization to enforce weight gain without attention to the underlying problems is useless, if not harmful.60

Similarly, Bruch questions the therapeutic value of medications commonly used at the time, such as insulin (to stimulate the appetite) and thyroid shots (to raise the metabolic rate). It is not unusual even today to find an anorexic who has been receiving thyroid shots for many years, and would not think of giving it up, because the patient is convinced that it helps her keep her weight down. As long as anorexia nervosa was considered of pituitary origin, it was a matter of course to prescribe some glandular extract or even to implant pituitary glands from animals.61 Bruch is convinced that even traditional psychotherapy has done more harm than good to patients with disordered eating problems. In spite of gaining insight, some basic disturbance in their approach to life remained beclouded and untouched, or was even reinforced in the traditional psychoanalytic setting in which the patient expresses secret thoughts and feelings, and the analyst interprets their unconscious meanings. This represents in a painful way a repetition of the significant interaction between patient and parents, where “mother always knew how I felt,” with the implication that they themselves do not know how they feel. Interpretation to such a patient may mean the devastating re-experience of being told what he thinks and feels, confirming his sense of inadequacy and thus interfering with his developing true self-awareness and trust in his own psychological faculties.62 Bruch is particularly critical of the more coercive measures in use at that time, such as enforced isolation, locked rooms, and gastric feeding tubes. Her recommendations for more effective treatment of anorexics included brief hospitalization primarily for those severely emaciated patients in need of life-saving intravenous infusions, the use of psychotropic drugs “under drastic conditions,” and more individualized, collaborative therapy where the patient is listened to, rather than told what she “really” feels and means.63 Bruch cautions that whereas a gain in weight is commonly taken as a sign of recovery, in reality it more likely represents only a temporary remission, especially if the underlying problems persist “below the facade.”64 Almost twenty years later, a study by another psychiatrist, L. K. George Hsu, reaffirmed some of the same observations Bruch had made in the 1970s. Inpatient treatment, according to Hsu, should be reserved for those anorexics whose body weight has fallen below 70 percent of the average, and should be discontinued shortly after the patient has reached “target weight.”65 Hsu further noted that the use of psychotropic drugs, including antidepressants, appeared to have a “marginal effect” on weight gain, but warned that using weight gain as an “index of improvement”

222


was highly problematic. “Rapid weight gain,” Hsu insisted, “is uncomfortable and possibly dangerous to the patient and bears no relationship to long-term outcome.”66 Treatment goals in the 1990s focused on the physical, emotional, and psychological recovery of the patient, and included the establishment of healthy eating patterns, the resolution of the patient’s abnormal fixation on thinness, and the prevention of relapses. Family therapy was believed to hold the key to recovery, because most patients still lived at home and the illness not only originated there, but rather impinged on every member of the family.67 Although some of the same treatment goals were identified for both anorexics and bulimics, the latter were not encouraged to gain weight, but rather to maintain a stable weight. A three-stage approach in the 1990s aimed at returning selfcontrol to the patient. First, the binge and purge cycle must be broken through a combination of stimulus control techniques (when, where, and how much to eat) and the self-monitoring of food intake. Generally speaking, once the bingeing is under control, the purges will cease. The second stage focuses on establishing a regular pattern of eating, and the final stage aims to prevent relapses.68 Fairburn and Wilson describe a similar threephase approach known as Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT). Once the underlying problems that precipitate the binge-and-purge cycle are identified, a contract is made to work on these issues during treatment sessions.69 A slightly different psychotherapy in use by the 1990s was supportive-expressive therapy. Here, disordered eating patterns are seen as disguises for deep-seated interpersonal problems. The patient’s past is explored to identify the sources of their relationship conflicts, and the expression of pent-up emotions is encouraged during the treatment sessions.70 By the end of the twentieth century, Intensive Outpatient Programs (IOPs) were introduced as an alternative to hospitalization for patients whose health insurance would not cover extensive hospitalization, or for those who needed transition care.71 In IOPs, treatment focuses on the physical (symptom management) and the psychological (understanding the disorder). Group therapy sessions typically meet weekly for several months and involve attending meals regularly. This has become a popular option for those who want to continue their daily lives and work routines, while attending evening sessions.72 The field of psychopharmacology grew rapidly by the end of the century. A range of new drugs was introduced to combat depression, curb binge impulses, and control tension-related behaviors. It was discovered that the neurotransmitter serotonin produced feelings of happiness and satisfaction, while lowered levels of serotonin triggered depression and urges to binge and purge. Medications such as Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil were commonly prescribed as mood enhancers and antidepressants to control obsessive-compulsive behaviors.73 By the advent of the twenty-first century, therapies for disordered eating in the Western world routinely included treatment to change not only the eating behaviors but also body image distortions. Distorted body image is one of the key indicators for both anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, according to the American Psychiatric Association. Patients significantly overestimate their size and shape, imagine or exaggerate feature flaws or defects, and believe their appearance is under intense scrutiny by others. A perceived defect in their appearance makes them believe they are defective people. Common complaints of disordered eating


223

patients focus on specific areas of the body, such as fat thighs, buttocks, upper arms, breasts, neck, or cheeks.74 Even after body weight is restored, or the cycle of binge eating followed by vomiting is broken, body image dissatisfaction persists. These cognitive disturbances, whether they are classified as delusional or obsessional, are treated with a variety of cognitive-behavioral procedures. Therapists identify the “negative body talk” of patients, “my thighs are huge and fat and ugly," and encourage cognitive restructuring, “my thighs are strong and muscular.” A body image diary continues to monitor the self-conscious statements, beliefs, and perspectives of disordered eaters during therapy. Behavioral procedures are introduced to counter the avoidance habits of patients, the excessive body checking and grooming, the repeated need for reassurance, and the constant comparing that are all hallmarks of disordered eating.75 Family therapy, particularly in the treatment of anorexics, has long been an integral component of treatment in the West. As early as Bruch in 1973, therapists have recognized that disordered eating arises within a family context, and family dynamics are as important for the resolution of these disorders as for their conception. Traditional family therapy viewed the family as influencing the personality of the individual, hence treatment focused on correcting the problems in the individual.76 Structural family therapy works not only with the individual, but also with the family, identifying, altering, or resolving dysfunctional patterns while encouraging open, healthy styles of communication within the family.77 Feminist family therapy emphasizes forming a partnership between client and therapist rather than presenting the therapist as the “powerful expert,” to address the sociocultural factors that are at the root of disordered eating, namely, the patient’s indirect method of gaining power and control while remaining subordinate.78 Families are encouraged to explore together issues of hierarchy and control, and parents, in particular, are urged to participate in therapy in nonconfrontational ways.

TREATMENT IN THE NON-WESTERN WORLD As the non-Western world differs in symptomology from the Western world, so, too, do treatment options for disordered eating differ. In cultures where fat phobia does not significantly define disordered eating habits, treatment focuses on other fundamental and underlying issues. Rather than the Western model in which disordered eating is largely regarded as an “appearance disorder” caused by an overattention to fashion and calorie counting, food refusal in many parts of the world expresses the need for control in situations in which one feels powerless. In Argentina, mostly because of the lack of insurance coverage for eating disorders, there is a shortage of facilities to treat anorexic and bulimic patients. Anorexia and bulimia are often treated in conjunction with other weight-related illnesses, such as obesity. Patients usually are treated by endocrinologists and nutritionists, with little input by psychologists and psychiatrists.79 Teamwork is sometimes construed as a breach of patient confidentiality, so professionals are unused to consulting and sharing patients and cases. Treatment teams are used, however, at the university-based treatment center in Buenos Aires, the largest facility in the country, which opened an Eating Disorders

224


Clinic in 1993. The treatment program at Hospital Nacional de Clinicas employs teams combining a psychoanalytical approach with family therapy and nutrition education on both an in-patient and out-patient basis. The majority of patients seen at this facility are bulimic, and the dropout rates are more than 50 percent.80 In 1996, MET (Motivational Enhancement Therapy) was introduced in Buenos Aires and has experienced some success in the treatment of adolescents with eating disorders, as has CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), which was introduced in 2000. The cultural preference in Argentina for one-on-one psychoanalytical therapy is gradually yielding to a model that incorporates a number of different therapy options, including patient self-reporting diaries and self-help programs.81 The relatively recent and continuing social and political changes occurring in South Africa since the end of apartheid have created a unique treatment profile for disordered eating, especially among the black, rural populations. In general, blacks in South Africa were underserved by the Western-based health care system during apartheid. Eating disorders, specifically, may have been present, but unreported, among black adolescents during these years. Equally possible is the likelihood that in the rural areas, then and now, patients suffering from self-starvation, severe and rapid weight loss, and self-induced vomiting may seek treatment from traditional healers.82 Since the end of apartheid, however, an ever-growing percentage of South Africa’s rural population has become urbanized. By 1996, the populations of most provinces in South Africa ranged from 50 percent urbanized to 95 percent.83 The process of urbanization, itself, along with the recent empowerment of black women in South Africa, has created pressures and psychological disturbances that may be factors in the emergence of eating disorders.84 A cultural understanding of these forces is critical in any treatment and therapy program. Cultural factors also shape the treatment options and recovery process in parts of the world, such as China, where fat phobia is not an important rationale for not eating. A study of Hong Kong families in 2000 identified five motives for selfstarvation, which are relevant to treatment, but are not related to fear of fatness.85 These motives are reflective of Chinese culture and values, and include selfsacrifice for family well-being, filial piety, bridging of parental conflict, expression of love or control, and camouflage of family conflicts.86 Psychotherapy and control therapy focuses on helping patients let go of the illusion of control their eating disorder gives them. Treatment options and preferences differ across Latin America. CBT, which employs such methods as journaling your thoughts and emotions, engaging in activities formerly avoided, and practicing new ways of thinking, reacting, and behaving, is a relatively new treatment in this part of the world and, as such, is accepted and employed in some countries while rejected in others. A shortage of trained and experienced therapists in CBT has been a handicap in some parts of South America. The latest research and treatment options for disordered eating bring us back to the Western world, to researchers in Canada and the United States. Scientists in both countries are convinced there is a genetic component to anorexia and bulimia and are searching for the genetic links between eating disorders and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Physicians and therapists had previously noted the high rates of OCD in families with eating disorders, and vice versa, and many now


225

believe that eating disorders become one of the ways in which OCD is expressed. As with other psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia and autism, it is expected that a genetic component to anorexia and bulimia soon will be identified.

NOTES 1. Rudolph M. Bell, Holy Anorexia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 114–16. 2. Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). 3. Nancy A. Gutierrez, “Shall She Famish Then?”: Female Food Refusal in Early Modern England (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 30–32. 4. L. K. George Hsu, Eating Disorders (New York: Guilford Press, 1990), 1–5. 5. A. H. Crisp, “Anorexia Nervosa,” Hospital Medicine I (1967): 713–719; G. F. M. Russell, “The Present State of Anorexia Nervosa,” Psychological Medicine 7 (1977): 353–67. 6. Hilde Bruch, Eating Disorders: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa, and the Person Within (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 211–25. 7. D. M. Garner, P. E. Garfinkel, and M. O’Shaughnessy, “The Validity of the Distinction between Bulimics with and without Anorexia Nervosa,” American Journal of Psychiatry 142 (1985) 581–87. 8. American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 1987). 9. Simona Giordano, Understanding Eating Disorders: Conceptual and Ethical Issues in the Treatment of Anorexia and Bulimia Nervosa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), 23. 10. Ibid., 29. 11. Richard A. Gordon, Eating Disorders: Anatomy of a Social Epidemic (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 22–23. 12. Megan J. Warin, “Reconfiguring Relatedness in Anorexia,” Anthropology and Medicine 13 (2006): 42. 13. Ibid., 43. 14. Margaret R. Miles, “Textual Harassment: Desire and the Female Body,” in The Good Body: Asceticism in Contemporary Culture, ed. Mary G. Winkler and Letha B. Cole (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 50–51. 15. Ibid. 16. Giordano, Understanding Eating Disorders, 19. 17. Richard A. Gordon, Eating Disorders: Anatomy of a Social Epidemic (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 93. 18. Kathryn J. Zerbe, The Body Betrayed: Women, Eating Disorders, and Treatment (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 1993), 108. 19. M. Crago, C. M. Shisslak, and L. S. Estes, “Eating Disturbances among American Minority Groups: A Review,” International Journal of Eating Disorders 19 (1996): 239–48. 20. Giordano, Understanding Eating Disorders, 20. 21. Gordon, Eating Disorders, 35. 22. Megan J. Warin, “Reconfiguring Relatedness in Anorexia,” Anthropology and Medicine 13 (2006): 47. 23. National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, http:// www.anred.com/stats.html. 24. Ibid.

226


25. Gordon, Eating Disorders, 36–37. 26. I. Nylander, “The Feeling of Being Fat and Dieting in a School Population,” Acta Sociomedica Scandinavica 3 (1971): 17–26. 27. Gordon, Eating Disorders, 86. 28. Veronica Strong-Boag and Gillian Creese, “Canada,” in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Women’s Issues Worldwide: North America and the Caribbean, ed. Cheryl Kalny (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003), 49–64. 29. Mervat Nasser, “Comparative Study of the Prevalence of Abnormal Eating Habits among Arab Female Students of Both London and Cairo Universities,” Psychological Medicine 13 (1986): 829–37. 30. Kathryn J. Zerbe, The Body Betrayed (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 1993), 113. 31. Ibid., 114. 32. Gordon, Eating Disorders, 82. 33. Ibid., 8. 34. Gunther Rathner, “Post-Communism and the Marketing of the Thin Ideal,” in Eating Disorders and Cultures in Transition, ed. Mervat Nasser, Melanie A. Katzman, and Richard Gordon (New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2001), 93–101. 35. Ibid. 36. Noah E. Gotbaum, “Commentary I,” in Eating Disorders and Cultures in Transition, ed. Nasser et al. (New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2001), 105–7. 37. Rathner, “Post-Communism,” 96–98. 38. Ibid. 39. K. Bisaga-Wlodarczyk, B. Dolan, S. McCluskey, and H. Lacey, “Disordered Eating Behavior and Attitudes towards Weight and Shape in Polish Women,” European Eating Disorder Review 3 (1995): 205–12. 40. Rathner, “Post-Communism,” 98. 41. S. Lee, T. P. Ho, and L. K. G. Hsu, “Fat Phobic and Non-Fat Phobic Anorexia Nervosa: A Comparative Study of 70 Chinese Patients in Hong Kong,” Psychological Medicine 23 (1993): 999–1015. 42. Richard Gordon, “Eating Disorders East and West,” in Eating Disorders and Cultures in Transition, ed. M. Nasser, M. A. Katzman, R. Gordon (New York: BrunnerRoutledge, 2001), 6–7. 43. Z. F. Chun, J. E. Mitchell, K. Li et al., “The Prevalence of Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa among Freshmen Medical College Students in China,” International Journal of Eating Disorders 12 (1992): 209–14. 44. Gordon, “East and West,” 7–8. 45. L. K. Oyewumi and S. S. Kazarian, “Abnormal Eating Attitudes among a Group of Nigerian Youths,” East African Medical Journal (1992): 663–66. 46. A. Furnham and N. Alibhai, “Cross-Cultural Differences in the Perception of Female Body Shapes,” Psychological Medicine 13 (1983): 829–37. 47. C. Szabo, M. Berk, et al., “Eating Disorders in Black South African Females,” South African Medical Journal 85 (1995): 588–90. 48. Ibid. 49. T. N. Srinivasan, T. R. Suresh, and J. Vasantha, “The Emergence of Eating Disorders in India,” International Journal of Social Psychiatry 44 (1998): 189–98. 50. Gordon, Eating Disorders, 83. 51. Roland Littlewood, “Modernity, Culture, Change and Eating Disorders in South Asian Societies,” British Journal of Medical Psychology 68 (1995): 45–63.


227

52. Roland Littlewood, “Commentary 1,” in Eating Disorders and Cultures in Transition, ed. M. Nasser et al. (New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2001), 57–58. 53. Ibid. 54. Gordon,“East and West,” 10–11. 55. Ibid. 56. Gordon, Eating Disorders, 85. 57. Oscar Meehan and M. A. Katzman, “Argentina: The Social Body at Risk,” in Eating Disorders and Cultures in Transition, ed. M. Nasser et al. (New York: BrunnerRoutledge, 2001), 148–61. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid. 60. Bruch, Eating Disorders, 330. 61. Ibid., 331. 62. Ibid., 336. 63. Ibid., 337. 64. Ibid. 65. Hsu, Eating Disorders, 131. 66. Ibid., 156. 67. Ibid., 129. 68. Ibid., 168–69. 69. Christopher G. Fairburn and G. Terence Wilson, Binge Eating: Nature, Assessment and Treatment (New York: Guilford Press, 1993), 272. 70. Ibid., 273. 71. M. Siegel, J. Brisman, and M. Weinshel, Surviving an Eating Disorder (New York: Harper, 1997), 149. 72. Ibid., 144. 73. Ibid., 146. 74. James C. Rosen, “Cognitive-Behavioral Body Image Therapy,” in Handbook of Treatment for Eating Disorders, ed. David M. Garner and Paul E. Garfinkel (New York: Guilford, 1997), 189. 75. Ibid., 193–98. 76. Christopher Dare and Ivan Eisler, “Family Therapy for Anorexia Nervosa,” in Handbook of Treatment for Eating Disorders, ed. Garner and Garfinkel (New York: Guilford, 1997), 309. 77. Ibid., 310. 78. Ibid., 315. 79. Meehan and Katzman, “Argentina,”160. 80. Ibid., 159. 81. Ibid., 160. 82. C. Szabo and D. LeGrange, “Eating Disorders and the Politics of Identity: The South African Experience,” in Eating Disorders and Cultures in Transition, ed. M. Nasser et al. (New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2001), 26. 83. Ibid., 30. 84. B. Silverstein and D. Perlick, The Cost of Competence: Why Inequality Causes Depression: Eating Disorders and Illness in Women (New York: Oxford Press, 1995). 85. S. Lee, “Fat Phobia in Anorexia Nervosa: Whose Obsession Is It?” in Eating Disorders and Cultures in Transition, ed. M. Nasser et al. (New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2001), 49. 86. Ibid.

228


RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Bruch, Hilde. Eating Disorders: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa and the Person Within. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Giordano, Simona. Understanding Eating Disorders: Conceptual and Ethical Issues in the Treatment of Anorexia and Bulimia Nervosa. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. Gordon, Richard. Eating Disorders: Anatomy of a Social Epidemic. Malden, MA: Blackwell Press, 2000. Nasser, Mervat, M. A. Katzman, and Richard Gordon. Eating Disorders and Cultures in Transition. New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2001. Zerbe, Kathryn J. The Body Betrayed: Women, Eating Disorders, and Treatment. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 1993.

Web Sites Anorexia Nervosa and Related Eating Disorders, http://www.anred.com. National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, http://www.anad.org. Eating Disorder Resource Center, http://www.edrcsv.org. National Eating Disorders Organization, http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org. International Association of Eating Disorders, http://www.iaedp.com. International Eating Disorders Centre, UK, http://www.eatingdisorderscentre.co./uk.

15 Obesity Joanne Gardner The obesity epidemic is all around us. For some readers, you can actually feel the adiposity surrounding your waistline. For others, it touches your life indirectly through family, friends, coworkers, clients, or patients. The obesity epidemic is indifferent to geopolitical boundaries, infiltrates all demographic segments, and is changing the course of history. The impact of increasing rates of obesity permeates all aspects of society, creating reactions within the financial, health care, and food industries, as well as social sectors. This chapter explores the current status of the obesity epidemic, describes the interdependent factors that contribute to the disturbing statistics, discusses efforts to curtail the epidemic, and challenges the reader to consider varied perspectives about what might reverse the trend.

OUR CORPULENT PLANET The World Health Organization (WHO) acknowledged that in 2005 approximately 1.6 billion adults were overweight, and at least four hundred million of them were obese.1 In response to the alarming fact of increasing obesity, WHO has developed a Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity, and Health.2 Obesity used to be a problem only in high-income countries, but now the rates are also rising dramatically in low- and middle-income countries as these populations adopt the foods and dietary habits of the high-income countries. Analyses of global economic and food availability data for 1962–1994 revealed an increased availability of cheap vegetable oils and fats, which has facilitated an increased fat consumption among low-income nations.3 Given that fat enhances flavor and it is human nature to seek flavorful foods, fat consumption may be strongly influenced by the amount of fat available in the food supply moreso than by feelings of hunger and satisfaction. Consequently, the nutrition transition away from traditional foods to a diversified diet, including more refined and processed foods with higher energy density, now occurs more often in countries with lower levels of gross national product. As income increases secondary to economic development, many

230


people experience improved food security and better health. Yet, with rapid nutrition transition catalyzed by easy access to the foods of an industrial diet, the health benefits of economic development are often offset by rising rates of childhood obesity.4

THE SUPERSIZING OF THE STATES A good glimpse into the dietary habits and body weight patterns of U.S. citizens is obtained through the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a program designed to assess the nutritional and health status of adults and children in the United States. The periodic survey includes responses from a representative sample of about five thousand persons across the country.5 Another national survey collects self-reported weight and height data through the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS).6 According to the NHANES 2003–2004 data, 34.3 and 32 percent of noninstitutionalized adults, age twenty years and older, are either overweight or obese, respectively. In consideration of current U.S. Census Bureau7 statistics with the current U.S. population approaching 305 million people, the NHANES data imply that with 66.3 percent of the population tipping the scales as overweight or obese, more than 146 million adults are above the range for a healthy weight. Overweight and obesity in adults are defined in these surveys using body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight relative to height that is closely correlated with total body fat content.8 According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) overweight in adults is defined as a BMI of 25 to 29.9 kilograms per square meters (kg/m2), obesity is a BMI 30 kg/m2, and extreme obesity is a BMI 40 kg/m2.9 The NHLBI also recommends the use of waist circumference in addition to BMI as a screening tool to identify individuals with high intra-abdominal fat, which, when combined with BMI, may be more indicative of increased health risks rather than using only BMI.10 NHANES also reported that 17 percent of teenagers age twelve to nineteen and 19 percent of children ages six to eleven are overweight,11 which implies that there are more than 11.3 million children and teens between six and nineteen years old in the United States who face the possibility of serious psychosocial burdens in addition to the increased health risks associated with being overweight.12 For children and teens up to age twenty years, the term “overweight” rather than “obese” is currently used by health care organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC Growth Charts are used to identify obese youth with a BMI at or above the 95th percentile of gender-specific BMI-for-age values.13 The CDC defines a BMI between the 85th and 95th percentiles as putting a child or teenager “at risk of [being] overweight,” which is the counterpart of the term “overweight” used in adults; however, it has been recommend that this terminology change to be consistent with the terms used for adults.14 Data from the 2007 BRFSS represent adult obesity rates, which are stratified by age, gender, race/ethnicity, educational level, and geographic region.15 The highest rates of obesity occur in black, non-Hispanic women (39 percent), and lower rates of obesity are associated with higher levels of education, especially in women. The lower rates reported by BRFSS, relative to NHANES, partially may be due to

Obesity

231

the fact that the BRFSS includes eighteen- and nineteen-year-old adults and NHANES reports on adults twenty years and older.16 As noted by NHANES, obesity rates in teenagers between twelve and nineteen years old average 17 percent,17 which would shift the rates of adults downward when eighteen- and nineteenyear-olds are included in the adult group. BRFSS results also reflect ethnic differences in overweight prevalence. Rates of increase in overweight children have been steepest in black, non-Hispanic children compared with Mexican American and white, non-Hispanic children.18 Socioeconomic differences in obesity in the United States are becoming less apparent in both adults and children.19 Conversely, a higher occurrence of obesity has been reported in rural populations compared with urban and suburban populations.20 Rural residency was a risk factor for obesity and overweight in children based on data collected in the 2003 National Survey of Children’s Health.21 Their analysis revealed that rural overweight children five years of age and older were more likely than their urban peers to be white, live below the federal poverty level, and watch television for more than three hours per day.22 Rural areas seem to be characterized by higher levels of poverty and lack of access to grocery, health, and physical activity resources, which may affect both adult and childhood weight patterns. One of the most significant trends is that obesity in adults and overweight occurrence for children and teens has accelerated rapidly since 1976–1980 when the data indicated that 15.1 percent of the adult population was obese, and 6.5 percent of children ages six to eleven and 5 percent of teens ages twelve to nineteen were overweight. Meanwhile, adult overweight rates have remained fairly steady at approximately 32 to 33 percent.23 The accelerated rate for children and teens may be leveling off, as one report optimistically found that the prevalence of high BMI for age among children and adolescents showed no significant changes when comparing data from 2003–2004 to 2005–2006, and no significant trends emerged between 1999 and 2006.24 In response to the release of this study, Randy Seeley of the Obesity Research Center said, “Whether this is meaningful data, we don’t know yet, but anyone who wants to stick a flag in this and declare victory is just crazy.”25 At this point, it is difficult to ascertain what has contributed to the plateau. It may be that efforts to improve school lunches and educate the public about measures to control childhood obesity are paying off, but on the other hand, it may be that the number of children who are environmentally and genetically susceptible to obesity has reached a saturation point.26

DON’T FOLLOW THE LEADER The United States is a leading exporter of both raw and processed foods, and the influence of these foods around the globe is substantial. The United States also exports technology, marketing, and media-based communications to far reaches of the world, where people can view American images of life and food choices on computer and television screens. For many people, these images exemplify the ideal life they aspire to attain in the land of abundance and plenty. What they don’t see are the associated health risks that accompany the adoption of the

232


average American’s diet. If they could see the full impact of these food and lifestyle choices, perhaps they would be viewed less glamorously. Obesity and overweight pose a major risk for chronic disease, including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis, hypertension, stroke, sleep apnea, and certain forms of cancer—notably, endometrial, esophageal, kidney, prostate, and postmenopausal breast and colon cancer.27 Even children are experiencing the adverse outcomes of being overweight, as demonstrated by an increased incidence of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular, orthopedic and pulmonary conditions, and depressive disorders.28 A report for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic Research Service expressed concern regarding the impact that excess body weight has on a child’s academic success. Overweight children showed less progress than their non-overweight peers in reading and math skills and were rated lower on both academic and socioemotional factors by their school teachers. These academic and social costs must be taken into account when assessing the economic and social impact of childhood overweight.29 Health care costs are escalating in the United States. Obesity alone accounts for as much as 7 percent of health care costs in several industrial countries, yet the true costs are undoubtedly greater since these calculations do not include all obesity-related conditions.30 A large proportion of health care expenditures are related to chronic conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease, which are linked to and exacerbated by overweight or obesity. Chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes are leading causes of disability and death in the United States. According to the CDC, in 2004, these diseases accounted for more than 70 percent of the $1 trillion spent on health care each year in the United States.31 As developing countries strive to improve their economic status and their dietary habits transition to those modeled by the industrial countries, the populations face the risk of encountering escalating rates of diet-related chronic diseases and the accompanying costs of treating these conditions. The WHO reports that, if current trends continue, India and the Middle Eastern region will have the largest number of diabetics by 2025. Large increases would also be observed in Latin America, the Caribbean, China, and the rest of Asia.32 Can these countries afford the care and treatment of the conditions associated with obesity? Are the food choices and lifestyle patterns of the United States really enviable if they lead to such high levels of debilitating chronic diseases with their enormous health care cost? The WHO is encouraging economically emerging countries to develop policies allowing them to bypass the obesity epidemic and create a healthier food environment.33

WHY ARE OUR COMMUNITIES SO FAT? Given that the rates of overweight and obesity have soared over the past thirty years, it is possible to examine what factors have changed and address these changes in hopes of slowing and reversing the weight gain experienced by our country’s youth. Countless variables contribute to the current obesity epidemic. For each overweight individual, their body weight is the outward manifestation of a combination of genetic, metabolic, behavioral, environmental, cultural, economic, and social influences.

Obesity

233

The first law of thermodynamics, stating that a system can either store or burn energy, is the underlying principle of food or energy balance; we eat and either burn or store the calories from food. This is the basis for most weight loss recommendations; eat less and move more. In theory it works, but in most people’s lives either internal or external interference complicates the body’s ability to regulate intake in relation to activity. To maintain a constant weight, the individual must correct energy intake or energy expenditure every few days to counter the imbalances that occurred on previous days. Some people are fortunate to have a strong internal regulatory response, which allows them to maintain their weight for many years. Other people’s regulatory response is softer and allows the body weight to gradually creep up each year. And yet for others, it looks as if there is not much of a natural regulatory response, as their weight rapidly balloons in a manner seemingly out of their control. To prevent weight gain, most people need to utilize some method of discipline by either restraining their eating or making adjustments to their intake or activity when they notice a slight weight gain. However, how well an individual can adhere to their intended strategy is what ultimately makes a difference. One challenge to this perspective is to consider the issue of young children gaining body weight disproportionate to their skeletal growth. What is taking place to diminish their innate regulatory response? Are they are a carrier of the “thrifty genotype”34 or genetically deficient in a regulatory hormone such as leptin?35 Perhaps the parents did not follow the infant’s signs of hunger and satiety and the child learned to disregard its internal messages.36 Maybe the mother had diabetes during pregnancy, which contributes to a higher risk of excess weight gain in infants.37 Exposure to other prenatal toxins may also affect the regulatory system as demonstrated in infants of mothers who smoke during pregnancy and have an increased risk of becoming overweight by age thirty when compared with infants of nonsmoking mothers.38 A child’s early food experiences are presented by parents and caregivers. The first experience is the liquid nourishment received from the breast or the bottle. When breast milk is the sole source of nutrition for more than three months, obesity risk is significantly reduced in preschool children and in adolescents when compared with infants who are breastfed for three months or less.39 The transition to table foods is a critical time for children and families to establish patterns of acceptance and familiarity.40 Are fruits and vegetables a regular part of meals? What kinds of beverages are served? What is the atmosphere around meals? What is the macronutrient quality and content of the meals (referring to the type and amount of fat, carbohydrate, and protein)? Does the family prepare its own foods from “scratch,” buy commercially prepared foods, or dine at restaurants? A multitude of issues surround the food environment in which children develop preferences and habits that they carry into the adult years.

THE INFLUENTIAL FOOD ENVIRONMENT IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF OVERWEIGHT AND OBESITY Since children consume their first calories from liquids, it is a good place to begin to explore the impact of food choices. It is common practice in many places to see a child with some type liquid in a bottle that is not breast milk, water, or commercial baby formula. In many cases, this liquid is a beverage sweetened with

234


high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), such as a fruit “drink” with only a small percentage of juice. One of the most noteworthy changes in food consumption from 1970 to the present is that the intake of HFCS has increased by more than 1,000 percent.41 HFCS, which represents more than 40 percent of the caloric sweeteners added to foods and beverages, contributes a daily average of 132 calories to the diet of Americans two years and older. The top 20 percent of consumers ingest 316 calories per day (kcal/day) from HFCS,42 which can be obtained from twentyseven ounces of soft drink. HFCS-sweetened beverages may contribute to calorie overconsumption and weight gain. If one does not compensate for these extra daily calories, it could result in an annual weight gain of 13.75 to 33 pounds, based on the premise that a positive energy balance of 3,500 calories will result in one pound of weight gain. Another factor that links HFCS to the accumulation of body fat is that the digestion, absorption, and metabolism of fructose differ from other sugars. The metabolic pathway of fructose favors the production of fat cells in the liver (hepatic lipogenesis) and does not stimulate insulin secretion nor enhance leptin production, two key substances in the regulation of food intake, satiety, and body weight.43 Parks further contributed to this point of view with a study that revealed that, when fructose was consumed, lipogenesis was twofold greater than in meals without fructose, and this effect carried over until later in the day.44 The theory that HFCS is contributing to the obesity epidemic is not universally accepted. Forshee and colleagues reported on the findings of food scientists at the Center for Food, Nutrition, and Agriculture Policy meeting in 2007. This group conducted a review of scientific literature to examine the relationship between consumption of HFCS and weight gain and determined that it is unclear why HFCS would contribute to obesity more so than the sucrose that was more common in the food supply before the 1970s.45 Another study compared the satiating effects of HFCS and sucrose in various beverages and concluded that the net energy balance from consuming HFCS-sweetened beverages was no different from those of sucrose-sweetened drinks or milk.46 The role of HFCS in our food supply warrants further study by researchers who are not linked with the production of the corn-based agricultural products from which the HFCS is produced. One relevant message for all consumers is that beverages containing HFCS, sugar, or alcohol contribute often-overlooked and, sometimes, excessive calories. An appropriate choice is to drink noncaloric beverages more often and obtain dietary fructose from whole fruits, with their naturally occurring fiber and nutrients, rather than from foods and beverages with HFCS. This is especially true when foods and beverages are introduced to young children developing their taste preferences. A review of the relationship between 100 percent fruit juice consumption and weight in youth found that 100 percent fruit juice did not contribute to overweight and that consuming one or two four-ounce daily portions of 100 percent juice can help children meet the recommended fruit servings.47 Unfortunately, parents and their children are affected by the media and marketing messages, which are intended to sway buying habits and food choices. Many of the foods marketed to families, children, and teens take a basically nutritious food and alter its taste or image by adding sugar, fat, salt, and flavor or color enhancers. The U.S. food industry is sophisticated and successful, and the scope of its influence can be seen in every grocery cart and garbage dumpster.

Obesity

235

Advertising to Children and Teens Food expenditure data48 indicate that consumers spent less of their disposable personal income in 2007 on food compared with 1970, (11.4 percent versus 15.3 percent), but this reduction was accompanied by a trend to spend more on foods eaten away from home, especially at quick-serve restaurants (QSRs). Disposable personal income spent to eat at home declined by 43 percent from 11.4 percent in 1970 to 6.5 percent in 2007, combined with a 25 percent increase in disposable money spent on foods away from home. This trend is reflected in the 2007 statistic that nearly 49 percent of food dollars were spent for foods consumed away from home, as compared with 1970 when 33.4 percent of food dollars were spent on foods eaten away from home.49 In 2007, 37 percent of the dollars spent to eat outside the home was spent at QSRs; a 158 percent increase from the 14.3 percent spent at QSRs in 1967.50 Active marketing campaigns certainly have influenced these numbers. Perhaps the media and messages that have been enthusiastically employed to market the food industries’ products can be used to spread the message that food choices and activity patterns can play a role in reversing the obesity trend. Messages to influence food buying habits could be modeled after the successful antitobacco campaign in a public crusade to curb the obesity epidemic.51 A Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report offers recommendations for food and beverage companies, along with the media and entertainment companies they employ, to utilize in their self-regulation.52 The first recommendation is to join the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, established by the Council of Better Business Bureaus in 2006.53 In response to the FTC report, Susan Linn, director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, said, “It’s the marketing industry policing itself, and as is shown over and over and over again, that’s problematic.”54 Do We Really Know What We Are Eating? With close to 50 percent of the 2007 U.S. food dollars spent on foods prepared and served outside of the home, the type and amount of foods selected at these establishments no doubt influences the nutritional intake and energy balance of U.S. citizens. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) released a report in August 2008 addressing the issue of “kids’ meals” in restaurants. Their investigation confirmed that good options for feeding kids are hard to find. Ninety-three percent of 1,474 possible choices at the thirteen chains provide more than one-third of the daily calories health professionals recommended for children between the ages of four and eight.55 A meal of cheese pizza, home-style fries, and lemonade topped out at one thousand calories. Better choices such as a mini-sub, juice box, and a side serving of apple slices, raisins, or yogurt provide less than the 430-calorie benchmark for one-third of a child’s daily needs. Criteria for selection specified that nutrition information is available on the restaurant’s Web site or upon request.56 CSPI Nutrition Policy Director Margo Wootan expressed concern that chain restaurants make it more difficult for parents to feed their children healthy foods when dining out: “Chains are conditioning kids to expect burgers, fried chicken, pizza, french fries, macaroni and cheese, and soda in various combinations at

236


almost every lunch and dinner.”57 Wootan comments that “most of these kid’s meals appear to be designed to put America’s children on the fast-track to obesity, disability, heart attack, or diabetes.”58 It would be easier to select healthy choices if menus and menu boards listed calories per serving. CSPI has advocated for regulations to require calorie information in visible locations, such as on restaurant menus or menu boards. As of March 2008, the New York City Board of Health mandated restaurants with fifteen locations or more to list calories on their menus or menu boards.59 Several other cities have passed menu-labeling policies and more than twenty states and cities have introduced menu-labeling legislation in the past two years. Adults are also challenged to select foods that do not contribute to weight gain. When children and adults are presented a large portion, they are likely to consume more calories.60 Portion sizes served in restaurants and available in the marketplace began to grow in the 1970s, rose sharply in the 1980s, and have continued to gradually increase in response to consumer expectations for a good value.61 Fast-food portions are larger in the United States than in Europe, and some chains have increased portion sizes even while health authorities are recommending reduced portion sizes.62 A 2006 survey of three hundred chefs found that they believe customers expect big platefuls of food when eating out.63 Overall, 60 percent of chefs serve steaks that are twelve ounces or larger (four times what the government’s dietary guidelines cite as a portion), pasta servings that are two to four times the standard half-cup serving, and rather meager vegetable portions that came close to the standard half-cup serving.64 Many strategies could be employed to improve the nutritional profile of fullservice and fast-food meals, but both the food service industry and consumers must accept these changes. Meals could be prepared according to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans65 and the American Heart Association (AHA) Dietary Guidelines.66 These meals would contain more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains and would limit the inclusion of high-fat and sweetened foods that are high energy density and low in nutritional value. This will only happen if consumers demand them and the food industry responds with tasteful, attractive, and reasonably priced options.

RISING FOOD PRICES AFFECT BUYING HABITS Dining away from home is associated with reduced intake of fruits and vegetables, with the exception of potatoes—either fried or chips.67 Encouraging Americans to eat more fruit and vegetables has been a primary focus in most dietary guidance messages. Supermarkets stock a broad range of produce year-round and many time-saving, convenient products are widely available. Most fruits and vegetables are naturally low in calories, yet their energy density can be dramatically affected by the addition of fat during preparation and service. Fruit consumption has been found to be associated with lower BMI,68 probably because most fruit is consumed in its natural low-fat form. The cost of fresh produce is a commonly cited reason why consumers do not eat more of these healthy foods, and when money is limited, purchasing fruit and vegetable is not a high priority. Drewnowski and colleagues criticized the current structure of food pricing that allows sweet and high-fat food to provide dietary

Obesity

237

energy at the lowest cost.69 Consumers trying to save money may buy energy-dense foods high in refined grains, added sugars, and fats.70 Other researchers found that the most significant impact on fruit and vegetable consumption was education, with college-educated households exhibiting the highest level of consumption.71 Among the efforts to increase intake of fruits and vegetables is to improve access, both financial and physical, as quality produce is less likely to be available in low-income neighborhoods. Food assistance programs are being modified and programs, such as the USDA fruit and vegetable pilot program for schools, are expanding.72 However, it remains to be determined whether these changes spur low-income overweight and obese individuals to eat healthier diets. Many behavioral and economic factors influence the decision to eat fruits and vegetables and, in the end, consumer preference drives the demand and supply for products in the market.73 The current economic downturn and rise in fuel prices are forcing higher prices for almost everything in the grocery cart. Some people are reacting by changing their food-buying and consumption patterns. Could it be that as Americans trim some superfluous expenses it may also slim their waistlines?

INCHING TOWARD HEALTHIER EATING AND A MORE ACTIVE LIFESTYLE A July 2008 CDC press release quotes Dr. William Dietz, director of the Division on Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity, as saying, The epidemic of adult obesity continues to rise in the United States indicating that we need to step up our efforts at the national, state and local levels. We need to encourage people to eat more fruits and vegetables, engage in more physical activity and reduce the consumption of high calorie foods and sugar sweetened beverages in order to maintain a healthy weight.74

An online publication by the Hartman Group, “the leading market research resource for consumer insights, knowledge acquisition and actionable analysis,”75 discussed the Problem with Obesity (Hint: It Ain’t the Food).76 The comment excerpted from the article addresses the complexity in developing efforts to reverse the obesity epidemic: Our research on individual practice and sentiment tells us the ideal solutions to the obesity dilemma may have little at all to do with individual people and a heck of a lot more to do with the larger culture framework within which we live our lives. Quite simply, and we don’t mean to sound glib here, but “it is not the food, it’s the culture, stupid.” . . . And herein lies the most significant and important challenge of all, namely, how to change not individual behavior but the parameters within which such behavior resides—how to change the culture.77

RESOLVING TO CHANGE THE CULTURE SURROUNDING OVEREATING AND INACTIVITY In 2001, the U.S. Surgeon General issued the Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity78 to spur the development of programs and action

238


plans directed toward this expansive problem. The U.S. Congress delegated the task of developing prevention-focused action plans to decrease the number of overweight children and youth to the Institute of Medicine (IOM). The report, Preventing Childhood Obesity: Health in the Balance, describes the committee’s action plan79 and directs attention to communities that experience high rates of obesity and the associated chronic illness and those with environments unsupportive of healthful nutrition and physical activity.80 Success will not be achieved without the cooperation from all segments of the society, including federal, state, and local governments; the food industry along with their media and marketing agencies; health care providers; community and nonprofit organizations; schools and education institutions; and parents, caregivers, and families.81 The AHA released a comprehensive plan for addressing the obesity epidemic.82 This plan provides a rationale for population-based obesity prevention efforts and research from a public health perspective. It addresses the need to bring together the various arguments for what needs to be done and how, with respect to population-based initiatives, to promote lifestyle, eating, and activity behaviors associated with preventing overweight and obesity.83 An example of change that must be explored on the community and cultural level relates to community design, such as public recreation, green spaces, sidewalks, and safe routes to school. This “built environment,” as contrasted to naturally occurring features, may either encourage or deter community residents and visitors from increasing their activity. Yancey and colleagues describe the societal changes that contribute to inactivity and identify specific recommendations for policy and environmental changes to facilitate higher levels of energy expenditure.84 Low-income, inner-city neighborhoods and rural areas both will benefit from exploring the opportunities for exercise, as well as the obstacles that impede their community members from engaging in regular exercise. Many people find their time available to exercise or their desire to engage in individual or family activity is diminished by long commutes to work, extended work hours or a second job, and a lack of safe places to walk or play. Access to safe places to be active, walkable neighborhoods, and local markets offering healthful food create environments for higher energy expenditure and healthful food selection—two types of behavior that can lead to reduced incidence of chronic disease and help avoid obesity.85 Framing population-based obesity prevention in the context of finding a balance between healthful eating and increased physical activity will require modification of individual choices, habits, and preferences, yet individuals are responsive to the surrounding environments and are influenced by the actions of their peers at home, school, and the workplace.86

DO PEOPLE FEEL EMPOWERED TO CHANGE OR ARE THEY TRAPPED BY THEIR CIRCUMSTANCES? Frances Moore Lappe, cofounder of Food First: The Institute for Food and Development Policy, and the Small Planet Institute, has argued that global hunger and malnutrition are caused not by the lack of food but rather by the inability of hungry people to gain access to the abundant amount of food that exists in the world because of the maldistribution of power. In essence, it is not that food is

Obesity

239

lacking, but that people lack power.87 The concept of lack of power may be applied to the current malnutrition associated with overnutrition and obesity, especially within the many clusters of people living within the demographic, geographic, ethnic, and socioeconomic populations demonstrating high obesity rates. Do people have power over their food choices? Do people have power to take action to change the food culture and the built environment? Do people have power to influence food growers, manufacturers, and food policymakers? Do people have power to create urban green spaces and urban vegetable gardens? Do people have power to obtain healthy food within the radius of their transportation modes? This power goes beyond the willpower needed to refuse the mid-afternoon candy bar or the quick stop at a favorite fast-food restaurant (although the power of self-discipline is necessary at times, too). According to Lappe, “power means simply our capacity to act.”88 She goes on to say that change in the world is a given. In fact, all of our actions create a ripple effect, such that even if we are not consciously choosing to create change, the choices we make can have broad reaching effects. She explains, “So the choice we have is not whether, but only how, we change the world.”89 As with any epidemic, it takes collective community action as described by the IOM,90 CDC,91 and AHA,92 as well as others to bring it under control. Each person is a valuable member of the greater community, and each person’s actions will affect the success of the campaign to rein in obesity. Every person can harness their own personal power to buy the most healthful foods available to them in a given situation, vote for leaders who support creating food and development policies conducive to healthy lifestyles, and engage in regular physical activity. The obesity epidemic may be an undesirable outward manifestation of our modern society, yet the course of this epidemic can be influenced by our individual and collective voice as expressed through conscious political, economic, lifestyle, grocery store, restaurant, and social choices.

NOTES 1. WHO (World Health Organization), “Obesity and Overweight” (Fact Sheet No. 311, 2006), http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/index.html (accessed July 24, 2008). 2. WHO, “Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health, 2004,” http:// www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/goals/en/index.html (accessed July 24, 2008). 3. A. Drewnowski and B. Popkin, “The Nutrition Transition: New Trends in the Global Diet,” Nutrition Review 55 (1997): 31–43. 4. Ibid. 5. NCHS (National Center for Health Statistics), “The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2003–2004,” http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/about/major/nhanes/ intro_mec.htm (accessed July 24, 2008). 6. CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), “State-Specific Prevalence of Obesity among Adults in the United States, 2007,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 57 no. 28 (2008): 765–68, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5728a1. htm (accessed July 22, 2008). 7. U.S. Census Bureau, “American Factfinder. Age and Sex: 2006 American Community Survey,” http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/STTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US

240


&-qr_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_S0101&-ds_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_9 (accessed July 29, 2008). 8. NIH (National Institutes of Health), “Clinical Guidelines on the Identification, Evaluation, and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults-the Evidence Report,” Obesity Research 6 (1998): 51S–209S. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. NCHS, “NHANES,” 2003–2004. 12. Institute of Medicine, “Focus on Childhood Obesity” (National Academy of Sciences, 2004), http://www.iom.edu (accessed July 23, 2008). 13. R. Kucamarski et al., “CDC Growth Charts: United States,” Advanced Data 314 (2000): 1–27. 14. S. Barlow, “Expert Committee Recommendations Regarding the Prevention, Assessment and Treatment of Child and Adolescent Overweight and Obesity,” Summary Report, Pediatrics 120 (2007): S164–S192. 15. CDC, “State-Specific Prevalence of Obesity among Adults in the United States,” 2007. 16. CDC, “State-Specific Prevalence”; NCHS, “NHANES,” 2003–2004. 17. Ibid. 18. D. Freedman et al., “Racial and Ethnic Differences in Secular Trends for Childhood BMI, Weight and Height,” Obesity 14 (2006): 301–8. 19. Y. Wang and Q. Zhang, “Are American Children and Adolescents of Low Socioeconomic Status at Increased Risk of Obesity? Changes in the Association between Overweight and Family Income between 1971 and 2002,” American Journal Clinical Nutrition 84 (2006): 707–16. 20. J. Jackson et al., “A National Study of Obesity Prevalence and Trends by Type of Rural County,” Journal of Rural Health 21 (2005): 140–48. 21. May Nawal Lutfiyya et al., “Is Rural Residency a Risk Factor for Overweight and Obesity for U.S. Children?” Obesity 15 (2007): 2348–56. 22. Ibid. 23. NCHS, “NHANES,” 2003–2004. 24. Cynthia Ogden, Margaret Carroll, and Katherine Flegal, “High Body Mass Index for Age among U.S. Children and Adolescents, 2003–2006,” Journal of the American Medical Association 299 (2008): 2401–5. 25. Jeffery Kluger, “How American’s Children Packed on the Pounds,” Time, June 23, 2008, 69. 26. Ibid. 27. Shiriki K. Kumanyika et al., American Heart Association Scientific Statement, “Population-Based Prevention of Obesity: the Need for Comprehensive Promotion of Healthful Eating, Physical Activity and Energy Balance,” Circulation 118 (2008): 6, http://circ.ahajournals.org (accessed July 10, 2008); WHO, “Obesity and Overweight.” 28. S. R. Daniels et al., “Overweight in Children and Adolescents; Pathophysiology, Consequences, Prevention, and Treatment,” Circulation 111 (2005): 1999–2012. 29. Sara Gable et al., “Ecological Predictors and Developmental Outcomes of Persistent Childhood Overweight” (Economic Research Service, USDA, 2008), http://www. ers.usda.gov (accessed June 14, 2008). 30. WHO, “Overweight and Obesity.” 31. CDC, “The Burden of Chronic Diseases and Their Risk Factors: National and State Perspectives 2004” (Atlanta: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2004), http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/burdenbook2004 (accessed July 30, 2008).

Obesity

241

32. WHO, “Overweight and Obesity.” 33. WHO, “Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health, 2004.” 34. R. St€oger, “The Thrifty Epigeotype: An Acquired and Heritable Predisposition for Obesity and Diabetes?” Bioessays 30 (2008): 156–66. 35. Y. Zhang et al., “Positional Cloning of the Mouse Obese Gene and Its Human Homologue,” Nature 372 (1994): 425–32. 36. Ellyn Satter, Child of Mine; Feeding with Love and Good Sense (Boulder, CO: Bull Publishing, 2000). 37. D. Dabelea et al., “Birthweight, Type 2 Diabetes, and Insulin Resistance in Pima Indian Children and Young Adults,” Diabetes Care 22 (1999): 944–50. 38. A. M. Toschke et al., “Maternal Smoking during Pregnancy and Appetite Control in Offspring,” Journal of Perinatal Medicine 31 (2003): 251–56; A. Tremblay et al., “Thermogenesis and Weight Loss in Obese Individuals: A Primary Association with Organochlorine Pollution,” International Journal of Obesity Related Metabolic Disorders 28 (2004): 936–39. 39. R. Von Kries et al., “Breastfeeding and Obesity: Cross Sectional Study,” British Medical Journal 319 (1999): 147–50. 40. Satter, Child of Mine. 41. G. Bray et al., “Consumption of High-Fructose Corn Syrup in Beverages May Play a Role in the Epidemic of Obesity,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 79 (2004): 537–43. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. Elizabeth Parks et al., “Dietary Sugars Stimulate Fatty Acid Synthesis in Adults,” Journal of Nutrition 138 (2008): 1039–46. 45. R. Forshee et al., “A Critical Examination of the Evidence Relating High Fructose Corn Syrup and Weight Gain,” Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition 47, no. 6 (2007): 561–82. 46. Stijn Soenen and Margriet Weterterp-Plantenga, “No Differences in Satiety or Energy Intake after High-Fructose Corn Syrup, Sucrose or Milk Preloads,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 86 (2007): 1586–94. 47. Carol O’Neil and Theresa A. Nicklas, “A Review of the Relationship Between 100% Fruit Juice Consumption and Weight in Children and Adolescents,” American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine 2 (2008): 315–54. 48. USDA/ERS (U.S. Department of Agriculture/Economic Research Service), “Consumer Price Index, Food and Expenditure Data 2007,” http://www.ers.usda.gov/ briefing/CPIFoodAndExpenditures/Data/table8.htm (accessed August 1, 2008). 49. USDA/ERS, “CPI, Food and Expenditure Data 2007,” http://www.ers.usda.gov/ briefing/CPIFoodAndExpenditures/Data/table1.htm (accessed August 1, 2008). 50. USDA/ERS, “CPI, Food and Expenditure Data 2007.” 51. Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, “Advertising, Marketing and the Media: Improving Messages” (2004), http://www.iom.edu (accessed July 22, 2008). 52. William Kovacic et al., Marketing Food to Children and Adolescents: A Review of Industry Expenditures, Activities, and Self Regulation (Federal Trade Commission, July 2008), www.ftc.gov/os/2008/07/P064504foodmktingreport.pdf (accessed August 1. 2008). 53. U.S. National Better Business Bureau, “About the Initiative,” http://us.bbb.org/ WWWRoot/SitePage.aspx?site=113&id=b712b7a7-fcd5-479c-af49-8649107a4b02 (accessed August 6, 2008). 54. Stephanie Clifford, “Tug of War in Food Marketing to Children,” New York Times, July 30, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/30/business/media/30adco.html (accessed August 1, 2008).

242


55. CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest), “Obesity on the Kids’ Menus at Top Chains” (2008), http://www.cspinet.org/new/200808041_print.html (accessed August 4, 2008); USDA, “My Pyramid,” http://www.mypyramid.gov/ (accessed Aug. 5, 2008). 56. CSPI, “Obesity on the Kids’ Menus at Top Chains.” 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid. 59. CNN, “New York Orders Calories on Chain Menus,” January 22, 2008, http:// edition.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/diet.fitness/01/22/calories.menus/index.html (accessed August 4, 2008). 60. Barbara Rolls et al., “Larger Portion Sizes Lead to a Sustained Increase in Energy Intake over 2 Days,” Journal of the American Dietetic Association 106 (2006): 543–49; J. Fisher et al., “Effects of Portion Size and Energy Density on Young Children’s Intake at a Meal,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 86 (2007): 174–79. 61. Lisa Young and Marion Nestle, “The Contribution of Expanding Portion Sizes to the U.S. Obesity Epidemic,” American Journal of Public Health 92 (2002): 246–249; J. Ledikwe et al., “Portion Sizes and the Obesity Epidemic,” Journal of Nutrition 135 (2005): 905–9. 62. Lisa Young and Marion Nestle, “Portion Sizes and Obesity: Responses of FastFood Companies,” Journal of Public Health Policy 28 (2007): 238–48. 63. Marge Condrasky et al., “Chefs’ Opinions of Restaurant Portion Sizes,” Obesity 15 (2007): 2086–94. 64. Condrasky et al., “Chefs’ Opinions”; USDA, “My Pyramid.” 65. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services/USDA, “Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2005,” http://www.health.gov/DietaryGuidelines/dga2005/document/ default.htm (accessed August 5, 2008). 66. American Heart Association Nutrition Committee, “Diet and Lifestyle Recommendations Revision 2006: A Scientific Statement from the American Heart Association Nutrition Committee,” Circulation 114 (2006): 82–96. 67. Joanne Guthrie et al., “Understanding Economic and Behavioral Influences on Fruit and Vegetable Choices,” Amber Waves April (2005), http://www.ers.usda.gov/ Amberwaves/April05/Features/FruitAndVegChoices.htm (accessed August 6, 2008). 68. Biing-Hwan Lin and Rosanna Morrison, “Higher Fruit Consumption Linked with Lower Body Mass Index” (Food Review 25, UDSA/ERS, 2002), http://www.ers. usda.gov/publications/FoodReview/DEC2002/frvol25i3d.pdf (accessed August 6, 2008). 69. Adam Drewnowski and S. Specter, “Poverty and Obesity: The Role of Energy Density and Energy Costs,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 79 (2004): 6–16; Adam Drewnowski and Nicole Darmon, “Food Choices and Diet Costs: An Economic Analysis,” Journal of Nutrition 135 (2005): 900–904. 70. Nicole Darmon et al., “Energy Dense Diets are Associated with Lower Diet Costs: A Community Study of French Adults,” Public Health Nutrition 7 (2004): 21–27. 71. Guthrie et al., “Understanding Economic.” 72. USDA, “2008 Farm Bill,” http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/farmbill2008?navid= FARMBILL2008 (accessed August 6, 2008). 73. Guthrie et al., “Understanding Economic.” 74. CDC, “Latest CDC Data Show More Americans Report Being Obese,” (July 17, 2008), http://www.cdc.gov/media/pressrel/2008/r080717.htm (accessed July 30, 2008). 75. The Hartman-Group, http://www.hartman-group.com (accessed July 30, 2008). 76. Ibid. 77. Ibid.

Obesity

243

78. U.S. Surgeon General, “Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity” (2001), http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/topics/obesity/calltoaction/Callto Action.pdf (accessed Aug. 5, 2008). 79. Jeffrey P. Koplan et al., eds., Preventing Childhood Obesity: Health in the Balance (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, Committee on Prevention of Obesity in Children and Youth, 2005), http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11015#toc. 80. Institute of Medicine, “Focus on Childhood Obesity” (2004), http://www.iom. edu/CMS/22593.aspx (accessed July 23,2008). 81. Ibid. 82. Kumanyika et al., “Population-Based Prevention.” 83. Ibid., 3. 84. A. Yancy et al., “Creating a Robust Public Health Infrastructure for Physical Activity Promotion,” American Journal of Preventative Medicine 32 (2007): 68–78. 85. J. Sallis and K. Glanz, “The Role of Built Environments in Physical Activity, Eating and Obesity in Childhood,” Future Child 16 (2006): 89–108, http://www.futureofchildren.org/information2826/information_show.htm?doc_id=355433 (accessed August 6, 2008). 86. S. Booth et al., “Environmental and Societal Factors Affect Food Choice and Physical Activity: Rationale, Influences and Leverage Points,” Nutrition Reviews 59 (2001): S21–S39, S57–S65. 87. Frances Moore Lappe et al., World Hunger: 12 Myths (New York: Grove Press, 1998). 88. Frances Moore Lappe, Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity and Courage in a World Gone Mad (Cambridge: Small Planet Media, 2007), 74. 89. Ibid. 90. Koplan et al., “Preventing Childhood Obesity.” 91. CDC, “Obesity and Overweight.” 92. Kumanyika et al. “Population-Based Prevention.”

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading American Heart Association Nutrition Committee. “Diet and Lifestyle Recommendations Revision 2006; A Scientific Statement from the American Heart Association Nutrition Committee.” Circulation 114 (2006): 82–96. Koplan, Jeffrey P., et al., eds. Committee on Prevention of Obesity in Children and Youth. Preventing Childhood Obesity: Health in the Balance. (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 2005. Available at http://books.nap.edu/catalog. php?record_id=11015#toc. Kumanyika, Shiriki K., et al. American Heart Association Scientific Statement. “Population-Based Prevention of Obesity: the Need for Comprehensive Promotion of Healthful Eating, Physical Activity and Energy Balance.” Circulation, 118 (2008): 1–37. Available at http://circ.ahajournals.org. Patel, Raj. Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System. Brooklyn, Melville House Publishing, 2007. Rolls, Barbara. The Volumetrics Eating Plan: Techniques and Recipes for Feeling Full on Fewer Calories. New York: Harper Collins Publishing, 2005. Satter, Ellyn. Child of Mine; Feeding with Love and Good Sense. Boulder, CO: Bull Publishing, 2000.

244


Web Sites America on the Move, http://www.americaonthemove.org/. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, http://www.cdc.gov/. Center for Science in the Public Interest, http://www.cspinet.org/. Institute of Medicine, http://www.iom.edu. U.S. Department of Agriculture, http://www.usda.gov/. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, http://www.ers.usda.gov/. World Health Organization, http://www.WHO.int/.


Laurel E. Phoenix is associate professor of Public and Environmental Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and chair of the geography department. She is an executive committee member of the Center for Food in Community and Culture. Laurel teaches courses on sustainable water and land resource management and planning; environment and society; environmental law; and graduate environmental science and policy courses. She is an associate editor of the American Water Resource Association’s Water Resources IMPACT. Her interest in critical food issues grew from decades of organic gardening as well as researching the synergies of water, air, and soil pollution and the political-corporate structures that perpetuate them. Richard H. Bernsten is a professor in the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics, Michigan State University (MSU), and teaches international development-related undergraduate and graduate courses. His research focuses on the adoption and impact of agricultural technologies, subsector analysis, food security, and agricultural policy analysis. Over the past thirty years, he has conducted research in various countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Before joining MSU in 1985, he worked for Winrock International (four years) and the International Rice Research Institute, including four years based in Indonesia. Before earning his doctorate at the University of Illinois (1979), he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone. Jim Bingen is a professor of community, food, and agricultural systems. With a degree in political science (University of California–Los Angeles), Jim works on a range of food, farming, and rural development issues from Michigan to Western Europe and French-speaking Africa. He is currently working on several applied research programs that involve studies with farmers market vendors, the

246


transition to organic farming and farmer access to organic markets, and the contribution of place-based and quality food to development in Michigan. Duncan H. Boughton is associate professor of international development in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Michigan State University (MSU). He has lived and worked for most of his professional life in Sub-Saharan Africa. He worked six years as country coordinator for the department’s Agricultural Policy Analysis project in Mozambique. Before moving to Mozambique, Duncan worked as a senior scientist with the International Crops Research Institute for the SemiArid Tropics (ICRISAT) based in Malawi. Duncan conducted doctoral and postdoctoral research with the national agricultural research program of Mali (IER) from 1991 to 1996, and prior to beginning his doctorate at MSU worked for the U.K. international aid program in the Gambia for five years. Dr. Michael Brewer is Field Crops Entomologist at the Texas AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Corpus Christi. He focuses on research of IPM tactics in cropping systems. He was previously coordinator of the Michigan State University IPM Program and Extension Entomologist at the University of Wyoming. Daniel A. Cibulka is a graduate student in the Environmental Science and Policy Program at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay. His research interests include sustainable agriculture and its relationship to surface-water quality and community health, fisheries dynamics of inland lakes, and zooplankton interactions within Lake Michigan. His thesis research examines the effects of agricultural changes, implementation of best management practices, and stream restoration projects on the water quality and biotic integrity of streams in the Duck Creek Watershed, Wisconsin. Kathryn Colasanti is a master’s candidate in the Agriculture and Community Food Systems Program within Michigan State University’s Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation, and Resource Studies. Her thesis research relates to the production potential of and community perspectives regarding cityscale urban agriculture in Detroit, Michigan. Before coming to MSU she worked on community garden–based neighborhood health initiatives through Denver Urban Gardens in Denver, Colorado. John T. Cook is an associate professor of pediatrics in Boston University’s School of Medicine researching the causes and consequences of food insecurity and hunger, particularly their impacts on the health, growth, and development of young children under the Children’s Sentinel Nutrition Assessment Program (C-SNAP). C-SNAP is a national network of pediatricians and public health researchers conducting original research to inform policy decisions that protect and promote children’s health and well-being. Tracy Dobson, J. D., is professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Michigan State University (MSU). Dobson conducts research in fisheries policy


247

and management, primarily regarding the Laurentian Great Lakes basin and the African Great Lakes, especially in Malawi. She teaches in the area of environmental policy and law and gender and environment. She is co-coordinator of MSU’s Gender, Justice, and Environmental Change graduate specialization and is a professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife. Cynthia Donovan is an assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics at Michigan State University (MSU). Her research and development interests include market information systems, food security and markets, market development for food staples, impacts of HIV/AIDS on agriculture and rural incomes, and impact monitoring for agricultural sector projects, with a focus in Sub-Saharan Africa. She currently conducts collaborative research and training in Mozambique and Angola, with extensive experience in East and West Africa. Margaret (Maggie) Fitzpatrick is a native of Cleveland, Ohio, and graduated from John Carroll University, a small Jesuit university on the east side of Cleveland, with a bachelor of science in biology and a concentration in environmental studies. Through environmental studies, she found an interest in sustainable food and agriculture and went on to complete two farm internships, one in Vermont and one in Dayton, Ohio. There she gained cultivation skills and experience as an educator. During this experience, Maggie began to reflect on her previous distance from food production as an urban dweller and how her life has been enriched through participation in food cultivation. She is seeking a master’s degree in science with the department of Community, Agriculture, Resource, and Recreation Studies (CARRS) at Michigan State University. Her research interest is the return of small livestock, mainly chicken, to backyards and urban areas through the urban agriculture movement. Joanne Gardner is a registered dietitian, with a bachelor of science in food science and nutrition, University of Rhode Island, and master’s degree in nutritional science from the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point 1999. Currently, she is an adjunct instructor at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay in the Nutrition and Dietetics Department. Her previous experience includes Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia, Clinical and Outpatient Dietitian at St. Mary’s Hospital, Green Bay, Wisconsin, and individual and group nutrition consulting and writing services for local and international clients. Marcia Ishii-Eiteman is a senior scientist and coordinator of the Sustainable Agriculture Program at Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA), and a lead author of the United Nations–sponsored International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development (IAASTD). Before joining PANNA in 1996, Ishii-Eiteman worked in Asia and Africa for more than twelve years, developing farmer field schools in ecological pest management in Thailand, government-farmer-and nongovernmental organization collaborations in sustainable agriculture in Southeast Asia, and women’s health,

248


literacy and resource conservation projects in Khmer and Somali refugee camps. Ishii-Eiteman holds a doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology from Cornell University and a bachelor’s degree in women’s studies from Yale University. Cheryl Toronto Kalny received her doctorate in U.S. history from Marquette University. She is an activist-scholar, teaching women’s studies courses at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, speaking at academic conferences and in public lecture halls, and working through women’s organizations for positive change. Her research interests and publications are concerned with the history of women’s rights and movements in the United States, and she is the contributing editor of the North America and Caribbean volume of The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Women’s Issues Worldwide (2003). John M. Kerr is associate professor in the Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation, and Resource Studies (CARRS) at Michigan State University. His research primarily covers analysis of policies and institutional arrangements related to managing rural natural resources in developing countries. His recent work has addressed the implications of payment for environmental services schemes for conservation and the distribution of benefits to rural people in various parts of the world. Vicki L. Medland is the associate director of the Cofrin Center for Biodiversity at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay. She teaches courses related to biodiversity, conservation, and agriculture and has published articles on biodiversity, agro-ecology, and environmental ethics. She is especially interested in issues surrounding the preservation of heritage crops and has led a university program that offers unique heritage vegetables and flowers for sale to the public for ten years. Katherine Nault is seeking a master’s degree in Community, Food, and Agriculture at Michigan State University. Her studies have focused on the engagement of urban youth in research and civic activities around food system issues. She is a former farmers market manager and a founding member of the Michigan Farmers Market Association. Patricia E. Norris holds the Gordon and Norma Guyer and Gary L. Seevers Chair in Natural Resource Conservation at Michigan State University and is a professor in the Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation, and Resources Studies and the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics. Norris has conducted research and extension education programs addressing issues in soil conservation, water quality, groundwater management, wetland policy, land markets, land-use conflicts, and farmland preservation. She has taught courses in natural resource economics, environmental economics, ecological economics, environmental science, agricultural policy, and public policy analysis. Norris holds her bachelor’s degrees in agricultural economics from the University of Georgia and her master’s degree and doctorate from Virginia Tech.


249

Debra Pearson is associate professor of human biology and nutritional sciences and co-director of the Center for Food and Culture at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay. She received her doctorate in nutritional science from the University of California–Davis. She has conducted research on phytochemicals and heart disease and is the author of several scientific publications, including a recent major review of osteoporosis and vitamin K. David Pimentel is professor emeritus of insect ecology and agricultural sciences, Department of Entomology and Section of Ecology and Systematics, Cornell University. His multidisciplinary research spans the field of basic population ecology, genetics, ecological and economic aspects of pest control, biological control, energy use and conservation, genetic engineering, sustainable agriculture, soil and water conservation, and natural resource management and environmental policy. He has most recently focused on the relationship between food and fuel. Sieglinde Snapp is associate professor in soils and cropping system ecology. She is based at the Kellogg Biological Research Station, Department of Crop and Soil Science, Michigan State University (MSU). Sustainable soil management and agro-ecology for smallholder livelihoods are central to her research and teaching, and are the subject of numerous articles and two books. Her deep commitment to science in the service of development in Africa was recently recognized by the Emerging Leader Hudzik International Studies Program Award. She developed the new graduate specialization at MSU in ecological food and farming systems, and teaches the course on international agricultural systems. Before joining MSU in 2000, she was an international scientist based in Malawi and Zimbabwe for close to a decade, and earned her doctorate at the University of California–Davis in 1991. John M. Staatz is professor of agricultural, food, and resource economics and of African studies at Michigan State University. He has worked on issues of economic development and food security for thirty-three years, with a special focus on West Africa. He teaches graduate courses and conducts research in the areas of food policy, food security, economic development, institutional change, information economics, regional trade, and marketing. Sandra M. Stokes, professor of education and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, is an executive committee member of the Center for Food in Community and Culture at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay and a member of the Mayor of Green Bay’s Sustainable Green Bay Task Force and its foods subcommittee. Stokes is the editor of the WSRA (Wisconsin State Reading Association) Journal and has authored texts on reading assessment and education issues as well as numerous scholarly articles in such publications as The Reading Teacher, The Reading Professor, Multicultural Education, and Women in Higher Education.


Index

Africa Union (AU), 170 agrichemical industries, 42 agricultural: knowledge, 71; labor, 71; lobbyists, 4, 12; policy, 3, 16, 90–91; practices effect on nutrient profiles, 177–89; subsidies, 87; trade, 39, 42–43, 45 agricultural biodiversity, 53–64; genetic biodiversity, 53; landscape level biodiversity, 53–54; Wilson, E. O., 53 agricultural growth in developing countries, 159, 163; effect on women, 163; irrigation, 163 agricultural land, abandonment of, 4; valuing of, 5, 10; urbanization of, 8 agriculture: intensification of, 42, 54, 64; interest groups, 3; legislators (federal or state), 15; agrochemicals, 4; monoculture crops, 4; mechanization of, 71, 87; Thomas Jefferson, 81 agrifood: aquifer, 4–5; corporations (industries), 3, 42; erosion, 4–5; flooding, 4–5; groundwater, 5; nonrenewable inputs, 54; production, 3; systems, 38 agrobiodiversity, 53–64 agrochemicals, 54 agroecology, 39, 46 agro-ecosystem, 53 agroindustry, 82 Albania, sustainable agriculture projects, 104 American Farmland Trust, 10

American Planning Association (APA), 9, 113 American Psychiatric Association, 216, 222 American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 15 Appropriative Rights Model Water Code, 15 aquaculture, 110, 124, 127–29 Argentina, soil, 23 Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE), 6 Australia, permaculture, 88; soil biodiversity, 57; soil salinization, 82; sustainable agriculture, 85; wheat, 185 Bangladesh, food security, 158; polyculture, 59; sustainable agriculture projects, 104 Berry, Wendell, x, 16, 114 Biodiversity strategies, beetle banks, 55; hedgerows, 55; Lockwood, Jeffrey, 60; low-till, 59; Pimbert, Michel, 59; resiliency, 55; natural fertilizer, 58; no-till, 58–59; organic, 59; polyculture, 54, 57 biofuel, 29, 70 biotechnology, 33, 34, 42 Bolivia, sustainable agriculture projects, 103 Brazil, soil, 23, 29 calories (kilocalories) in food. See energy in food Cambodia, national food security policy, 170

252 Canada, sustainable agriculture, 85; fisheries, 123 carrying capacity, xvi, Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), 29 children and food insecurity in the United States, 143–54 Children’s Health Watch at Boston Medical Center, 148–53 children’s school breakfast, 195–97 children’s school lunch, 195–208; bonus, 197–98; commodity foods, 195, 197–98, 204; content and supply, 198–200; Depression of 1930s, 196; Diabetes, 196; entitlement, 197–98, 204; farm-toschool (FTS) programs, 202–3; fat, 202; fiber, 202; funding, 197–98; and Industrial farms (corporate), 197; junk food, 207; Levine, Susan, 207–8; nutritional content of, 195–96; National School Lunch Act, 195–96; National School Lunch Program (NSLP), 195–96; obesity, 196; policy, 207–8; procurement, 200–206; program history, 195–96; recommendations, 206–7; sodium, 202; subsidies cut by Reagan, 197; sugar, 202 Children’s Sentinel Nutrition Assessment Program (C-SNAP). See Children’s Health Watch China, dams, 125 Colony Collapse Disorder, 56 Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO), 103 community-based associations (CIALs), 105 Concentrated Animal Feed Operations (CAFOs), 4 conservation tillage, 84 cropland loss, 70 crops: cash, 27: commodity, 38, 97; cover, 59, 73, 85, 185; intercropping, 59; multicropping, 59; residue, 27; specialty, 38; water intensive, 5; yield, 189 Cuba, urban gardens, 113 Depression of the 1930s, 167, 196 developing countries, 95–107 development strategies, 95–107 Diamond, Jared, Collapse, 82 disordered eating, 213–225; American Psychiatric Association, 222; anorexia (voluntary food denial, food asceticism),

Index 213; and body image, 213–25; Bruch, Hilde, 214, 220–22; bulimia, 214–18; causes of, 214–16; CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), 224; Christian medieval Europe, 213; cognitivebehavioral procedures, 223; commensality, refusal of, 216; Control therapy, 222, 224; cosmetic surgery, 220; Cultural factors, 224; demographics, 215–16; depression, 222; Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), 214; diaries, 224; diet drugs, 220; distorted body image, 222; Fairburn and Wilson, 222; family therapy, 222; feminist family therapy, 223; group therapy, 222; history, 213–14; hospitalization, 221; Intensive Outpatient Programs (IOP), 222; Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT), 222; Jonson, Ben, 213; Kibarashi syndrome, 217; medication, 221–222; MET (Motivational Enhancement Therapy), 224; mortality rates, 216; National Association of Anorexia Nervosa, 216; Ophelia, 213; physical effects of, 214; psychotherapy, 221; reaction to media messages, 220; reaction to political or cultural changes, 219–20; relatedness, refusal of, 215; Ritual group fasting, 219; Self-help programs, 224; serotonin, 222; supportive-expressive therapy, 222; Shakespeare, 213; social epidemic, 216; studies, 216–20; treatment in the nonWestern world, 223–24; treatment in the Western world, 220–23; treatments for, 220–24; and Western cultural influences, 216 economies, local, 86 economists, 45 ecosystem, 11; Millenium Ecosystem Assessment, 55; services, 55–56; value, 55 Ecuador, sustainable agriculture projects, 103 energy: conservation in agriculture, 69–74; fossil fuel, 69–74; in fertilizer, 96; nonrenewable, 69 energy (kilocalories or Kcal) in food, 69–74; vegetarian diet, 69; in horses and mule labor, 71. See calories

Index energy used, in food packaging, 69–73; in food preparation, 69–73; in food processing, 69–73; in food transportation, 69–74 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 11–12 erosion, wind and water, 70 ethanol, 96 factory farming (see industrial agriculture), effects on soil and land use, 3–4; effects on water quality, 4–5 fair trade certification, 106; organic certification, 106; Rainforest Alliance, 105–6; Rainforest Alliance Certified Seal, 106; Sustainable Agricultural Network (SAN), 105–6; Wal*Mart/ Sam’s Club, 106; Whole Foods Market, 106 Farm Bill (Food, Agriculture, Conservation, and Trade Act), 83, 85, 97 farm size, efficiency of, 87 farmers: education, 96; livelihoods, 4, 9, 34; markets, 10 farmland, title to (see land tenure), 26–27, 29, 158, 162; “land to the tiller” laws, 26, 30; land lease, 26, 29 farmland protection, toolbox, 10; Purchase of Agricultural Easements (PACE), 10; Transfer of Development Rights (TDR), 10; Trust for the Public Land, 10 farm-to-school, 203–6; Agatston, Dr. Arthur (South Beach Diet), 205; Allen, Patricia and Julie Guthman, 203; alternative agrifood movement, 203; Belkin, Lisa, 205; California Fresh Start Program (CFSP), 206; Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, 206; educational aspect, 204; Farm Fresh Start, Hartford, CT., 203; food quality, 204; food transport, 204–5; Healthier Options for Public Schoolchildren (HOPS), 205; Imig, Gail, 205; Kloppenburg, Jack and Neva Hassanein, 203; organic food, 204; programs, 205; school gardens, 204–5; Seeds for Solidarity, 205; Senator Tom Harkins, 204; W. K. Kellogg Foundation, 205; Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch program, 204 fast food, 177, 198–99, 202, 204

253 fisheries, 123–135; bycatch (non-target species), 127; capture fisheries (ocean), 127; collapse, 128–29; consumer product labeling, 133; employment, 128–29; equity in employment, 129; harvest and production, aquaculture, 127–29; HIV/AIDS and employment, 128, 130, 134; inland fishing, 127; illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing (IUU), 127 marginalized (vulnerable) groups, 129, 134 fisheries management, 123; beach village committees (BVCs), 132; Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, 131; collaborative management of transboundary fish stocks, 131; Committee on Fisheries (COFI), 131; Earth Summit of 1992, 131; European Inland Fisheries Advisory Commission, 131; Fisheries Conservation and Management Act of 1997 of Malawi, 132; fisheries policy, 130–35; fishery management councils, 132; fishing policy, 130; individual tradable quotas (ITQs), 130; Joint Strategic Management Plan for Great Lakes Fisheries, 132; Law of the Sea Treaty (LOS), 131; Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act, 132; public education on fisheries, 131; regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs), 131 fisheries politics, 132–33; Exclusive economic zone (EEZ), 132; fishery management councils, 132; industry influence on councils, 132; MagnusonStevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act, 132; North Pacific Fishery Management Council, 133 fisheries trends, 123–26; air pollution, 125; Anderson, Christian, 126; aquaculture, 124; biodiversity loss, 126; Chesapeake Bay, 125; dams, 125; eating down the food chain, 126; eutrophication, 125; exotic fish, 125; factory ships, 126; FAO Introductions of Aquatic Species, 125; fish contamination, 124; fish stocks, 123; fish trade, 124; fisheries management tools, 123; fishing pressure, 126; Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 124; food security, 124;

254 fisheries trends (continued) Great Lakes Fishery Commission (GLFC), 125, 131–32; habitat degradation and loss, 123, 125; human population, 123–24; Indian Ocean, 124; International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, 126; Lake Erie, 125; Lake Malombe, Malawi, 126; Lake Victoria (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania), 125; Laurentian Great Lakes, 125; mercury, 125; Myers, Ransom and Boris Worm, 123; optimum sustainable yield, 123–24; overfishing, 123, 126; PCBs, 125; Pew Oceans Commission, 124; runoff, suburban and agricultural, 125; water quality, 125; World Resources Institute’s “Environmental Impacts of Aquaculture,” 128 fishing: corporate fleets, 129; overcapitalization of, 129; petroleum costs of, 129; rights, 129 fishing policy and projects, 133–35; aquatic protected areas (sanctuaries), 134; Arctic waters, 133; Bratspies, Rebecca, 128, 135; Committee on Fisheries (COFI), 135; Greenpeace’s “Principles for Ecologically Responsible Fisheries,” 134; International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 133; NGO (non governmental organization), 130–31, 133, 135; Malawi Wildlife and Environment Society, 134; Marine Protected Areas, 134; precautionary principle, 134; Project Seahorse, 134; The American Fisheries Society (AFS), 134; The Convention for Biological Diversity, 134; University of British Columbia, 134; World Fish Center (WFC), 133 food: access, 116, 143–44; as culture, 61; local, 86; production, 3, 8, 15; organic, 71; stamps, 150; supply, 12, 69; value of, 8; where grown, 8 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 34, 39–41, 54, 109, 160 food insecurity, 144, 148–50, 152–53; body mass index (BMI), 152–53; and child health, 148, 150–51; chronic hunger (undernourishment), 160; coping strategies for, 160, 171; demographics, 144, 146–48, 150–51, 153; in developing countries, 159–64, 171;

Index dysthymia, 152; Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS), 152; effects of, 150–54; famine, 159–60; FAO, 160; food markets, 161; iron deficiency anemia (IDA), 151; maternal depression, 151; overweight, 148, 153; Pediatric Symptom Checklist (PSC), 152; positive depressive symptoms (PDS), 151; poverty, 144, 146–47, 171; poverty trap, 160; psychosocial functioning, 152; rationing, 150; school performance, 152; urbanization, 161 Food miles, 86. See also energy in food transportation food policy in U.S., 144, 150, 153–54; Consumer Price Index (CPI), 146; Food Stamp Program (now Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program SNAP), 150; WIC (Women, infants, and children) program, 151 food productivity in developing countries, 159, 164–65 food security, xviii, 8, 45, 96, 143–45; Food Security Learning Center, 10; and insecurity in the United States, 143–54 food security, measuring, 143–144; Children’s Food Security Scale (CFSS), 144–45; Current Population Survey (CPS), 144, 148; Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), 143; Food Security Scale (FSS), 144, 148; Household and child food insecurity (H&CFI), 150; Household food insecurity (HFI), 147; Life Sciences Research Office (LSRO), 143; Parent’s Evaluation of Developmental Status (PEDS), 148; USDA Economic Research Service (USDA/ERS), 144 food security in developing countries, 157–72; approaches to improve, 161–69; agricultural productivity, biodiversity, 165; child feeding programs, 164; defining, 157–60; education, 166; food availability, 158, 162; food access, 158–60, 162; Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 157; food cost, 158–60, 164, 171; food-forwork programs, 164, 167; food first approach, 162; food price dilemma, 164; food self-sufficiency, 162; food trade, 162; food utilization, 159, 162–63;

255

Index gender roles, 158; genetically modified organisms (GMOs), 165; Green Revolution, 165; improvement of, 162; hunger, 158; land tenure, 158, 162; Mali, 166; policies, 166; and rural development capital types, 165–66; soil biological capital, 165; South Asia, 157, 160; Sub-Saharan Africa, 157, 160; trade policy, 166; targeted food subsidies, 164; U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), 157; US Agency for International Development (USAID), 157; World Bank, 157 food security roles and coordination, 169–71; Africa Union (AU), 170; Cambodia, 170; collective action, 171; Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program (CAADP), 170; food aid, 169–70; food security, marketbased approach, 170–71; Framework for African Food Security (FAFS), 170; government capacity, 170; international food market, 171; Laos People’s Democratic Republic, 170; national food security strategies/policies, 169–70; poverty, 169, 171; U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO), 169; World Food Summit of 1996, 169–70; World Food Summit plan, 170 food system: in developing countries, 159, 161, 166; employment, 159

industrial agriculture, xvi, 82, 91, 207; concentration of, 4; externalities, 6; mechanization of, 3; Industrial food system, 114; subsidies, 208 industrial revolution, 81 infrastructure, investments in, 96 integrated pest management (IPM), 33–46; Badan Perencanaan Pembangunan Nasional (BAPPENAS), 44; biological control, 33; community-based organizations, 43; cultural control, 33; ecological justice approach, 43; FAO Inter-Country Programme, 44; Farmer Field Schools (FFS), 44; geneticallymodified crops, 33; Icipe (African Insect Science for Food and Health), 41; International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), 39; investment in higher education, 41; marginalized (vulnerable) groups, 43; natural resource valuation, 43; (NGOs), 44; policy options, 38–43; reduced-risk pesticides, 33, 38; sustainability of IPM tactics, 34–37; risk assessment of IPM tactics, 34–37; social equity, 43 Intellectual property, 45 International Fertilizer Development Center, 96 Irrigation, 70

gender analysis, agricultural practices, 42, 45 genebanks, plants and animals, 62–64 Glennon, Robert, 14 global warming, 95, 107 grain production per capita, 71 Great Britain, plant varieties 62 Green Revolution, xiii, 98, 165 Greenbelt Movement, 105; Maathai, Wangari, 105

Jamaica, sustainable agriculture projects, 104 Japan, millet, 62; permaculture, 89 junk food, 70, 73

Hawaii, permaculture, 88; food imports, 88 HIV/AIDS, 95, 128, 134 Honduras, sustainable agriculture projects, 10 hunger in the U.S., 144, 149–50 hydroponics, 88 India, Colony Collapse Disorder, 56; soil, 27 Indonesia, integrated pest management (IPM), 43–46, soil, 29; sustainable agriculture projects, 104–5

Kunstler, James Howard, 11 land tenure. See farmland title landspreading of manure, sewage sludge, industrial waste, 4 land use, 3–13, 15–16; effects of federal lands, 6; effects of state statutes, 6–7; effects of wetlands, 6; Land use regulation, 3, 6–11; plans, 6; policy, 9; regulations (see zoning ordinances), 7; “right to farm” laws, 9; section 404 permits, 6; state consistency statutes, 7; Oregon Dept. of Land Conservation and Development, 11; Oregon 1973 Growth Management Statute, 11;

256 land use (continued) Portland, Oregon’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, 11; urban growth boundaries, 11; urban perspective, 6; variances, 7 Land Use in a Nutshell, 10 Laos People’s Democratic Republic, national food security policy, 170 local economies, 11 Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act, 129, 132 Malawi, fishing, 128, 132, 135; sustainable agriculture projects, 105 Mali, sustainable agriculture projects, 104 malnutrition, 70–71 manure, 27, 73; management plan, 12 marginal land, 95 Maslow, Abraham, 143 Mexico, 59–61; conservation payments, 60; contamination by GMO crops, 54; Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, 60 monoculture, 59, 82 National Commission on Small Farms, 87 National School Lunch Program (NSLP), 195–96, 198; nutrition, effect on learning, 197; success, 196–97; vitamins, 197 natural capital depletion, 82 nutrient content affected by growing method, 183–88; arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, 185; Australia, wheat, 185; bioavailability, 185; biological pest control, 183; carbon/nutrient balance theory, 184–85; compost, 183, 188; cover crop, 185; crop rotation, 183; fertility studies on rats, 187; fertilizer, 183; flavonoids, 181, 187; green manure, 183; growth/differentiation balance theory, 184–85; harvesting, timing of, 188; Long-Term Research on Agricultural Systems (LTRAS), 187–88; manure, 187; mechanical cultivation, 183; nitrates, 184; organic farming, 178, 183–88; phytate, 185–86; soil fertility, 183; soil management, 183; sustainable practices, 183; University of CaliforniaDavis, 187; vitamin content, 184–88 nutrient content of food from post-harvest changes, 177; links to post-harvest

Index changes, 177, 182, 187; cancer, 177, 182, 187; cardiovascular disease, 177, 182; fast foods, 177; type 2 diabetes, 177 nutrient content of food from pre-harvest changes, 177–88; agricultural (farming) system, 178; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 177; crop management, 177; disease, 177; farming efficiency, 178; fertilizer, 177, 187–88; food quality, 178; genetic modifications of plants, 177; herbicide, 177; livestock management, 177; malnutrition, 178; mineral content, 179; nutrient density, 178–79; obesity, 178; pesticide, 177; plant selection/breeding, 177 nutrient content varies among agricultural plants and growing methods, 178–83; agricultural (bio)diversity, 181–83; conventional farming (industrial farming), 178–79, 181, 183; dilution effect, 180–81; E. coli, 182; farmers markets, 183; genetic diversity, 181; genetic variability, 180–82; grain consumption, increase in, 179; Green Revolution, 179; heirloom varieties, 183; local foods, 183; macronutrient, 181; micronutrient, 181; mineral content, 179, 181, 184–85, 188; monocultures, 178–79, 181; nutrient deficiencies, 179; organic farming, 179; phytochemical profile, 181–82, 184–87; plant genetics, 181; traditional foods, 183; United Kingdom, 179; urinary tract infections, 182; USDA, 179; variety (cultivar) selection, 177–79, 183; vitamin content, 179, 181 nutrients: in food, 74; profiles in plants, 177–89 nutrition, 59, 70 obesity, 229–39; AHA Dietary Guidelines, 236, 238; body mass index (BMI), 230; body weight patterns in U.S., 230; Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 230; Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), 235; childhood obesity, 230; Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 236; dietary habits in U.S., 230; epidemic, 229–30; epidemic in U.S., 230–39; fast food, 236; food access, 237; food assistance programs, 237; food

Index prices, rising, 236; Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health, 229; industrial diet, 230; National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 230; National Survey of Children’s Health, 231; New York City Board of Health, 236; nutritional profile, 236; nutrition transition, 229–30; portion sizes, 236; poverty, 231; psychosocial burdens, 230; and public ignorance of food content, 235–36, 238; and rising food prices, trends and demographics, 230–31; 236–37; school lunches, 231; Seeley, Randy (Obesity Research Center), 231; U.S. Census, 230 World Health Organization (WHO), 229 obesity, factors contributing to, 232–35; alcohol, 234; breast milk, 233; calorie (kilocalorie), 234; Center for Food, Nutrition and Agriculture Policy, 234; Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, 235; food expenditure data, 235; food industry, 234–35, 238; Forshee, et al., 234; fructose, 234; high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), 234; Linn, Susan (Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood), 235; media, 234–35; prenatal toxins, 233; quick-serve restaurants (QSRs), 235; regulatory response, 233; soda (soft drink), 234–35; sucrose, 234; sugar, 234; thrifty genotype, 233 obesity, results from industrial diet, 231–32; child academic success, 232; child socioemotional factors, 232; disease and obesity, 232; exports of food, 231; exports of marketing and technology, 231; health care costs, 232; USDA Economic Research Service, 232 obesity, reversing the trend, 237–39; American Heart Association (AHA), 238–39; built environment, 238; development policies, 239; Dietz, William Dr. (Division on Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity), 237; food access, 238; food policies, 239; Hartman Group, Problem with Obesity (Hint: It Ain’t the Food), 237; Institute of Medicine (IOM), 239; Institute of Medicine (IOM), Preventing Childhood Obesity: Health in the Balance, 238–39;

257 Lappe, Frances Moore, 238–39; malnutrition, 238–39; physical activity, 238–39; power over food choice, 238–39; U.S. Surgeon General, Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity, 237; urban gardens, 239 Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), 224–25 Office of Management and Budget (OMB), 12 OMBWATCH, 12 organic food, 86, 89; certification, 86 Organic Trade Association, 86 organic, 71 overgrazing, 85 overweight, 229–39 Paraguay, soil, 23 Peak oil, 11, 82; global oil supply, 82–83; Hirsch, et al., 82; Hubbert Curve, 82–83; M. King Hubbert, 82–83; Youngquist, Walter, Post-Petroleum Paradigm, 83 perennial crops, 87–88 permaculture, 88–89; Circle School, Richmond, 90; Fukuoka method, 89; Holmgren, David, 88; Land Institute, Kansas, 87–88; Masanobu Fukuoka, 88–89; Mollison, Bill, 88; Permaculture Center (Japan), 89; Shitara, Kiyokazu, 89; Virginia Commonwealth University, 90 Peru, sustainable agriculture projects, 103 pesticides, 33–46, ecological risk of, 33, 34, 38; energy costs, 39; energy taxes, 39; human health risk of, 33, 34, 38; invasive pest species, 41; maximum pesticide residue level (MRL) standards, 39; pesticide-induced resistance, 33; pest resurgence, 33; phytosanitary, 39; policy, 39–40; reduced-risk, 38; socioeconomic risk, 33, 34, 38; subsidies, 42, 45 Philippines, sustainable agriculture projects, 104 planning, planners/planning, 6–11; energy, availability of, 8; traditional assumptions of, 7; sprawl, urban, 7; Developers, 7 planning horizons of farmers, 25–26 Platt, Rutherford, 10

258 polluter pays principle, 39, 43 polyculture, 54, 57, 87 population growth, 69–70, 95, 123 post-industrial countries, 81–91 Pothukuchi, Kameshwari and Jerome Kaufman, 8 precautionary principle, 43, 134 Regulated Riparian Model Water Code, 15 Rural by Design: Maintaining Small Town Character, 11 seed, 38; industries, 42; saving, 34, 54, 61; trading, 54, 61 soil biodiversity, 57–59 soil conservation, 19–30; agricultural land value and, 26; climate change, 23; compliance monitoring of, 29; Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), 21, 28, 29; conservation tillage, 23; cover crops, 24, 27; credit, 26; districts, 28; easement, 28–29; education, 28; Global Assessment of Soil Degradation (GLASOD), 20, 21; Lal, R. et al., 21; land use, 20; National Resources Inventory (NRI), 20; natural resource conditions, 20; organic carbon, 23; payment for environmental services (PES), 29; policy, 28–30; poverty, 26; regulation of, 28; residue management, 23; sequester carbon dioxide, 29; socioeconomic barriers to conservation, 24–28; subsidization of, 28; Sustainable Agriculture Network, 27; technical assistance for, 28; tolerance rate, 20; water tax, 29; wildlife habitat, 29 soil contamination (pollution), 3–4; DDT, 4; PCBs, 4; Heavy metals, 4; Soil salinization, 4, 70; micronutrients (in soil and plants), 4; nutrients (in soil and plants), 4, 5, 12; organic matter (in soil), 4; persistent organic pollutants (POPs), 4 soil degradation, 19–30, 95; erosion, 19, 21–22, 82; eutrophication, 102; salinization, 82; dryland salinization, 82 Somalia, soil minerals, 186 sustainable agriculture, xv, xvi, 10, 81–91, 96; animal forage, 85; animal management plan, 90; August, Kris, 90; biophysical aspects, 84; Cornell University, 82; cover crops, 85;

Index Elkington, John, 90; Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), 85; European Conservation Agriculture Federation (ECAF), 85; Gandhi, Mahatma, 81; land management plan, 90; locavore, 86; New Zealand Farmsure Program, 90; Polyface farm, 85; rotational grazing, 85; Social Responsibility Plan, 90; socio-economic aspects, 84; Thompson, Paul, 97; Triple Bottom Line (TBL), 90 sustainable agriculture and development, 96–107; agroecology, 99; Alteri, Miguel, 98; compost (humus farming), 98; Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), 97; ecoregional approach, 97; externalities, 98; Farmer field school (FFS), 98; Gliessman, Steve, 98; Green Revolution, 98; Harwood, 98; Balfour, Lady Eve, 98; Howard, Sir Albert, 98; industrial (conventional) agriculture, 99; integrated natural resource management approach, 97; integrated pest management (IPM), 98; Carson, Rachel, 98; organic farming, 99; Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), 98; “push-pull” approach, 105; resilience, 99; resistance, 99; Rodale, J. I., 98; system stability, 98–99; whole-systems approach, 99; World Bank Annual Development Report, 106 Sustainable Agriculture Network, 29 sustainable agriculture strategies, 99–106; adaptive research, 101; afforestation, 102; Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), 102; Collaborative Research Support Program (CRSP), 100; extension-driven strategies, 101, 104–5; Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), 100; forest loss, 102; forest, property rights to, 103; integrated pest management (IPM CRSP), 100; International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), 102; International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), 102; International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), 102; International Food Policy Research Institute, 102; International Potato

Index Center (CIP), 102; International Water Management Institute (IWMI), 101; Lake Victoria, 102; land management techniques, 102; market-driven strategies, 1010, 105–6; Natural Resources Management and Environment Department of the FAO, 100; research-driven strategies, 101–4; Sustainable agriculture and resource management (SANREM CRSP), 100; technologies, 100; U.S. land grant universities, 100; USAID, 100; vermicomposting, 102; World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF), 102 sustainable development, 95; Brundtland Commission Report, 95; U.N. Conference on Environment and Development, 95; U.N. Environmental Summit, 95; U.N. Millennium Summit, 95; World Summit on Social Development, 95; World Summit on Sustainable Development, 95 sustainable livelihoods, 44 sustainable living, 10 tax, property, 9; circuit breaker, 10; differential assessment, 10 traditional plant varieties: biodiversity of, 60–64; food diversity, 61; Japan, plant varieties 62; indigenous crops, 62; genetic diversity, 60–63; Agricultural Research Service (ARS) of USDA, 62; Alternare, 60; Association for Nature and Sustainable Development (ANDES), 63; DIVERSITAS, 63–64; genebank, plants and animals, 62–64; International Association of Agricultural Development (IAAD), 63; International Food and Life Association, 62; National Plant Germplasm System, 62; natural capital (ecosystem services), 63–64; Peru, plant varieties, 62, 63; Quechua communities, 63; Seed Savers Exchange, 62; Slow Food’s Foundation for Biodiversity, 62; sustainable agriculture, 64; Svalbard Global Seed Vault, 62; The International Institute for Environment and Development, 63; The International Potato Center, 62; US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), 60; World Wildlife Fund (WWF), 60

259 transgenic crops (cross list with geneticallymodified crops), 33–34, 38, 45; crosspollination of, 34; effects on biodiversity, 34; herbicide-resistant weeds caused by, 34 Transition Town, 11 transitory food insecurity in developing countries, addressing, 167–71; cash transfers, 167–68; commodity selection, 169; food staple stocks, 168–69; Mozambique, 168; NGOs, 166, 170–71; Tschirley, David and Anne Marie del Castillo, 168; World Food Programme (WFP), 167–68 tyranny of small decisions, 9 U.S. Congress, 83, 97 United States Agency for International Development (USAID), 44 United States Geological Survey (USGS), 82 Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What to Do about It, 14 urban agriculture, 109–18; Ablemen, Michael, 110; alternative agrifood movements, 110; American Planning Association (APA), 113; Antonio Roman-Alcala, 117; aquaculture, 110, 112; Bailkey, Martin, 111; Berry, Wendell, 114; Brown, Katherine and Andrew Jameton, 116; capital investment in, 113; Cezanne, Paul, city planning, 113–15; 115; cultural heritages of, 115–16; deserts, 116; economic development policy, 114; Edible Schoolyard, 116; food access, 116; food policy, 116–17; food security from, 116–18; gardening and farming, 109–18; greenhouses/hoop houses, 110; Hawken, Paul, 115; health improvement from, 116; Heifer International, 112; hydroponics, 112; Hynes, Patricia, 116; Klindienst, Patricia, 116; Kropotkin, Peter, 114; land available for, 110–12, Lautenschlager, Lauren and Chery Smith, 116; livestock, 112–13; Nasr, Joe, 111; planning, 110; policy for, 110; school gardens, 116–17; zoning, 113–14 urban agriculture, historical movements: Detroit Allotment Gardening for Panic of 1893, 115;

260 urban agriculture, historical movements (continued) Garden City Movement, 113; National War Garden Commission U.S. School Garden Army, 115; Potato Patches, 115; Victory gardens (also Liberty or Relief gardens), 115 urban agriculture projects and programs, 110–117; Added Value, Red Hook Farm, New York, 112; Adopt-a-Lot program, Flint, 111; Allen, Erika (Growing Power), 110–11; Braddock, Pennsylvania, 114; Brownfields Federal Partnership Action Program, 111; California Healthy Cities and Communities (CHCC), 116; Capuchin Soup Kitchen, Detroit, 116; City Sprouts, Omaha, 116; East London Manor Garden Allotments, 111; East New York Farms!, 113; Esperanza Garden, NYC Green Thumb Program, 111; Fairview Gardens (S. California), 111; Field to Table’s Urban Bees Project, Toronto, Canada, 113; Food and Agriculture Precinct, Southlands Community Planning Team, Vancouver, Canada, 114; Food for the Cities, 109; Food Project, Boston, 116; From Our Roots, Holyoke, 117; Garden Resource Program Collaborative, Detroit, 117; Genesee County Land Bank, 111; Green Guerrillas, New York City, 116; Greensgrow Farm Inc., Philadelphia, 112; Growing Power, Milwaukee, 112; Institute for Innovations in Local Farming, 114; Loisaida Gardens, Manhattan, 111; Madison Area Community Land Trust, 111; Mole Hill Lane, Vancouver, Canada, 112; Our Roots, Holyoke, 116; People’s Grocery, West Oakland, 116; Providence Urban Agriculture Policy Task Force, 114; Rooftop gardens, Chicago and Beijing, 112; Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, 114; Somerton Tanks Farm, Philadelphia, 114; Toronto FoodShare, 117; Troy Gardens, Madison, 111; Neighborhood Gardens Association, 111; Urban Agriculture Conference in Milwaukee, 114; Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture

Index Alliance (UPA), 115; USDA Community Food Project, 115; USDA Community Food Projects Program, 111; W.K. Kellogg Foundation Food and Fitness Initiative, 117 urban gardeners, 115, 117; activist, 115; garden guerrilla, 115, 117 urban public health policy, 116 Vietnam, sustainable agriculture projects, 104 water: allocation law, 3, 13–15; broadcast irrigation, 82; high capacity wells, 5; irrigation, 5; interstate compacts, 13–14; policy, 3, 16; loss, 3; shortages, 95, state laws, 13–15 surface water, 4; table, 5; use, 3–4, 11–16 water, contamination (pollution), 3–5, 11–12; agricultural pollution of water supplies, 95–96; eutrophication, 5, 125; deoxygenation, 5; nitrogen, 5; nitrates, 5; methemoglobinemia (Blue Baby syndrome), 5; perchlorate, 12; pesticides, 82; heavy metals, 12; pathogens, 12; sewage effluent, 12; salmonella, 12; E. coli, 12; cholera, 12 water, quality, 38; regulations, 3, 11–13; buffer zone, 13; recharge zone, 13; point source water pollution, 11–12; nonpoint source water pollution, 12; Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA) of 1972 (see Clean Water Act), 11–12; Clean Water Act (CWA), 11–12; The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES), 11–12; National WaterQuality Assessment (NAWQA) Program, 82; Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL), 11 World Bank, 44 World Health Organization (WHO), 39, 70, 229 World War II, 196 Zambia, sustainable agriculture projects, 103 zoning (ordinances), 7; for agricultural protection, 10; rezoning, 4; agricultural districts, 10; urbanization, xiii, 10

Critical Food Issues: Problems and State-of-the-Art Solutions Worldwide


Critical Food Issues: Problems and State-of-the-Art Solutions Worldwide Volume 2: Society, Culture, and Ethics

Edited by

Lynn Walter

PRAEGER An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC

Copyright 2009 by Lynn Walter All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Critical food issues : problems and state-of-the-art solutions worldwide. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-313-35444-1 (set: hard copy: alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-313-35446-5 (vol. 1: hard copy: alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-313-35448-9 (vol. 2: hard copy: alk. paper)— ISBN 978-0-313-35445-8 (set: ebook)—ISBN 978-0-313-35447-2 (vol. 1: ebook)— ISBN 978-0-313-35449-6 (vol. 2: ebook) 1. Food supply. 2. Food consumption. 3. Food—Social aspects. 4. Agriculture. 5. Produce trade. 6. Nutrition policy. I. Phoenix, Laurel E. II. Walter, Lynn, 1945HD9000.5.C733 2009 363.8—dc22 2009018999 13

12

11 10

9

1 2 3 4 5

This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents

Foreword Lynn Walter and Laurel E. Phoenix

vii

Preface Lynn Walter and Laurel E. Phoenix

ix

Introduction to Volume 2 Lynn Walter

xi

Abbreviations

xxiii

PART I. SOCIETY 1. Roots and Roles of Alternative Agrifood Systems Patricia Allen

3

2. Alternative Food Market Governance: Current Research and Unanswered Questions E. Melanie DuPuis

17

3. Farmwork and the Labor of Meatpacking and Poultry Processing: Another Way of Working Is Possible Dan La Botz

33

4. Equity in Access to Land, Human Rights, and Capital: Food Security Movements from the Global South William Van Lopik

51

vi

Contents

5. Food and Democracy Larry Smith

67

6. Consumers as Political Actors Michele Micheletti and Dietlind Stolle

85

7. Choosing Quality: The Knowledge-Intensification Shift JoAnn Jaffe

101

PART II. CULTURE 8. Sustaining Regional Food Systems and Healthy Rural Livelihoods Gail Feenstra and Jennifer Wilkins 9. Social Movements: Slow Places, Fast Movements, and the Making of Contemporary Rurality Daniel Niles 10. Gender, Generations, and Commensality: Nurturing Home and the Commons Lynn Walter

121

139

155

11. Cultural Differences in Food Preferences Regan A. R. Gurung

175

12. Images of Sustenance in Contemporary Literature Aeron Haynie

187

13. Indigenous Knowledge Systems Esther Katz

199

PART III. ETHICS 14. Food Security: Three Conceptions of Access—Charity, Rights, and Coresponsibility Lisa Heldke

213

15. Animal Welfare Andrew Fiala

227

16. Stewardship of the Land Eric J. Fitch

243


253

Index

257

Foreword Lynn Walter and Laurel E. Phoenix Eating is one of the first things we do in life and one of the last things we do. In between our first and last bite, food sustains us, orders our days, celebrates our lives, stimulates our senses, brings us together, and sets us apart. Food is so central to our individual and collective experience that we are intimately familiar with it. But, even with all we know about food, we need to know much more; and this is as true of gourmet “foodies” as it is of those who consider food a trifle. First, we need to identify how the way that food is produced, distributed, and consumed affects human well-being as well as that of our environment and communities. Critical Food Issues: Problems and State-of-the-Art Solutions Worldwide examines many of the problems that derive from our prevailing agrifood system—from environmental degradation, resource depletion, and disordered eating, to declining rural livelihoods, food insecurity, unjust labor practices, and animal mistreatment. Second, we need to know how to address these critical food issues, which is the key question of this collection. Each chapter focuses on strategies and practices that will enhance the synergy between sustainable agrifood systems and a sound environment, healthy people, and equitable communities, locally and globally. As befits the scope of the problems, the solutions are wide-ranging—from local markets, appropriate technologies for pest management and soil improvements, and policies for better working conditions for agricultural workers to social movements for land equity and environmental quality, political consumerism, and creative and scholarly work in the arts and sciences. The critical food issues are examined by specialists from many academic disciplines who analyze the current state of research on both specific problems and potential solutions. They bring authoritative depth to their analysis of the current literature based in their specific disciplinary specializations, from environmental, nutritional, soil, and agricultural sciences; public health and dietetics; education; literature; history; philosophy; economics; sociology; anthropology; and gender studies. Most of the chapters examine case studies from around the world, wherever problems are being addressed effectively; others concentrate on the United

viii

Foreword

States, where the research in agrifood studies is growing in concert with the rapidly increasing number of communities, schools, farms, agencies, and businesses working on sustainable agrifood projects. Each chapter is written in jargon-free language to inform citizen and consumer engagement in the future of food and agriculture and to advance interdisciplinary agrifood studies. The breadth of the problems and solutions is examined in two volumes, generally divided into more bioenvironmental issues or more sociocultural ones. Volume 1 covers Environment, Agriculture, and Health Concerns, while Volume 2 focuses on Society, Culture, and Ethics. To an extent, the partitions between the volumes and among the sections within them are simply paper ones, because addressing the problems and solutions requires integrating knowledge from the natural sciences with the social sciences and humanities. As farmer and writer Wendell Berry observed, “Eating is an agricultural act.”1 Because eating links our bodies to the Earth, developing strategies to sustain agriculture requires considering nature in relationship to the ways humans transform it into culturally appropriate foods through social processes. Therefore, while the contributors analyze specific problems and solutions with the depth that comes from their specialization in one of the many academic disciplines represented in this collection, they share an overarching interdisciplinary problem-focus that integrates their work as a whole. That focus is on strategies to promote a sustainable symbiosis among viable agrifood systems, a sound environment, healthy people, and equitable communities. Scholars of “agro-ecology” and “the ecology of food” have conceptualized the holistic, interdisciplinary character of agrifood studies with various ecological models. The value of ecology as a framework for agrifood studies is that it takes the long-term sustainability of natural resources, the economy, and human health into consideration. As it is understood here, the ecology of agrifood framework also includes values, tastes, traditions, and an ethic of equity and justice. Because an ecology of food links health, economy, environment, community, culture, and ethics, strategies based on it should (1) provide food security for all, (2) renew and sustain the natural resource base and the biodiversity of the environment to ensure future food security, (3) build viable agrifood systems that provide for decent rural livelihoods, and (4) promote democratic access to agrifood decision-making as a basis for just and equitable communities. Encompassing all of these factors in the creation of sustainable agrifood systems will take serious thought on all our parts and knowledge of the models, ideas, and information with which to consider the problems and solutions. Whenever we think seriously about food, we evoke the past millennia during which times turning soil, water, and sunshine into sustenance was understood to depend on prayer, since food was such a precious and precarious thing. The rising call to return food to its central place in our imaginations and our politics indicates that we are once again uncertain about the future of food. Critical Food Issues: Problems and State-of-the-Art Solutions Worldwide examines the bases of our fears and ways that we might address them.

NOTE 1. Wendell Berry, “The Pleasures of Eating,” in American Food Writing, ed. Molly O’Neill (New York: Library Classics of the United States, 2007), 551–58, 552.

Preface Lynn Walter and Laurel E. Phoenix A project of the scope of Critical Food Issues: Problems and State-of-the-Art Solutions Worldwide requires a collaborative effort. Especially critical has been the work of the forty-one university researchers from around the country and around the world who have provided their academic expertise to this collection. They were asked to present complex information and ideas in a way that not only revealed the complexity of their subjects but also communicated it across the disciplinary boundaries. Communication among the many different disciplinary specialists depended on their commitment to the goals of the project as a whole—first, to provide the public with the information necessary to address the critical foods issues confronting the world today; and second, to contribute to the development of a new interdisciplinary field of food studies. Given the range of disciplines represented here— from environmental, nutritional, and agricultural sciences, to literature, history, philosophy, economics, sociology, anthropology, and psychology—this was no easy task. The knowledge integration process has been institutionally supported by the fact that the editors and some of the contributors are faculty members at the Center for Food in Community and Culture at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay. The mission of the center is reflected in the central interdisciplinary problem-focus of this collection, which is to promote “interdisciplinary scholarship to enhance the synergy between sustainable food systems and a sound environment, healthy people, and equitable communities, locally and globally.” Its work is reinforced by the innovative, interdisciplinary structure of the university’s mission, in which the faculty is encouraged to cross the traditional boundaries of knowledge within the broad frameworks of ecology and engaged citizenship. We are indebted to Debora Carvalko and Elizabeth Potenza from Praeger and Rebecca L. Edwards of Cadmus Communications for their editorial support. At the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, we relied on Katie Stilp for editorial assistance with the manuscript production. We are grateful for their efforts, their talents, and their encouragement.

x

Preface

Lynn Walter personally thanks her friends and colleagues Katherine Hall, Diane Legomsky, and Judy Martin for reading and reviewing her work throughout the process. Finally, none of this would have been possible if it were not for the fact that people around the world, farmers and farmworkers, chefs, family cooks, gardeners, artisan food producers, community activists, journalists, and scientists, are awakening us to the critical food issues and to ways that we might learn from their experience. We recognize their work in ours and hope we have done it justice.

Introduction to Volume 2 Lynn Walter Food security is the critical food issue with the most immediate impact on human well-being—on who lives and who dies, on who thrives and who withers. Even though the right to food was proclaimed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the United Nations reports that there were 963 million hungry people in the world in 2008, most of them from the poorer countries of the global south, but many from wealthy ones as well.1 Because the main cause of hunger is poverty,2 in the future, even more people may be at risk if food prices rise in response to the depletion of natural resources tied to environmentally destructive agricultural practices.3 Countering this dismal scenario are alternatives promoting a positive synergy between sustainable agrifood systems, socioeconomic equity, and food security through active citizen engagement in the process. The contributors to Volume 2 of Critical Food Issues: Problems and State-of-the-Art Solutions Worldwide bring their expertise in society, culture, and ethics to bear on an assessment of both potential futures with the intention of fostering the brighter one.

THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEMS AND THE SOLUTIONS The complex nature of contemporary critical food issues is rooted in long-term, global processes of change, including urbanization, increased consumption levels and population growth, and the development of industrialized, commodified agrifood systems that have intensified the pressure on the natural resource base. Unsustainable levels of consumption of water and fossil fuels, soil degradation, pesticide contamination, and loss of biodiversity along with predicted global warming impacts do not bode well for our future food security.4 At the same time, the consolidation of agricultural production, food processing, and distribution into fewer and fewer firms, and their concentrated political influence, have made it increasingly difficult for local communities, regions, or even states, to enact more sustainable agrifood policies; and wealth inequalities within and between nations have exacerbated this democratic deficit.5 As rural livelihoods decline and the

xii


countryside empties of people, as well as other forms of life, fewer people have a clear understanding of where our daily bread comes from, how it is made, and what it is made of.6 Instead, we have more often taken food for granted, eaten it alone and on the run, and absorbed much of our knowledge of it from the consumption of highly processed food and mass marketing appeals. All of these forces constrain our ability to understand and address the problems. Yet, because food sustains our existence, it has always been the object of human creativity in all its forms—individual and collective, cultural and practical, scientific and artistic, political and philosophical. Evincing all of these forms of creativity, strategies to address critical food issues have developed in every corner of the world and from every angle. The problems and creative responses to them are the focus of the new field of Food Studies, which critically examines the linkages between topics as varied as organic agriculture, celebrity chefs, commodity chains, hunger, culinary traditions, and body image. The particular contribution of Critical Food Issues: Problems and State-of-the-Art Solutions Worldwide to food studies is that it integrates knowledge from various academic disciplinary specializations into an interdisciplinary problem-focus on ways to promote a sustainable symbiosis among a viable agrifood system, a sound environment, healthy people, and equitable communities. The 16 chapters of Volume 2 are divided into parts—Society, Culture, and Ethics—based mostly on the disciplinary perspectives of the authors, their primary approach to the sustainable agrifood problem-focus, and the particular issue. To advance an interdisciplinary reading of their collected work as a whole, however, this introduction draws from all the chapters to develop four themes that intersect and integrate them. These are the alternative agrifood movement, communities and coalitions, the rejuvenation of agrifood knowledge, and rights and responsibilities.

THE ALTERNATIVE AGRIFOOD MOVEMENT Many of the citizens and consumers; artists, journalists, and artisans; grassroots and transnational social movements; and indigenous and other community organizations who are working on critical food issues are doing so as part of a comprehensive mission to sustain quality food, food security, and decent livelihoods for all and a sound environment for future generations. Their effectiveness depends on securing access to natural, financial, human, and social capital; empowering ordinary people; including constituents who may hold contrary views; encouraging communication and cooperation among them; and seeking equitable and just solutions. Patricia Allen opens this volume in chapter 1 with an analysis of the roots of their struggles. She notes that at least since the early nineteenth century, individuals and social movements have been working for food safety and food security, environmental conservation, and decent livelihoods for farmers and farmworkers. The constraints they have confronted over time reveal conflicts of interest by class, race, and gender as well as by countries and regions, conflicts rooted in the structure of the prevailing agrifood systems. Allen argues that recent developments of innovative agrifood strategies such as fair trade, food policy councils, urban agriculture, organic agricultural production, and farmers markets have begun to coalesce in an alternative agrifood movement that holds promise for making the


xiii

systemic changes necessary to achieve quality food, sustainable agriculture, food security, and just and equitable communities. One of the historical precedents cited by Allen is the antislavery movement, a critical example of a nineteenth-century social movement to end an extreme form of race-based agricultural labor exploitation. Dan La Botz’s chapter 3 on contemporary farmworkers and meat and poultry processing workers in the United States demonstrates that the problem of the “atrocious and shameful” working conditions of agricultural laborers is an entrenched one that, in this case, is also exacerbated by the marginalized status of Latino immigrant and African-American women workers. He sees labor organizing and labor politics as the key strategies for enforcing a living wage, fair labor practices, and better working conditions. La Botz and Allen both refer to a few recent labor victories, including those of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers who won their drive for higher wages from Taco Bell and Burger King, and their antislavery campaign to investigate and prosecute contemporary forms of farmworker slavery.7 In general, however, the problems of low wages and unfair labor practices in agrifood production and processing persist. The relationship between the alternative agrifood movement and labor issues is complicated by workers’ employment in the commercial-industrial system. Therefore, the effectiveness of the alternative agrifood movement depends upon its capacity to support better wages and working conditions for agrifood workers and, at the same time, develop viable alternative livelihood strategies and ways of working together toward common goals of sustainable agriculture, food security, quality food, and decent livelihoods. As the power of labor unions, and even governments, has diminished in the process of the globalization of capital and agrifood systems, in chapter 6, Michele Micheletti and Dietlind Stolle argue that consumers have become more active participants in the alternative agrifood movement in support of fair labor practices. For example, they discuss the use of boycotts and buycotts by consumers in support of labor struggles. They identify the grape boycott in support of the United Farm Workers’ strike in the 1960s and recent buycott campaigns, encouraging consumers to purchase fair trade coffee and chocolates to improve farm income and farmworker wages and working conditions, as examples of the ways political consumers have supported fair labor practices. La Botz’s analysis of the relationship between the disempowered status of immigrant agrifood workers and the decline of small-scale farms in Mexico, in part as a result of free trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA), suggests a basis for common interests between peasant farmers and immigrant farmworkers. For example, the Farmworker Association of Florida, Inc. (FWAF), an association to empower farmworkers, is also a member of la Via Campesina, a transnational organization of rural development, farmer, and farmworker groups.8 In his research among Mexican campesinos, Daniel Niles in chapter 9 identifies la Via Campesina as the largest example of a transnational organization that recognizes the link between migration and the viability of small and mediumsize agricultural production. In chapter 4, William Van Lopik points out that the key elements of la Via Campesina’s mission include not only agrarian reform and sustainable peasant agriculture but also migrant farmworkers’ rights. This link between fairer agrifood labor practices and more equitable access to land and capital is well understood by people in the countryside and their former neighbors who have migrated to the burgeoning cities of the global south or crossed the border in

xiv


search of employment. For example, Niles noticed that almost all of the men at la Via Campesina demonstration he attended in Mexico City had worked in the United States at some time in their lives. The search for viable alternative livelihood strategies for displaced farmworkers and distressed farmers has also led to the development of alternative markets, such as CSA (community-supported agriculture) and farmers markets. E. Melanie DuPuis, in chapter 2, along with Gail Feenstra and Jennifer Wilkins, in chapter 8, point to the consolidation and distortion of conventional markets by very large, vertically integrated agrifood corporations as another reason for the development of alternative markets, especially in the United States. A third motive, as Feenstra and Wilkins explain, is the increasing demand by consumers for qualities in food that shoppers perceive are not being satisfied by the foods offered by the conventional market—qualities like healthy, fresh, flavorful, organic, fairly traded, locally grown, hormone free, cage free, sustainably caught, and grass fed. To ensure that the alternative markets for such qualities are not simply co-opted by more powerful conventional markets, as happened with organic agriculture in California,9 and that the interests of agrifood workers, consumers, and producers are fairly represented, DuPuis calls for civic markets. In civic markets the forms of market governance are transparent and democratic, and so develop in various directions. She examines the market governance structures of several alternative markets and their governance forms, including ones supported by the European Union as part of rural development programs designed around the multifunctionality of agriculture and those to improve access to small farm producers in Europe and the global south to conventional and alternative markets.

COMMUNITIES AND COALITIONS What distinguishes the alternative agrifood movement from earlier struggles for safe food and better working conditions is the interweaving of campaigns for just labor practices, sustainable agriculture, healthy foods, decent rural livelihoods, and sound environments, which means that consumers, producers, and workers have had to develop ways of working together as citizens and in communities. Many of their strategies focus on local communities and regional foodsheds10 in efforts to reconnect regional farmers and artisans with consumers. From such locally based organizations have come grassroots coalitions at the national and global level. This community-coalition approach to organizing has developed in the context of globalization processes that began in the 1980s. The mobility of capital markets and more capital- and resource-intensive forms of conventional agrifood production have been promoted by multinational trade and monetary agencies. In the process, multinational agrifood corporations have grown ever larger through mergers and acquisitions, decreasing market competition in agrifood production and markets and driving out small and medium-size firms and farms. It is not surprising, therefore, that as part of the processes of globalization, people also have been on the move to cities and across borders, wherever they think they might find employment and despite low wages and poor working conditions when they get there. Or, if their bodies are not moving, then their voices are, through the global spread and more equitable availability of wireless telecommunication and Internet


xv

connectivity. Only the land has not moved, although the goods produced from its natural capital are sold through a global commodity market. These global economic and communication developments have made it both easier and more urgent for people who want to address the sustainable agrifood problem to act collectively. The fact that land does not move is important to understanding why so much of the work of the alternative agrifood movement has focused on local communities and why, to a large extent, the strength of its transnational organizations has come from the formation of grassroots coalitions among a myriad of locally based groups. In chapter 8 on “sustaining regional food systems and healthy rural livelihoods,” which opens the second section of this volume, Feenstra and Wilkins provide an overview of localization strategies in the United States and the reasons behind efforts to link local producers to local consumers. They point out that as a whole the localization strategy links the health, food security, and well-being of local communities and regions to the viability of the rural livelihoods and the regional agrifood economy, the sustainability of its ecosystem, and the reduction of energy and other resource costs. They describe a rapidly growing number of communities that have developed local alternatives. Farmers markets, CSA, farm-toschool programs, community gardens, urban agriculture, and many other innovations have excited the passions of local “foodies” for fresh produce as well as those of city leaders interested in sustainable “green” growth, of farmers and processors with smaller operations looking for more profitable markets and safer agricultural practices, and of citizens who want cleaner, greener, fairer places to raise their children and grandchildren. Predictably, this localization strategy takes different directions in different communities and even within the same community. The diverse strategies along with the sheer number of participants and programs and their swelling ranks, the deep commitment that comes from work in one’s own community, and the relative ease of global coalition building are sources of organizational strength. Feenstra and Wilkins note, however, that the localization strategy does have its weaknesses, especially if community activists do not think critically about the dangers of parochialism and the pitting of interests against one another within and between communities. Feenstra and Wilkins describe the development of food policy councils as one way of bringing diverse perspectives to the table. DuPuis’ case for civic markets within and across communities is another. Both food policy councils and civic markets address the political question of how best to include diverse voices in the development of just and sustainable agrifood systems. The principal strategy has been to build coalitions within and across communities and countries. At the national level, Lisa Heldke in chapter 14 analyzes the U.S.-based Community Food Security Coalition as an example of a coalition that resists “us/them thinking” about food security. Internationally, la Via Campesina and Slow Food1 International, analyzed by Niles (chapter 9), have built coalitions of activists in the agrifood movement around the world. They have come together in world conferences and demonstrations, through e-mail distribution lists and organizational Web sites, and through interpersonal connections between countries to form alternative agrifood movement organizations in mutual support of rural livelihoods, quality food, and sound environments.

xvi


Grassroots organizations from across the global south have responded to the problem of food insecurity by calling for food sovereignty as a precondition of food security. “Food Sovereignty is the right of Peoples to define their own policies and strategies for the sustainable production, distribution, and consumption of food, with respect for their own cultures and their own systems of managing natural resources and rural areas.” This definition is from the Declaration of Atitlan, a 2002 consultation of indigenous peoples in Atitlan, Guatemala. From their perspective, food sovereignty builds on the principle that agrifood policy should be formed in the context of transparent democratic processes at the local, regional, and national level. In the global south, food sovereignty proponents have opposed economic development policies pushed by powerful, outside, top-down, agrifood advocates. Since the 1980s, such advocates have based their trade and foreign aid policies on the neoliberal platform that economic development proceeds when countries concentrate on expanding production of export commodities to sell in a world market. The political plank of neoliberal development limits the role of governments to enforcing private contracts and protecting private property and minimizes public expenditures in support of small and medium-size farms or social welfare programs. One critical question is whether these prescriptions increase or decrease food security in the long run. Another critical question is what role citizens should play in making decisions about their own future food security. Clearly, food sovereignty advocates are demanding a much more powerful voice in shaping their local agrifood system within a democratic process. In the United States, some of the communities advocating food sovereignty are indigenous nations.11 For example, programs like Tsynhehkwa in affiliation with the Oneida Community Integrated Food Systems, described by Lynn Walter in chapter 10, are part of a process of healing the wounds inflicted by their historical loss of land. The work of Tsynhehkwa focuses on the Wisconsin Oneida Nation community, but it is also connected to similar projects around the world through transnational networking. Slow Food has made developing such connections a definitive part of its mission through projects to support food communities and preserve heritage foods and artisanal production. According to Slow Food, a food community includes “people involved in the production, transformation, and distribution of a particular food, who are closely linked to a geographic area either historically, socially, or culturally.”12 For example, Slow Food has given support to the Oneidas’ northern neighbors the White Earth Band of Chippewa by helping to support their defense of wild rice production. This structure—local community agrifood projects in communication with other communities across the country and around the world—is not entirely new, but its effective ability to act collectively and its need to do so are relatively recent phenomena grounded in new forms of globalization.

REJUVENATING THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE COMMONS A key question for the alternative agrifood movement in local communities and global coalitions is how to get access to information about sustainable agrifood best practices, local food crises, and international and national policy proposals and to discuss that information among the interested groups and share the knowledge that comes from the process of discussion and debate across communities and borders. Sharing knowledge contributes to the political strength of the alternative


xvii

agrifood movement by making the dimensions of the issues more transparent and, thereby, more accessible to informed democratic action. This collection is intended to contribute to the process of sharing knowledge to support citizen engagement in democratic agrifood development. In addition to reviewing the academic literature on the sustainable agrifood problem-focus, the contributors consider the knowledge of farmers and artisans, much of it rooted in historical experience in particular ecosystems and cultures. They also evaluate the knowledge that comes from citizen and consumer engagement in efforts to promote “good, clean, and fair food”13 as well as research invested in the development of large agrifood corporations. Exploring the implications of the knowledge-intensification shift, JoAnn Jaffe (in chapter 7) examines all of these ways of knowing, critically analyzing the barriers to transparency and consumer knowledge in the commercialindustrial food system, where agrifood knowledge is increasingly a highly technical, proprietary commodity in a knowledge-based economy. It is in this light that Jaffe assesses the potential of “new knowledge contexts” in which consumer demands for quality in its broad connotations of taste, health, fairness, and sustainability are linked to knowledgeable producers and publicly oriented researchers. One of these new knowledge contexts has been developed by the political consumers who are the focus of Micheletti and Stolle’s study (chapter 6). These consumer activists have led the way in establishing various labeling and certification systems for organic, fair trade, and sustainable fisheries at the global, national, or regional level. Consumer-driven certification and labeling of foods provide knowledge to consumers about a broad range of concerns from the nutritional value of specific foods, the environmental conditions of agrifood production, the use of growth hormones or genetically modified organisms, the fairness of labor practices and farmer profits, the sustainability of its wild source, and the sustainability of its ecosystem. Micheletti and Stolle point out that the labeling and certification process is a highly political one, not only because of the regulatory structure and resources needed to enforce them, but also because of the resistance to such knowledge schemes from proprietary commercial interests. In chapter 13, Esther Katz focuses on another, much older knowledge context—traditions rooted in particular places and artisanal agrifood practices. Preserving this knowledge for the benefit of local producers is just one of the goals of place of origin labeling of foods, which Katz argues also includes preserving heritage varieties and promoting agrobiodiversity, protecting against biopiracy (the threat to the knowledge of the commons and heritage varieties through privatizing them), and improving the quality and safety of food. Who should provide and certify the knowledge consumers and producers need as key stakeholders in agrifood knowledge? Should it be the associations of civil society, producer organizations, or governments? If the answer to building consumer knowledge and preserving producer knowledge is to establish government certification and labeling schemes, then political consumers and producers must be able to engage the state as citizens in a democratic process. In chapter 5, Larry Smith draws on the work of democracy theorist Robert Dahl to make a case for the essentiality of shared, meaningful knowledge of quality to develop food democracy. Among several cases of individuals and organizations promoting the sharing of such knowledge among small-scale producers and consumers, Smith highlights Indian physicist, ecologist, and publicly oriented researcher Vandana Shiva. Shiva

xviii


founded the research foundation Navdanya to preserve practical knowledge of seed varieties inherited from Indian agricultural traditions as part of the knowledge of the commons that supports what she calls earth democracy. As analyzed by Van Lopik (chapter 4), the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, which began as an effort to replant trees, is similar in many ways to Navdanya. Its founder, Wangari Maathai, like Shiva, exemplifies transformational leadership in the promotion of the knowledge of the agrifood commons in several ways: (1) She seeks to “rejuvenate” the indigenous knowledge of generations of local agrifood consumer/producers for the common use of future generations. As the word “rejuvenate” indicates, her goal is not only to preserve accumulated knowledge and resources but also to build on their creative potential. (2) Her understanding of the problem links agrifood knowledge to food security and to sustainable ecological systems. (3) She sees empowerment of local people, especially women, as a vital part of its environmental mission. (4) She has connected her work with other locally based organizations in a network of knowledge-sharing and power-enhancing strategies in Green Belt Movement International. Shiva and Maathai are among the most prominent of the many transformational leaders of countless grassroots organizations doing similar work around the world. It typically has been assumed that intensified agrifood knowledge is transferred from the countries of the wealthier global north to the poorer global south through either commodified knowledge as in the case of patented genetically modified seeds or through economic development programs that rely on scientific and technical knowledge to increase agricultural production. Alternatively, Van Lopik points out that all of the many indigenous grassroots organizations he describes from the global south—from Kenya to Belize, Bangladesh, and India—are sources of rich, diverse, and profound agrifood knowledge that people in the global north can learn from, if they are “open to seeing.” He credits his own experience at the Sustainable Development Institute at the College of Menominee Nation, a small tribal college in northern Wisconsin, with expanding his knowledge of sustainable practices through the numerous opportunities it has provided to share knowledge with indigenous experts from around the world. The idea that the agrifood knowledge of local, indigenous, and artisanal producers should be valued and rejuvenated and that this goal depends on sharing knowledge and support with numerous other similar organizations worldwide is central to the organizing mission of the transnational organizations Slow Food International and la Via Campesina. Both are the subject of Niles’s analysis of transnational social movement organizations as ways to support rural livelihoods (chapter 9). One aspect of his analysis of “contemporary rurality” is that the activists’ goals of rural development are both preservationist and prefigurative. That is, the Mexican campesinos he interviewed for his study want to preserve rural livelihoods, their resource base, and artisanal knowledge but also to build on them in the light of contemporary conditions and in conjunction with other rural people as well as urban consumers. La Via Campesina and Slow Food International demonstrate that preserving cultural knowledge is served by sharing it and thereby “rejuvenating” it. Niles’s conclusion that sustaining rural livelihoods is served by sharing, and so expanding, local knowledge will not surprise students of culture who know that, as an adaptive strategy, culture is always both preservationist and prefigurative. He points out that what is actually new is that local people are better able to reach


xix

groups far from their home communities through intercommunity grassroots organizing, Internet connectivity, global conferences, and new allied intermediaries such as Slow Food International connecting the goals of small-scale producers and consumers—in the global north and global south. That culture is preservationist with respect to accumulated knowledge is most explicitly documented in this volume by Regan A. R. Gurung, who reveals in chapter 11 the historical roots of Western, traditional Chinese, and Indian understanding and practices of the relationships between health and the foods we eat. That culture is prefigurative is also demonstrated in Gurung’s discussion of the ways that immigrants carry agricultural and culinary traditions with them to their new homes where, for example, ancient prescriptions to eat foods that are in season confront the less abundant, colder, and shorter growing seasons of the north. He points specifically to a culturally prefigured adaptive response by Hmong immigrants to northeastern Wisconsin, who have become major purveyors of seasonal produce in many local farmers markets. Artists also create works prefigured by culture, even as they “imaginatively transform [it], creating possibilities and celebrating alternatives.” This quote from Aeron Haynie’s chapter 12 on food and literature identifies the central purpose of her essay on several contemporary novels, including Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer, Ruth Ozeki’s All Over Creation, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Dave Eggers’s What Is the What, and Louise Murphy’s The True Story of Hansel and Gretel. She argues that these recent representations of food in literature, which focus on concerns like hunger and environmental threats to food security, reflect as well as imaginatively transform popularly recognized problems in the current agrifood system. Although her essay focuses on works of fiction, Haynie also credits contemporary journalists’ accounts, especially Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma and Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, for bringing greater popular awareness of critical food issues to their readers. Micheletti and Stolle (chapter 6) discuss the creative work of “culture jamming,” especially with the employment of new Internet media with which culture jammers transform advertising and other popular culture images to counter mass-mediated marketing campaigns. Along with these artists and journalists, artisans have imagined innovative approaches to food and agriculture, as Smith notes in chapter 5 with reference to “grass farmer” Joel Salatin and chef Alice Waters, a pioneer in championing local, organic, and seasonal fruits and vegetables. Their efforts to rejuvenate the knowledge of the commons by preserving, creating, and sharing it, in the context of food communities and transnational coalitions, indicate that the alternative agrifood movement has taken on the responsibility of building a just and sustainable agrifood system. In the final section, some of the ethical bases of this responsibility are considered.

RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES In 1948, the United Nations passed the Universal Declarations of Human Rights. While most of the articles cover civil and political rights, a few declare social rights. Of particular relevance is Article 25, which states: (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing

xx


and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection. Article 25 stands out for its call for positive action to fulfill societal responsibilities; specifically, it declares the gendered, male-breadwinner family and, ultimately, society responsible for adequately feeding, clothing, housing, and caring for one another. The second clause makes us responsible for the special social protection of motherhood and childhood, thus formally recognizing the responsibilities of the generations for one another. Inherent in Article 25 is also the “right to feed,” that is the right, as stated, of the male head of household to a livelihood that permits him to feed his family, a right that marriage and the birth of children actualize. Thus, this basic human rights document recognizes kinship rights and responsibilities as well as the responsibilities of society to support kinship. Much has changed since 1948: the new women’s movements around the world declared enforcement of the male breadwinner family to be discriminatory, many women left the house and gained their own livelihoods, they demanded their own right to feed their families and tried to get society to fulfill its declared responsibilities for special care and assistance for mothers and children. However, notwithstanding these profound changes in gendered domestic and public life, families still have the primary responsibility for adequately feeding, clothing, housing, and caring for one another, men still have an advantage in the labor market, and women still do more of the actual feeding of their families. Walter (chapter 10) explores the implications for the alternative food movement of the gendered, generational nexus between family and society for the right and responsibility to feed and care for one another. Specifically, she analyzes the significance of sharing food and eating together as practices that define kinship in what she calls a relational concept of home. Focusing on home as a primary locus of gendered and generational interests, she argues that specific forms of women’s activism in the alternative food movement—including community kitchens and gardens—reveal conflicting and common interests in the struggles of women to feed their children. She points to women and men who are active in support of feeding their children in ways that expand the relations of home by sharing food in the wider community. Her analysis draws on Eva Feder Kittay’s conceptualization of a relational self, a self who serves society and future generations best when those who feed and care for children and other dependent people are also cared for.14 In chapter 14, Heldke also builds on the concept of the relational self to make a case for her coresponsibility paradigm of food security. In contrast to the charity and rights paradigms, which she argues too often have an “us/them dynamic,” the coresponsibility paradigm might lead us to see our own food vulnerabilities in solidarity with others. It might also help us understand how we are interdependent in the sense of being part of dependency systems, a reality that becomes obvious when these systems break down or are not appropriate for the context, such as dependence on a retail grocery chain for food in a flooded city or in a remote fishing village. Heldke intends the coresponsibility paradigm to help us recognize the connections between various forms of marginalization, in this particular case, between


xxi

disability and food insecurity. Recognizing the many different ways that people are food insecure can also be the basis for the development of community food coalitions across their differences. She is careful to note that conceptualizing food security in terms of coresponsibility does not eliminate conflict, but that it reframes well-being in such a way that one person’s gains do not necessarily mean another person’s loss—for example, she points out that well-nourished children contribute to the community’s well-being, even if they are someone else’s children. In chapter 15, Andrew Fiala, like Heldke, takes a philosopher’s perspective to examine the issues of farm animal treatment from animal rights to animal welfare standpoints, from human-centered to animal-centered viewpoints, and from Aristotelian to Kantian philosophies. He concludes that the philosophical arguments about animal welfare have shaped policy. For example, he refers to recent European Union legislation based on the idea that animals are sentient beings and that they should be free from hunger, discomfort, pain, and fear and free to express normal behavior. However, he notes that factory farming, which has largely abandoned such traditional concepts of animal husbandry and stewardship, is on the increase worldwide and that philosophical arguments against the treatment of animals as nonsentient objects have encountered resistance from the immediate selfinterests of producers and eaters of cheap meat. Stewardship as a moral stance would have us be responsible for the welfare of the creatures we depend on for sustenance and consider how our treatment of them will mean that they continue to sustain us or to diminish our future wellbeing. Land stewardship is a concept that Eric J. Fitch traces in chapter 16 to earliest human society and in written form in Europe at least as far back as medieval times. He grounds his discussion in the relationship between scientific perspectives on land stewardship and theological and philosophical ones. He quotes appreciatively from A Sand County Almanac by the noted environmentalist Aldo Leopold, “A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of land.”15 However, Fitch notes, as does Fiala with regard to animal welfare, that relatively recent separation of people from the land and from farming has made it difficult for most people to know what is happening to agricultural land and its resources, or to farm animals and their welfare. As a result, we must educate ourselves about the critical food issues if we are to be good stewards. Fortunately, Fitch can point to scientists working on best practices for land conservation and to many different Protestant denominations and the Catholic Church, which have produced policy statements on environmental stewardship. He concludes with the critical question of how the scientific, theological, and philosophical conceptions of land stewardship can be put into practice in “the quest to create human cultures and societies that live sustainably upon the planet.” In the following chapters of Critical Food Issues: Problems and State-of-the-Art Solutions Worldwide, we examine efforts by people around the world who have undertaken this quest.

NOTES 1. FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), “Number of Hungry People Rises to 963 Million” (Rome: FAO, 2006), http://www.fao.org/news/ story/en/item/8836/ (accessed January 20, 2008).

xxii


2. FAO, World Food Summit, “Rome Declaration on World Food Security,” http:// www.fao.org/docrep/003/w3613e/w3613e00.HTM (accessed January 20, 2009). 3. Stanley Wood, Kate Sebastian, and Sara J. Scherr, Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems: Agroecosystems (Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute and World Resources Institute, 2000). 4. David S. Battisti and Rosamund L. Naylor, “Historical Warnings of Future Food Insecurity with Unprecedented Seasonal Heat,” Science 323 (January 2009): 240–44; USAID, “Food Security and the Global Water Crisis,” http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/ environment/water/food_security.html (accessed January 11, 2008). 5. Marion Nestle, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); William Heffernan, Mary Hendrickson, and Robert Gronski, “Consolidation in the Food and Agriculture System,” Report to the National Farmers Union (February 1999), http://home.hiwaay.net/ ~becraft/NFUFarmCrisis.htm (accessed January 12, 2009). 6. Ann Vileisis, Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes from and Why We Need to Get it Back (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2008). 7. Coalition of Immokalee Workers, http://www.ciw-online.org/index.html (accessed January 19, 2009). 8. FWAF (The Farmworker Association of Florida, Inc.), http://www.farmworkers. org/fwafpage.html (accessed January 19, 2009). 9. Julie Guthman, Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). 10. Jack Kloppenburg Jr., John Hendrickson, and G. W. Stevenson, “Coming in to the Foodshed,” Agriculture and Human Values 13, no. 3 (1996): 33–42. The term “foodshed” is used in analogy with “watershed” to focus attention on the relationship between the regional economy and ecosystem and the foods produced, marketed, and consumed within them. 11. Food and Seed Sovereignty Network, http://protectseeds.org/node/244 (accessed January 19, 2009). 12. Terra Madre, http://www.terramadre2006.org/pagine/rete/ (accessed November 2, 2008). 13. This pithy phrase, “good, clean, and fair food,” comes from Slow Food International. 14. Eva Feder Kittay, Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality and Dependency (New York: Routledge, 1999). 15. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949), 204.

Abbreviations

AFN ALRA APHA ASPCA BMI BSE CAFO CAP CFP CFPA CFS COOL CSA DBCP Defra DHHS EPA EU FAO FIFRA FLOC FLO-I FLSA FMNP FPC FPG FWAF GATT

alternative food networks Agricultural Labor Relations Act (California) American Public Health Association American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals body mass index Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Confined Animal Feeding Operation Common Agricultural Policy (European Union) Community Food Projects Council of Food Policy Advisors (United Kingdom) community food security Country of Origin Labeling community-supported agriculture 1,2-Dibromo-3-chloropropane (pesticide) Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (United Kingdom) U.S. Department of Health and Human Services U.S. Environmental Protection Agency European Union Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act Farm Labor Organizing Committee Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International Fair Labor Standards Act Farmers Market Nutrition Program (of WIC) food policy council food policy group Farmworker Association of Florida, Inc. General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

xxiv GMO HFCS IBT IFAD IFOAM ILO IMF IPC IPHAN IUCN KKPKP LDA MDGs MSAWPA MSC NAFTA NAWS NGO NLRA NRCS NSS OCA OCIFS ORBCRE OSHA PARI PETA PI RCCQ RWDWU SAGARPA SARE SAREP SATIIM SCS SFMNP SNDTWU SPCA SSHRC STNP TCM TFPC TNAFA UFCW UFW

Abbreviations genetically modified organism high fructose corn syrup International Brotherhood of Teamsters International Fund for Agricultural Development International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements International Labour Organization International Monetary Fund International Planning Committee National Institute of the Historical and Artistic Heritage International Union for Conservation of Nature Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat London Development Authority Millennium Development Goals (United Nations) Migrant and Seasonal Workers Protection Act Marine Stewardship Council North American Free Trade Act National Agricultural Workers Survey nongovernmental organization National Labor Relations Act National Resources Conservation Service Native Seeds/Search Organic Consumer Association Oneida Community Integrated Food Systems Ohio River Basin Consortium for Research and Education Occupational Safety and Health Administration PARI Development Trust (Bangladesh) People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals Peoples’ Institutions Regroupement des Cuisines Collectives du Quebec (Quebec Collective Kitchens Association) Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Workers Union Secretary of Agriculture, Cattle Ranching, Rural Development, Fisheries, and Food (Mexico) Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program Sarstoon-Temash Institute for Indigenous Management (Belize) Soil Conservation Service Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey Women’s University (India) (SNDT) Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Sarstoon-Temash National Park Traditional Chinese Medicine Toronto Food Policy Council Traditional Native American Farmers Association United Food and Commercial Workers United Farm Workers [Union]

Abbreviations UNAC UNCTAD UNESCO UNICEF UPA UPWA USDA UFCW WHY WIC WTO WWF

xxv National Farmer’s Union of Mozambique United Nations Committee on Trade and Development United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization United Nations Children’s Fund urban and peri-urban agriculture United Packinghouse Workers of America U.S. Department of Agriculture United Food and Commercial Workers World Hunger Year Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (U.S. Nutritional Assistance Program) World Trade Organization World Wildlife Fund for Nature


PART I Society


1 Roots and Roles of Alternative Agrifood Systems Patricia Allen The current agrifood system is in crisis in many dimensions and in many places. Impoverished farmers in India harvest meager rice crops because a Coca-Cola plant draws water the farmers formerly used to irrigate their fields. Children in Haiti eat cookies made of dirt because there is nothing else. Residents of the U.S. Midwest shop at stores and eat at restaurants of numbing sameness because the local merchants have all gone out of business. These conditions and experiences—different as they are in geography and urgency—have been in the making for a long time, as have the efforts to change them. Today the scope and depth of the crisis has given rise to a new level of action and organizing to create sustainable food systems for everyone. In this chapter, I briefly lay out some of the key environmental and social problems in the agrifood system, discuss the roots of the alternative agrifood movement, and highlight the efforts being made to address agrifood problems.

PROBLEMS IN AGRIFOOD SYSTEMS Modern agrifood systems have developed based on intensive resource use and social inequalities. Despite advances in science, technology, and reform efforts, people go hungry, resources are depleted, toxins enter the food chain, and foodrelated health problems intensify. Never before have such conditions combined to create the degree of social and environmental crisis that the world faces today. These issue areas are interconnected. For example, global climate change in the future will likely exacerbate environmental problems associated with agriculture. Weather predictability may decrease, sea levels may rise, and agricultural zones may shift. The impacts of these changes may lead to an even more skewed distribution of food resources between the rich and poor. Climate change has the potential to disproportionately affect agriculture in the global south, where most of the world’s poor live.

4

Society, Culture, and Ethics

Food Security No other product is as essential as food. Everyone—regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, or social class—needs to eat in order to live. Yet, the food system has done a poor job of meeting the food needs of everyone. Food security, which involves both quantity and quality of food, occurs when all people are able to obtain sufficient, nutritionally adequate, and culturally acceptable food through nonemergency sources. Yet many people are not food secure. Hunger is a growing problem—more people go hungry today than at any point in history. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) tells us that 854 million people worldwide are chronically hungry, that 820 million of these people live in the developing world, and that a quarter of these hungry people are children.1 Every year that hunger continues at current levels costs the lives of 5 million children. Put into perspective, this is the equivalent of ten thousand jumbo jet crashes each year, each crash with one hundred percent fatality. For the living hungry, it is not possible to have healthy, productive lives. Hungry children face stunted physical and cognitive development as well as acute and chronic health problems. While those at greatest risk of hunger are women and children living in rural areas of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, many people in affluent nations also go hungry, where safety nets for low-income people are becoming tattered. For example, in the United States, the world’s largest producer of food, nearly 36 million people were food insecure in 2006.2 Hunger is not democratic—those most likely to be food insecure are those living in single-mother-headed households, African Americans, Latinos, the elderly, the disabled, and children. Many low-income people pay higher prices for their food, and food insecurity has been exacerbated in recent years because of the recent spike in foreclosures, increased cost of food, and increased cost of living in general. Throughout the world, more and more emergency food centers are being established to feed people, but the demand is so great that many people do not receive the assistance they need. In 2008, nearly all U.S. food banks and pantries reported an increase in the number of people seeking assistance, and most needed to reduce the amount of food they were able to distribute. Both food insufficiency and food overabundance are major public health issues. Diseases easily treated in the industrial world, such as measles or dysentery, can kill undernourished children; undernutrition is a contributing cause to more than half of all childhood deaths.3 For many, it is not lack of food, but too many calories that is the problem. More than 1 billion adults globally are overweight and at least 300 million of them are obese.4 The percentage of overweight adults has more than doubled since the mid-1970s to 33 percent, and the increase is even more dramatic for children and teens. Overweight and obesity increase the risk of many diseases and health conditions, such as high blood pressure, arthritis, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, gallbladder disease, sleep apnea and respiratory problems, and some cancers.5 For the two-thirds of Americans who neither smoke nor drink excessively, food choices influence long-term health prospects more than any other factor.6 Overweight and physical inactivity account for more than three-hundred thousand premature deaths in the United States each year, second only to deaths related to tobacco use.7

Roots and Roles of Alternative Agrifood Systems

5

Food safety scares have become regular news items, and millions of people are affected each year. The incidence of food-borne diseases is increasing worldwide due, in part, to the globalization of the food supply and chain of custody issues. The contamination often happens because of the large scale of food production and processing, with the food changing hands many times before it gets to our tables. In the meat industry, one cause of the proliferation of pathogens is the subtherapeutic use of antibiotics to increase rates of growth in livestock. This reduces the efficacy of antibiotics for fighting disease in both livestock and humans, as the pathogens develop resistance to the antibiotics. Pesticides are another source of food contamination. Even babies are exposed to pesticides and other toxins though umbilical cord blood. One study found 287 chemicals in cord blood, most of which can cause cancer, birth defects, hormone disruption, and infertility, or compromise the immune system.8 Pesticides are also a major source of environmental degradation.

Environment The discovery of insecticides based on synthetic organic compounds around the time of World War II greatly increased the use and consequences of pesticides in agriculture. In a very short time, they were being used on almost every crop in most countries of the world.9 Any increased application of pesticides carries the possibility of intensifying future needs for more chemical toxins, as pests develop resistance to standard preparations. While pesticide use in the United States increased 1,000 percent between the 1940s and the 1980s, crop losses to insect pests also increased by almost 50 percent.10 Less than 1 percent of pesticides applied in the United States actually reach the pests to which they are targeted, but pesticides end up in the bodies of wildlife or the water people drink. Agriculture is the primary cause of species endangerment in the United States, especially mammals and amphibians. Pollution from agriculture is also a major contributor to water-quality problems in U.S. surface and groundwater through agrichemical runoff and sediment deposition. Pesticide contamination can remain long after the compound is no longer used. In California, for example, the long-banned pesticide DBCP (1,2-Dibromo-3-chloropropane), one of the most potent carcinogens known, still contaminates the water of one million Californians at levels that are almost three hundred times the “safe” level for infants and children.11 In addition to resource degradation, resource depletion is a major problem. Approximately one-third of the original topsoil has been removed from U.S. cropland in the past 200 years, and much of U.S. cropland erodes at rates that exceed government-established tolerance levels. The extensive use of groundwater for irrigation has meant that declining water tables have become common throughout the world. Resource depletion and degradation have caused the abandonment or threatening of farming systems because of groundwater depletion, soil salinization, and unmanageable pest problems caused by pesticide use. Worldwide, degradation of agricultural land is causing an irretrievable loss of an estimated six million hectares per year. Increasing demand for meat is a major cause of deforestation: 70 percent of deforested Amazonian rainforests have been cleared to create grazing lands for livestock. Livestock are also major contributors to global climate change,

6


generating, for example, more greenhouse gases than all forms of transportation combined. Environmental degradation and global climate change will dramatically affect people’s livelihoods in the agrifood system. For the many poor people in the system, their livelihoods are already tenuous.

Livelihoods The modern agrifood system embodies and has depended on extremely unequal material and social relations among groups of people. For example, landless migrant farmworkers do most of the labor in the food system, for which they often are poorly paid and work in dangerous conditions. In the United States, farmworkers have the lowest family income of any occupation surveyed by the U.S. Bureau of the Census; half of these families live below the poverty line. Most of these workers are employed by the less than 2 percent of farms with the highest sales. Many farmworkers do not have adequate housing, and many still work without access to restrooms or fresh drinking water, although access to these so-called amenities was a central goal of labor-organizing efforts as far back as the early 1900s. Jobs in the farm fields are often seasonal and transitory, and this is also becoming the trend in the new flexible labor economy for those who work in food processing, retail, and service. Workers in produce and meat-processing industries are often poorly paid, seasonally terminated, receive no benefits, and work under miserable conditions. Many of these workers are new immigrants who have little bargaining power or other employment options. One of the reasons that workers have so few options is that land ownership is so highly concentrated worldwide. In the United States, for example, only 5 percent of American landowners own 80 percent of the land and reap the lion’s share of agricultural subsidies. Although many agrifood workers are doing poorly, many agrifood companies are doing well, primarily through acquisition of other companies and cornering the market. A handful of companies control global trade and retail in agrifood products. Similarly, only three companies dominate the food service industry. For many years, farmers’ share of the food dollar has been decreasing. Food is becoming increasingly distant from the point of production, with the result that farmers are getting a decreasing share of the money people spend on food. Much of the price of food in the market goes toward packaging, transportation, processing, and advertising.12 Worker safety is also a livelihood issue. Agriculture is among the top three most dangerous industries for workers in the United States. Farmworkers are at risk from fatal or disabling injuries from machinery, falls, and livestock. Exposure to pesticides can cause acute illnesses, such as respiratory conditions and flu-like symptoms, as well as chronic conditions, such as cancer and Parkinson’s disease. Injuries and illnesses are compounded by lack of adequate health care among farmworker populations. These issues with food security, environment, and livelihoods have led people throughout the world to organize for better conditions and social systems. For the alternative agrifood movement, the focus is on creating new policies and practices to make the agrifood system more ecologically sound and socially just.


7

ROOTS OF THE ALTERNATIVE AGRIFOOD MOVEMENT The alternative agrifood movement is a constellation of multiple movements that have grown from early engagements and concerns about the agrifood system dating back to the 1800s.13 Social movements are collective efforts of people to change what they perceive to be a society-wide problem. For ordinary people who do not control major economic resources or have access to formal political power, social movements are a primary form of power. This section describes agrifoodrelated social movements in the areas of food security, environment, and livelihood. Food Security Because food is basic to all of us, it is unsurprising that movements for healthy and safe food have a long history. The integrity of the food supply and dietary recommendations have been public issues for a long time. As early as the 1830s, vegetarians protested public health recommendations for a heavily meat-based diet; and at the end of the nineteenth century, consumers protested the food adulteration that had become part of the industrialization of the food system. Upton Sinclair’s 1906 graphic account of the meat-packing industry in his novel, The Jungle, caused an outcry that led to regulations aimed at improving food safety and controlling fraud. Today, in Europe and the United States, food safety problems and the development of bioengineered crops have led to active and growing movements to solve food safety problems and stop genetically modified organisms from entering the food supply. The issue of hunger was first put on the international agenda in 1933, but it was not until the early 1970s that the term food security was coined in response to the world food crisis of the early 1970s. At that time, prices of staple foods soared, much as they have today. Food security became a clear and central policy goal of most developing countries as the 1974 World Food Conference proclaimed people’s inalienable right to freedom from hunger and resolved to completely eliminate hunger and malnutrition. In the 1980s, many people’s economic conditions worsened in affluent nations. Low-income people lost ground they had gained, and many middle-class families joined the ranks of the poor. As a result, food security decreased. Despite these conditions, it was during this time that governments reduced social welfare programs. In the United States, the combination of deteriorating food security conditions, the insufficiency of private and public efforts to combat hunger, and the conceptual innovations at the international level led to the development of the concept of community food security in the 1990s. Community food security is an integrated approach that focuses not only on meeting people’s food security needs, but also on a broad range of food-system issues, including farmland loss, agriculture-based pollution, urban and rural community development, and transportation. Environment As early as the 1800s, the U.S. conservationist movement raised concerns about artificial fertilizers and soil depletion. As agricultural productivity began to decline dramatically in the early nineteenth century both in Europe and the

8


United States, technological efforts to overcome the constraints of nature included chemical and mechanical means, such as the development of artificial fertilizers and tillage equipment. These solutions, however, led to further natural resource problems and were widely recognized and criticized. In his Lectures on Modern Agriculture of 1859, the soil chemist Justus von Liebig considered the agricultural systems of the time to be forms of “robbery” in which the “conditions of the reproduction” of the soil were destroyed. American economist Henry Carey wrote in 1858 that “Man is but a tenant of the soil, and he is guilty of a crime when he reduces its value for other tenants who are to come after him.”14 George Perkins Marsh, one of the first Americans to understand that the condition of the land was as much a product of humanity as of nature, rejected the older idea that nature existed to be tamed and conquered.15 It was during this period that the American transcendentalist movement, based on a rejection of materialism, brought about a renewed interest in nature. In the early part of the twentieth century, Sir Albert Howard observed the relationship between healthy soil and healthy crops in India. He eschewed the use of agrichemicals in farming, publishing the results of his work, An Agricultural Testament, in 1940. Around the same time, in 1932, J. I. Rodale, concerned about the relationship between agricultural practices and people’s health, started Organic Farming and Gardening magazine to teach and promote organic techniques. Despite these earlier efforts, it was not until Rachel Carson’s 1962 publication of Silent Spring that the environmental movement was galvanized into action around the environmental consequences of pesticides. The organic farming movement, which advocates farming without the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, developed rapidly from this point. The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), started in 1972, is now the worldwide umbrella organization for the organic movement, with 108 member nations. In 1973, the California Certified Organic Farmers organization was formed and continues to play a leading role in promoting both organic practices and certification. Interest in and activities around sustainable agriculture grew in the early 1980s, fueled by concerns about environmental issues in agriculture. A 1980 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) report, Report and Recommendations on Organic Farming, sparked increasing interest in alternative agriculture because it showed that organic agriculture was an effective means of producing food. Sustainability first emerged as a major concept in the 1980s, starting with the idea of sustainable development. Most development plans for alleviating poverty and hunger were based on models that involved increased depletion or degradation of natural resources. The 1987 publication of Our Common Future by the World Commission on Environment and Development catalyzed a new wave of thinking and action around merging priorities of the global north and south under the rubric of sustainability. The United Nations’ Agenda 21, adopted at the Earth Summit in 1992, promoted sustainable agriculture and rural development as a plan for meeting food needs without further degrading natural resources. The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development continued on the path of raising awareness of connections between poverty and resource degradation. Sustainability began to be applied to agriculture with the 1983 publication of Robert Rodale’s “Breaking New Ground: The Search for a Sustainable Agriculture,” which sought to expand the concept of organic agriculture. Eventually, terms such


9

as “low-input agriculture,” “ecological agriculture,” and “organic farming” came to describe alternatives to industrial agriculture. The term “sustainable agriculture” has emerged as the standard, due in part to its acceptance by national and international agricultural agencies. A U.S. government report framed sustainable agriculture as the fourth major era in agriculture (following the horsepower, mechanical, and chemical eras), stating that the effects of this new era could be more profound than those of previous agricultural revolutions.16 Livelihood The sustainable agriculture movement also builds on the agrarian populist movement, which addressed issues of the survival of family farms in an era of economic concentration that followed the Civil War. Agrarian populism was revived during the “back to the land” movement of the late 1960s, which defended the family farm and rural communities and opposed the technological, public policy, and market advantages that large-scale, industrial agriculture enjoyed over smallscale farming. Agrarian populism surged again as a result of the 1980s economic crisis for farmers. At this time, although U.S. farm production was at its highest level in history, 1982 was the worst year for farm income since 1932. Many farmers could not make ends meet and lost their farms. To address international issues of farmer livelihoods and end hunger, the food sovereignty movement began in 1996, when the term was developed at the World Food Summit by the international peasant movement, Via Campesina. The movement asserts the right of all peoples to “safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food” as well as access to sufficient land to produce it. The food sovereignty movement is not opposed to trade, but states that trade policies and practices should be in the service of people’s right to have safe, healthy, and ecologically sustainable food production. In 2007, the World Social Forum convened more than 65,000 people from more than 100 countries to discuss the food issues of the poor and advocate for change in world trade policies. At the end of the meeting, a group that included farmers, landless laborers, and environmental and human rights advocates affirmed the need for food sovereignty—that people, rather than corporations, should determine international food policies, which should focus on meeting people’s food and livelihood needs rather than maximizing profits. The fair trade movement uses market-based approaches to achieve similar goals of ending poverty and promoting ecological sustainability. In this movement, organizations work with small-scale producers in developing countries to provide market access and fair prices for their products. Starting with coffee, cocoa, and bananas, the movement has expanded to include other products and the market for fair trade goods has been expanding by almost 50 percent a year. The USA Domestic Fair Trade Working Group has launched an effort, now piloted in several states, to bring fair trade practices to the United States by working to create a third-party-certified standard that would represent social justice criteria, including a living wage. Movements for worker rights and safety are also longstanding. The earliest agricultural labor movements, of course, were the antislavery movements. During the Great Depression, these were followed by movements that focused on migrant workers. During the Civil Rights movement, Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, coming out of backgrounds as community organizers, cofounded the National Farmworkers

10


Association, an interethnic coalition that worked toward farmworker justice and would later become the United Farm Workers (UFW) union. During the 1970s, consumers supported the union through a boycott of table grapes and head lettuce, which was designed to both protest pesticide residues on produce and to apply pressure for legislation that would give farmworkers the right to organize without threat of retaliation. Thus, the UFW was able to organize for justice among urban consumers as well as workers in the fields. Today, the Agricultural Justice Project promotes social standards to accompany environmental standards. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has organized boycotts to apply pressure to increase wages for farmworkers and has worked with U.S. government agencies to free more than 1,000 farmworker slaves discovered working in America’s farm fields.17 Over the years, the food security, environmental, and labor movements have brought about significant change in the agrifood system. Food safety laws, workers’ rights to unionize, and conservation and antihunger programs were brought about by the collective actions of ordinary people working through social movements to solve social problems. Throughout human history, people organizing themselves through social movements have been the main driver of social and environmental advances.

ALTERNATIVE AGRIFOOD POLICIES AND PRACTICES The power of social movements lies in their ability to take direct actions, develop new ways of doing things, and create new ways of thinking about the world. These movements create change by providing analyses of current problems, offering alternatives, and mobilizing people to act. This section describes how the alternative agrifood movement has worked through existing channels to change public policy and through civil society to develop new food institutions and practices. Policy Changes Initiated by Alternative Agrifood Movements International, national, and local policies are major determinants of problems and solutions in the agrifood systems. In general, international policies and agreements such as the World Trade Organization have large impacts on agricultural production and markets, as well as the global distribution of wealth and income. For example, the “structural adjustment” programs of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund created severe hardships in developing countries, because they resulted in cuts in public services and stalled land reform programs. National policies also can affect the global situation. For example, a key factor in the rapid increases in global food prices is the growing market for biofuels, supported by U.S. and European biofuel programs. In most countries, national policies have supported and subsidized the current agrifood system through the allocation of resources, research, technical assistance, and management of labor supply. In the European Union, the Common Agricultural Policy sets farm subsidies, tariffs, and quotas; in the United States, equivalent programs are authorized through the federal farm bill. Recently, however, national policies have been adopted to support alternative agrifood systems, although the size of the resulting programs is small compared with those that support conventional agrifood systems. The USDA has established


11

programs in both sustainable agriculture and community food security. Both of these programs—the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) and the Community Food Projects (CFP)—fund competitive grants. In Europe, the European Council is advocating agricultural sustainability and integrating environmental and sustainable rural development goals into the Common Agricultural Policy. Citizens have been instrumental in the establishment of these types of alternative agrifood policies. For example, the largest public response the USDA had ever received was about the proposed federal definition of organic food. Many more people will become conversant in alternative agrifood systems (thereby increasing their ability to make change) through higher education as interdisciplinary alternative agrifood programs are being established at many colleges and universities. In the United States, for example, more than 150 American agricultural universities now have sustainable agriculture programs, while there were very few even a decade ago. At the municipal level, many cities and counties are developing food policy councils. Although the purview of these councils varies, most focus on increasing local knowledge about agrifood problems and developing policies to solve them. Food policy councils are usually public-private partnerships that include representatives of multiple sectors of a region’s food system. The membership of these councils typically includes representatives from farming, hunger-prevention, retail-food, nutrition-education, food-processing, sustainable-agriculture, religious, health, government, and environmental organizations. One of the oldest of these organizations, Canada’s Toronto Food Policy Council, has developed a food policy for the city that establishes the right of all residents to adequate, nutritious food, and promotes food production and distribution systems that are equitable, nutritionally excellent, and environmentally sound. This council frames food security as a health issue in which hunger and poverty are viewed as part of the larger health issue, a perspective that sees access to food as not only equitable but economical. In the United States, the millions of low-income families who participate in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) soon will have access to healthier food. A new program, WIConnect, will enable households to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and soy products, as well as provide foods with lower amounts of fat and sugar content. Many states have policies that work to improve nutrition, plant school gardens, support farm-to-school programs, and reduce environmental pollution from agriculture. For example, in 2001 California passed a healthy foods law that sets nutritional standards for elementary schools and promotes pilot programs to increase student nutrition. Such changes in public policy create the environment in which alternative agrifood practices can develop and flourish. Practices Developed by Alternative Agrifood Movements Alternative food initiatives such as organic farming, farmers markets, farm-toschool programs, local label schemes, urban agriculture and gardens, and communitysupported agriculture (CSA) are becoming central strategies of those working to develop ecologically sound and socially just agrifood systems. As with policy change, these efforts are driven by ordinary people who are seeking to change the agrifood system for the better.

12


Farmers markets, for example, serve the needs of both farmers and consumers by providing a market outlet for small farmers and by increasing consumer access to fresh produce. In the 1970s, farmers markets were organized in urban lowincome communities to provide nutritious food to the urban poor. They have provided accessible markets for producers outside of the mass market and have filled an important niche for consumers who seek fresh, high-quality food. These markets provide an important sales outlet for farmers whose production is too small to participate in the conventional marketing system. The number of farmers markets has increased rapidly in the United States in the past decade, and more are opening every year. CSA is another approach that can provide small farmers with a market, while increasing access to fresh produce for consumers. In a CSA program, a group of consumers (shareholders or members) purchase shares at the beginning of the season with the idea that they will receive a portion of the crops produced that year. Consumers pay a fee to a grower and in return receive a weekly share of fresh produce, usually harvested the same day. In many cases, consumers travel to the farm to pick up their weekly box of produce; in others, farmers may deliver the boxes to a pickup location in the community. Consumers get fresher and more varieties of produce, and the farmer has a ready market and cash flow. The vision is that farmers and nonfarmers will work together to support each other and build strong community-based economies. Almost all CSA farms use organic production methods. Like farmers markets, the number of CSAs is growing year by year. Institutional purchasing links local farmers with public institutions that purchase large volumes of food, such as colleges and schools. Such links provide significant market outlets for growers. For example, the school food services market alone is estimated at $16 billion per year. Alternative agrifood advocates have focused their efforts primarily on farm-to-school programs. Instigated by farmers, schools, parents, and community groups, these programs are intended to address two problems concurrently: childhood nutrition problems such as obesity and lack of access to markets for small and medium-size farms. The farm-to-school initiative joins school food services with local farmers in a partnership that is intended to bring fresher, healthier produce to school meal programs, while at the same time supporting local farmers by providing an additional source of income and a relatively secure market. Farm-to-school programs may include salad bars with farmfresh fruits and vegetables purchased at the local farmers market. In one case, a cooperative of small farmers sells produce directly to the local school district. Farmto-college projects are also growing, often as part of the overall campus sustainability movement. Many restaurants are buying and featuring local and organic foods on their menus. One of the newest restaurant trends is the concept of “pay what you can,” which is based on the idea that everyone deserves good food, but not everyone can afford to pay the same price. These institutional efforts to serve fresh, local food are part of an overall trend to support local farmers while providing healthier food and preserving local varieties. Active in more than one hundred countries, the Slow Food1 movement organizes meals, food tastings, and festivals to promote the connection between “the plate and the planet,” while supporting local and artisanal food producers. In the United States, “Buy Fresh, Buy Local” organizations are springing up across the states to promote the idea of consumers supporting their local farmers. These


13

efforts have been successful. For example, in Kansas, the Good Natured Family Farmers Cooperative, selling through a group of locally owned and operated supermarkets, showed a 36 percent increase in local food sales since the chapter’s inception in 2004. In addition to these kinds of marketing initiatives that are facilitating the growth of alternative agrifood systems, changes are happening at the level of production. The number of farmers who use ecological production methods such as organic farming practices has grown significantly in the past decade. Worldwide, some 26 million hectares are under certified organic production. In the United States, certified organic crop acreage quadrupled during the 1990s, and now more than 4 million acres in the United States are certified organic. Sales of organic food have kept pace, growing significantly each year, primarily in the European Union, Japan, and the United States. This growth in sales is facilitated by the increasing availability of organic food. Once available only in natural food stores, today, organic food is sold in three out of four conventional grocery stores. Sustainability is also being supported by the annual increase in sales of vegetarian and fair trade foods. Urban agriculture—food production on residential plots, public or vacant private land, balconies, or rooftops within a metropolitan area—is also becoming more important as food prices rise. Already, one-seventh of the world’s food supply is grown in cities by eight-hundred million urban farmers.18 The amount of food that can be produced in gardens in the United States is substantial. Worldwide, an estimated $38 million worth of food is produced from urban plots.19 In Cuba, where twenty-six thousand hectares are cultivated within cities, urban agriculture is credited with playing a big part in Cuba’s recovery from the food crisis brought on by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the U.S. embargo.20 Home gardens and community gardens can add variety, freshness, and beauty to people’s food supply, provide an important source of nutrients crucial to overall health, and reduce food costs. This will become even more important for low-income people as food prices continue to rise and the emergency food system fails to keep up with demand. Examples include Lesotho’s “keyhole gardens”—small raised round garden beds surrounded by large rocks—that help hungry families survive. These gardens are also ecologically sound: the stonework protects the soil from erosion and drought in a windy, dry landscape.

CONCLUSION The triumph of modern, industrial agriculture has been its ability to produce vast amounts of agricultural products. However, this has not solved food security problems in either the developing or industrial world, and this productivity has been at the expense of environmental quality. Food prices have risen 40 percent on average globally since mid-2007. The dramatic increase in food costs has led to increased hunger everywhere and food riots in a number of countries. For decades, people have been organizing to resolve agrifood issues. Most recently, a number of these efforts have coalesced to form the alternative agrifood movement. This movement has been successful in drawing attention to agrifood issues, changing public policies, and developing new ways of farming and marketing that are more environmentally sound and socially just. These efforts are the beginning of a large-scale change that is required to provide food security for people worldwide and to halt agriculturally

14


related environmental destruction. Every urban garden, every fair trade purchase, and every organic farm can be a step toward a more sustainable agrifood system. Together with collective action and policy changes, these individual choices can create a food system that will provide healthy food for the children of the future.

NOTES 1. FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2006: Eradicating World Hunger—Taking Stock Ten Years after the World Food Summit (Rome: FAO, 2006), http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/ a0750e/a0750e00.htm (accessed August 4, 2008). 2. Mark Nord, Margaret Andrews, and Steven Carlson, Measuring Food Security in the United States: Household Food Security in the United States, 2006, Economic Research Report No. (ERR-49) (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2007). 3. WFP (United Nations World Food Programme), World Hunger Series 2007: Hunger and Health (Rome: WFP, 2007). 4. WHO (World Health Organization), Obesity and Overweight (Geneva: WHO, 2008), http://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/publications/facts/obesity/en (accessed April 25, 2008). 5. CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), Overweight and Obesity (Atlanta: CDC, 2008), http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity (accessed April 25, 2008). 6. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, The Surgeon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health, DHHS [PHS] Publication No. 8850210 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988). 7. CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), Obesity Epidemic Increases Dramatically in the United States: CDC Director Calls for National Prevention Effort (National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 2000), http:// www.cdc.gov/media/pressre/r991026.htm (accessed April 23, 2009). 8. EWG (Environmental Working Group), Environmental Speaker Sheds Light on Toxins (Washington, DC: EWG, 2008), http://www.ewg.org/node/26094 (accessed April 25, 2008). 9. Gordon R. Conway and Jules N. Pretty, Unwelcome Harvest: Agriculture and Pollution (London: Earthscan Publications Ltd., 1991). 10. David Pimentel et al., “Environmental and Economic Impacts of Reducing U.S. Agricultural Pesticide Use,” Bioscience 41, no. 6 (1991): 402–9. 11. Environmental Working Group, “Tap Water in 38 Central California Cities Tainted with Banned Pesticide: Some Bottle-Fed Infants May Exceed ‘Safe’ Dose before Age 1,” EWG California Policy Memorandum (Washington, DC: EWG, 1999), http://www.ewg.org/files/dbcp.pdf (accessed August 4, 2008). 12. Hayden Stewart, How Low Has the Farm Share of Retail Food Prices Really Fallen? Economic Research Report Number 24 (Washington, DC: USDA, 2006), http://www. ers.usda.gov/publications/err24/err24.pdf (accessed April 20, 2008). 13. For a comprehensive history of the movement, see Patricia Allen, Together at the Table: Sustainability and Sustenance in the American Agrifood System (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004). 14. Ibid. 15. Benjamin Kline, First Along the River: A Brief History of the U.S. Environmental Movement (Oxford: Acada Books, 2000).


15

16. U.S. General Accounting Office, Sustainable Agriculture: Program Management, Accomplishments, and Opportunities, GAO/RCED-92-233 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1992). 17. In several federally prosecuted cases of tomato pickers in Florida, farmworkers were found to have been chained up, beaten, forced into debt-servitude, and charged rent for living in trailers with 8 to 10 other workers. In April 2007, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers negotiated an agreement with McDonald’s and Yum! Brands (owner of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC) in which the fast-food giants have agreed to pay a penny more per pound to workers harvesting tomatoes. For more information, see CIW (Coalition of Immokalee Workers), U.S. Senate Hearing into Farmworker Exploitation in Florida Tomato Fields (Immokalee, FL: CIW, 2008), http://www.ciw-online.org/ Senate_hearing.html (accessed October 28, 2008). 18. Jac Smit, Annu Ratta, and Joe Nasr, Urban Agriculture: Food, Jobs, and Sustainable Cities (New York: United Nations Development Programme, 1996). 19. Paul Sommers and Jac Smit, Promoting Urban Agriculture: A Strategy Framework for Planners in North America, Europe and Asia, Cities Feeding People Report 9 (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 1994). 20. Peter M. Rosset, “Cuba: Alternative Agriculture during Crisis,” in New Partnerships for Sustainable Agriculture, ed. Lori Ann Thrupp (Washington, DC: World Resources Institute, 1996), 64–74.

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Allen, Patricia. Together at the Table: Sustainability and Sustenance in the American Agrifood System. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. Allen, Patricia, ed. Food for the Future: Conditions and Contradictions of Sustainability. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1993. Belasco, Warren James. Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry, 1966–1988. New York: Pantheon Books, 1989. Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962. Gottlieb, Robert. Environmentalism Unbound: Exploring Pathways for Change. Boston: MIT Press, 2001. Guthman, Julie. Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Lappe, Frances Moore, and Anna Lappe. Hope’s Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet. New York: Tarcher/Penguin Publishing, 2002. Nestle, Marion. Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Poppendieck, Janet. Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement. New York: Penguin Books, 1998. Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 2001.

Web Sites The Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, http://casfs.ucsc.edu. Coalition of Immokalee Workers/Coalicion de Trabajadores de Immokalee/Kowalisyon Travaye nan Immokalee, http://www.ciw-online.org.

16


Farm Labor Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO, http://www.floc.com. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, http://www.fao.org. Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy, http://www.foodfirst.org. Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, http://www.iatp.org. International Food Policy Research Institute, http://www.ifpri.org. Pesticide Action Network North America, http://www.panna.org. Small Planet Institute, http://www.smallplanet.org. World Food Programme, http://www.wfp.org.

2 Alternative Food Market Governance: Current Research and Unanswered Questions E. Melanie DuPuis The failure of movements to transform the modern economic system, from the decline of cooperative organizations, the welfare state, and 1960s radicalism to the fall of the Berlin Wall, has led many social change activists to abandon strategies to reform conventional institutions. Instead, many new social-change visionaries embraced the creation of “alternative” economies, essentially parallel sets of institutions that remake the economic relationships between certain sets of producers and consumers. Today these alternative worlds include the art and journalistic institutions that are part of the youth-based “indie” movements, “open space” and other nonmainstream forms of computing, alternative energy development, and alternative healing practices often linked to new spiritual movements. In the United States, where government solutions have always been mistrusted, social movement actors have been the main organizers of these alternative economies, emerging in part from the “opt out” movements of the 1960s, particularly the creation of new (often farm-based) communities that eventually evolved into new localist communitarian movements. In contrast, the establishment of alternative market institutions in Europe has become part of European Union rural development policy. The most evident and developed form of alternative economy, and the one that has been most studied by social scientists, is the alternative food movement. Transforming and diversifying modern food provisioning in Western Europe, North America, and many other parts of the world, social change actors have created new economic and cultural spaces for alternative food markets, whose products— organic, fair trade, local, and quality foods—are different from those typically furnished by mainstream food manufacturers and retailers. These new alternative markets are particularly diverse, involving many types of outlets and strategies, the dynamics of which are poorly understood. Therefore, several social scientists are now studying community-supported agriculture (CSA), fair trade, and other alternative food market institutions to answer the question: “What makes these markets work?” This chapter will provide an overview of current research on alternative

18


food economies. More than a decade of such research has yielded valuable insight into how alternative economic systems work. Added to this will be a few anecdotal examples from the author’s own work with local food policy organizations in Upstate New York and on the Central California Coast. Mainstream economics tend to see efficient markets as “free”—that is, private and asocial, moving buyers and sellers beyond the strictures of bureaucratic regulation or social norms. However, other social scientists have shown that no market functions without set rules of behavior.1 From this perspective, markets simply do not exist outside of social contexts. Society sets the rules and procedures by which markets work. These rules are commonly referred to as market governance. Social science research has expanded the understanding of market governance in general and alternative food markets in particular, especially organic markets. Drawing on this research, as well as personal experience, this section provides an overview of some basic social science insights on alternative market governance, as well as unanswered questions about this new form of exchange. As this overview will demonstrate, social scientists agree that alternative food markets tend to be even more embedded in social and political relationships than conventional markets are.2

THE NATURE OF GOVERNANCE Governance is “the inter-firm relationships and institutional mechanisms through which non-market co-ordination of activities in the [marketing or ‘value’] chain is achieved.”3 In other words, “markets” here do not necessarily mean just buyers and sellers; they are networks of actors that affect the “non-market co-ordination” involved in the exchange of commodities along the “value chain,” including government, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), business and citizen activists, and other consumers, organized or not. Needless to say, some actors in these networks are more powerful than others. Some social scientists study the unequal power relationships in alternative marketing systems, in particular, pointing to the control or power that large buyers have over the system, enabling them to gain most of the value (profit) from the system.4 In particular, they note the increasing supermarket control of food purchasing, which enables these actors to have increasing control over value and profits.5 Ten large food retailers are responsible for half of all food sold in the United States today, and these large economic actors are increasingly calling the shots in the purchase of fresh produce.6 Studies of alternative market governance, therefore, involve a focus on issues of power, both economic and political. Other social scientists have studied the ability of alternative food economies to provide some countervailing power to less-powerful actors in the conventional value chain, particularly farmers and consumers.7 This effort is probably most prominent in European Union rural development policy.8 EU policy sometimes involves enabling smaller organic producers to maintain their access to the conventional value chain (e.g., to regain the ability to sell to supermarkets). In other cases, the approach is to focus on selling to alternative market niches, helping those with smaller farms develop strategies to make these niche markets work for them. Strategies, however, require information and understanding of these alternative markets. This understanding of alternative markets tends to assume that market niches are “out there” simply waiting for someone to discover them. The current perspective

Alternative Food Market Governance

19

also tends to see actors in the chain as involved primarily in a private set of bilateral—one-on-one—interactions to meet predetermined, private demands. In fact, alternative marketing strategy is more than just a matter of producers discovering a group of consumers waiting for a new kind of cheese or carrot. The market governance perspective sees markets as a dynamic process based on social interaction. A number of recent studies of organic and alternative agriculture have found that these alternative governance systems are more “civic” in nature than conventional markets. For example, Thomas Lyson, Neva Hassenein, and Michael Bell have shown that alternative agriculture is a dynamic, interactive process that relies on civic engagement.9 If one looks at alternative agriculture from a market governance perspective, one can also argue that alternative marketing strategies will always include public deliberation and that the vitality and growth of these markets will always depend on democratic engagement. Invisibility, loss of voice, lack of transparency, and the breakdown of public discussion (and even a degeneration in the belief in “the public” itself) will undermine civic markets as alternative economies. The creation of alternative markets therefore involves negotiations over the way commodities are made and sold, and “supply” and “demand” is the mutually constituted product of these interactions. Civic markets are those that are created through an open and public conversation. It makes sense, therefore, to think of market governance in alternative agriculture in terms of “civic markets.” The idea that civic engagement is a part of market governance combines two major sociological perspectives. First are the notions of civic engagement most prominently put forth by Robert Putnam and Robert Bellah.10 Second is the research of social scientists who have shown that markets are “embedded”—that is, they are creations of their particular social and political context. The creation of market governance rules is therefore a social activity. Social scientists talk about civic engagement as part of “discursive democracy” that requires a “public sphere,” a social arena in which people discuss possible social rules, including market rules, and implement them.11 Studies of markets as part of the public sphere tend to look at who wins and who loses, as well as who is included and who is excluded, from the institution of particular market governance structures. In other words, social scientists are often interested in the fairness, or “social justice,” of particular market governance systems. Needless to say, social scientists have found that markets formed through more democratic engagement tend to be fairer. Raynolds, for example, has shown that organic farmers in the less-developed world are often not equal participants in the creation of fair trade rules, which has affected their ability to maintain adequate incomes through these markets.12 The implication here is that civic engagement can create markets and that a number of potential markets can come out of civic processes. However, little research has looked closely at the ways in which producers and consumers engage in a public conversation about the rules around alternative markets. Further research on alternative markets could benefit from looking at studies of water and electricity markets as civic markets, with rules of transaction set through public processes that are participatory.13 Of course, new forms of private market contracting have also arisen, as farmers become producers of custom products for niche markets controlled by large food chains.14 These are basically private contract systems that are arranged between individual actors. Civic markets, in contrast, describe the more public forms of

20


exchange in which the rules are transparent and are generally open and negotiable by a larger group of buyers and sellers. One question yet to be answered is whether or not private niche markets for organic or other alternative foods could survive if the civic discourse around these foods disappeared. Could large-scale organic milk companies survive without activist civic discourse against genetically engineered food, for example? Each alternative market has its own form of governance—that is, each follows a distinct set of rules, including rules for public deliberation. The civic dynamic of a particular alternative market affects how and whether these markets will grow and remain profitable. For example, a farmers market that simply protects founding members and excludes new members grows only as its current members expand their production. Another way to grow, however, is to admit new members who add new products or who expand the consumer choice of existing products. What makes farmers market decision-makers pursue one strategy or another? The answer to that question may depend on the power of various actors to implement their ideas about fairness in a particular alternative market. A farmers market run by founding producers, for example, may tend to be more exclusive, as founding members see the fairness in terms of the risks they took to create the market in the first place. In farmers markets where consumers have a voice, however, they are more likely to advocate for the greater inclusion of new members, in order to have greater choice. Of course, what is fair and what is not fair is also something that gets discussed and decided on in the public sphere. People tend to disagree about what is fair and what is unfair. A set of market governance structures reflects a group of people who have agreed with each other about the fairness of the system enough to participate in this system, assuming they are not being coerced. Coercion does not always entail police power: when travelers stop at a highway rest stop and cannot find what they consider to be healthy food, they may feel like they are being coerced to participate in the conventional economy of multinational fast food chains, although it is a “soft” coercion. Lack of alternatives can therefore be a form of coercion, and the creation of alternatives can be a form of agency.

ALTERNATIVE FOOD MARKETS The rest of this chapter will review a number of current alternative food markets, and talk a bit about the governance structures of these markets and how these market rules are the product of particular civic interactions. These social contexts are the product of particular agreements between buyers and sellers in the public, civic sphere. These agreements have their own embedded controversies, their own ways in which fairnesses and unfairnesses arise. The extent to which each of these alternative markets expands is to a great extent dependent on whether or not buyers and sellers find them worth participating in because they offer a better—or what they perceive to be a fairer—deal. Community-Supported Agriculture CSA involves a direct relationship between farmer and consumer in which consumers agree to pay for a season’s worth of produce in return for what is usually a weekly box of produce provided by the farmer over that season. Most of the rules


21

around CSA membership are based on a private contract between two parties. However, these contracts often involve rules of behavior that affect the entire membership of the CSA. Those rules are often set by the grower or informally between the grower and the members of the CSA. In addition, according to the report “CSA Across the Nation,” 28 percent of all CSAs have a kind of governing board, generally called a Core Group.15 Therefore, consumer and producer membership depends not just on the writing of a check, but also on creating and following social rules and obligations of membership. Some of these rules are part of a contract between the member and the farmer. Others tend be more informal. For example, according to the CSA report mentioned above, more than three-quarters of all CSAs put together member events that go beyond the provision of produce, such as festival days, farm tours, and so on. Although these events are not part of the contract, if the farmer of a CSA in New York, for example, cancelled her strawberry festival without explanation, she would get an earful from her members. More formal CSA rules often involve things like whether or not a member is expected to put in labor hours on the farm or at the pickup points. Specific rules often are established to regulate behavior for members at pickup points, in terms of maintaining cleanliness, controlling noise, and other things such as the ability to trade unwanted produce with others. The extent to which members follow the rules necessary to maintain the functioning of a CSA or other alternative market depends to a large extent on the social capital in the system.16 One way that members try to expand trust in the system is to encourage a more inclusive approach to membership, so that people who cannot afford membership fees are subsidized by other members. Approximately half of the CSAs have a subsidized share program so that low-income families can participate as members.17 Social capital, enrollment, and issues of trust also are important in the relationship between consumer members and the producers in alternative economies. Farmers who do not feel supported by their members sometimes exit these systems. In particular, the financial aspects of landownership can be especially difficult for farmers. Member-farmer commitments to acquire land have also been a part of CSA governance in some cases. Because access to quality land is difficult and costly in many places, some CSAs have become increasingly involved in gaining access to land for the CSA farmer, and sometimes share in land costs. This involves another layer of rules of behavior—and relations of trust—between the consumer-landowners and the farmer.18 Another governance aspect of CSAs that have Core Groups actively involved in farm budget decisions is the issue of farmer salary. In these governance structures, the annual membership fee pays the farmer a collectively determined specific salary over the costs of growing. However, exactly what fee would maintain membership at what salary can be a constant source of worry. Many Core Groups cannot resolve such issues as health insurance, pension, and adequate salary at a reasonable membership cost. Many farmers remain committed to CSAs, despite the poor income and benefits. Clearly, health care and the need for a secure retirement are issues that farmers want to address with CSA members but often cannot. In these various cases, decision-making, especially in those CSAs that do not have Core Groups, is often by “exit or voice.” In other words, members “vote with their feet” and leave the CSA, or they choose to stay and make noise and hope

22


the farmer listens. Farmers, in turn, if they cannot achieve their goals of health or income security or other management issues with members, also shut down their farms or move to other types of farm markets. In alternative markets with high trust, all members feel that they can express their concerns and get a fair hearing, even if the problem cannot be resolved. In addition, numerous smaller issues are a constant topic in newsletters (written by farmers or by Core Groups), with or without various forms of sanction (“please remember to . . . or we may no longer be welcome here as a pickup point next year”). More information needs to be collected on exactly how CSAs create and implement high-trust governance structures. The issue of whether or not to have a Core Group, and the extent to which that group has decision-making ability, continues to be a topic of conversation in relation to CSA governance. Farmers Markets The governance issues surrounding farmers markets are dauntingly large and generally not adequately understood. There has been very little generalized research around the governance structures of farmers markets, and this is a potentially rich field of study. In part, the richness comes from the sheer variety of rules—set by municipalities, business associations, and so on—that govern farmers markets. For example, some markets have rules about how far away a farm can be from the market (another issue to be addressed in the market localization section) and what can be sold. Others certify whether or not the farmers produce all the products they sell in the markets. Organic-only farmers markets rely primarily on a farm’s organic certification for compliance with organic rules, but they may also certify the farm’s “producer-only” status. Unlike CSAs, nearly all farmers markets have governing boards. The members of the market are the farmers, not the consumers, although consumers, along with local business members and others, are often members of the governing boards. As with CSAs, decisions about transparency, voice, honesty, inclusion, and exclusion have an effect on the extent of trust in a particular farmers market. In board-governed markets, board members have to assure both producers and consumers that rules are being followed and that they are fair. In many farmers markets, much of this responsibility rests with the farmers market director. But no comprehensive survey of how boards and directors create trust has been conducted.19 Farmers markets, like CSAs, are a form of food system relocalization, and the section on relocalization will continue the discussion of farmers markets. Fair Trade and Other Ethical Marketing Even though fair trade represents only a small fraction of the global economy, it is an arena of rapid civic markets development, in terms of production standards, prices, and the processes by which producers and consumers agree on these issues. The last ten years have seen the publication of some excellent social science research on fair trade markets.20 This work can contribute to the understanding of alternative governance structures as civic process. Fair trade markets generally develop their own unique market governance structures. Because “fairness” is the prevailing idea behind these markets, civic engagement is generally part of the process. Who decides and who benefits from a fair


23

trade market, however, differs from one system to the next. In many cases, NGOs representing consumers determine what the rules of fairness will be, and then work with farmers who are willing to work within those rules. As recent studies21 have shown, however, a “fair” market is not easy to define and is generally a topic of public conversation among actors in various fair trade commodity chains. Once again, actors participate through both voice and exit strategies; they either try to make a system that does not work for them more fair, or they leave the chain and participate in other markets. The extent to which nongovernmental actors make decisions that build trust has a great deal of influence on the maintenance and growth of these markets. Much of the research in this area has focused on whether fair trade actually helps farmers. Issues of market governance are only beginning to come to the fore, particularly in relation to coffee markets. Civic Markets as Small and Artisanal Farm Support Policy In some cases, especially in the European Union, alternative governance systems have worked to increase the access to markets to growers with small farms.22 In addition, the European Union has initiated policies that enable greater market access to agriculturalists with small farms from the global south.23 In other cases, EU policymakers have been interested in protecting artisanal and territorially based specialty food producers in Europe.24 These are civic markets in that they involve public discussion about who deserves to participate in the EU market and what benefits they deserve from that participation. In general, the idea is to create new value chains in which actors (both consumers and producers) who have less power in conventional value chains are able to gain more power and therefore gain greater benefits from the system. These policies are meant to serve farmers in terms of gaining greater profits as well as consumers in terms of making a higher quality of food available.25 Some of these programs focus primarily on providing assistance to farmers to enter conventional markets, but other projects attempt to create new value chains that follow different market governance rules. These alternative value chains often meet up against government regulations, particularly those protective of sanitation. This is particularly true in the case of raw milk, artisanal cheeses, and other highly perishable products. Dairy grading, pricing, and market governance systems create different value chains out of milk. Not surprisingly, different chains enable vastly different forms of dairy production with different uses of natural resources as well.26 British researchers Sonnino and Marsden have argued that the entry of large food retail companies as buyers of organic production has had a negative impact on alternative marketing channels.27 One unanswered question is the extent to which civically engaged market governance processes hold the key to the survival of alternative markets that are threatened with private niche competition. Market Localization Projects It is almost a mantra among smaller organic farmers on the Central Coast of California to say that they are refocusing their marketing efforts to their local communities. These local marketing strategies are sometimes undertaken in the context of community support and often are organized through local food policy

24


councils. Market strategy in California has historically been oriented toward outof-state and export markets. The organic sector has been no exception, even for medium-size farms. However, even these midsize organic farmers in California speak of increasing difficulty finding conventional market outlets. In response, many of these farmers state that they are turning to their local home markets to identify customers. In some cases, these farmers are now participating more in farmers markets or have organized CSAs. However, many farmers markets no longer have space for new farmers, or the governance structure limits new entries. As a result, less formally organized farmers markets are on the rise, which along the Central Coast of California sometimes are referred to as “guerilla farmers markets.” Some of these markets exist in neighborhoods, others may provide merely a private farm stand, and yet others are composed of a group of farmers formally organized in a marketing cooperative. These markets have a different governance structure than the “certified” (e.g., by the State of California) farmers markets around town. In its cooperative form, farmers agree among themselves what they can sell and how they will sell their products. In certified markets, this is the provenance of a governing board made up of farmers, consumers, local nonprofits, and other participants. The guerilla market relies on a co-op membership agreement to maintain “producer-only” status, not certification from the state. In some cases, agreements are made between the co-op members to allow a member to sell the produce of another farmer (or a crafted food product, such as dried fruit or honey). The number of private farm stands has also risen, particularly along Central Coast Route 1 in California, which has a great deal of tourist traffic. The market potential of these farm stands usually depends on access to property along a major travel route. The governance structure of these farm stands is probably the closest to “Wild West” standards. Hand-painted signs on the highway make claims about organic or “no spray” fruits and vegetables, although certification of these claims is often slim. The general governance system appears to be either community trust or, for the one-time tourist stop, “let the buyer beware.” Farm stands, however, do fall under direct marketing regulations, which can include either state or county regulations. Little research has been conducted on the social and political context in which these farm stand rules are created and implemented, the consistency of rules between regions, and the prevalence of other more formal or informal nonstate rules between farm stand sellers and buyers. However, these stands can fall under various rules about zoning and sanitation, and other city rules that apply to local businesses. The lack of local alternative market access along the Central Coast of California, because of the saturation of CSA, farm stands, and farmers markets, has led to new community-based efforts, led by coalitions of farmers and consumers organized in a food policy council, to create new local market opportunities. Like fair trade, social scientists have taken a critical look at food localization movements. These researchers argue that consumer movements concerned about injustice in the food system often see the relocalization of the food system as a cure-all for inequalities. In fact, local politics can be pretty unjust as well. Careful attention needs to be paid to governance structures and the types of processes by which people create and implement these structures, understanding that certain forms of governance may be more equitable than others. In a series of articles on this topic, David


25

Goodman and I argue that people have to approach these problems “reflexively”— that is, they need to be aware of potential unfairnesses in the ways decisions tend to get made. Although no process can be totally fair, constant and reflexive attention to issues of fairness is important, especially in situations in which people define “fair” differently.28 More research is needed on how these processes of relocalization take place on the ground, with real people in real places. For example, to encourage the growth of the local food system in an Upstate New York city, a food policy group (FPG) put on such events as local harvest festivals and CSA “sign-up days” for consumers to become members of established and new CSAs in the area. Formal rules were never established for the policy group to take on this responsibility, but its acceptance of responsibility for the growth and maintenance of CSAs in the area built trust among both consumers and producers (and between them). When groups of actors successfully carry out trust-creation activities, they can create a greater willingness among people to work with them to further other projects. Some social scientists talk about this kind of trust creation as “enrollment”; others see trust as a kind of economy in itself, with its own form of exchange, or capital, which they call “social capital.”29 A local FPG in Santa Cruz County developed a kind of structured public discussion of local food issues that grew out of nonviolent communication strategies designed to promote inclusion and reflexivity as well as trust creation. During these food forums, structured public conversations give participants an equal chance to have their voices heard in a nonthreatening environment that encourages active listening and nonjudgmental behavior. Little change in local food system governance has emerged from these discussions, and the FPG is largely inactive at the moment, subsumed under the more active local food NGOs. The two food forums did create an impetus for certain actors to initiate new projects, such as farm-to-institution efforts. Yet, in a community saturated with food and farm NGOs, the FPG struggled to find an identity and mission that did not compete with more-established groups and their food policy missions. Most communities, however, are more like the Upstate New York city, with no local food policy NGOs. In these places, the establishment of a local FPG can provide the main institutional umbrella under which projects to create local alternative markets are able to place.30 FPGs vary greatly in their structure and activities from one place to the next. They can be organized by state, county, or city (or sometimes all three). Their missions can be different from one place to the next, with some groups more concerned about nutrition or local hunger issues than with the creation of alternative or local markets. In many cases, however, FPGs have taken as a main mission the expansion of local markets for local farmers. These projects usually are created in conjunction with consumers who are seeking to resolve a particular food issue they face in terms of lack of food choice. For example, many FPGs are involved in starting or assisting farm-to-school programs in which farmers provide produce directly to school cafeterias as a way to improve nutrition and to educate students about good eating.31 Piecemeal communication between farmers and each school district, however, is resource intensive, and FPGs have attempted to provide an arena in which farm-to-institution efforts can be more effective. In Santa Cruz, the University of California–Santa Cruz Food Policy Working Group and other NGOs have created a consortium of farmers who

26


provide the university with local organic food. It is expanding to work with a consortium of other local public institutions involved in institutional feeding. Finally, the “Buy Fresh, Buy Local” advertising campaign has put a single brand face on the marketing of local food as a way to grow local alternative markets.32 In all of these situations, questions remain: Who will be responsible for setting up the rules of interaction between local consumers and local farmers? To what extent will these rules remain fractured between subgroups, and to what extent will that fracturing lessen the growth of the local food market? Does an entirely devolved and local form of governance work, or are other scales of governance necessary for the creation of alternative markets? Daniel Block and I have looked at the history of local milk market orders as an example to understand the politics of scale in localization strategies. In local “milkshed” politics, the definition of what is a local market has been an intensely political decision. Historically, peri-urban farmers have vigorously defended their right to sell into city milk markets; in other words, they have defended their right to be defined as local.33 For farmers attempting to preserve a highly risky and often marginal livelihood, the fact that some may have access to spaces in the local farmers market, while others do not, can lead to bitterness over what is a perceived injustice. Exactly how to create fair governance structures about access to limited farmers market spaces is one of the justice challenges faced by the food relocalization movement. In some cases, the following questions need to be answered: How does “local” get defined in relocalization efforts? Are the farmers who have access to the market representative of the diversity of farmers in the surrounding area? Or, do local market governance processes give access to certain less-than-representative groups of people? To what extent do founding members deserve to restrict access to protect their initial investment in what was originally a risky business venture? Other questions that need to be asked about setting the rules of local food market governance are as follows: Who will have a say in this process? Will this commodity chain be, in the words of Gerry Gerrefi, consumer or producer driven?34 Also, who will do the work, and will this work be conducted mainly by volunteers? Will consortiums of farmers work together or will relocalization mostly depend on the growth of individual CSAs selling to individual families? How will governance issues vary by community context? Also, importantly, who wins and who loses when particular market governance rules are put into place? For example, what happens to the farmers 101 miles away from a city that applies a 100-mile definition of “local” to its farmers market rules? In other words, the question of organic market growth at the local level is laden with governance issues that have not been adequately understood, much less resolved.

CONCLUSION As this overview demonstrates, how market governance issues are resolved will have a significant effect on the future vitality and growth of alternative markets. Yet, this discussion has brought up many more questions than answers. Nonetheless, existing research on alternative markets leads to some tentative conclusions. First, governance is not just a set of regulations. Governance is the process by which regulations are formed, the underlying formal (legal) and informal (community consensus) authority upon which the rules are based, who gets to form them, and


27

how they are implemented. The social context “embedding” these markets is therefore important and more attention needs to be paid to the civic interactions around organic markets to understand how and when they will grow and how and when civic processes and governance structures help or hinder organic market growth. Second, fairness is an important issue in the creation of market governance structures. If people think governance is unfair, they may exit the system. Many people talk about food localization as the creation of networks of trust. However, as David Goodman and I have recently argued, “trust” tends to be “blackboxed”—that is, everyone talks about trust but no one ever says directly what trust is and how you can recognize it when it exists.35 It is necessary to open up this box to understand the micropolitics of trust in local networks. Understanding market governance structures is one way to achieve this, to thereby understand how and when the rules of interaction are set in ways that allow fairness and trust. In our interest to expand alternative markets, we need to recognize that the expansion alternatives will require the setting of market-expanding governance structures that will involve more public interaction between farmers and consumers. In many cases, the context for these civic interactions is place based, with local consumers working with local farmers to create new local markets. Unfortunately, for farmers, going that extra mile to schmooze with consumers can seem like yet another stress on an already overwhelmingly stress-filled life. Farmers who are interested in growing their local markets need to talk to each other to learn how to interact with local consumers in ways that are not only sane but efficient and perhaps pleasurable. Consumers need to figure out how to interact with farmers in ways that do not simply exhaust farmers. This may sound like an unimportant point, but at many consumer-led local food policy meetings farmers, glassyeyed with exhaustion, clearly wonder why they are in attendance. Consumers in these organizations often have day jobs, too, and personal lives. We need to come up with processes that create governance structures that are straightforward and easy, while being respectful of both diverse views and limited amounts of time. As this overview shows, the dynamics of alternative food market structures are poorly understood. What current research shows is the extent to which these markets are a product of social deliberation. It is clear that the vitality of organic markets depends on maintaining its “civic” nature, its openness to ongoing public deliberation and decision-making. Otherwise, consumers will become doubtful as to why they are participating in alternative food markets. In addition, the civic nature of alternative food markets makes them intrinsically dynamic. A reflexive approach to alternative market governance enables market actors to maintain the civic dynamic necessary for the survival and growth of alternative food markets, as well as to maintain the continuing autonomy of these markets as “alternative” to the conventional system. Social scientists have contributed to reflexive civic processes by mapping out the dynamic alternative food market landscape. Much more, however, needs to be done.

NOTES 1. Douglas C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Ronald H. Coase, The Firm, the Market and the Law (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988); Oliver Williamson, The

28


Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Firms, Markets, Relational Contracting (New York: The Free Press, 1985); Mark Granovetter, “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness,” American Journal of Sociology 91 (1985): 481–510. 2. Thomas Lyson, Civic Agriculture: Reconnecting Farm, Food and Community (Boston: Tufts University Press, 2004); Laura B. de Lind, “Place, Work and Civic Agriculture: Common Fields for Cultivation,” Agriculture and Human Values 19 (2002): 217–224. I was on the founding board of the Farm and Food Project in Albany, New York; I participated in the Core Group of my New York CSA; and I have more recently worked closely with the Santa Cruz County Food Policy Working Group and the University of California, Santa Cruz, Food Policy Working Group. These experiences have brought me into contact and interaction with numerous farmers, activists, extension agents, local entrepreneurs, and public officials involved in these efforts. I am fortunate to have lived in two vastly different places in terms of the dynamics of alternative food markets: my Upstate New York city had an active food-consumers co-op but in a local food producers “desert.” I was part of a group of local citizens that created a Food Policy Group to create a local food system “from scratch.” My current Santa Cruz County home has a concentration of alternative food NGOs and one of the highest percentages of organic farmland under cultivation of any county in the United States. Living in these places has provided me with tremendous opportunities to study the social context surrounding the governance of alternative food markets. 3. John Humphrey and Hubert Schmitz, Governance in Global Value Chains (Sussex, UK: Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, 2000); Raphael Kaplinsky and Mike Morris, A Handbook for Value Chain Research (Sussex, UK: Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, 2000). 4. Kevin Morgan, Terry Marsden, and Jonathan Murdoch, Worlds of Food: Place, Power, and Provenance in the Food Chain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 5. Everard Smith and Terry Marsden, “Exploring the ‘Limits to Growth’ in UK Organics: Beyond the Statistical Image,” Journal of Rural Studies 20, no. 3 (2000): 345–357. 6. Paul Kaufman, Charles Handy, and Roberta Cook, “The Changing Structure of Produce Buyers—Food Retailing and Wholesaling—and Implications for Suppliers,” Perishables Handling Quarterly 103 (2000): 3–6. 7. Mark Lapping, “Toward the Recovery of the Local in the Globalizing Food System: The Role of Alternative Agricultural and Food Models in the US,” Ethics, Place and Environment 7, no. 3 (2004): 141–150; Jack Kloppenburg, John Hendrickson, and G. W. Stevenson, “Coming into the Foodshed,” Agriculture and Human Values 13, no. 3 (1996): 33–42. 8. Morgan, Marsden, and Murdoch, Worlds of Food. 9. Lyson, Civic Agriculture; Neva Hassanein, Changing the Way America Farms: Knowledge and Community in the Sustainable Agriculture Movement (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999); Michael Bell, Farming for Us All: Practical Agriculture and the Cultivation of Sustainability (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004). 10. Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001); Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). 11. Jurgen Habermas, “Three Normative Models of Democracy,” Constellations 1 (1994):1–10; John Dryzek, Discursive Democracy: Politics, Policy and Political Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 12. Laura Raynolds, “Re-embedding Global Agriculture: The International Organic and Fair Trade Movements,” Agriculture and Human Values 17 (2000): 297–309.


29

13. Carl Pechman, Regulating Power: The Economics of Electricity in the Information Age (Amsterdam: Kluwer, 1999); Brendt Haddad, Rivers of Gold: Designing Markets to Allocate Water in California (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2000). 14. Julie Guthman, Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). 15. Daniel Lass et al., “CSA across the Nation: Findings from the 1999 CSA Survey” (Madison: Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, University of Wisconsin, 2003), http://www.cias.wisc.edu/pdf/csaacross.pdf. 16. “Social capital” describes the extra “wealth” possessed by individuals through their membership in social networks. Societies in which many people are members of many social networks are said to have higher social capital than those with fewer networks. 17. Ibid. 18. Steven McFadden, “The History of Community Supported Agriculture Part II: CSA’s World of Possibilities,” New Farm (2004), http://www.newfarm.org/features/ 0204/csa2/part2.shtml (accessed July 27, 2008). 19. Allison Brown, “Farmers’ Market Research 1940–2000: An Inventory and Review,” American Journal of Alternative Agriculture 17, no. 4 (2002): 167–176; Neil Hamilton, “Farmers Markets: Rules, Regulations and Opportunities,” http://www. statefoodpolicy.org/. 20. Patricia Allen, Together at the Table: Sustainability and Sustenance in the American Agrifood System (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004); Chris Bacon, “Confronting the Coffee Crisis: Can Fair Trade, Organic and Specialty Coffees Reduce Small-scale Farmer Vulnerability in Northern Nicaragua?” World Development 33 (2005): 497–511; Elizabeth Barham, “Towards a Theory of Values-based Labeling,” Agriculture and Human Values 19 (2002): 249–260; Michael K. Goodman, “Reading Fair Trade: Political Ecological Imaginary and the Moral Economy of Fair Trade Foods,” Political Geography 23 (2004): 891–915; Laura Raynolds, Douglas Murray, and Peter L. Taylor, “Fair Trade Coffee: Building Producer Capacity via Global Networks,” Journal of International Development 16 (2004): 1109–1121; Aimee Shreck, “Resistance, Redistribution, and Power in the Fair Trade Banana Initiative,” Agriculture and Human Values 22 (2005): 17– 29. The Fair Trade Resource Network has an excellent list of research articles on fair trade: http://www.fairtraderesource.org/bib-journalarticles.html. 21. Ibid. 22. Perpetua McDonagh and Patrick Commins, “The Promotion and Marketing of Quality Products from Disadvantaged Rural Areas,” End of Project Report, Project # 4485 (Brussels, Belgium: EU FAIR Programme, 2000). European Union studies and projects were mostly concerned with the expansion of markets for small “quality” food producers (generally producers of artisanal products like cheeses and wines) rather than organic producers. 23. Suzanne Friedberg, Green Beans and Food Scares (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 24. See, for instance, Elizabeth Barham, “Translating Terroir: The Global Challenge of French AOC Labeling,” Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003): 127–138; Terry Marsden and Everard Smith, “Ecological Entrepreneurship: Sustainable Development in Local Communities through Quality Food Production and Local Branding,” Geoforum 36 (2005): 440–451. 25. E. Melanie DuPuis, David Goodman, and Jill Harrison, “Just Values or Just Value? Remaking the Local in Agrofood Studies,” in Between the Local and the Global: Confronting Complexity in the Contemporary Agri-Food Sector, ed. Terry Marsden and Jonathan Murdoch (London: Elsevier, 2006), 241–268.

30


26. E. Melanie DuPuis and Daniel Block, “Sustainability and Scale: US Milk-market Orders as Relocalization Policy,” Environment and Planning A 40, no. 8 (2008): 1987–2005. 27. Roberta Sonnino and Terry Marsden, “Beyond the Divide: Rethinking Relationships between Alternative and Conventional Food Networks in Europe,” Journal of Economic Geography 6 (2006): 181–199. 28. C. Clare Hinrichs, “The Practice and Politics of Food System Localization,” Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2004): 33–45; E. Melanie DuPuis and David Goodman, “Should We Go Home to Eat?: Toward a Reflexive Politics of Localism,” Journal of Rural Studies 21 (2005): 359–371; DuPuis, Goodman, and Harrison, “Just Values or Just Value?” 29. Bruno Latour, The Pasteurization of France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988); Putnam, Bowling Alone. 30. For an overview of Food Policy Councils, see publications by the Drake Agricultural Law Center: http://www.statefoodpolicy.org/. 31. Patricia Allen and Julie Guthman, “From ‘Old School’ to ‘Farm to School’: Neoliberalization from the Ground Up,” Agriculture and Human Values 23 (2006): 401–415. 32. Patricia Allen and C. Clare Hinrichs, “Buying into ‘Buy Local’: Engagements of United States Local Food Initiatives,” Constructing “Alternative” Food Geographies: Representation and Practice, ed. Damien Maye, Lewis Holloway, and Moya Kneafsey (Oxford: Elsevier, 2007), 255–272. 33. DuPuis and Block, “Sustainability and Scale.” 34. Gary Gereffi, “The Organization of Buyer-Driven Global Commodity Chains: How US Retailers Shape Overseas Production,” in Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism, ed. Gary Gereffi and Miguel Korzeniewicz (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994), 95–122. 35. DuPuis and Goodman, “Should We Go Home to Eat?”

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Allen, Patricia. Together at the Table: Sustainability and Sustenance in the American Agrifood System. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. DuPuis, E. Melanie, and Daniel Block. “Sustainability and Scale: US Milk-market Orders as Relocalization Policy.” Environment and Planning A 40, no. 8 (2008): 1987–2005. DuPuis, E. Melanie, and David Goodman. “Should We Go Home to Eat? Toward a Reflexive Politics of Localism.” Journal of Rural Studies 21 (2005): 359–71. Hinrichs, C. Clare. “The Practice and Politics of Food System Localization.” Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2004): 33–45. Humphrey, John, and Hubert Schmitz. “Governance in Global Value Chains.” Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, 2000. Kloppenburg, Jack, John Hendrickson, and G. W. Stevenson. “Coming into the Foodshed.” Agriculture and Human Values 13, no. 3 (1996): 33–42. Lapping, Mark. “Toward the Recovery of the Local in the Globalizing Food System: The Role of Alternative Agricultural and Food Models in the US.” Ethics, Place and Environment 7, no. 3 (2004): 141–50. Lass, Daniel, G. W. Stevenson, John Hendrickson, and Kathy Ruhf. “CSA across the Nation: Findings from the 1999 CSA Survey.” Madison: Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, University of Wisconsin, October 2003. Available at http:// www.cias.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/csaacross.pdf.


31

Lyson, Thomas. Civic Agriculture: Reconnecting Farm, Food and Community. Boston: Tufts University Press, 2004. McCarthy, James. “Rural Geography: Alternative Rural Economies—The Search for Alterity in Forests, Fisheries, Food, and Fair Trade.” Progress in Human Geography 30, no. 6 (2006): 803–11. McFadden, Steven. “The History of Community Supported Agriculture Part II: CSA’s World of Possibilities.” New Farm (2004). Available at http://www.newfarm.org/ features/0204/csa2/part2.shtml. Morgan, Kevin, Terry Marsden, and Jonathan Murdoch. Worlds of Food: Place, Power, and Provenance in the Food Chain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Raynolds, Laura, Douglas Murray, and John Wilkenson. Fair Trade: The Challenges of Transforming Globalization. New York: Routledge, 2007.

Web Site Fair Trade Resource Network, http://www.fairtraderesource.org/bib-journalarticles.html (includes an excellent list of research articles on fair trade).


3 Farmwork and the Labor of Meatpacking and Poultry Processing: Another Way of Working Is Possible Dan La Botz Improving the lives of U.S. farmworkers, meat packers, and poultry processors— between two and three million wage earners—is an enormous challenge. The oligopolies that dominate large-scale agriculture and meat and poultry industries are enormously powerful economically and politically, and their sole concerns are productivity, market share, and profits—profits derived from the exploitation of lowwage labor. Small agricultural producers, without the economies of scale of large producers, must make the most of labor and thus may be equally exploitative. Federal and state governments have proved poor defenders of the rights, health and safety, and social well-being of workers in these industries. As a consequence, farmwork, meatpacking, and poultry processing are among the worst jobs in the United States today: physically demanding, psychologically stressful, frequently hazardous and unsafe, low paid, and low status.1 The social situation for these workers is often poor. Farmworkers frequently have bad housing and poor living conditions, such as dilapidated buildings, overcrowded conditions, and poor facilities that contribute to disease and illness. Both farmworkers and meat and poultry workers, many of whom are immigrants or African American, generally have low annual incomes, often lack health care, and in many cases live lives hemmed in by the racial prejudice, poverty, and social exclusion. Immigrant farmworkers may labor in areas that are politically and socially hostile. The working lives of meat- and poultry-processing workers are by and large not only oppressive and exploitative, but also inhumane. In some cases, conditions verge on a kind of industrial torture that cause pain and anguish and take both a physiological and a psychological toll.2 Employers have been able to create and to maintain such conditions because workers in these industries are often either new immigrants or citizens who form part of the country’s rural poor. The rural poor of the U.S. Southeast constitute an industrial reserve army for the meat and poultry industry in areas of the country where high unemployment forces workers to accept awful jobs at near-subsistence wages. Many of the workers in the poultry industry are African American women

34


for whom these exhausting, dirty, and dangerous low-paid jobs are the best paid jobs available. Other workers are immigrants from Latin America, Vietnam, Laos People’s Democratic Republic, and the Balkans.3 Many workers in these industries are undocumented Latino immigrants who work under false names and social security numbers, and consequently, live a life in the shadows. About half of crop farmworkers and as much as 25 percent of meat and poultry workers were undocumented in the 1990s and early 2000s.4 These workers are in many cases pariahs without the right to legal residence, with no civil or political rights, in many cases without even the most minimal recognition of their human rights.5 Immigrant workers in agriculture, poultry, and meat industries are often brought into the United States by coyotes, smugglers of human contraband, and in agriculture a fifth of the workers are employed by labor contractors. Nowhere else in our economy is the relationship between economic exploitation and police repression so clear. Many farm, meat, and poultry workers live in fear of the immigration authorities and of the local sheriffs and police who also engage in immigration enforcement in several states, counties, and cities.6 Living in dread of arrest and deportation, they often hesitate to use emergency rooms and hospitals, and they may be reluctant to call the police or fire department in an emergency. Those who are foreign workers often do not know the language, culture, and laws of the country; and they often do not know their labor rights. In either case, these workers may be reluctant to demand their rights for fear of being fired or turned over to immigration authorities, imprisoned for using false identification, or deported to their home countries. The economic structures of these industries and their workforces, and the corporate organization of work itself at the level of the field or the plant, create jobs set up to force workers to work as hard, as fast, and as intensely as possible to produce more product and higher profits. The corporations that own the factories and the factories in the fields have designed the workplaces, the processes, the tools, the work relationships, and the labor itself completely in the interest of higher productivity and greater profitability and generally without even a minimal concern for the impact of work organization on human beings. Where this work is organized on a bureaucratic and industrial model, as it is on larger farms and in virtually all meat and poultry plants, it is alienating in the sense that all humanity has been squeezed out of it, all self-expression extinguished. The work organization is completely hierarchical, vertical, and authoritarian with a military-style command-and-control structure that gives workers virtually no latitude or input, much less opportunities to offer suggestions or make decisions. Above all, the pace of work set by the machine or driven by piece-rate payment forces these workers to give up not only their workday, but also their health and their future well-being, and in some cases their very lives for the corporations’ profits. These industries are among those with the highest rates of accidents, illnesses, and deaths, and they produce high levels of stress and depression. Not surprising, worker turnover is high, sometimes reaching 100 percent in a year. Adding insult to injury, these industries often pay below a subsistence wage. In the case of farmworkers, few of these in the United States earn a living wage.7 In the case of meatpacking, which once paid a decent wage, employers have succeeded in two decades of industrial warfare in breaking unions or weakening contracts so that today’s wages and benefits have been reduced to low levels, and

Farmwork and the Labor of Meatpacking and Poultry Processing

35

conditions have deteriorated. Poultry workers, who remain largely unorganized, have wages below even those of the meatpacking industry.8 The employers in these industries with few exceptions do all in their power to prevent the unionization of their workforces, turning to specialized law firms and often engaging in illegal, unfair labor practices. In violation of labor law, employers have frequently punished or fired union activists, threatened workers with deportation, and in some cases have called in the immigration authorities to break union-organizing drives. Workers in these industries do not enjoy the fundamental rights that are guaranteed to workers under the law, even if they are immigrants and even if they are undocumented.9 The existence of such atrocious and shameful conditions in our nation for farmworkers and their families, several million people, is not only an evil in itself, but also represents a threat to other workers and to our society at large, for where the combination of corporate power and government neglect is permitted to exist, they threaten also to jeopardize the working and living conditions of others in our society. The problems in these industries are enormous and the need for change urgent, yet the tremendous investments of capital in the current structure and the economic and political power of the corporations are so great that clearly reform will not be simple, easy, or quick. The big question in proposing reforms in the areas of agriculture and meatpacking and poultry processing is how not only to bring about reform, but also how to strengthen working people in relation to capital, so that over time the problems that arise from the existing system of exploitation can be eliminated permanently. I look at here some purported best practices in these industries, examine their real impact, and ask whether these practices are truly useful, and, if they are, how these practices might or might not be generalized and extended to improve the lives of workers. Labor union organization and the negotiation of collective bargaining agreements could improve farm, poultry process, and meatpacking workers’ lives. Social democratic legislation to provide universal health care, free kindergarten through postgraduate education, one-month vacation for all workers, and the other features of a European-style social safety net would benefit all workers. In turning to real long-term solutions, human beings ought to be able to create a system of agriculture and of agricultural labor that produces decent lives for workers, maintains and improves the environment, and produces healthy food for consumers, without the profit motive and without repression. Socialism, publicly owned industries with worker-run farms and factories in the context of a democratic government represents a humanistic alternative for these workers.

THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMIC CONTEXT American agricultural labor, poultry processing, and meatpacking all were transformed over the last 30 years within the broader context of the transformation of the U.S. and world economy through the policies of the neoliberal economic model of deregulation and privatization accompanied by the policies of open markets, free trade, and world production in the process called globalization. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher introduced the neoliberal model at the national level beginning in 1980, and subsequently in the 1980s and 1990s, under

36


the rubric of “The Washington Consensus,” the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization used structural adjustment policies to impose this model on developing countries and the former Eastern Bloc nations.10 All of this has meant increased economic competition on a world scale, leading to the creation of rival trading blocs, in particular the completion of the European Union and the establishment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 by Canada, Mexico, and the United States. These agreements have been supplemented by myriad bilateral and multilateral trade agreements. NAFTA had devastating consequences for many Mexican farmers. As millions of tons of subsidized U.S. agricultural products flooded Mexico, hundreds of thousands of small farmers failed.11 At the same time, the Mexican government stopped subsidies to farmers and ended the country’s fixed price for corn at about twice the world market price. The 1994 peso devaluation also hurt Mexican farmers. Unable to make a living in farming, many farmers and their families migrated to Mexican cities, to the border region, or to the United States in search of work. Undocumented immigrants rose from 2.5 million in 1995, to 4.5 million in 2000, to 11 million in 2005. Sixty percent or six million of these immigrants were Mexican.12 Today, about 10 percent of all Mexicans live in the United States. Many found work on farms and in meatpacking and poultry plants.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMIC CONTEXT IN THE UNITED STATES These global and continental political economic transformations profoundly affected American industry, including agriculture, meat, and poultry. For agriculture, the principal change has been demographic, a change from native-born workers, many of them Mexican American, to immigrant workers, most of them Mexican and many of them undocumented. For meatpacking and poultry processes, the changes have been more thoroughgoing—that is, a complete reorganization of the industry, geographically, demographically, and in terms of industrial relations. What has happened in these industries reflects broader changes in the American economy and labor movement. During the period between 1940 and 1980, most industries in the United States remained relatively stable, often regulated, and dominated by a few large corporations. The industrial core of most heavy industries was organized by a major industrial union, and worker wages and benefits improved until the 1970s. Beginning around 1981 with Ronald Reagan’s firing of thirteen thousand unionized air traffic controllers, government and private employers launched an offensive against unions and workers with devastating consequences. Unions were broken, contracts weakened, wages stagnated, and benefits were cut.13 Today, unions represent only 7.5 percent of the private workforce in the country, while total unionization stands at only 12.1 percent.14 Agriculture, however, had never been widely organized except for a brief period in the 1970s in California when the United Farm Workers (UFW) union succeeded in organizing and winning contracts for a significant number of workers.15 After a brief period of success, growers turned to modest mechanization, the use of farm labor contractors, and the hiring of immigrant Latino workers, often undocumented. The


37

UFW was barely able to keep a toehold in the industry. Today less than 2 percent of California farmworkers are organized and have contracts, although there have been gains in organizing H-2A visa workers in North Carolina by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) and food-processing workers in California by the UFW and the Teamsters.16 The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has won higher wages for workers in Florida through campaigns against Taco Bell and Burger King.17 In meatpacking, the big five packers of the period from 1890 to 1960—Swift, Armour, Morris, Wilson and Cudahy—were organized by the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA), (later merged with the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and then becoming part of the United Food and Commercial Workers [UFCW]). Between the 1960s and 1990s, a new breed of packer moved plants to rural areas where land and labor were cheaper and introduced a system of boned-and-trimmed boxed beef. When rural labor was not sufficient, the companies recruited immigrants, mostly from Mexico and many of them undocumented. The corporations adopted a more aggressive attitude toward unions, forcing strikes, engaging in lockouts, breaking militant local unions, and wiping out pattern agreements (master contracts). Union density and strength declined, and so did wages. The UFCW turned to bargaining concessions in the 1980s. By the 1990s, a new Big Three of meatpackers had emerged—IBP, Excel (a subsidiary of Cargill), and ConAgra— that had increased productivity and employed a partially unionized workforce at much lower wages. The poultry industry as we know it today has grown up in the last few decades and is almost a new industry altogether. Before the 1950s, the poultry industry had been a small farm business. During the 1960s to 1980s, a process of economic concentration began so that by the 1990s half a dozen companies dominated the industry, which employed a quarter of a million workers.18 Concentration was accompanied by mechanization and the deskilling of jobs so that virtually all jobs are unskilled labor. Three firms, Tyson Foods, Pilgrim’s Pride, and Gold Kist, control nearly 50 percent of the poultry industry. The UFCW and the RWDWU (the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Workers Union, which is part of the UFCW) have succeeded in organizing about 30 percent of the industry.19

AGRICULTURE AND FARMWORKERS The United States had approximately two million farms in 2002.20 Agriculture is diverse in terms of size, crops, revenues, and workforces. Some states have produced more or less the same principal crops, such as corn and wheat, for decades, and other states, particularly California, represent “a caldron of perpetual change.” There are powerful trends toward horizontal and vertical integration, although they manifest themselves differently in different states with different geographies, climates, and crops. While oligopolies (a few producers) or oligopsonies (a few buyers) dominate some markets, others are more competitive. For example, four companies control 89 percent of the market in grains, whereas in vegetable crops, the market is far more diverse. However, even where producers are diverse, the market may be dominated by processors, distributors, or retail grocers. Even in California, where agriculture is most diverse and dynamic, 4,775 farms or 6 percent of all farms in the state “had sales exceeding a million dollars and accounted for 75 percent of total sales.” However, fruit, vegetables, nuts, dairy, and ornamental

38


products all remain competitive markets with few exceptions.21 Some are large farms that employ large numbers of farmworkers on a seasonal basis, although others are midsize and have fewer workers.22 A typical 40-acre strawberry farm in California has about $1 million in revenue and employs about 20 workers, half of whom work at least 150 days per year.23 The U.S. Census of 2002 reported that 927,708 hired farmworkers are working 150 days and 2.1 million are working less than 150 days.24 Workers employed more than 150 days are often hired by farmers; those not working 150 days are usually hired by labor contractors or crew leaders.25 The trend is toward more workers hired by farmers rather than contractors. The National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS), based on interviews with 6,472 crop farmworkers during the period from October 2000 to October 2002, found that 79 percent of workers interviewed were men. Only 23 percent of workers were native born, while 75 percent were born in Mexico, 2 percent born in Central America, and 1 percent born in other countries. Most are Spanish speakers (81 percent), and only 25 percent of workers are U.S. citizens. Some 53 percent of crop farmworkers lacked authorization to work in the United States, while 21 percent were legal permanent residents. Many of these workers were migrants, defined as having traveled 75 miles within the previous year to obtain a farm job. While 26 percent traveled within the United States, 35 percent came from a foreign country (usually Mexico), and 38 percent were newcomers in the United States (i.e., present for less than a year at the time of the survey). Most of these workers, 79 percent, were directly employed by growers or packing firms, while 21 percent were hired by labor contractors, a 50 percent increase since 1993–1994.26 Farmworkers and their families have wages so low that many can be classified as poor. Workers worked an average of 42 hours per week; and their average hourly earnings were $7.43, ranging between $6.76 and $8.05 based on tenure with their employers. Wages have fluctuated throughout the past decade. Individual income in 2001–2002 ranged between $10,000 and $12,499 per year, and total family income was between $15,000 and $17,499. Thirty percent of farmworkers had total incomes below poverty guidelines. Only 23 percent of workers report that they have health insurance. In the past two years, more than 20 percent of these workers or their families had received some sort of public assistance, including Medicaid, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women Infants and Children (WIC), or food stamps. Almost half of these workers have some assets: 49 percent own a car, and 17 percent are buying a home either in the United States or their home country.27 Much farmwork requires skill, but many farm laborers are semiskilled or unskilled. Farm labor often involves long days of 10 to 12 hours, working outdoors under the sun and sometimes in inclement conditions. For farmworkers, overtime does not begin until after 60 hours have been worked, so the 12-hour day is common. Growers and contractors push workers to work as fast as possible, either under the orders of a foreman, pushed along by the pace of a machine, or driven by piece-rate payment. Foremen sometimes yell at, swear at, or otherwise verbally abuse workers who fall behind the pace of work. Workers in the fields and packing sheds may be exposed to fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and rodenticides and other chemicals in the air, on plants, or in the soil. Exposure to pesticides may result in dermatitis, cancer, eye injuries, and respiratory disease. Farm crop labor is


39

physically demanding. Workers often engage in bending, stooping, pulling, twisting, lifting, throwing, climbing, reaching, and stretching, and repetitive motions sometimes result in musculoskeletal disorders. “Backaches and pain in the shoulders, arms, and hands are the most common symptoms that farmworkers report.” These injuries can be disabling. Farmwork is one of the most hazardous industries for occupational injuries and deaths. Workers are endangered by potential accidents and injuries resulting from lifting and from exposure to tractors or other farm machinery, or by accidents such as falling from a truck. The living conditions of farmworkers may lead to alcoholism or to depression or result in child abuse.28 Heat exposure is a health hazard and in 2008 resulted in worker deaths in North Carolina and California.29 Crop workers themselves offer their own critique of the industry and work organization. They complain of growers or contractors who treat them disrespectfully. They also find the pace of work, often driven by piece-rate payment, to be too fast, and the wages too low. Most would like year-round employment, which not all have. Health insurance, which three-quarters of farmworkers lack, is a priority for these workers. Health and safety concerns are further down the list for farmworkers, although these issues are serious. These workers would like to have a pension plan, something most of them do not enjoy. Most would also like involvement in decision-making processes and clear and effective grievance procedures.30 Federal law should protect farmworkers, but federal labor laws that protect workers’ rights do not cover most farmworkers. Farmworkers were specifically excluded from the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) that protects the rights of other workers. Nor are they covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which establishes maximum hours and minimum wages for other workers. Because the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspects only farms with more than 10 workers, 90 percent of U.S. farms are exempt.31 Some states such as California have more progressive laws. California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA) and CalOSHA regulations apply to all farms. Still, under California law, overtime applies to farm laborers only on the seventh day after six consecutive 10-hour days.32 Throughout the country, children as young as 12 and 13 may work with parents’ consent. Some federal laws are intended to offer special protection to farmworkers, such as the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), which has worker health and safety provisions enforced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Workers Protection Act (MSAWPA) governs the recruitment, hiring, and provision of services (such as housing and transportation) by labor contractors and crew leaders. The act is enforced by the Department of Labor’s Wages and Hours Division.33 Although most federal labor laws do not cover farmworkers, even where such laws exist, they are not always aggressively enforced; and seldom are employers jailed or fined for violations of the law.

ANOTHER KIND OF FARMWORK How might we reorganize farmwork to make it not only a human but also a humane occupation—that is, one in which human beings not only make a living, but also express themselves through their creativity? Researchers and scholars, some growers and farmworkers, and union organizers have suggested different models of

40


reform for making farmwork more humane, more economically rewarding, and sustainable. Philip L. Martin, professor at the University of California–Davis and a leading researcher on agricultural labor, suggests that farm labor can be reformed by changing immigration policy. He argues that more restrictive immigration policies will result in higher labor costs, leading growers to mechanize agriculture. Such changes, he suggests, might make unionization more likely among the remaining, more skilled workers. In any case, he believes that in the long run such developments will lead to a smaller, more stable, and more highly skilled workforce that will be better paid and live a life more like that of other U.S. workers.34 Researchers at the California Institute for Rural Studies, collaborating with both growers and farmworkers, have put forward a different strategy for the humanization of farmwork. They suggest short- and long-term strategies for improving farmwork that revolve around several key ideas: treating workers with dignity; paying a living wage; providing workers adequate housing; creating stable, year-long employment; pursuing immigration reform to ensure that workers have legal status; providing access to health care; making farmwork safe and healthy; codifying workers’ rights and creating a grievance procedure; giving workers a voice in decision-making; and providing for older workers. These researchers and their collaborators have identified several farms, most of them smaller or niche crop farms engaged in sustainable agriculture, that implement some of these policies, and they have identified programs in several communities that encourage and support such developments.35 Finally, the UFW and other farmworker organizations organize workers to force employers to do many of the things mentioned above, from paying a living wage and providing decent housing to making work safe and creating a grievance procedure. The UFW and other farmworker organizations also pressure government to reform immigration policy, generally by providing legal status for workers and by creating opportunities for legal permanent employees and guest workers. The unions take the position that the workers’ collective self-organization as expressed through the union will win contracts and legislation that will make farmwork humane and farmworker communities viable. The UFW has seen these goals as being achievable through collaboration with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. These three alternatives can be characterized as (1) the corporate agricultural industry position, (2) the small farm or niche crop position, and (3) the organized labor position. All three positions offer the hope of change, but all are fraught with problems. Fundamentally, Martin wants to make agriculture just another American industry, but he does so at a moment in history when U.S. manufacturing hardly provides a humane model. In fact, manufacturing corporations have been imitating agriculture and its worst practices. Corporations have pared back their permanent, full-time workforce through practices pioneered in agriculture, such as subcontracting. Manufacturers have turned to unskilled immigrant workers from Mexico and Central America. Through such changes in production, they have been able to cut wages, reduce health care benefits, and increase the intensity of work. Why would one think that if agricultural producers made more modern factories in the fields that they would treat the workforce in mechanized agriculture any differently than they treat industrial and service workers? In fact, the pressures of competition in the global marketplace would tend to pressure them to reduce wages and benefits while speeding up production.


41

The California Institute for Rural Studies and its grower and worker collaborators envision boutique agriculture as the road to more humane agricultural work, mostly smaller sustainable farms producing high-quality products for upscale niche markets. Some owners of these farms believe in environmentally sound and socially just agriculture. But this is a vision of best practices on the margins of the industry, among niche crop growers in specialized organic products. Some of the practices they propose would be easy to implement and, in some cases, cost nothing. In the Institute’s survey of twelve California farms, they found that one, for example, had a “no yell” policy—that is, foremen and supervisors were not permitted to yell at workers. Many tried to promote personal contact between farm owners, supervisors, foremen, and the workers, and they found that farmworkers appreciated having a “personal relationship with farmers.” Most of these farms gave their workers some paid days off (at least the public holidays). Several farms offered workers free or subsidized housing, but only for some workers. Several offered housing and others paternalistic benefits, such as personal loans, and access to food from the farm, even free farm food in some cases. Yet, even among such a relatively prosperous and successful group of growers, it is hard to point to models. Wages are among the top two considerations of workers. One exceptional farm pays its permanent workers $24,000 per years plus a productivity bonus. Yet among all twelve farms examined in the study by the California Institute for Rural Studies, the investigators found that “it was difficult to find a farm that offered a living wage.” Nor did any farm provide an annual wage for all of their field staff, although most of the farms provided year-round work for at least some of their workers. And half of the sustainable farms used farm labor contractors at least for short time periods. Most of these farms recruit workers’ family and friends, but when necessary, they also turn to the farm labor contractors, although some attempt to use contractors whose practices are more humane. While these growers emphasize that they treat workers with dignity, some remarks from both growers and workers have the ring of paternalism. In any case, the growers have the last word in all questions, and the workers are dependent on them.36 No doubt, at least for the privileged permanent workforce, labor on these farms would be much preferable to work in factory fields of agribusiness. Yet these cannot be solutions for most workers in agriculture because they are based on mostly small farms or niche crop growers selling high-end products. The greatest problem for niche farms is that their products become more popular and therefore of interest to large-scale corporate agribusiness. When corporate agriculture takes an interest in these products, it introduces factory-style production, mechanized, paid by piece rate, and based on low-wage workers. Those new megafarms then compete with the boutique producers. If the boutiques do not change their production, they succumb; if they change their production methods and survive and grow, they become large-scale corporate producers with all the attendant problems; and others will be bought out or merge with big producers. Of course, given the protean character of agriculture and its markets, new niche groups and boutique producers will emerge, but that only proves the marginal nature of these producers.37 Finally, the labor union model has its own problems. Cesar Chavez, the charismatic leader of the UFW, succeeded in building a union and leading victorious strikes in the late 1960s. With the support of Democratic Party Governor Jerry

42


Brown and the passage of the California ALRA in 1975, the UFW succeeded in organizing a significant portion of the mostly Mexican American farmworkers of California, and the union reached a membership of 40,000 to 50,000 by 1980. Workers’ wages rose substantially as the union signed scores of contracts in several crops. Nevertheless, the union could not hold on to its success for several reasons. Divisions within the UFW, an inability to deploy union workers as needed, and unrealistic demands in negotiations in the 1970s all weakened the union.38 When Republican George Deukmejian became governor of California, ALRA ceased to be effective for the UFW. Employers turned to farm labor contractors and new immigrant workers or to H-2A visa workers and escaped the union and its contracts. The immigrant amnesty of 1982 led former farmworkers to seek work in higher-paying industries, thinning the union’s ranks. In addition, when union wages in some crops became too high, growers turned to mechanization, reducing the number of farmworkers. By the 1990s, most farmworkers in California were unauthorized workers from Mexico and Central America, and the UFW had lost most of its contracts, being reduced to representing less than 2 percent of the state’s farmworkers. Labor union organization among farmworkers is highly desirable because it gives workers’ unions the power to negotiate contracts that can improve workers’ wages, better their conditions, protect their health and safety, and gain health and pension benefits. Farmworker unions should negotiate the right to control the introduction of new technologies and operations in the fields, something other unions have won in a factory setting, so that they have some control over the threat to the replacement of workers by agricultural mechanization. Farmworker unions also play an important role in organizing for political candidates who support labor and social legislation of benefit to farmworkers. In Western European countries, a majority of agricultural workers are represented by labor unions, have collective bargaining agreements, and often enjoy the same social benefits as other workers, such as health care and pensions. Although wages may be only two-thirds of that of industrial workers, farmworkers share in other social benefits that guarantee their security and well-being in the society.39 Some agricultural unions have taken steps to protect the rights of migrant workers. German and Polish unions cooperate to educate Polish migrant workers about labor rights in Germany.40 With labor unions, workers have a vehicle for improving their conditions and defending themselves from abuse. Each of these models offers some vision of improving lives for farmworkers, but in many respects these are utopian solutions. The interconnectedness of finance, industry, and agriculture in the United States makes it difficult to envision lasting changes in our political economy in anything less than the system as a whole. Only the labor union organizing model offers some suggestion of a long-term solution by increasing the power of labor in relation to capital.

THE MEATPACKING AND POULTRY-PROCESSING INDUSTRIES More than 500,000 workers are employed in slaughtering and processing industry in approximately 5,700 plants in the United States. The workers are young (43 percent under age 35), usually male (63 percent), and Hispanic (42 percent),


43

and an estimated 26 percent are foreign-born noncitizens.41 Workers in many of these plants are represented by the UFCW or in a few cases by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), but many plants remain unorganized. In meatpacking and poultry plants, no model companies or plants exemplify best practices. These industries might be improved in the following three ways: (1) by corporate initiative, (2) by government regulation, and (3) by union control. What have corporations done to improve workers’ lives? Donald D. Stull and Michael J. Broadway found in their study of the meatpacking industry that, Machines now work alongside people on meat and poultry lines, but jobs remain tedious, monotonous, and risky. And workers who fill them rarely earn a “living wage,” one sufficient to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves and their families.42

Although some corporations and plants do establish safety programs, very often their actual practices vitiate them. Stull and Broadway found that in the meatpacking industry productivity takes precedence over other concerns, such as quality and safety. Improvements in the industry are complicated by the tendency of supervisors to pass the buck and avoid taking responsibility, making change difficult. Also, many Anglo supervisors have racist attitudes toward Mexicans and other immigrant workers, discriminate against them, and mistrust them. Supervisors often have cultural and linguistic difficulties in communicating with their subordinates and generally do not attempt to deal with these issues.43 Poultry-processing work often exposes workers to extreme temperatures, it distorts the body or wears it out through repetitive motions, it deafens workers with loud noises, and it disgusts and repulses them with its blood and guts. Workers suffer frequent lacerations and amputations. The rapid line speed drives workers to their physical and mental breaking point. The working conditions, often accompanied by low wages and consequently poor living conditions, combine to cause depression in many of these workers. One group of researchers described poultry management practices as “benign neglect,” and said there was “little evidence of coercive or abusive supervisory practices” nor of any “commitment on the managers for workers’ safety.”44 But “benign neglect” is clearly the wrong term because the system is intentional and rational, run to produce profit by employers well aware of the human cost but with no concern for it. A better term would be “malign intent.” The combination of physical pain and mental anguish produced by the system constitutes the recognized definition of torture, and this should be called “industrial torture.” At present, poultry workers even where unionized often have no defense against such institutionalized mistreatment and abuse.45 The best practices in the area of safety and health might be OSHA’s voluntary standards.46 These standards are meant to protect workers from illness or injury in their work by describing hazards and precautions for each job. For example, one of the jobs in a poultry plant is the Neck Breaker. OSHA describes the job as follows: “The neck breaker uses a knife to cut the neck of the bird. Most companies have eliminated this position by installing an automatic neck breaking machine. Employees serve as backup to this machine.” The hazards Neck Breakers face are listed as follows: “Standing for a long time, reaching to the shackles, and ergonomic hazards from use of knives.” To take an example of the standards for just one of these areas: “Neck Breakers perform various tasks by reaching repeatedly to

44


the shackles. Reaching creates stress on the arms, shoulders, neck, and back.” Therefore, OSHA makes the following recommendation: • Lower shackles and/or move them closer to employees so they can perform the task with elbows in close to body. • Install height-adjustable stands so employees can properly position themselves. • Install automatic machines and ensure they are working properly. OSHA describes dozens of such tasks, pointing out the potential hazards and describing safe practices that might make poultry workers safer.47 Despite such recommendations as these, several problems persist. The biggest is that most of these are voluntary, not mandatory, standards, that is, employers are not required by law to enforce them and are not liable for fines, jail time, or other penalties. Second, there is no ergonomic standard. Although many of workers’ health and safety problems—such as those of the Neck Breaker—are musculoskeletal issues that arise from ergonomic issues, OSHA has no ergonomic standards; and the industry has strenuously opposed not only the standards but even attempts to do the studies that might lay the basis for such standards. Where mandatory standards do exist in these industries, under recent administrations, OSHA has not acted vigorously to protect workers’ health and safety. Rather than using its existing police powers, OSHA has often preferred to create partnerships with employers and to establish voluntary guidelines rather than enforce regulations and impose penalties. Even when OSHA uses its police powers and fines corporations for violating one of its mandatory standards, it seldom takes legal action to prosecute and jail corporate chief executives, plant managers, supervisors, or foremen when workers are killed, maimed, injured, or suffer unhealthy or unsafe work situations. Corporate executives in this country may and do kill workers with no repercussions, with few exceptions. The election of an administration in Washington that was more concerned about workers’ issues might make a considerable positive difference.48 To do so, it would have to make OSHA standards mandatory not voluntary, it would have to create ergonomic standards and also enforce them, and it would have to use its police powers and cooperation with the courts to not only fine corporations but also to jail executives, supervisors, managers, and foremen responsible for violations regulations that harm workers. It is doubtful that it would solve the problems of the industry without an increase in the power of workers and their unions.

LABOR UNION ORGANIZATION Labor union organization would be the most effective way to improve conditions in these industries.49 Labor union organization would have to be achieved through strikes that would give workers a sense of power and break the company’s absolute control over the industry and the workplace. The unions would then be in a position to negotiate collective bargaining agreements that might achieve a living wage, health and pension benefits, rules governing workplace conditions, and a grievance procedure to enforce the contract. The unions would be in a position to demand that federal OSHA and state OSHAs enforce the law. Equally important, if workers had unions that built workplace strength, workers could stop abuses and even control line speed.


45

Corporations in the poultry industry could improve conditions through practices suggested by researchers, such as job rotation, slowing the line speed, and avoiding abusive and coercive supervisory tactics.50 They have not done so because such practices would cause them to lose out in national and world competition and thus reduce their corporations’ stock value and profits. Only government regulation and union power will force corporations to improve worker conditions. When unions were strong in the meatpacking industry, workers often simply stopped the line when necessary to protect their health and safety, to force a slowdown in the pace, or simply to take a break. Where unions have become strong enough to dominate an industry, as they have sometimes in mining, they have introduced contract language that gives the union the right to refuse unsafe work or even to shut down the entire operation. If meat packers and poultry workers had such language, they might use it to force management to reduce line speed and the resultant repetitive motion traumas that cripple workers. Clearly, unions able to win longer lunch periods, more breaks, rotation of workers to different jobs, and slower line speeds would go a long way toward humanizing fieldwork, slaughtering, butchering, and packing. Labor Politics Labor unions would not only benefit workers as economic organizations, but also could use their political clout to back legislation that benefits workers. If the meatpacking and poultry industries were organized, presumably within the context of a resurgence of the American labor movement that would return unions to some significant level of unionization, they would have more political leverage. We might see unions play a stronger role in the Democratic Party or even see the creation of a labor party that would put forward a program for industrial regulation and social democratic reforms, such as those adopted in Europe during the postwar period (from 1945 to 1980). For this to happen, workers would have to transform the existing bureaucratic labor unions into more democratic and militant organizations.51 Imagining democratic socialism as representing the best way to improve the lives of workers may seem utopian, but it is certainly no more utopian than imagining that the answer lies with a government dominated by corporations, employers driven by profits, or labor unions locked into a capitalist economy. Workers would be better off if they had control over the workplace, the industry, and the government. When workers in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gained power through unions and political parties, they not only organized unions but also created workplace councils of various sorts. Labor and socialist parties promoted these notions under the name of workplace democracy or economic democracy. At various periods, workers succeeded in establishing factory committees in which workers participated in running the factory. Through the power of the labor unions in the postwar period, a more conservative version of this notion became institutionalization in Germany under the name of Mitbestimmung or codetermination. Some U.S. unions have seats on company boards of directors, a yet weaker version of codetermination. Labor unions and a labor party to fight for legislation to defend workers on the job and to give them a decent life in society would transform agricultural labor. Still, while we live in a system of private property in the means of production, free markets, economic competition, and the profit motive, neither farmworkers,

46


meatpacking workers, nor poultry workers will be able to have safe and healthy jobs, or secure employment at a living wage. Nor will anyone’s job and life be secure while society is subject to capitalism’s boom-and-bust economic cycles. The best chance for farmworkers, for poultry process and meat workers, and for the rest of us is strong labor organization, a political party of working people, and the revolutionary transformation of our societies leading to democratic socialism.

NOTES Thanks to Sherry Baron, Hester Lipscomb, Roni Neff, Jackie Nowell, and particularly Don Villarejo for comments, suggestions, and other views. I alone am responsible for the views presented in this article. 1. GAO (U.S. Government Accountability Office), Safety in the Meat and Poultry Industry, while Improving Could Be Further Strengthened (Washington, DC: GAO, 2005), http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0596.pdf.; Don Villarejo and Sherry L. Baron, “The Occupational Health Status of Farm Workers,” in Occupational Medicine: State of the Art Reviews 14, no. 3 (1999): 613. 2. I use the term “torture” advisedly. In 2004, acting Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin said torture is defined as physical suffering or lasting mental anguish. The discussion of torture has led to recognition that stress positions, extreme temperatures, and loud noises constitute torture. In a series of studies of poultry workers, Hester Lipscomb and her colleagues have found that such conditions as well as an inhuman line speed lead to both physical disabilities and to depression. Hester Lipscomb’s articles are cited below in a more detailed discussion of poultry workers. 3. William G. Whittaker, Labor Practices in the Meatpacking and Poultry Processing Industry: An Overview (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress, October 27, 2006), http://www.nationalaglawcenter.org/assets/crs/ RL33002.pdf. This paper describes many of these conditions. 4. For farmworkers see, U.S. Department of Labor, National Agriculture Workers Survey, Executive Summary, http://www.doleta.gov/agworker/naws.cfm; for meat and poultry workers see, GAO, Safety in the Meat and Poultry Industry. 5. Dan La Botz, “The Immigrant Rights Movement: Between Political Realism and Social Idealism,” New Politics 11, no. 3 (2007), http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue43/ LaBotz43.htm. 6. April Clark et al., “2007 National Survey of Latinos: As Illegal Immigration Issue Heats Up, Hispanics Feel a Chill” (Pew Hispanic Center, December 13, 2007), http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/84.pdf. 7. There is no commonly accepted formula to figure a living wage. The federal poverty guidelines can be found at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/threshld/ 07prelim.html, where it should be clear that those do not constitute a living wage. Economic Policy Institute, “Basic Family Budget Calculator,” http://www.epi.org/content. cfm/datazone_fambud_budget, constitutes another better measure of a living wage. (Thanks to Stephanie Luce for suggesting those sources.) Beyond calculations, the reader might ask what wage he or she would need or accept as a minimum. Presumably, this could be called a living wage, unless the reader thinks these workers and their families deserve less than others earn. 8. National Agriculture Workers Survey, Executive Summary, at http://www. doleta.gov/agworker/naws.cfm; Whittaker, Labor Practices. This paper describes many of these conditions.


47

9. Lance Compa, Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers’ Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2004). This documents the violation of workers’ rights in meat and poultry plants. 10. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). Harvey gives the best overview and explanation of neoliberalism. 11. Ana de Ita, “Fourteen Years of NAFTA and the Tortilla Crisis” (Americas Program Special Report, January 10, 2008), http://americas.irc-online.org/am/4879; Public Citizens, “The Ten Year Track Record of the North American Free Trade Agreement: The Mexican Economy, Agriculture and Environment,” http://www.citizen.org/documents/ NAFTA_10_mexico.pdf. 12. Philip Martin, “NAFTA and Mexico-US Migration” (December 16, 2005), http://giannini.ucop.edu/Mex_USMigration.pdf. 13. Kim Moody, An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism (New York: Verso, 1988). 14. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2007 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2007). 15. Philip L. Martin, Promise Unfulfilled: Unions, Immigration and the Farm Workers (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), chapter 3, 57–89. 16. The U.S. government issues H-2A visas to temporary or seasonal agricultural workers. 17. “The Price of a Tomato,” The Economist June (2008): 38–39. The article reports, “The extra cent a pound [won by the COIW from Burger King] is the first pay increase in 30 years. Even with it, a picker would have to fill fifteen 32-pound buckets an hour to earn Florida’s minimum wage [for nonfarmworkers] of $6.79—a tall order in the broiling sun.” 18. Whittaker, Labor Practices. 19. Correspondence from Jackie Nowell of the UFCW, May 28, 2008. 20. USDA, NASS (National Agricultural Statistics Service), http://www.nass.usda. gov/Charts_and_Maps/graphics/data/fl_frmwk.txt. 21. Don Villarejo, personal communication, May 2008. 22. For two papers that look at different aspects of current developments, see Democratic Staff of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, U.S. Senate, “Economic Concentration and Structural Changes in the Food and Agriculture Sector: Trends, Consequences and Policy Options” (October 28, 2004), Tom Harkin, Iowa, Ranking Democratic Member; Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics, University of California, “Whither California Agriculture: Up, Down or Out? Some Thoughts about the Future” (September 2007). The first paper reflecting the Iowa experience points to increasing concentration in grain and meat, while the second paper from California notes that “[d]espite perceptions of increased concentration of production among a few large-size farms, U.S. census data do not reveal strong evidence of increased concentration over the past several decades.” The quotation “caldron of perpetual change” comes from the Giannini Foundation paper. 23. Villarejo, personal communication, May 2008. 24. USDA NASS 2002, at http://www.nass.usda.gov/research/2002mapgallery/ hiredlabor.html. 25. I do not discuss livestock workers in this paper. More than 900,000 livestock workers are working an excess of 150 days per year. Their jobs are often more dangerous than those of agricultural workers. 26. U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, “National Agriculture Workers Survey, Executive Summary,” http://www.doleta.gov/agworker/

48


naws.cfm; The NAWS is an ongoing survey process, but 2002 is the last set of study results available. 27. Ibid. 28. Sherry Baron et al., Simple Solutions (Cincinnati, OH: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, 2001); Villarejo and Baron, “The Occupational Health Status of Hired Farm Workers.” 29. Associated Press, “San Joaquin Coroner Says Young Farm Worker Died of Heat Stroke,” June 19, 2008; Dan Glaister, “Migrant Farmworker’s Death in U.S. Highlights Poor Labour Conditions,” Guardian (United Kingdom), June 5, 2008. The victim was a 17-year-old pregnant girl. Glaister writers, “Since 2005 there have been 23 suspected heat-related fatalities among California’s 450,000 seasonal agricultural workers.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report: “During this 15-year period [1992– 2006], 423 workers in agricultural and nonagricultural industries were reported to have died from exposure to environmental heat; 68 (16%) of these workers were engaged in crop production or support activities for crop production. The heat-related average annual death rate for these crop workers was 0.39 per 100,000 workers, compared with 0.02 for all U.S. civilian workers” (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, June 20, 2008, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5724a1.htm). 30. Ron Strochlic and Kari Hamerschlarg, “Best Labor Management Practices of Twelve California Farms: Toward a More Sustainable Food System,” California Institute for Rural Studies December (2005): 1–28, 15. The authors list 16 things workers would most appreciate: “respectful treatment, slower pace of work, fair compensation (through wages and other forms of supplementing incomes), year-round employment, health insurance, personal loans, food from the farm, healthy and safe work environment, paid time off, flexible work schedule, housing, opportunities for advancement and professional development, diversity of tasks, involvement in decision making processes, clear and effective grievance procedures, and retirement plans.” I would question whether all of these really would be desirable. For example, there is a long history of employers using personal loans as a way to keep farmworkers dependent and even of holding agricultural workers captive in poor conditions, that is, of creating a system of debt peonage. 31. USDA, Census of Agriculture 2002, U.S. and State Data (Washington, DC: USDA, 2002), Table 7, 281. 32. Villarejo and Baron, “The Occupational Health Status of Hired Farm Workers,” 618–20. 33. GAO, “Child Labor in Agriculture: Changes Needed to Protect Health and Educational Opportunities” (Washington, DC: GAO, 1998), 30, http://www.gao.gov/ archive/1998/he98193.pdf. 34. Martin, Promise Unfulfilled, 180–96. 35. Strochlic and Hamerschlarg, “Best Labor Management Practices”; Martha Guzman et al., “A Workforce Action Plan for Farm Labor in California: Toward a More Sustainable Food System,” California Institute for Rural Studies June (2007): 1–21; see also, for an example of sustainable farm, The Farm, http://www.swantonberryfarm.com. 36. Strochlic and Hamerschlarg, “Best Labor Management Practices,” 4–15. 37. I remember that in 1999 while working for Global Exchange as director of its California Program, I led a group on a tour of Northern California and Central Valley agricultural areas. We visited former immigrant farmworkers who had established an organic farm and been successful for a while, until the big grocery chains and agricultural producers became interested in organic vegetables and they came into competition with new, large-scale organic farms. They feared they would be driven out of business soon.


49

38. Dan La Botz, Cesar Chavez and La Causa (New York: Longman, 2005), chapters 8, 9. 39. “Industrial Relations in Agriculture,” Eironline: European Industrial Relations Observatory On-Line (September 2005), http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/2005/09/ study/tn0509101s.htm. 40. “German and Polish Unions Cooperate over Seasonal Workers in Agriculture,” Eironline: European Industrial Relations Observatory On-Line (October 2003), http:// www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/2003/10/inbrief/de0310204n.htm. 41. GAO, Safety in the Meat and Poultry Industry, 1. 42. Donald D. Stull and Michael J. Broadway, Slaughterhouse Blues: The Meat and Poultry Industry in North America (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2003), 74. 43. Ibid., 82–98. 44. Joseph G. Grzywacz et al., “The Organization of Work: Implications for Injury and Illness among Immigrant Latino Poultry-Processing Workers,” Archives of Environmental & Occupational Health 62, no. 1 (2007): 19–26, 24. 45. H. J. Lipscomb et al., “Musculoskeletal Symptoms among Poultry Processing Workers and a Community Comparison Group: Black Women in Low-Wage Jobs in the South,” American Journal of Industrial Medicine 50 (2007): 327–38; H. J. Lipscomb et al., “Upper Extremity Musculoskeletal Symptoms and Disorders among a Cohort of Women Employed in Poultry Processing,” American Journal of Industrial Medicine 51 (2008): 2–36; H. J. Lipscomb et al., “Depressive Symptoms among Working Women in Rural North Carolina: A Comparison of Women in Poultry Processing and Other LowWage Jobs,” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 30, no. 4, 5 (2007): 284–98; H. J. Lipscomb et al., “Are We Failing Vulnerable Workers? The Case of Black Women in Poultry Processing in Rural North Carolina,” New Solutions 17, no. 1, 2 (2007), 17–40. 46. OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) poultry standards and guides can be found at http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/poultry/user_guide.html. 47. Ibid. 48. The Clinton administration created the “No Sweats” policy at the Department of Labor in 1995, which included more frequent and serious inspections, but its standards were still voluntary. 49. Workers cannot be successful in union organizing, winning contracts, and building workplace power as long as many of them do not enjoy the legal right to live and work in the country. The AFL-CIO and Change to Win, the two major labor federations in the United States, as well as the Catholic Church and many Protestant and Jewish organizations, have supported calls for what they call “comprehensive immigration reform.” Dan La Botz, “If Not Now When?” New Labor Forum Spring (2008), http://www.newlaborforum.org/html/2008/spring/abstracts.html#ifnotnow. 50. Grzywacz et al., “The Organization of Work,” 25. 51. Kim Moody, US Labor in Trouble and Transition: The Failure of Reform from Above, the Promise of Revival from Below (New York: Verso, 2007). Moody addresses the need for the democratic transformation of unions in this book.

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Bacon, David. Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants. Boston: Beacon Press, 2008.

50


Compa, Lance. Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers’ Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants. New York: Human Rights Watch, 2004. Fink, Leon. The Maya of Morganton: Work and Community in the Nuevo South. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007. La Botz, Dan. Cesar Chavez and la Causa. New York: Longman, 2005. Martin, Philip L. Promise Unfulfilled: Unions, Immigration, and the Farm Workers. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003. Pew Hispanic Center. Annual Labor Report—2008. Available at http://pewhispanic.org/ reports/report.php?ReportID=88. Southern Poverty Law Center. “Close to Slavery.” Available at http://www.splcenter. org/legal/guestreport/index.jsp. Stull, Donald D., and Michael J. Broadway. Slaughterhouse Blues: The Meat and Poultry Industry in North America. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2003. U.S. Government Accountability Office. Safety in the Meat and Poultry Industry, while Improving Could Be Further Strengthened. Washington, DC: GAO, 2005, http:// www.gao.gov/new.items/d0596.pdf.

Web Sites Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), http://www.floc.com/. Farm Worker Justice Fund, Inc., http://www.fwjustice.org/. Philip Martin, University of California–Davis, http://martin.ucdavis.edu/. Migration News, http://migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/. National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS), http://www.doleta.gov/agworker/naws. cfm. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), http://www.cdc.gov/ niosh/topics/agriculture/. United Farm Workers (UFW), http://www.ufw.org/. United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), http://www.ufcw.org/.

4 Equity in Access to Land, Human Rights, and Capital: Food Security Movements from the Global South William Van Lopik Equity in access to land, human rights, and capital historically has been a contentious issue in the poor regions of the world. This chapter describes and analyzes the effectiveness of a rapidly expanding number of local, regional, international, and global initiatives that are addressing issues of hunger, poverty, and inequity. Movements of various scale and motive are developing in the global south in response to the failed economic and development agendas from the global north that have not benefited them. Whether it is farmers in Latin America, churches in Africa, or indigenous people in Belize, groups are organizing to meet their food security needs according to their agenda. Gender inequality has led women activists in Sub-Saharan Africa and India to advocate for equal rights in addressing their poverty issues in organizations like the Green Belt Movement in Kenya and the Wastepickers Association in India. The leadership map of developmental geography has shifted significantly to the south. Indigenous and grassroots organizations outside of North America and Western Europe are now on the cutting edge of effective programs in sustainable development.

INTRODUCTION In the summer of 2007, the College of Menominee Nation through the leadership of its Sustainable Development Institute sponsored a week-long conference entitled “Sharing Indigenous Wisdom: An International Dialogue on Sustainable Development.” The conference was held to foster dialogue on traditional indigenous knowledge being utilized and incorporated as models and methods of sustainable practices. Traditional or indigenous knowledge refers to the wisdom, embodied within the indigenous communities, that is utilized to preserve and protect resources vital to the continuity of that community. This was the second such conference that the small tribal college located in rural northeast Wisconsin had sponsored in the past four years. The intent of the conference was to bring together indigenous researchers from different parts of the globe to create a dialogue on a wide variety of issues from

52


land rights, to the empowerment of women in community development, to communities managing and building their own natural and capital assets. The key word that was used throughout the week was “sovereignty.” The interpretation of the word in the context of the conference addressed the fundamental question of “who has control over the decisions that are made in a community pertaining to its assets?” These assets include land, human, economic, and natural resources. The presentations resonated strongly with me and echoed the stories I had heard while living for seven years in Central America and visiting dozens of poor rural villages. That is, poverty and hunger issues are directly tied to the question of who controls the resources. Examples of lack of control over resources include farmers who are dependent on renting only marginal land from rich landowners, who then siphon off any profits, and local markets that are flooded by cheap imported food that undermines the locally grown food. Examples of lack of sovereignty are found when poor countries use their foreign aid to pay off interest payments to rich countries for bad loans that seem to benefit only the elite. Examples of lack of control over destiny emerge when poor women are forced to sacrifice their own health and basic human rights because they are not entitled to own land, acquire a bank loan, or hold individual financial assets. It is when people are able to build up, manage, and acquire land and capital assets that they are able to combat hunger and alleviate extreme poverty. Economist Hernando de Soto says that the poor lack the process to represent their property and create capital. They have houses but not titles; crops but not deeds; businesses but not statutes of incorporation. . . . This explains why people have not been able to produce sufficient capital to make their domestic capitalism work.1

The examples discussed here will demonstrate various processes by which poor people are addressing these problems and gaining capital assets. Much of the inspiration to write this chapter came out of these two conferences sponsored by the College of Menominee Nation. The initiatives mentioned in this chapter range in scale, geography, and visibility. All of them provide much-needed hope and have been successful in no small measure at alleviating hunger and poverty in the lives of poor families. Six organizations are highlighted in this chapter. Via Campesina and the Micah Network are global campaigns addressing poverty and hunger issues through global advocacy. The Green Belt Movement is working on environmental and women’s rights issues in East Africa. The Sarstoon-Temash Institute for Indigenous Management (SATIIM) is a regional program in southern Belize that addresses indigenous rights. The Wastepickers Association is a local initiative in the city of Pune, India, in which the empowerment of marginalized women is the key objective. Finally, the PARI Development Trust in Bangladesh (PARI) focuses on building capital assets in communities through a unique community savings program.

LA VIA CAMPESINA Sustainable development requires simultaneous attention to economic growth, environmental protection, and social equity to meet the needs of present generations without compromising those of the future. The World Resources Institute

Equity in Access to Land, Human Rights, and Capital

53

has said secure tenure over land and resources by all segments of society, and particularly by the poor, has been identified as a critical enabling condition for sustainable development to occur.2 Land tenure is a key asset for the rural poor that provides an important foundation for the economic and social development of a community. Without secure tenure, it is unlikely that a farmer will invest either financially or physically in the conservation of their land. Tenure is vital for transferability of land, access to credit markets, and investment in sustainable farming practices. Land tenure offers the potential to the rural poor to adjust to the unpredictability of globalization and ensure their own food security. Extensive research has shown that most development organizations are in agreement about the importance of land tenure to the development process in alleviating poverty, although few devote significant financial resources to the issue.3 La Via Campesina (from Spanish, “the peasant farmer way”) is an initiative that describes itself as “an international movement which coordinates peasant organizations of small and middle-scale producers, agricultural workers, rural women, and indigenous communities from Asia, Africa, America, and Europe.”4 It is an international movement of peasants, small- and medium-size producers, landless rural women, indigenous people, rural youth, and agricultural workers. Their purpose is to defend the values and the basic interests of their members. Now in its sixteenth year, Via Campesina includes 142 member organizations from 56 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. It was formally constituted in 1993 during a conference held in Mons, Belgium, when a group of forty-six farm leaders gathered to define a progressive alternative to the further liberalization of agriculture and food reflected in the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The principal objective of Via Campesina is to develop solidarity and unity among small farmer organizations to promote gender parity and social justice in fair economic relations. This objective includes issues pertaining to the preservation of land, water, seeds, and other natural resources, as well as food sovereignty and sustainable agricultural production based on small producers. Via Campesina focuses its work on seven key issues affecting peasants and farmers everywhere: the need for genuine agrarian reform, food sovereignty and trade liberalization, biodiversity and genetic resources, gender relations in the countryside, sustainable peasant agriculture, migration and migrant farmworkers’ rights, and human rights.5 The main goal of Via Campesina is to build a peasant-based alternative model of agriculture. To reach this goal, Via Campesina organizations work together to achieve the following: • • • • • •

Organize exchanges of information, experiences, and strategies Develop connections among farm organizations Build solidarity and unity among farm organizations Strengthen the participation of women at all levels of farm organizations Articulate joint positions and policies Engage in collective action

Since its inception, farming peoples around the world have marched together in the streets of Paris, Geneva, Seattle, Rome, Genoa, Porto Alegre, and Quebec

54


City, among other cities. With its members chanting slogans, wearing dark green caps, bandannas, and white T-shirts, and waving green flags decorated with the movement’s logo, Via Campesina has become an increasingly visible actor and audible voice of radical opposition to the globalization of a neoliberal and corporate model of agriculture. Food sovereignty has always been a fundamental issue of particular concern for Via Campesina especially given the global crisis of rising food prices. Peter Rosset, former executive director of the Institute for Food and Development Policy, says that now is a critical time to listen to directives of the movement. Some of these directives include the need to stimulate the recovery of a country’s national food-producing capacity, specifically that capacity located in the peasant and family farm sectors. It means stopping the dumping of artificially subsidized cheap food from rich countries on poor countries, which then undercuts the market share of local farmers. Via Campesina also calls for genuine agrarian reform. Land reform is urgently needed in many countries to rebuild the peasant and family farm sectors, whose vocation is growing food for people, because the largest farms and agribusinesses seem to produce only biofuel for cars and export crops for insatiable appetites in the global north. Via Campesina advocates for national governments to implement export controls and to stop the forced exportation of food desperately needed by their own populations. Finally Rosset points out, [W]e must change dominant technological practices in farming, toward an agriculture based on agroecological principles, that is sustainable, and that is based on respect for and is in equilibrium with nature, local cultures, and traditional farming knowledge. It has been scientifically demonstrated that ecological farming systems can be more productive, can better resist drought and other manifestations of climate change, and are more economically sustainable because they use less fossil fuel.6

Subsistence farmers have many years of experience in relying on their locally available resources. They are capable of producing the optimal quantity and quality of food with few external inputs. They do well when they grow food for family consumption and domestic markets and are not competing against artificially supported transnational agribusinesses. Via Campesina sees food sovereignty as a right of peoples, countries, and state unions to define their own agricultural and food policy. This view is based on Article 25 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights that “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care.”7 Food sovereignty organizes food production and consumption according to the needs of local communities, giving priority to production for local consumption. Food sovereignty includes the right to protect and regulate the national agricultural and livestock production and to shield the domestic market from the dumping of agricultural surpluses and low-price imports from other countries. Landless people, peasants, and small farmers must get access to land, water, and seed as well as productive resources and adequate public services. Food sovereignty and sustainability must take a higher priority than trade policies.8 Ismael Ossemane, a farmer and founding member of the National Farmer’s Union of Mozambique (UNAC), in a public speech given at a Via Campesina


55

conference on August 17–18, 2007, in Mozambique, said, “[We] must . . . Focus on food for the people; Give the due value to food producers; Establish local food systems; Strengthen local control; Develop local knowledge; Work with nature.”9

THE MICAH NETWORK In September 2000, at the United Nations Millennium Summit, world leaders agreed to a set of time-bound and measurable goals and targets for combating hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women. Placed at the heart of the global agenda, they are now called the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Eight goals were agreed on by the 189 United Nations member states to try to achieve by the year 2015. The first of those eight goals is to “Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.” The two target areas that pertain to this goal are as follows: (a) Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day. (b) Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.10 The world is making progress toward the MDGs, but this progress is uneven and too slow. A large majority of nations will reach the MDGs only if they get substantial support, including advocacy, expertise, and resources, from outside their countries. The challenges for the global community, in both the industrial and developing world, are to mobilize financial support and political will, reengage governments, reorient development priorities and policies, build capacity, and reach out to partners in civil society and the private sector.11 Jeffrey Sachs, the main architect of the United Nations Millennium Project, says that a “global compact” must be established between rich and poor nations. He says, The poor countries must take ending poverty seriously, and will have to devote a greater share of their national resources to cutting poverty rather than to war, corruption, and political infighting. The rich countries will need to move beyond the platitudes of helping the poor, and follow through on their repeated promises to deliver more help.12

The Micah Challenge campaign is an international antipoverty campaign organized by the World Evangelical Alliance, which represents more than 3 million congregations around the world and the Micah Network, a coalition of more than 270 Christian relief and development groups. Chapters have formed in the Andean region, Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, India, and the United Kingdom. The purpose of this global campaign is to mobilize Christians against the extreme poverty that is pervasive in many countries. It aims to deepen Christian engagement with impoverished and marginalized communities, and to influence leaders of rich and poor nations to fulfill the promises they made to achieve the MDG of halving absolute global poverty by the year 2015. The goals of the Micah Challenge are summed up in its global petition, the Micah Call. They are twofold: (1) within the

56


church, to deepen connections to and solidarity with the poor, and (2) in society at large, to call on national and international decision-makers to fight poverty. It calls on Christians to lobby and advocate on behalf of and with the poor to increase and improve aid, drop the unfair debt burden on the poorest countries, and achieve a more just trading system.13 The lobbying and advocacy efforts are aimed at the national governments in the global north and south, as well as international organizations such as the World Bank and transnational corporations. On a national level in Peru, for example, that means encouraging the government not to concentrate all its resources on the middle class or the urban population of Lima, but to take real steps for economic development in rural communities, especially indigenous ones. In wealthier countries, likely actions include pushing for debt relief as well as more and bettertargeted foreign aid.14 Each country campaign is in charge of defining its own strategies for meeting the MDGs. In places like Malawi in southeastern Africa, the Micah Challenge has translated into initiatives such as the following: • The development of contextual stewardship and discipleship Bible study and sermon outline materials for churches to respond to the MDGs • District visitations of 367 church leaders to the collective congregations of more than 30,000 people to discuss the campaign • Production and presentation on national radio programs regarding the Micah Challenge to raise awareness, education, and advocacy • Training of twenty-four church leaders throughout Malawi in the utilization of a Constituency Development Fund tool to monitor the governance, institutions, processes, and promises of the national government15 The Micah Challenge has united groups that traditionally have not worked together. Ban Ki-Moon, the secretary general of the United Nations and one of the world’s most influential leaders, did the unimaginable in the fall of 2007. He was invited to speak at a dinner of the National Association of Evangelicals. He met with a diverse group of 400 evangelicals near Washington, D.C., and asked for help from the church. Speaking on behalf of 192 nations that have committed themselves to cutting global poverty in half by 2015, Ban told evangelicals, We cannot do it alone. We need good allies such as you. We need . . . the faith community to help be a voice to the voiceless people. Your engagement can push governments to push through on their commitments. Do not underestimate your power. With faith and the will, we can make a difference.16

This campaign, uniting two hundred million to four hundred million evangelical Christians around the world, has the potential to make a significant impact. It definitely should be noticed and appreciated as this group follows a prophetic call to bring the issues of poverty to political leaders of the world and seeks to influence them to achieve justice for the poor and rescue the needy.17 The success of the Micah Challenge in addressing critical food issues is still unknown, but the desire and commitment is a positive and laudable initiative.


57

THE GREEN BELT MOVEMENT For most of the world, the Green Belt Movement remained in relative obscurity outside of environmental circles until the year 2004 when its founder and director, Wangari Maathai, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Even though the organization had been in existence since 1977, it was not until 2004 that the general public noticed this grassroots environmental organization, which has assisted women and their families in planting more than forty million trees across Kenya. Since then, Wangari Maathai has been thrust onto the world stage in her call for people to recognize that for peace to exist resources need to be sustainably and equitably distributed. While much attention has deservedly been put on Wangari Maathai as an advocate of sustainable development, this chapter will focus on the positive aspects of the forty million trees and their role in alleviating hunger and creating healthy living environments. A task force formed by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations reported that trees have a potential to restore degraded ecosystems and to provide food, medicinal products, health care, and meaning to people around the world. Trees provide shade, protection from air pollution and wind, soil fertility, erosion control, and groundwater recharge.18 Forests also provide a safety net during times of environmental, political, or personal stress. During seasonal or emergency food shortages, the nuts, seeds, leaves, fruits, and tubers found in the forest can supplement a family’s diet. Forest food is often rich in protein, vitamins A and C, iron, niacin, and riboflavin.19 Medicinal forest plants and meat from wild animals are additional benefits that an emerging forest can offer a community. In many parts of Kenya, the demand for wood has surpassed local supply, and people cannot afford other forms of energy; thus, they face an increased vulnerability to illness and malnutrition from consuming (unboiled) microbiologically contaminated water and improperly cooked food. Poor women and children in rural communities often are those most affected by a scarcity of fuel wood. Many must walk long distances searching for fuel and firewood and hauling it home. These time-consuming tasks reduce the time and energy available for tending crops, cooking meals, or attending school. Therefore, access to a sustainable source of fuel-wood is fundamental not only for economic development, but also for health and well-being.20 The mitigation of climate change is an additional attribute of reforestation. In Kenya, two of Africa’s highest mountains (Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya) will lose their ice cover within twenty-five to fifty years, say scientists, if deforestation and industrial pollution are not stopped. Mount Kenya is one of the few places near the equator with permanent glaciers, and it has already lost 92 percent of them over the past 100 years. This is of major concern for Kenya because seven rivers in the country claim the ice cap as their headwaters. If these were to dry up, it would have devastating effects for the people of Kenya. The Green Belt Movement plans to plant 2 million trees in the coming 30 years over an area of 4,942 acres within the areas of Mount Kenya to mitigate the climate change of the area.21 Certainly the capacity for two million trees to offset carbon emissions are significant; however, it probably will not be sufficient to ward off the melting of the glaciers on Mount Kenya without additional conservation of carbon emissions in the rich countries. The Green Belt Movement cannot expect to do it on its own.

58


Much like Via Campesina, the Green Belt Movement puts emphasis on the issue of food security. Planting trees, as mentioned, plays a role in food security; but the movement also contributes by promoting sustainable farming methods and offering community education on nutrition and food production. Green Belt promoters give community training in organic farming, crop rotation, growing indigenous food crops, family gardening, and proper farming techniques.22 Their focus is always on self and community empowerment while instilling in people a love for environmental conservation.

SARSTOON-TEMASH INSTITUTE FOR INDIGENOUS MANAGEMENT In southern Belize, in the Toledo District of the country lies the SarstoonTemash National Park (STNP). It is Belize’s second-largest national park, encompassing an area of forty-one thousand acres of pristine forest and coastline along the southern border with Guatemala. The park includes 16 miles of Caribbean coastline and contains 14 ecosystem types, including undisturbed mangrove, the only comfre palm forest in Belize, and the only known lowland sphagnum moss bog in Central America. The national park was declared by the Belizean government in 1994 on lands traditionally used by the Garifuna and Maya communities who live in the area. What is now SATIIM began in 1997 as the Sarstoon-Temash National Park Steering Committee, which was formed after the indigenous communities around the park came together to stake a claim in the management of the land and natural resources in and around the park. SATIIM represents several Ketchi Maya and Garifuna indigenous communities that have traditionally inhabited the area surrounding the national park. These communities provide a buffer zone surrounding the park. Representatives from five of these communities sit on the board of directors of SATIIM.23 In 2003, the government of Belize signed an agreement with SATIIM giving it authority to comanage the park with the Department of Forestry, and for the last five years, SATIIM has been taking care of the management of the park. The idea of comanagement is based on the principle that those living closest to the land are best suited to care for it. The Maya and Garifuna communities living near the park possess an integral relationship with the land. Their very existence as farmers and fishermen is tied directly to the health of the environment. Their present and historical relationship to the land ensures their motivation and interest in the parks’ ecological health and vitality. The SATIIM Web site states their mission “to safeguard the ecological integrity of the Sarstoon-Temash region and employ its resources in an environmentally sound manner for the economic, social, cultural, and spiritual well-being of its indigenous people.”24 SATIIM’s conservation of the SNTP is important not only for its ecological significance as a sanctuary and biological corridor, but also for its economic, cultural, and spiritual importance to the indigenous Maya and Garifuna communities living around it. One of the key challenges that SATIIM has faced in recent years is the pressure by the government of Belize to offer logging concessions to multinational corporations who want to log in the region as well as pressure from U.S. oil companies who want to do exploratory drilling in the area and seismic testing in the national


59

park. The government has not shown the same level of resolve in protecting the human and biological diversity of the region as SATIIM has. In 2007, two of the indigenous communities won a landmark decision in the Belizean Supreme Court through the tireless efforts of SATIIM. On October 18, 2007, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Belize ruled that the indigenous villages of Santa Cruz and Conejo hold collective and individual rights to the resources and lands that they have occupied since before the Europeans ever arrived and that they have used according to Maya customary practices. This was a critically significant ruling because the communities did not have legal title to the land, even though they have been living on the land for many years under the auspices of Maya customary land rights, and because the government of Belize had issued or threatened to issue leases, grants, and concessions to these lands without respecting the traditional land tenure of the communities. This ruling states that the government of Belize will now recognize that the Maya people have rights to land and resources in southern Belize based on their longstanding use and occupancy, not based on whether the government had issued them a written lease. They now can continue to farm, hunt, and fish on their land without fear that it will be lost to outside resource extractors. Sovereignty to their land has now been won.25 It is the work of SATIIM that helped achieve this victory. SATIIM mounted a multifaceted advocacy campaign that involved raising awareness of the oil exploration issue through public outreach and education, coalition building, legal action, policy research, and analysis; mobilizing local supporters; lobbying government ministers; generating international political, technical, and financial support; and preparing to monitor and mitigate activities in the national park if oil exploration went ahead. They began the campaign with ambitious objectives—to halt or mitigate the impacts of resource extraction in the STNP and to incorporate biodiversity conservation and indigenous community concerns into Belize’s relevant policies and regulations. Thanks to funding from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Summit Foundation, Green Grants, Conservation International, and the Oak Foundation, SATIIM has been able to carry out their advocacy activities that support these objectives in a timely and effective way.

WASTEPICKERS OF PUNE, INDIA In the city of Pune, India, a unique university is devoted to the “Empowerment of Women through Education.” It is called the Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey Women’s University (SNDTWU or SNDT). It was convened in 1916 by social reformer Bharat Ratna Maharshi Karve and philanthropist Sir Vithaldas Thackersey, both of whom had radical visions, for their times, of offering women the same education advantages that were then the exclusive privilege of men. Today, the university has expanded to more than seventy thousand students spread over many states in India. In 1968, the SNDT College of Home Science was founded under the motto “An Enlightened Woman Is a Source of Infinite Strength.” The university practices this motto in many ways.26 One of these ways is through a pilot project of training for wastepickers in Pune that was coordinated in 2007 by Dr. Gita Sundaresh, a faculty member at SNDT College of Home Science in the department of Family Resource Management. It is a project that demonstrates the objectives of the university by providing

60


higher education to women through formal and nonformal means. It has been effective at inculcating a positive self-concept among the students, raising awareness of women’s issues and rights, and instilling a sense of human values and social responsibility. Pune is a city of 3.1 million people in the state of Maharashtra; 40 percent of the city dwellers live in slum conditions. The rapid growth of the city and increased consumption levels of its residents have led to a huge problem of solid waste management to the tune of more than one thousand tons daily. Unfortunately, the waste is not managed in a scientific and sanitary method. It is disposed of in open pits and not confined to specific landfill sites. These open-pit sites attract some of the most desperate members of Indian society belonging to the lowest, most depressed social groups in the country. They are the wastepickers, who sift through the garbage looking for recyclable items that they sell for a few pennies to recycling brokers for their livelihood. These wastepickers are mainly women and children from the marginalized sections of the society, who search for scrap paper, metal, glass, and plastics. It is a morbid existence for these women who suffer from unhealthy working conditions, harassment by police, indignity of existence, exploitation, and the poor quality of scrap collected.27 In 1990 SNDT’s Continuing and Adult Education Department took notice of the plight of these workers while implementing the National Adult Education Program. The initiators of the program (Poornima Chikramane, Laxmi Narayan, and Shabana Diler) felt strongly motivated to fulfill the mandate of the university to even this most marginalized group of women. They realized that by having the households segregate the recyclable items at the source rather than at the landfill they could create better health conditions for the wastepickers, who could collect the segregated waste yielding better-quality scrap with higher monetary returns, and allow education time for the wastepickers. Wastepickers, however, were not legally recognized as municipal workers and, therefore, not entitled to worker privileges, even though they actually were doing the recycling for the city. Organizers from the SNDT Women’s University were instrumental in arranging public rallies that resulted in the formation of a Wastepickers’ Association called the Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat, literally meaning an association of workers of paper (Kagad), glass (Kach), and metal (Patra) (KKPKP). The trade union has around 7,500 members, making it one of the biggest wastepickers’ unions in India. It has a governing structure, registered membership, and photo-identification cards for each wastepicker. This structure finally gave them legal worker status and exemption from police harassment, not to mention a great deal of personal dignity. The Wastepickers’ Association then negotiated with the Pune Municipal Authorities to begin picking up waste directly from individual houses so that they would not have to rummage through the garbage pits. Buckets were distributed to residential homes, one to collect recyclable items and another to collect wet waste (food scraps). This doorstep method of collecting waste reduced the collection by civic authorities and facilitated the segregation of waste and its management. This method provided better working conditions for the women, enabled them to collect a higher percent of clean recyclables, and provided them dignity and freedom from social exploitation. These women were able to get a better price from the recycling brokers because they collected better-quality waste.


61

The fact that the workers were then recognized as legitimate civil workers entitled them to get free education for their children, provided them with access to medical insurance and municipal food rations, and helped them form credit cooperatives. This latter benefit freed them from their dependence on money lenders who would often charge interest rates of 60 percent per year. Their work hours have now gone down, allowing them time to attend basic literacy classes. These benefits are directly attributable to an increase in the income of the wastepickers. They are getting higher prices now from the brokers because of the high quality of the recyclable scrap that they are now collecting. They also charge a nominal fee to each household for picking up the waste at the doorstep. The residents segregate garbage into dry and wet and put it in different colored bins. The wastepickers then collect the garbage, dump the wet garbage in the bins, and take the dry garbage. The wet waste that they collect is deposited in large concrete and metal receptacles that are strategically placed throughout the city. In some colonies, the wet waste is collected in pits for vermi-composting, where it biodegrades after a period of time. The fertile compost is then sold to the public for those who want to put it on their fruit and vegetable gardens. This is an additional source of income for the wastepickers, something they did not have before the formation of the association.28 The project has created a great example of sustainable development in action. More material is now being recycled and compost fertilizer is available to city residents, creating environmental benefits. Additionally, the quality of life is now much better for the women wastepickers and their families. Although tension still exists between the wastepickers and the Pune Municipal Corporation, which wants to mechanize all recycling efforts, the positive gains are indisputable. Mangal Gaikwad, a wastepicker by profession, was quoted as saying in the local newspaper, Today I earn Rs. 3,000 [US$60] from doorstep collection and the sale of scrap. Residents who used to frown at me while I was at the garbage bin now know me by my name and greet me. One of them even gave me a second-hand bicycle, which I now ride to work.29

COMMUNITY SAVINGS PROGRAMS IN BANGLADESH The Grameen Bank in Bangladesh has received worldwide attention as the premier model of a successful village-level microcredit program. However, another model in the country has received sparse publicity but has proven to be even more transformational than the Grameen Bank. In Bangladesh, a consortium called “The Learning Circle” includes twelve development organizations. Besides having development programs in the standard areas of literacy training, agricultural assistance, and health care, these organizations have developed unique community savings groups that have truly transformed the lives of thousands of Bangladeshi families. One of these organizations is the PARI Development Trust, which works in rural Bangladesh. The methodology that they use is to first form a primary group composed of fifteen to twenty community members. Separate groups for men and women address the strong cultural morays against unfamiliar men and women working together. Each group has an executive committee of three to five members. Additionally, five subcommittees include community initiatives in income

62


generation, justice and rights, adolescent development, functional education, and community-based primary health care. The second tier of the community structure is the Peoples’ Institutions (PI). They are formed by approximately ten to fifteen primary groups. At this level, they include a mixed group of women and men. Each primary group elects one or two representatives to serve on the PI. PARI has 180 primary groups in the district of Mymensing, with 3,600 total participants. Forty percent of the participants in the program have increased their family income levels by more than 10 percent in the past year. This increased income allows families to meet their essential daily needs, including eating three meals a day. The goal of the microenterprise program is to achieve the following: • • • • •

Create funds through regular savings Invest the funds in community income-generating projects Create permanent employment opportunities Properly monitor the funds Utilize the funds and local resources to effectively bring financial solvency and positive changes to families as well as in society

Primary groups are motivated to save a small amount of money every week. The groups are trained by PARI staff in effective financial management and recordkeeping. They receive training in how to open bank accounts, do basic financial audits, and invest their funds in profitable local businesses.30 Members of the primary group who want to start a business can request a loan from the primary group funds at reasonable interest rates. They are accountable to their fellow group members to pay the loan back on time. The funds are replenished by the continuous savings of the members as well as the accrued interest from the rotating loan fund. Each primary group then contributes a portion of their funds to the PI. The PI also establishes a rotating loan fund, which gives out loans to members who request larger loans. This methodology follows the line of a community credit union in which the poor, who might not be able to acquire a standard bank loan, now have access to a line of credit from their group. The groups manage their own funds and are the sole contributors to the fund. Most participants can contribute only a few cents per week to the fund, but now the entire program has more than $138,000 in available loan funds.31 In 2002, Faterna began attending the weekly meeting of one of the primary group meetings that started up in her village. She initially contributed US$.07 a week to the group, even though it was financially difficult. After attending a series of training workshops on literacy and money management, she was able to take out a small loan of US$73 to start raising poultry and ducklings, maintaining a fishpond, and cultivating a kitchen garden. Before being group members, her family monthly income was only US$10 per month. Now it has grown to US$87 per month from their many projects. Her personal savings at the group is US$32 and total group savings is US$470 as of December 2006.32 The community savings program of PARI has transformed the lives of many families in Bangladesh by building their personal and community assets. It differs markedly from the Grameen Bank in that community members maintain the accounting and decide themselves what microenterprise projects they choose to


63

invest in. It is transformational in creating businesses, jobs, and a security net for the poor in these communities. It is unique in that it is based on savings from the community and does not receive outside funding except for the training they receive from PARI. Sustainable community development, after all, is based on the development of community ownership among community members.

CONCLUSION The common theme that transects all of the examples cited in this chapter is that they are movements started from below. That is, they are not government initiatives, or United Nations initiatives, or even global philanthropic initiatives. They are movements of those who are marginalized, poor, and disenfranchised. They are people who know what they need for their communities and have designed a strategy to achieve it. They are successful movements that have been able to leverage their success to gain support and attention. The global north can learn from its friends in the global south regarding critical food issues. Access to food is an essential requirement for human survival, and if equity is one of our core values, supplies are sufficient for all. The examples cited in this chapter demonstrate in different ways how people are achieving food security by accessing the necessary land, finances, and social capital to grow and purchase their own food.

NOTES 1. Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 7. 2. Amy Cassara, “The Importance of Tenure in Sustainable Development,” World Resources Institute (June 2007), http://earthtrends.wri.org/updates/node/212 (accessed June 12, 2008). 3. Klaus Deininger et al., “Land Policy to Facilitate Growth and Poverty Reduction,” Land Reform: Land Settlement and Cooperatives: FAO Special Edition (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2003), 5; William Van Lopik, “The Response of U.S.-Based Non-Governmental Development Organizations to Inequitable Land Tenure in Latin America” (PhD dissertation, Michigan State University, 2002), 147. 4. Institute for Food and Development Policy, “Global Small-Scale Farmers’ Movement Developing New Trade Regimes,” Food First News & Views 28, no. 97 (Spring/ Summer 2000): 2. 5. Annette Aurelie Desmarais, “United in the Via Campesina,” Food First Backgrounder (Fall 2005): 2. 6. Peter Rosset, “La Hora de La Via Campesina,” La Jornada 24, no. 8521 (May 9, 2008): 8. 7. United Nations, “United Nations Declaration of Human Rights” (1948), http:// www.un.org/Overview/rights.html (accessed June 2, 2008). 8. La Via Campesina, “What Is La Via Campesina?” http://www.viacampesina. org/main_en/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=27&Itemid=44 (accessed May 16, 2008). 9. Institute for Food and Development Policy, “Food Sovereignty and Agroecology: Growing Movements for Constructive Resistance,” Food First News and Views (Winter 2007), http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/1809.

64


10. United Nations Millennium Project, Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals, report to the UN Secretary General (London: Earthscan, 2005), http://www.unmillenniumproject.org (accessed May 16, 2008). 11. United Nations, “The Millennium Development Goals and the United Nations Role” (2002), http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/MDGs-FACTSHEET1.pdf. 12. Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty (New York: Penguin Group Inc, 2005), 266. 13. Lawrence Temfwe, “Micah Challenge,” Sojourners Magazine, July 2005, 23–24. 14. Elizabeth Palmberg, “What’s Right With This Picture?” Sojourners Magazine, March 2005, 9. 15. Micah Challenge Malawi, “Strategic Areas of Focus,” http://www.micahchallenge. org/uploaded_docs/Tell%20it/MC_Malawi_update_June_2008.pdf (accessed June 15, 2008). 16. Dana Milbank, “Guess Who Came to the Evangelicals’ Dinner,” Washington Post, October 12, 2007, A02. 17. Jim Wallis, God’s Politics (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005), 204. 18. International Union of Forest Research Organizations Task Force (2007–2011), “Forests and Human Health,” http://www.iufro.org/download/file/1879/3770/tf-terms-ofreference.doc (accessed June 18, 2008). 19. Carol Pierce Colfer, Douglas Sheil, and Misa Kishi, “Forests and Human Health: Assessing the Evidence” (Occasional Paper No. 45, Center for International Forestry Research, CIFOR, Indonesia, 2006), 13, 25. 20. Anthony McMichael, Simon Hales, and Carlos Corvalan, Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Health Synthesis (Geneva: World Health Organization Press, 2005), 3. 21. Malkhadir Muhumed, “Group Warns That Mountains Will Lose Ice Caps,” CBS News, Sci-Tech, October 12, 2006, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/12/ap/tech/ mainD8KN9DQ80.shtml (accessed May 16, 2008). 22. Wangari Maathai, The Greenbelt Movement (New York: Lantern Books, 2006), 42–46. 23. Author unknown, “I-A Commission says GOB must protect indigenous people of Toledo,” The Reporter, January 5, 2007, http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14293. 24. SATIIM (Sarstoon-Temash Institute for Indigenous Management), http://www. satiim.org.bz/index.php?section=2 (accessed May 27, 3008). 25. Legal Proceedings of the Supreme Court of Belize, October 18, 2007, Claim Nos. 171 and 172, 2007. 26. SNDT College of Home Science, “About Us,” http://www.sndthsc.com/about% 20us.htm (accessed June 28, 2008). 27. Gita Sundaresh, “Multi-focal Dimensions of Urban Domestic Solid Waste Management (Pune City)” (paper presented at the College of Menominee Nation, Keshena, WI, October 25–26, 2007). 28. Rahul Chandawarkar, “Making It Your Culture,” The Times of India, March 15, 2002, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3895177.cms. 29. Author unknown, “Pune Union Helps Ragpickers Build Lives—Scrap by Scrap,” The Times of India, October 31, 2007, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/ 2504102.cms. 30. Kohima Daring, Christian Reformed World Relief Committee country consultant in Bangladesh, e-mail message to author, August 5, 2008. 31. Susan Van Lopik, Delta Team Leader for the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, interview with the author, August 6, 2008. 32. Kohima Daring, “Empowerment Blossoms in the ‘Ghardaraj’ (Gardenia) Group,” The Learning Circle, October 4, 2007, 3.


65

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Lappe, Frances Moore, Joseph Collins, Peter Rosset, and Luis Esparza, World Hunger: Twelve Myths. New York: Grove Press, 1998. Maathai, Wangari. Unbowed: A Memoir. New York: Vintage Books, 2007.

Web Sites Sharing Indigenous Wisdom: An International Dialogue on Sustainable Development Conference, http://www.sharingindigenouswisdom.org/. Food First, Institute for Food & Development Policy, http://www.foodfirst.org/. The Micah Network, http://www.micahnetwork.org/. World Bank, Social Capital, http://go.worldbank.org/VEN7OUW280. Grameen Bank, http://www.grameen-info.org/.


5 Food and Democracy Larry Smith How can you be expected to govern a country that has 246 kinds of cheese? —Charles de Gaulle

Democracy shares biological and cultural roots with concern for collective human well-being, grounded in accessing and sharing food. Human roots in foraging likely shaped our genetic predispositions in ways that complicate food democracy. That is, beyond simply responding to preferences, general equity in access to food among many preagrarian cultures, and clear domination of poorly nourished masses by a few better-fed elites in many agrarian cultures, the parameters of food democracy are grounded in genetic predilection for culturally supported, varied and nutrient-rich diets, and moral interaction.1 Britain, China, India, and North Africa all provide early written legacy of food-related proto-democratic sentiments.2 Such food-related democratic attitudes also blossomed in eighteenth-century France based, in part, on the physiocratic understanding that agriculture was the only independently and naturally productive cultural activity. The economic theorists known as physiocrats envisioned the possibility of positive self-organizing collaboration among three freely interacting social groups: farmers (for them, the only net producers), landowners, and artisans.3 Such ideas, summarized as laissez faire (let them alone), became the foundation of the “self-evident” truth of collective benefit as a result of independent “pursuit of liberty” that inspired the American Revolution. Many of the European American founders were influenced by these ideas through their contact with France and, some argue, indigenous North American collaborative management.4 The physiocrats’ agrarian productivity and freedom-grounded thought inspired some colonial American rebels as they embarked on what became modern political democracy. Subsequently, the virtue of mutually reinforcing self-interested decision-making, borrowed from the physiocrats, was reshaped by British emphasis on industry into the foundation of the classical school of economics with Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and

68


Causes of the Wealth of Nations as its seminal text. Smith’s argument, related to food democracy, is best summarized in this famous passage: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.5

A long century later corporate interests outmaneuvered both the political and the cultural meanings and experience of democracy, as understood by Adam Smith and by many of the American founders, particularly Thomas Jefferson.6 The principal tool of corporate domination remains the 1886 reinterpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, promulgated to clarify the full legal personhood of just-freed slaves, to the legal “interpretation”7 that corporations deserve the same legal status as individual persons. Additional corporate legal privileges added later include the priority of shareholder monetary considerations, the equation of purchased political communication with individual political speech, and pushing the costs of corporate actions onto others.8 These constitutional interpretations have dominated food politics for the past century and a quarter,9 while both the quantity of food produced and the human population have increased astonishingly under what Lang and Heasman call the productionist food paradigm.10 But, recent assessment suggests that in the process human and planetary ecosystem health have been pushed to near failure.11

RECENT PERSPECTIVES Amartya Sen gave us history’s most robust empirical statement linking food and democracy with his observation that cultures with democracies supported by free and pubic sharing of information do not experience famine.12 Sen observed the relationship between democracy and food security operating through a free press, but recently, the even less controllable Internet has sometimes moderated abusive attempts at political control.13 However, some look anxiously at the world’s food future and wonder about the durability of Sen’s observation. In any event, the story of how humanity first created and later overcame famine, and today paradoxically stands challenged by both excess and inadequate nutrition, teaches much about the connections between food and democracy.14 Food and democracy, and her muse freedom, wend complexly through all human experience. Curiosity and freedom encourage exploration of different foods and their production and preparation. But freedom also reduces biological diversity and planetary productivity, as with overharvesting and desertification, and destroys some specific food sources, such as easy-to-hunt species, overproduction in fragile environments, heirloom plant and animal varieties overshadowed by “modern” not-quite-equivalents, and heritage foods and food skills crowded out by “easy” or “tasty” market-based alternatives and, with them, both cultural awareness and nutritionally critical dietary diversity. Restrictions on and excesses of freedom, many grounded in individual-, cultural-, policy-, and marketing-driven choices,

Food and Democracy

69

can be problems. Such choices often express themselves in poor nutrition.15 Examples include the following: • • • • •

Soft drinks and caffeinated beverages Most candy and desserts Nearly all “fast” and processed “convenience” foods Excessive salt in the American diet16 Low-income-driven choice of energy-dense foods made artificially inexpensive by industrial-agriculture-favoring policy choices17 • Widespread hunger and forced migration, as when overly intensive land use or climate change or both degrade productivity • Diet-related diseases, like some cancers and circulatory problems, diabetes, fetal alcohol and other nutritional syndromes, hypertension, obesity, and scurvy Given our appetites for animal fats and sweets, probably inherited from our forager predecessors,18 food democracy must attend to both access and restraint, not just to the provision of whatever foods seem abundant, appealing, convenient, or inexpensive. Lang calls this concern choice editing in relation to democratic food policy.19 From this perspective, democracy requires not only the freedom to preserve and create food choices, but also to limit them.

DEMOCRACY Then, what, after all, is democracy? Both Lincoln’s hopeful “A government of, by, and for the people”20 and Churchill’s cynical “The worst of all political systems except for all those others that have been tried”21 lack operational detail, while the revolutionary sentiment that “the government is best which governs least”22 reveals physiocratic laissez-faire commitments. De Gaulle’s question, “How can you be expected to govern a country that has 246 kinds of cheese?” suggests conflict between authority and independent food artistry, the most universally practiced and widely accessible productive activity and, perhaps, the ultimate manifestation of nascent economic democracy. In On Democracy Robert Dahl, the virtual dean of democratic theorists, identifies five prerequisites for people in democratic “state” governments: • • • • •

Effective participation Equality in voting Gaining enlightened understanding Exercising final control over the agenda Inclusion of adults

He also suggests that pursuit of these ideals yields ten desirable consequences: • Avoiding tyranny • Essential rights • General freedom

70


• • • • • • •

Self-determination Moral autonomy Human development Protecting essential personal interests Political equality Peace-seeking Prosperity

Dahl emphasizes that his lists of democratic prerequisites and consequences are never-completely-realized ideals for governments and have never-fully-experienced consequences. Being state focused, some of these prerequisites are not directly applicable to all food issues.23 Still, we can focus Dahl’s list of prerequisites on food democracy as follows: • Access to food (an individual biological necessity) • Choice among foods (a cultural and, for some, genetic24 necessity) • Access to quality information and meaningful support, including purchasing power, for learning and participating focused on nutrition, health, and food selection and preparation (a general health and social efficiency necessity) These prerequisites are used below to assess some food democracy-related activities that are a subset of a larger activity web sometimes collectively referenced as alternative food networks.25

CASE STUDIES Food Policy Councils World Hunger Year’s (WHY) overview of food policy councils celebrates their growth and expansion since their start in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1982. It emphasizes that “Food policy councils respond to a simple question. If food is a basic human need—on par with water, housing, and health services—why don’t state and local governments have a Department of Food?” WHY also emphasizes that [N]o U.S. city, state, or county has a Department of Food, and food issues continue to be embedded throughout various local, state, and federal government agencies. Typically, a food policy council at the city or county level does not fully realize the vision of a Department of Food, as its resources and powers are usually quite limited.26

Toronto has one of the more active and visible food policy councils. In 1991 the City of Toronto Public Health created the Toronto Food Policy Council (TFPC). The TFPC partners with business and community groups to promote food security through food system awareness, equitable food access, nutrition, community development, and environmental health. The TFPC operates as a modestly funded subcommittee of the Toronto Board of Health. Members include city councilors and volunteer representatives from consumer, business, farm, labor, multicultural, antihunger advocacy, faith, and community development groups. TFPC has

Food and Democracy

71

brought food security and food policy development to Toronto’s municipal agenda by seeking to bridge the gap between producers and consumers.27 The TFPC recognized that durable, local solutions require more than a global market and its “mind-numbing notions of food as commodity, people as consumers, and society as marketplace. Instead advocates need to cultivate food citizenship and associated rights and responsibilities.”28 The TFPC focuses on an integrated and selfreinforcing program to encourage food democracy by offering information and experience-rich alternatives to conventional approaches. For example, rather than relying on the traditional charity approach their Field to Table program (one of hundreds of community food projects) sells food produced by area farmers at wholesale prices to organized groups of primarily low-income people, and trains these groups in food-related skills . . . lost with the food industry’s emphasis on convenience and . . . consequent “de-skilling” of consumers.29

Most documentation on TFPC activities is found in reports from the late 1990s and early 2000s celebrating the first 10 years of experience. Although activity continues, it seems likely that something like policy or volunteer fatigue comparable to WHY’s critique presented above and discussed below for community gardening has reduced TFPC enthusiasm and activity expansion. Continuing activity by other interests and governments inspired by the pioneering work of early food policy councils include the 2002 formation of the Chicago Food Policy Advisory Council, which, as its title suggests, chooses to operate “outside of formal city structures” and is thus also vulnerable to volunteer fatigue. In his glowing introduction to this report, Mark Winne of the Community Food Security Coalition, and perhaps the most visible and vocal of the food policy council advocates, praises the CFPAC for working for several years to bring together those neighborhood and organization voices that cry out for a just and sustainable food system. They have worked closely with the City of Chicago officials to identify opportunities within city government to . . . push the food system in the right direction . . . public and private sectors are working and planning for access to healthy food for all, see food as a critical part of a sustainable environment, and recognize that food is a major driver in the region’s economic engine.30

Still, statements from the body of the report like “There was concern if the council was run and managed by the city, participants would lose their ability to set the agenda and priorities for the council” suggest that a deep tension exists between government and people’s perceptions of their own interests. Clearly, food is at the epicenter of an enduring contest between human interests and government perspectives reflected in durable policy.31 The London Food Board, established in 2004, and the national U.K. Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs Council of Food Policy Advisors (CFPA), established in October–December 2008, are other efforts in the evolution of urban and national food policy that likely took cues from the TFPC among other projects. The London Food Board seeks “to develop activities and policies which support a sustainable food system in the capital.”32 It relies on activity and individual influence of its twenty-five Food Board members, to encourage and secure the delivery of healthy and sustainable food for London. The London Development

72


Authority (LDA), in partnership with Go London, provides Secretariat support, and the LDA and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) provide operational funding to the London Food Board.33 The Defra CFPA is the most hopeful new hybrid in the evolving development of food policy. It is new and untested, but its formative documents and membership are impressive, as is its home in a national department with food in its title.34 The press release announcing the intent to create the department says that it will advise the government on food affordability, security of supply, and the environmental impact of food production, and will contribute to a policy for food security and supply, which is expected to be published within a year. To date, fourteen members of the still-expanding council advisory team with appropriately diverse food system experience have been appointed.35 The Defra CFPA is charged with providing advice on the following: • Achieve sustainable production, distribution, and consumption of food, ensuring that it is available and affordable for all sectors of society • Consider the effects of global trends on the above • Advise the secretary of state on how to achieve the four objectives (economics and equity, health, safety, and environment) for food policy set out in the Strategy Unit’s report Food Matters: Towards a Strategy for the 21st Century • Make practical policy recommendations One worrisome detail of the initial organization is that “The role is unpaid, but Defra will reimburse travel and associated expenses.” This, of course, means the members are volunteers who must secure their livelihood elsewhere and, though officially “appointed . . . in a personal capacity, not as representatives of any sector, company, or organization” they will face problems supporting recommendations that may challenge interests within the food chain that support them. That concern would be moderated, however, if the council were to move the discussion toward what Lang and Heasman call evidence-based policy and away from the historic interest-based approach.36 Fortunately, “[t]he Council will be established for two years in the first instance, with a review after 18 months. If, when the Council is reviewed, it is decided that a more permanent body is required, a formal appointments process will be followed.”37 Ideally, these recommendations will include the possibility that representatives of critical food chain interests who lack economic security can serve in a paid capacity. Just as the U.S. political response to climate change has grown primarily from city initiatives, the two newest major urban models of democratic action, which are now followed by a new British national model, may foretell a food policy future—like that called for by WHY, in which departments of food exist at all levels of government.38 While it is too soon to assess the outcome of these initiatives, it not too soon to suggest that national governments everywhere, including and especially the new U.S. administration, consider similar initiatives. Food Sovereignty and Security: Earth Democracy “Earth Democracy is both an ancient worldview and an emergent political movement for peace, justice, and sustainability. Earth Democracy connects the

Food and Democracy

73

particular to the universal, the diverse to the common, and the local to the global.”39 With these words, the international human rights activist Vandana Shiva adopts the ancient worldview and promotes the emergent Earth Democracy movement. Shiva holds a doctorate in physics with an emphasis on quantum mechanics, but her career focuses more on India-grounded global social mobilization. Still, Shiva never forgets basic physical realities underpinning natural productivity. Food democracy, with a special focus on cultural rights and genetics especially through seed saving, are at the core of her work, including an emphasis on Earth Democracy and a related partnership with the Slow Food movement called Terra Madre. All of Shiva’s work and especially Earth Democracy reflects a deep understanding of the complex web of life and planetary potential, but much of it grows from concern for inalienable rights of farmers to the products of their cultural knowledge, especially as expressed in seed saving. Earth Democracy is a formidable opponent of corporatization of seed and knowledge with a special emphasis on local food production capability. Shiva explains both the problems and the needed response as follows: The globalized food system . . . is creating a fourfold crisis. The first is the crisis of non-sustainability because of overexploitation of soil and water, destruction of biodiversity, and the spread of toxic pollution from pesticides and chemical fertilizers. The second is the crisis faced by small farmers and producers. The third is the crisis of hunger, with a billion people denied their rightful share of the earth’s produce. The fourth is the obesity crisis, of which one billion people are victims. This crisis is simultaneously ecological, economic, cultural, and political.40

Her recommendation in response to the crisis is democracy. Food safety and food security are a democratic challenge for North and South, for rich and poor, for producers and consumers. The right to safe, good, and adequate food is a universal human right and the basis of food democracy. No society can call itself free if it operates in violation of food democracy. . . .41 By taking back control over our food systems, we can produce more food while using fewer resources, improve farmers’ incomes and strengthen their livelihoods, while solving the problem of hunger and obesity. The future is not certain, but this much is, a better agriculture is possible than the one corporations offer.42

Earth Democracy and Terra Madre link ancient wisdoms, resistance to corporate domination grounded in analytical comparisons with the historic enclosure processes that privatized collective resources, and contemporary physics-grounded problems. According to Philpott, “Shiva pines for a ‘carbon-rich’ future—one in which agriculture systematically builds organic matter into the soil, capturing it from the atmosphere.”43 That future would enrich individual, cultural, and ecosystem productivity, especially regarding access to food, and democracy at every level. Alternative Food Networks Alternative food networks (AFNs) are webs of activity, including community gardens, urban agriculture, food cooperatives, farmers markets, community-supported agriculture (CSA), activist restaurants, and artisan agriculturalists and related

74


activities with many labels.44 Space allows for only limited discussion of a few such activities, all of which seek to shorten food supply chains and personalize food interactions in full accord with the three food-democracy prerequisites identified above and in direct contrast to industrial agriculture’s impersonal, opaque, and often deceptive food system.45 A profound metaphor for AFNs is the 1960s Japanese housewives’ slogan Teikei usually translated as “food with a farmer’s face,” which, in conjunction with older holistic European influences,46 spawned CSA.47 AFNs promote short, personalized, information-rich food supply chains. Like certain CSAs that contribute surpluses to food banks or encourage members to subsidize “shares” for low-income members, some AFNs champion effective food policy and food security as a fundamental human right.48 By facilitating collaboration among ordinary people in the production or supply chain of their own food, grassroots food activists enact the ultimate manifestation and the historically oldest version of food democracy. For example, collaborative gardening is surely a primary root of both agriculture and cities. Also, direct provisioning, including food service and the sharing of information and awareness that comes with it, must have accompanied trade routes throughout history. Furthermore, as is symbolized by both the Great Depression’s unemployed apple peddlers and contemporary street food vendors everywhere, when other economic options fade, people still need to eat, and nearly anyone can earn at least something by helping to feed them. Community gardens and urban agriculture are obvious roots of urban population aggregation. Immediate local food production was essential to precommodity, transport-based, urban food systems, and it remains significant today, especially to the urban poor and for food diversity. In many places significant shares of often unique foods are produced within or in proximity to cities.49 Milwaukee community gardener and inner-city activist Will Allen just won a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship for his exceptional urban agriculture and inner-city cultural transformation program called Growing Power.50 Community gardens exist in nearly every city. A recent study of New York community gardens—the U.S. city with the most community gardens (nearly 2,000 in 1996, although it is tied for seventh place on a per capita basis)51—finds that they increase neighboring property values.52 Another study confirms that community gardeners consume more fresh fruits and vegetables.53 And recent and rapidly growing scholarship documents the nutritional superiority of fresh, diverse, naturally grown produce compared with homogeneous industrial alternatives.54 But scholarship on community gardening is thin. Laura Lawson’s 2005 City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardening in America provides a welcome academic perspective; however, as she acknowledges, it cannot fully make up for limited credible primary sources.55 Although Lawson recognizes the possibility of a deeper history to community gardening,56 she mentions only postcontact North American experience and focuses on policy experience since 1890 and thus fails to consider the full roots of collective gardening that not only predate but, quite literally, fed urbanization itself. The thesis of this chapter is that food and democracy share deep, common, and widely shared roots, grounded in the garden, hearth, and food culture. Perhaps consideration of deeper roots could resolve the question of why interest in community gardens, though ever present and multifaceted, never gained the traction granted other public land uses like parks and playgrounds during the last century.

Food and Democracy

75

At least since fossil-fueled hauling replaced animal-powered cartage it has been common to think of agriculture, beyond gardening, as something that happens, or should happen, in “the country.” But, in fact, much food is produced in or near most cities. Estimates of urban and peri-urban agriculture’s (UPA) share of food consumed in the same city range from around 10 percent or so to upward of 50 percent. For reasons similar to those offered to explain urban gardening’s lack of staying power during the last century in America, urban leaders have been uncomfortable embracing in-city agriculture. Thus, while UPA is important for food, employment, and learning, especially for the poor, as well as for enhancing public support for both UPA and sustainable communities generally, scholarship to analyze it and policy to develop it have been sporadic, even in the global south (except in isolated contexts like Cuba).57 Moreover, human-animal disease exchange and coevolution, recently associated with the bird flu, increase policy concerns about promoting some historically important forms of urban agriculture. These concerns are raised despite the growing awareness of the widespread, long-standing, and continuing significance of those activities for food security, diet quality, and employment for the poor.58 A recent analysis of the decline in UPA as Japan urbanized and struggled with associated planning and zoning conflicts, and of its current efforts to increase UPA activity, expresses the hope that Japan’s experience may provide useful insights to other urbanizing areas.59 Thus, while many voices speak for the employment, food security, health, social cohesion, aesthetic, therapeutic, transport, and other virtues of UPA,60 not even some of the most effectively planned cities are able to durably encourage it. Still, despite fundamental concerns like public health and safety and more superficial ones like “modern urban image,” interest in UPA is growing and is increasingly fueled by concern for the global environmental consequences of historically conventional views of the “appropriate” division of economic activity between city and country in addition to food security, health, and other social concerns.61 Interest in UPA is at an all-time high among policy, philanthropic, and activist realms. The evolving concern for the global environmental consequences of the past century because of fossil fuel overindulgence,62 now added to the health, food security, and broad social benefits of UPA, can only grow and perhaps bloom into a cornerstone of food democracy in the increasingly urban twenty-first century. Activist Restaurants Virtually every community of significant size enjoys one or often several activist restaurants. The activism may start from a cultural, including whole or wholesome food, or ethnic orientation but ever more frequently it also includes locally produced and often “organic” food. Perhaps the most famous such local-productionoriented restaurant is Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California.63 But in the spirit of the wide and rapid spread of this movement, let’s focus on the White Dog Cafe in Philadelphia. The White Dog Cafe started in 1983 as an informal coffee and muffin shop on the first floor of Judy Wicks’s house. Dishes were washed in the corner of the dining room, and the restroom was upstairs in her home. The business took off, and Wicks added a kitchen in the basement and used space from the adjacent brownstone.

76


Today, the White Dog Cafe has a national reputation for its award-winning fare and leadership in the local-food movement, and Wicks has been named one of Inc. magazine’s favorite businesswomen, because she put into place “more progressive business practices per square foot than any other entrepreneur.” White Dog Cafe follows a four-part mission of serving customers, community, employees, and the natural environment; and uses humanely sourced meat and poultry, seafood from sustainable fisheries, and organic produce in season from local family farms. The Cafe has created numerous educational and community-building programs focused on economic and social justice, environmental protection, peace and nonviolence, drug policy reform, and community arts. Through “Table for Six Billion, Please!” the international “sister restaurant” project started in 1986, the Cafe has organized trips to Nicaragua, Cuba, Mexico, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Vietnam, Israel, and Palestine to understand the effects of U.S. agrifood and other policy. A local sister restaurant program promotes minority-owned restaurants in Philadelphia and Camden, Pennsylvania. The White Dog mentoring program began in 1992 to introduce inner-city high school students to the restaurant business through internships at the Cafe. An adjacent gift store, founded in 1989, features local and fair trade crafts. White Dog Enterprises employs more than 100 people and grosses approximately $5 million annually, demonstrating the concept of “doing well by doing good.”64 Artisan Agriculture As a cultural medium, from its roots agriculture frequently becomes a multidimensional art form in many realms. While some of these realms overlap with some of the collaboratively democratic modes discussed above, individual or family farms or food processors focused on producing distinctive high-quality foods, often with no explicit connection to any other cultural movement or phenomenon, abound. These food producers and processors often seek ways to distinguish their product and are symbolized by de Gaulle’s quote that is the epigraph to this chapter. From rich dark-yolked eggs from genuinely free-range poultry; lean grass-fed meats from many specialty breeds and even species and sometimes overfed extravagances from goose livers to beer-fed beef; to every imaginable kind of cheese, beer, and wine; to specialty confections and pickled-everything, food artistry is everywhere. Outstanding forms of this expressive medium can provide enough market advantage to support hard-to-govern independent agriculturalists of the sort that Jefferson imagined would give a backbone to democracy and that de Gaulle laments. Joel Salatin and his Polyface Farm, which was given a vast boost in public attention by Michael Pollan’s bestselling The Omnivore’s Dilemma, exemplify this yeoman agricultural art form.65 Unlike industrial agriculture, whether organic or not, Salatin uses biology and multispecies interactions, rather than raw fossilfueled power and industrial fertilizers, to achieve astounding productivity and profitability. Salatin considers himself a “grass farmer.” His rotational grazing practices maximize the productivity and feed value of his pasture grass. He follows beef cattle with careful timing of chickens that scatter and enrich the cattle manure and break parasite cycles by, as Salatin puts it, “doing what chickens do,” and eating grubs. In the winter, he raises rabbits in hoop houses with poultry under the rabbit cages to take advantage of waste feed and manure with worms under it all, and in

Food and Democracy

77

the spring the area becomes garden. For Salatin, and many similarly creative farmers, farming is truly an art form and a never-ending process of creative improvement.66 This kind of agriculture, and these kinds of farmers, are what Colin Tudge has in mind as he tells us Feeding People Is Easy, if only industrial agriculture and court rulings will stand aside in favor of a more democratic agrifood policy.67 Even without Pollan’s bestselling boost, Salatin is a well-known public figure. He sponsors tours of his farm, writes extensively, especially in Acres U.S.A., which calls itself “The Voice of Eco-Agriculture,” and also contributes to books with titles like Salad Bar Beef and Pastured Poultry Profit$. In 2008, he was invited to testify on meat-processing standards before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. His testimony grew out of his Polyface Farm transparency guiding principles, which are as follows: 1. Encourage a relationship among food, patron, farmer and processor . . . 2. Delivery limited to within four hours from the farm . . . 3. Diversified work stations . . . [with rotated workers to reduce physical and emotional stress and improve workers’ ability to relate to visitors] . . . 4. Processing should be done on-farm or as close to the farm as possible.68 His testimony emphasized the need for transparent and culturally embedded food processing, including for slaughter and meat processing. He suggests establishing empirical thresholds for contamination enforced by random testing instead of rigid rules, which favor industrial-scale producers. Empirical thresholds with random testing would provide opportunities for real competition between industrially supplied and “serious entrepreneurial community-based food.” Rules that make such communitybased, culturally embedded agricultural processes competitively viable, Salatin argues, will “guarantee every American freedom of food choice.” Among ten witnesses on the day he testified, Salatin was the only advocate of culturally and ethically grounded bottom-up, and hence inherently democratic, “regulatory” procedures. The other witnesses all were debating details of top-down regulation and enforcement.69 Salatin’s summary states, The answer is more transparency through expanded market competition by freeing up community-based food systems to exist again . . . allow[ing] a community to at least try it. If people get sick, then it won’t spread. But if in fact people begin eating better, the distribution carbon footprint is smaller, and area hospitals become vacant, then this system can be exonerated . . . and a self-directed community can choose for itself whether it wants government food or neighborhood food. . . . Food freedom can be allowed to proliferate organically and to make its own credentials within the culture.70

These recommendations, if generalized beyond meat processing, constitute a near manifesto for the future of food. The manifesto will be even more pertinent as time and contemporary human appetites continue, despite the current recession’s dip, to press fossil fuel and thus industrially produced food prices upward. As this transpires, a broad transition to local food production and consumption will move ahead in rough parallel. As Pollan and Salatin make clear, locally appropriate farming is a learning process that, like any learning process, is furthered by collaboration and cooperation. Food giants that close their plants to the world’s view and thereby

78


to the openness of the democratic process must learn everything for themselves, however slowly, and their customers must pay for their learning in either prices or health consequences. Collaborating local farmers can learn from each other, their customers, and their suppliers as well as their advocates, like Acres U.S.A., Rodale Press, and many authors in these two volumes. That these farmers are still out of the mainstream, and they are quite aware of this fact, means that they must learn together, trust each other, and develop the trust of their customers. Such collective learning by those who are left out, in the spirit of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed,71 is the essence of democracy. This learning can be trusted to bring local food to the world’s tables and democracy to its cultures despite practices and powers of corporate interests. In this regard, the continued leveling of the playing field, with increases in the price of fossil fuel, and associated incentives for carbon sequestration (at which low-input local food production is efficient) are all the policy support local agriculture and associated food democracy probably need. Indeed, “carbon farming” will likely dominate in the future, particularly as a policy to slow climate change matures with or without the currently corporate, “Big-Ag” and “big-food” dominated U.S. food policy.72 Specific supports can help—for example, the land-grant agricultural college and extension systems, originated in the 1860s to promote food democracy, can be encouraged to attend at least as enthusiastically to local agricultural interests as they have historically to Big Ag interests.73 Leveling the playing field in terms of what can be labeled “organic”—or better, carbon-friendly—also can help. But even without explicit policy support, the sun’s inherently democratic distribution of its immense energy—which was exactly why the physiocrats focused on the productivity of the land—ultimately will overwhelm the industrial food system that still seems incapable of reducing the mileage on, as well as the attendant fuel and carbon cost of, its products in the supermarkets.

CONCLUSION The activities discussed in this chapter explicitly address the most fundamental of our modified version of Dahl’s characteristics of democracy; they embody and reflect profound desire to infuse meaningful information into the food system. They also, at least implicitly but ever more openly, demonstrate a profound commitment to the ultimate sharing of information among eaters and to the foundation of the food system that is coming to be called “carbon farming.” In the spirit of life’s chemistry, perhaps it should be called “life farming.” Whatever we call it, food democracy is resilient and permanent. The mindlessness brought increasingly to eating by marketing in the last century is a temporary phenomenon. It will pass, and as it does, shared democratic consciousness regarding what and when to eat will return. The return of food consciousness will be greatly enhanced by the greatest social force on the twenty-first century horizon, carbon-conserving politics forced by climate change. We will soon, at least in historic context, embrace this consciousness and with it regionally democratic food practices. The more rapidly we move in this direction, the more comfortable humanity can be in its niche on Earth. As we move to embrace carbon consciousness, the sometimes-struggling activities reviewed in this chapter will provide useful perspective; and as the transition gains momentum, we will gradually begin to wonder, why were those pioneers so marginalized?

Food and Democracy

79

NOTES 1. Kenneth F. Kiple, A Movable Feast: Ten Millennia of Food Globalization (Cambridge, MA; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 1–13; Marc D. Hauser, Moral Minds (New York: Harper Collins, 2006). 2. Ven. S. Dhammika, The Edicts of King Ashoka (1993), http://www.cs.colostate. edu/~malaiya/ashoka.html#INTRODUCTION (accessed September 12, 2008). “The contents of Asoka’s edicts make it clear that all the legends about his wise and humane rule are more than justified. . . . State resources were used for useful public works like the importation and cultivation of medical herbs, the building of rest houses, the digging of wells at regular intervals along main roads and the planting of fruit and shade trees.” Craig A. Lockard, Societies, Networks, and Transitions: A Global History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008), 309; Peter Linebaugh, The Magna Carta Manifesto (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, An Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), vol. 3. 3. Henry William Spiegel, The Growth of Economic Thought (London; Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), chapter 8. 4. Jack McIver Weatherford, Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1988) 117–50. 5. Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Edwin Cannan (1776; repr., New York: Random House, 1937), 14. 6. James Gustave Speth, The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability (London; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), chapter 8. 7. Ibid., 166. “In the 1886 Supreme Court case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, the chief justice merely said from the bench during oral argument that Southern Pacific was entitled to the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment. This comment, irrelevant to the Court’s disposition of the case, made it into the clerk’s notes on the case, not the decision itself, and the rest is history.” 8. Ibid., 166–68. 9. Marion Nestle, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, California Studies in Food and Culture, 3 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). 10. Tim Lang and Michael Heasman, Food Wars: The Global Battle for Mouths, Minds and Markets (London; Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2004), 16–20. 11. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, http://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/ index.aspx (accessed November 8, 2008). 12. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1999), 51–52. 13. Garry Rodan, “The Internet and Political Control in Singapore,” Political Science Quarterly 113, no. 1 (1998): 63. 14. Thomas F. Pawlick, The End of Food: How the Food Industry Is Destroying Our Food Supply—and What You Can Do About It (Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade, 2006); Paul Roberts, The End of Food (London: Bloomsbury, 2008). 15. Nestle, Food Politics. 16. Kiple, A Movable Feast, 293–94. 17. Michael Pollan, “You Are What You Grow,” New York Times Magazine, April 22, 2007; Nicole Darmon and Adam Drewnowski, “Does Social Class Predict Diet Quality?” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 87, no. 5 (May 2008): 1107–117. 18. Such appetites and associated abilities to follow the scent of burning meat, arrive first, gorge, and flee, sometimes with the need for great endurance that would have been enhanced by rapidly digestible energy-boosting foods like honey, when

80


available, would have been advantageous in times of scarcity or stress and thus concentrated in the evolving gene pool. 19. Tim Lang, “Food Security or Food Democracy?” Pesticides News 78 (December 2007): 12. Of course, our present system already edits choice, for example, toward foods high in inexpensive ingredients like fat, salt, and high fructose corn syrup; and, the editing is not all about cost fundamentals because production of certain ingredients like corn and sugar and practices like confined animal feeding are favored by policy. 20. Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, 1863, http://showcase.netins.net/web/ creative/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm (accessed April 16, 2009). 21. Said What?, “Government and Politics in Quotes” http://www.saidwhat.co.uk/ articles/government.php (accessed April 16, 2009). 22. This statement is often attributed to Thomas Jefferson. However, it has not been found anywhere in Jefferson’s recorded writings or speeches. http://www.geocities.com/ peterroberts.geo/Relig-Politics/TJefferson.html (accessed April 17, 2009). 23. Robert Dahl, On Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 37–45. 24. Kiple, A Movable Feast, 292–94. Higher risk of hypertension among people of African heritage is probably just one of many genetic roots of dietary risk resulting from broad cultural and food processing practices, in this case overabundant salt in the U.S. diet. 25. Lucy Jarosz, “The City in the Country: Growing Alternative Food Networks in Metropolitan Areas,” Journal of Rural Studies 24, no. 3 (2008): 231–44. 26. Anonymous, Food Policy Councils, http://www.worldhungeryear.org/fslc/faqs/ria_ 090.asp?section=8&click=1 (accessed December 28, 2008). 27. Toronto Food Policy Council, http://www.toronto.ca/health/tfpc_index.htm (accessed October 15, 2008). 28. Neva Hassanein, “Practicing Food Democracy: A Pragmatic Politics of Transformation,” Journal of Rural Studies 19, no. 1 (2003): 79–80. 29. Ibid.; Wesley Mitchel, “The Backward Art of Spending Money,” The American Economic Review 2, no. 2 (June 1912): 269–81. 30. Lynn Peemoeller, “Building Chicago’s Community Food Systems: A Report by the Chicago Food Policy Advisory Council,” Monograph (Chicago: Chicago Food Policy Advisory Council, 2008), http://www.chicagofoodpolicy.org (accessed December 28, 2008). 31. Ibid., 9. 32. Anonymous, “Terms of Reference for the London Food Board,” http://www.lda. gov.uk/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.2877 (accessed December 28, 2008). 33. Ibid. 34. The Strategy Unit, Food Matters: Towards a Strategy for the 21st Century (Cabinet Office, U.K. Government, July 2008), http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/ cabinetoffice/strategy/assets/food/food_matters1.pdf. 35. Defra (Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs), “Council of Food Policy Advisors,” http://www.defra.gov.uk/foodrin/policy/council/index.htm. Links to three late-2008 press releases regarding formation of the Food Council Board, announcement of its chair, and announcement of appointments to the Food Council Board are available here. To date, 14 Council members have been announced with more to come. Four of these also sit on the London Food Board. The impressive slate of board members are “appointed . . . in a personal capacity, not as representatives of any sector, company, or organization.” They come with critically appropriate food chain experience, including conventional and cooperative food industry interests, activist restaurant entrepreneurship, childhood and other at-risk food interests, insurance, and agriculture, including farming, public health, and academia. Four of the 14 are academics, including Professor Tim Lang, who is an outspoken critic of conventional corporate-dominated food policy. It will be

Food and Democracy

81

fascinating to see the minutes of their deliberations, which must be made transparently public to enhance the effort’s credibility. 36. Lang and Heasman, Food Wars, 42–46. 37. Defra, “Council of Food.” 38. Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It (New York: Rodale Press, 2006); Anonymous, Food Policy Councils. 39. Vandana Shiva, Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2005), 1. 40. Ibid., 151–52. 41. Vandana Shiva, “Food Democracy v. Food Dictatorship: The Politics of Genetically Modified Food,” Z Magazine, April 2003, http://www.zmag.org/zmag/viewArticle/ 14050 (accessed December 31, 2008). 42. Shiva, Earth Democracy, 152. 43. Tom Philpott, “Terra Madre Notes: Vandana Shiva Rocks the House, A Food/ Climate Manifesto Presents New Visions for Responding to Climate Change,” http:// gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/10/25/904/94558 (accessed November 18, 2008). 44. Jarosz, “The City in the Country.” 45. Nestle, Food Politics. 46. Anonymous, “History of Community Supported Agriculture, Lecture Outline,” http://casfs.ucsc.edu/education/instruction/tdm/download/4.1_CSA_History.pdf (accessed May 12, 2008). Despite limited documentation, this lecture outline is the most comprehensive single overview of the history of CSA. 47. Steven M. Schnell, “Food with a Farmer’s Face: Community-Supported Agriculture in the United States,” Geographical Review 97, no. 4 (2007): 550–64; Katherine L. Adam, “Community Supported Agriculture” (2006), http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/ PDF/csa.pdf (accessed December 27, 2008). 48. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25 no. 1, http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html (accessed August 14, 2008), is the most universally cited authority naming food as a core element of an adequate standard of living, a basic human right. 49. Fred Pearce and Orjan Furubjelke, “Cultivating the Urban Scene,” in AAAS Atlas of Population & Environment, ed. Paul Harrison and Fred Pearce (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), http://atlas.aaas.org/index.php?part=4&sec=urban (accessed December 26, 2008); Wendy Mendes et al., “Using Land Inventories to Plan for Urban Agriculture: Experiences from Portland and Vancouver,” Journal of the American Planning Association 74, no. 4 (2008): 435–49. 50. 2008 MacArthur Fellows, “Will Allen,” http://www.macfound.org/site/c. lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.4537249/ (accessed December 27, 2008). 51. American Community Gardening Association, “National Community Garden Survey” (ACGA Monograph 1998), http://7d8ca58ce9d1641c9251f63b606b91782998fa39. gripelements.com/docs/CGsurvey96part1.pdf (accessed November 18, 2008). 52. Ioan Voicu and Vicki Been, “The Effect of Community Gardens on Neighboring Property Values,” Real Estate Economics 36, no. 2 (2008): 241–83. 53. Katherine Alaimo et al., “Fruit and Vegetable Intake among Urban Community Gardeners,” Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 40, no. 2 (2008): 94–101. 54. See chapter 12 by Debra Pearson in volume 1, Environment, Agriculture, and Health Concerns. 55. Laura J. Lawson, City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardening in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) 292–93.

82


56. Ibid., 2. 57. Alexandra Spieldoch, “The Food Crisis and Global Institutions” (Global Policy Forum, August 5, 2008), http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/hunger/general/2008/ 0805globalinstitutions.htm (accessed December 31, 2008); Sinan Koont, “Food Security in Cuba.” Monthly Review 55, no. 8 (2004): 11–20, http://www.monthlyreview.org/ 0104koont.htm; Bill McKibben, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (New York: Times Books, 2007), 71–77. 58. Anonymous, Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture (UPA) in the Asian and Pacific Region (Taipei: Food and Fertilizer Technology Center, 2007); London Food Link, Edible Cities—A Report of a Visit to Urban Agriculture Projects in the U.S.A. (London: Sustain, 2008). 59. Kunio Tsubota, Urban Agriculture in Asia: Lessons from Japanese Experience (Taipei: Food and Fertilizer Technology Center, 2007), 2–3. 60. Anne C. Bellows, Katherine Brown, and Jac Smit, “Health Benefits of Urban Agriculture” (Venice, CA: Community Food Security Coalition, 2005), http://www. foodsecurity.org/UAHealthArticle.pdf (accessed July 4, 2008). 61. Katherine H. Brown and Anne Carter, Urban Agriculture and Community Food Security: Farming from the City Center to the Urban Fringe, Monograph (Venice, CA: Community Food Security Coalition. 2003), http://www.foodsecurity.org/PrimerCFSCUAC. pdf (accessed July 4, 2008). 62. See chapter 5 by David Pimentel in volume 1, Environment, Agriculture, and Health Concerns. 63. Renee Montagne, “The Food Revolution of Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse,” Morning Edition of National Public Radio, April 27, 2007, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/ story.php?storyId=9848900 (accessed December 1, 2008). 64. White Dog Cafe, http://www.whitedog.com (accessed December 1, 2008); David Kuppfer, “Judy Wicks on Her Plan to Change the World, One Restaurant at a Time,” The Sun, August 2008, 5–13. 65. Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (New York: Penguin, 2006) 185–273. 66. Ibid., 208–25. 67. Colin Tudge, Feeding People Is Easy (Pari, Italy: Pari, 2007). 68. Joel Salatin, “After the Beef Recall: Exploring Greater Transparency in the Meat Industry,” Acres U.S.A. 38, no. 6 (2008): 40–41. 69. Ibid., 42–45. 70. Ibid., 45. 71. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myrna Bergman Ramos (New York: Continuum, 1970). 72. Tiziano Gomiero, Maurizio G. Paoletti, and David Pimentel, “Energy and Environmental Issues in Organic and Conventional Agriculture,” Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences 27, no. 4 (2008): 239–54. 73. Daniel S. Greenberg, Science for Sale: The Perils, Rewards and Delusions of Campus Capitalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Berry, Wendell. The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996 (1977).

Food and Democracy

83

Hawken, Paul. Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. New York: Penguin, 2007. Kiple, Kenneth F. A Movable Feast: Ten Millennia of Food Globalization. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Lang, Tim, and Michael Heasman. Food Wars: The Global Battle for Mouths, Minds and Markets. London and Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2004. Lawson, Laura J. City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardening in America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. McKibben, Bill. Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. New York: Times Books, 2007. Nestle, Marion. Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. New York: Penguin Press, 2006. Speth, James Gustave. The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008. Tudge, Colin. Feeding People Is Easy. Pari, Italy: Pari, 2007.

Web Sites Community Food Security Coalition, http://www.foodsecurity.org/. Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, Council of Food Policy Advisors, http://www.defra.gov.uk/foodrin/policy/council/index.htm. Global Policy Forum, http://www.globalpolicy.org/visitctr/about.htm. Growing Power, http://www.growingpower.org/Index.htm. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, http://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/index.aspx. Navdanya, http://www.navdanya.org/. Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture & Food Security, http://www.ruaf.org/. Wiser Earth, http://www.wiserearth.org/. World Hunger Year, http://www.worldhungeryear.org/about_why/why_programs.asp.


6 Consumers as Political Actors Michele Micheletti and Dietlind Stolle FOOD FOR POLITICAL THOUGHT Globalized agricultural production offers consumers a steady supply of affordable fresh food all year long. It livens up meals with a good selection of produce and provides meat, poultry, and fish for the family dinner. Supermarket ads and food displays in grocery store aisles encourage consumers to indulge in seasonal food off-season. Thanks to the global food trade, consumers can purchase a wide variety of eatable goods on a daily basis. The list of global food constantly available on supermarket shelves grows longer and longer each year. Consumers can now plan meals around fresh berries, vegetables and fruit, inexpensive meat, poultry and fish, and plenty of good coffee, tea, and chocolates. Yet behind this enticing smorgasbord of affordable abundance is a series of problems directly related to global food supply and demand. Intensified agribusiness has led to global environmental problems with groundwater supply depletion, soil degradation, fresh water and air pollution, biodiversity loss, deforestation, and animal waste. It perpetuates the transmission of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (“mad cow disease”), salmonella, and avian (bird) flu. Farming for the global supermarket also diverts land in poor countries from more local food crops and tends to treat farmworkers badly. The World Summit on Sustainable Development declared in 2007 that “fundamental changes in the way societies produce and consume are indispensable for achieving global sustainable development.”1 The United Nations, World Resource Institute, European Union, national governments, corporate business, and civil society have problems associated with globalized food production on their agenda. The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity identifies agriculture for its 2008 international day as “a major driver of biodiversity loss,” and its agencies—the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)—work together because “the problems facing workers in agriculture need to be highlighted concerning social exclusion, poverty alleviation, fundamental

86


rights, sustainable agriculture and sustainable development, food security and decent work in agriculture.”2 Local-to-global civil society campaigns mobilize grassroots consumer support to protect nature and humans from the negative effects of global agribusiness and to protest child labor in agricultural work and farm animal cruelty. This chapter focuses on why these groups believe that consumers must take responsibility for the food they eat, how they convince them to do so, and how successful they in campaigning.

THREE FORMS OF FOOD ACTIVISM Civic groups use colorful language to draw consumers’ attention to how their food choices and eating habits affect the world. They call farmworkers who help stock global supermarket shelves with fresh produce and candy “fruit slaves” and “chocolate slaves” to drive home problems with the lack of decent working conditions and wages in globalized food production. Their campaigns also identify large-scale agriculture as an industry—a “factory farm” system—that produces “Franken[stein] foods” from genetically modified seed and fodder and treats cows, pigs, and chickens like “animal machines” that only live to produce a steady high supply of milk, eggs, and meat. These groups urge consumers to think more broadly about agricultural products, protest against corporate practice, make different food choices, adopt new eating habits, and, in so doing, help change global food production. Their mission is political consumerism. The consumer market, particularly the global supermarkets and fast-food chains in affluent nations, is their arena for politics. The groups inform shoppers about the “politics of products”—the social justice, health, and environmental aspects of food commodity production. Many of them target national and supranational governments. However, current free trade doctrines, the character of global problems, difficulties in legislating forceful national approaches, national protectionism, and the slow-moving consensual nature of international governmental organizations make public policy solutions less attractive. Instead, these civic groups focus on the growing power of individual and even institutional consumers to influence the politics behind supermarket food. They support the three forms of political consumerism: boycotts, “buycotts,” and discursive actions. Consumers are asked to support their cause by boycotting (refusing) to buy certain designated food brands and products. Examples include the 1960s grape boycott to protect grape pickers in California from deadly pesticides and give them better working and living conditions, the tuna boycotts of the 1980s to save dolphins caught in tuna fishing nets, and the Monsanto boycotts of the 1990s to oppose genetically modified organisms (GMOs).3 In the ongoing Killer Coke Campaign, consumers pressure Coca-Cola to allow unions to represent workers in its bottling plants in Colombia, stop its overuse and pollution of fresh water in India, and protest its procuring of sugar harvested by child labor in El Salvador. The campaign criticizes the company’s marketing of sweetened beverages to children globally. The boycott of Nestle is well-known and long in duration. It charges Nestle with responsibility “for more violations of the World Health Assembly marketing requirements for baby foods than any other company.”4 Conversely, “buycotts” ask shoppers to buy (i.e., BUYcott) goods for ethical, political, and environmental reasons. Shopping guides and labeling schemes are the main forms of food buycotts today. Both types of guidelines, which have

Consumers as Political Actors

87

increased in number and importance, give consumers information about choosing among brands responsibly, replacing certain food choices with others, and a general understanding about how they can eat and promote sustainable food consumption in one easy bite. One of the first shopping guides, The Green Consumer Supermarket Shopping Guide. Shelf-by-Shelf Recommendations for Products Which Don’t Cost the Earth (1984), is called a publishing phenomenon. It appeared in some 20 foreign editions, sold about 1 million copies globally, was updated in 1991 and functions as a role model for similar efforts. Discursive actions, the third form of political consumerism, spread ideas rather than directly guiding consumers’ choice. Although supportive of boycott causes and labeling schemes, they play an independent role by providing consumers with additional ways to speak out about how they view the connection between the food they eat and the way it is produced. At times, they are the only option open for consumers. Some examples include nongovernmental organization (NGO) “urgent alerts” that trigger consumers immediately to send corporations e-mails and faxes, animated films, culture jamming,5 and efforts in “taste education” to teach food appreciation that discourages more globalized fast food. Food political consumerism even brings commercial culture and popular brands into activism. Interesting efforts include Free Range Studios’ flash films, which successfully catch the public’s eye by adapting blockbuster movie themes and music. The Meatrix award-winning films piggyback on The Matrix. They include interactive technology for consumers to learn more about factory farming and farm animal treatment and have been seen by more than twenty-five million people globally. The Star Wars theme is recognizable in Grocery Store Wars, a campaign film for organic food dubbed as a sci-fi supermarket saga by its sponsor, the Organic Trade Association. These films, which are easily found on YouTube and appeal to young people, hit hard at agribusiness and fast-food restaurants, and direct consumers into political consumerist activism.6 Food activism also employs culture jamming in its campaigns when it sponges off commercial advertising and corporate imagery in consumer society. After consumer pressure, celebrity support, and more than 800 protest actions worldwide, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) called off its 2001 “Murder King” campaign when Burger King, in an industry-leading commitment, began to source cage-free eggs.7 Ongoing culture jamming is used to pressure Wendy’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken to do the same.8 Interestingly, the Kentucky Fried Cruelty campaign lets supporters devise their own activism. The Killer Coke Campaign also uses cultural resonance in the form of Coca-Cola’s well-known marketing imagery, that is, its logotype and slogans. Previously McDonald’s was an important target, but consumer activism led it to change its corporate practices. Nevertheless, its golden arches and the term “McDonaldization” still call attention to the negative effects of a fast-food lifestyle.9 Discursive actions can even include friendly goaloriented talks with the local grocer and restaurants about better procurement policy and with friends and neighbors about why food activism is important.

CERTIFICATION SCHEMES AND LIFESTYLE FOOD ACTIVISM Certifying food has become an important vehicle in the struggle for sustainable food production and consumption. Certification and labeling schemes offer

88


consumers concrete ways to change their purchasing choices and dietary habits. Most labeling schemes started as small activist campaigns that ran counter to established corporate policy and practice. Today, they successfully bring NGOs, farmers, consumers, and global food corporations together in constructive efforts to solve problems with global food production. They direct food activism away from contentious boycotts and reveal to businesses that consumer demand and a market exist for sustainable food. Labeling schemes are, therefore, an important innovation in food activism. Three global schemes for organic, fair trade, and sustainable fish are in operation today. Others are on the way. This section discusses what is called the “certification revolution” in global food production.10 But first it is important to distinguish political consumerist labeling and certification schemes from those run by business. Both appear on common food goods. Political consumerist schemes are “type one” (third-party) in character. Business-driven ones (one-party schemes) are not. Type-one schemes are multistakeholder regulatory frameworks characterized by procedural and operational transparency. They bring together the major stakeholders—civil society associations, scientists, business, and government—to formulate certification criteria and use independent professional bodies to evaluate food for accreditation. Food production is then monitored to ensure that the accreditation standards are followed. If not, food producers are warned and, when necessary, certification is rescinded. Organic Labeling for Ecological Food and Farming Certification as organically grown is the oldest political consumerist food label. Concern for soil life and food for human health are the roots of today’s global organic labeling industry. The first label (the Demeter biodynamic label) is from 1928. Broader consumer interest for organic food came after the publication of Silent Spring (1962), which addressed the problem of pesticide use in agriculture. In the early 1970s, alternative farmers and particularly a French farmers’ association mobilized worldwide support for the creation of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM). The British Soil Association (an important food activist group) established its organic label in 1973. IFOAM has grown from a small operation with member organizations from five countries (Great Britain, France, Sweden, South Africa, and the United States) to one with 739 affiliates from 106 countries (more than half of all countries in the world today). Many countries have more than one member. Canada has 11, China 33, Japan 17, Germany 69, India 48, Mexico 11, the Netherlands 25, the United Kingdom 16, and the United States 45. In the beginning, organic certification focused solely on the ecological aspect of farming (food produced from renewable resources, without antibiotics and growth hormones and that conserved the soil and water and enhanced biodiversity). As factory farming expanded and campaigns for pure or true non-GMO food, interest in fair trade, and consumer demand for communitysupported local agriculture grew in importance, IFOAM expanded its standards to include the four principles of health, ecology, fairness, and care in its certification process. Health equates human and ecosystem well-being, ecology is biodiversity, fairness is fair treatment of farmworkers and farm animals, and care is the personal responsibility of farmers and consumers to safeguard the health and well-being of current and future generations and the environment.


89

Labeling schemes certify both organic food produced by “counterculture” green small farmers and food corporations, which shows the strength of the food “certification revolution.” Some groups, like the Organic Consumer Association (OCA), view corporate activism as a threat to organic standards and ask consumers to boycott some U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) organic-labeled products. But in general, political consumerist food activists support it and use enticing, colorful, appealing, and even guilt-creating efforts to get shoppers to do so as well. Environmental, humanitarian, humane societies, and consumer-oriented associations as well as Global Exchange and special associations just for organic food even follow the lead of corporate commercial culture and prey on consumer vulnerabilities at holiday time. Like food and other retailers, they play up holiday generosity and gift-giving in special offers for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. OCA plays off the classic hit “Unchain My Heart” to get North American consumers to unchain their hearts and open their wallets at Valentine’s Day. Why? Because “by purchasing organic and Fair Trade chocolate and flowers . . . your consumer dollars will no longer be going towards toxic pesticides, child slavery, and farm worker exploitation.”11 Along with buying organic gifts, it suggests that consumers download a special Valentine’s card and send prewritten e-mail messages to “anti-Valentines” businesses. In 2008, they included Nestle, Dole, Wal-Mart, M&M-Mars Inc., and Hershey. It also gets animated in a simple and silly one-minute flash film that names, shames, and blames these businesses.12 Fair Trade Labels for Global Social Justice The first fair trade label, Max Havellar, appeared on coffee in the Netherlands in 1988 after a plea from Mexican coffee farmers for help in stabilizing coffee prices and then expanded to other countries and products. Today the key institution is Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO-I from 1997) with twenty European and North American national fair trade certification marks operating in twenty-one countries that accredit eighteen different agricultural product categories and some processed food from the developing world. Fair trade certification is a global standard that ensures that food is traded under better conditions for producers and workers in developing countries. Its criteria include ILO core conventions, guarantee a minimum price considered as fair to producers, and require producers to invest in projects to enhance the local social, economic, and environmental development. Fair trade is also part of the certification revolution. A growing number of large-scale corporations—including up- and down-market coffee shops and large supermarket chains in Europe and North America—sell fair trade food, and corporate brand names seek to certify these products.13 Religious groups and churches as well as international humanitarian, human rights, developing world, environmental, and labor organizations conduct grassroots campaigns for fair trade. Again, holidays are a favorite opportunity. For example, British Oxfam, the oldest, largest, and leading fair trade actor, runs the campaign “Unwrap Oxfam Easter Gifts—100% of profits go to help fight poverty.” Global Exchange, which aggressively opposes free trade and corporate globalization, appeals to kids in its Fair Trade Chocolate Easter Campaign message: “Every bunny loves fair trade.” This campaign also asks adults to “make Easter sweeter for

90


cocoa farmers by buying Fair Trade chocolate” and by faxing Nestle USA about its use of child labor on cocoa farms.14 Campaigners exert strength to mobilize entire geographic units as fair trade towns, now existing in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United States. Even fair trade churches, islands, countries, and universities have emerged. In the United Kingdom, where the idea originated, three hundred towns have been certified and more than two hundred areas are currently campaigning toward this status. Fair trade certification is given to institutions or areas when they work toward five goals that show a political, retail, media, and activist commitment to promoting fair trade products.15 From Boycotts to Certified Sustainable Seafood Supermarket activism has weight. Wide consumer support for the tuna boycott mentioned above forced the fishing industry to change its nets and led to national and multilateral government guarantees of dolphin safety and several dolphin safety seals of approval. A certification scheme can, thus, develop quickly when contentious grassroots consumer clout is harnessed. The case of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), the most comprehensive, ambitious, and only global ecolabeling scheme for seafood, shows that the driver can also be a partnership between green food activists and food corporations. MSC was cofounded in 1997 by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF, a large market-oriented global environmental organization) and the British-Dutch food conglomerated global corporation Unilever PLC. Finding a way to protect the oceans from overfishing caused by increased consumer demand for seafood globally and the limited capacity of ongoing regulatory programs explains WWF involvement. For Unilever, MSC is a risk management strategy that helps to ensure a continued future supply of seafood for its consumer products and a way of keeping consumer boycotts at bay.16 Thus, unlike organic and fair trade labeling, this “sandals and suits” partnership17 did not result from a long historical ideological commitment to small producers and does not include a raging social dilemma over the advantages and disadvantages of catering to global supermarkets and certifying food from global agribusiness. What it does, instead, is certify seafood on the basis of three principles—no overfishing, ecosystem maintenance, and compliance with local, national, and international fishery regulation—and harness “consumer purchasing power to generate change and promote environmentally responsible stewardship of the world’s most important renewable food source.”18 Its focus on mainstream consumption is clearly shown on its “Where to buy” Web site, which offers information on MSC foods and where they can be found in more than thirty countries. Many environmental organizations, including Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, support it actively.19 Campaigning for New Eating Habits and Lifestyles Getting a global labeling scheme in place can be difficult—even with consumer support, considerable civil society activism, government interest, and an attentive media. Finding mechanisms to improve farm animal treatment is a case in point. Environmental, agricultural, religious, and animal rights groups; humane societies


91

and societies for the prohibition of cruelty against animals; and consumer-oriented associations support the better treatment of farm animals.20 They maintain that farm animal treatment “is a marker for the entire industrial system’s attitude toward farmers, communities, consumers and the environment”21 and call on consumers to “end factory farming before it ends us,” because it “causes environmental destruction, damages human health, contributes to global hunger and inflicts immense suffering on billions of animals across the world.”22 Both animal welfare organizations and the more adamant animal rights groups campaign for consumer supermarket activism. They emphasize farm animal sentience, complexity, and uniqueness—in other words, that farm animals should not be viewed or treated as “animal machines” for human consumption purposes—and supply consumers with statistics, reports, and video clips on meat consumption and animal treatment. With vivid titles like “Cruelty to Animals: Mechanized Madness,” and “Living a Nightmare: Animal Factories in Michigan,” activist reports urge consumers, producers, and governments to take action to solve the problems of industrial and global food production. The more moderate animal welfare groups campaign for farm animals’ “five freedoms”—that is, protection from hunger, thirst, and malnutrition; pain, injury, and disease; physical and thermal discomfort; fear and distress; and discomfort— and for animals’ ability to express normal behaviors. They do what they can to promote existing animal welfare labeling (including organic food labeling) and better general farm animal treatment. So far, their efforts have not led to a global labeling scheme or widespread use of the ones in place. The European Union is slowly developing one such scheme. Examples of national and subnational schemes include Certified Humane Raised & Handled (United States, formerly entitled Free Farmed Certified), American Humane Certified, Freedom Food (United Kingdom, supported by celebrity cook Jamie Oliver), and the Canadian British Columbian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) certification, as well as special schemes for free-range eggs. Because animal rights groups do not think that these schemes go far enough, they openly criticize them for failing to ensure good farm animal treatment and promote their own smaller non-third-party vegan labels. Without a trustworthy global food label, farm animal activism mobilizes consumers into a larger register of responsibility. In particular, it attempts to convince consumers to play a direct role by becoming vegetarians. PETA and other animal rights’ groups argue that “the best way to stop the destruction and the cruelty is to stop eating animals now” and advocate veganism (a complete plant-based diet and lifestyle).23 Both animal rights and animal welfare groups support vegetarianism (a plant-based diet that may include milk, cheese, and eggs) and know that vegetarianism does not come easy. It is often viewed as time-consuming, dull, and outside most social conventions. So they strive to create positive social pressure by offering scientific evidence about the positive personal health effects of a vegetarian diet and by showing that growing numbers of ordinary consumers make easy everyday dietary changes. Their long lists of famous and even “sexy” vegetarians from different age and pop culture backgrounds makes vegetarianism look cool and socially acceptable. “You’re not alone” announces the Free Farmedä Consumer Action Center of the Humane Society of the United States and cites polling data to back this up. Animal welfare groups give advice about gradual lifestyle change in their “three R’s program—Reduce (eat fewer animal products), Refine (choose organic

92


or cage- and crate-free animal products), and Replace (become vegetarian). PETA provides its 1.6 million members and others with a “Go Veg” Web site and a free vegetarian starters’ kit to try a plant-based diet for 30 days. Dating sites and blogs for vegetarians and vegans illustrate that both are acceptable lifestyles, easy food recipes for family meals and pot luck encourage dietary change, and campaign apparel and buttons reinforce the sense of a shared lifestyle identity. Letting food-related changes play a central role in how consumers take everyday, hands-on responsibility for their lifestyles, their communities, and global affairs is the goal of the Slow Food1 movement. It pushes for “ecogastronomy” (traditional local food culture) to strengthen the connections between “plate and planet.” Slow Food began in the mid-1980s as a protest against a McDonald’s restaurant near Piazza di Spagna in Rome. Now it has more than 85,000 members in 132 countries. Like all food political consumerism, it continues to broaden its scope and, thus, gives weight to the centrality of food in contemporary global political activism. Ideas about organic farming, fair trade, and animal welfare are part of its philosophy of good, clean, and fair food. Its taste education (mentioned above) aims to lessen the distance between the farm and fork by informing consumers about food production, actively supporting labeling schemes, and considering consumers as coproducers of food. Its mission of maintaining food cultures and the love of well-cooked food have now spiraled into another effort, Cittaslow International, which, reminiscent of Fair Trade Towns’ certification initiative, uses the politics of food to bring people sharing the same food goals together in local food communities.24

FOOD SHOPPING AS RESPONSIBILITY FOR GLOBAL FOOD PRODUCTION How successful is political consumerist activism in creating awareness about the problems of consumption in the world today? In answer to the question whether people had participated in a consumer boycott, comparable data available for eight Western democracies from 2002 show a clear rise from 4.7 percent in 1974 to an average of 15.2 percent in 1999. Buycotts are even more popular. Overall, when asked whether they purchased products for ethical, environmental, or political reasons, about 24 percent of Europeans in 20 countries said they had done so in a 12-month period.25 Northern Europeans are often the most active. In Sweden, for example, buycotting has become somewhat of a mainstream form of shopping. About 55 percent said they have buycotted in the last year, and 95 percent claimed that they understood organic labeling and 63 percent understood the fair trade labeling scheme.26 Political consumerism has not taken off this way throughout Europe: among Southern Europeans and Eastern Europeans only 7 to 12 percent are political food activists. Americans—with 23 percent buycotting and 18 percent boycotting—take a middle position between the high and low political consumerist regions of Europe. Yet when asked specifically about organic labels, more than half (52 percent) of Americans indicated that they bought organic foods in 2006; 26 percent bought organic beverages, and nearly one-third reported purchasing organic products “as often as possible.” This shows a rise when compared with the one-third who said they bought either organic food or beverage products in 2002.27 The conclusion is that consumers clearly feel increasingly


93

drawn into political consumerism and, more specifically, toward food boycotts and labeled food. But what do consumers think about when shopping for food? Available data are sparse. Findings from a Swedish national mail survey from 2003 as well as ethnological studies provide some insight.28 These studies show that consumers who say they frequently buycott are much more likely to think about the working conditions, environmental consequences, and farm animal treatment when they decide what to eat. What is interesting is that at least Swedish buycotters do not differ from other consumers when it comes to concerns about personal health and food price as well as quality and taste. Thus, political consumers express a heightened awareness of the political, environmental, and ethical significance of their purchasing choices but, otherwise, are just like other consumers when it comes to valuing personal health and other aspects of food consumption. Some consumers do more and adapt their personal lifestyles to their political and moral values. Vegetarians are a good case in point. They “boycott” meat, poultry, and fish. Many strive to purchase the labeled farm products discussed above. Together with others, they engage in the boycotts of fast-food chains and lobby businesses to change their values and codes of practice. Some go further and “boycott” the use of animals for all forms of human consumption—food, leather, cosmetics, and so on. Vegetarianism and veganism are, therefore, an interesting form of lifestyle food activism. How widespread is vegetarianism in Western democracies? In seven European countries, researchers estimated about 4.6 percent are vegetarians, with a high of about 8 percent in the United Kingdom, and a low of about 1 percent in France.29 The Vegetarian Resource Group (a nonprofit organization that educates the public on vegetarianism and the interrelated issues of health, nutrition, ecology, ethics, and world hunger; see more at www.vrg.org) estimates that about 2.3 percent of adult Americans consider themselves vegetarian because they indicate that they never eat meat, poultry, and fish. Another 6 to 10 percent said they were “almost vegetarian,” and another 20 percent to 25 percent are “vegetarian inclined” and intentionally reduce meat in their diet. Over the last 10 years, the number of Americans rejecting or “boycotting” red meat has been steady at around 6 percent. But what is interesting is that those “boycotting” fish have climbed from 4 to 15 percent; and those “boycotting” eggs changed from 4 to 9 percent. There seems, therefore, to be a growing category of specialized vegetarians who reject certain animal products but not others. Even the number of occasional (nonrigid) vegetarians is increasing as they try to follow a vegetarian lifestyle whenever possible. It seems that the “three R’s” concept is catching on. In general, overall interest in a vegetarian lifestyle and diet is on the rise, a development also reflected in the increase of U.S.-based vegetarian food sales, which doubled since 1998, hitting $1.6 billion in 2003, and with steady increases since then. Similar trends are noticeable in Europe as well. Increasingly specialized and fluctuating interest in vegetarianism suggests a variety of reasons for choosing a more plant-based diet. A 2002 Time/CNN poll shows that health concerns lead the American list with 47 percent, whereas about 21 percent are vegetarians because they are concerned about animals and animal rights. Five percent mentioned a more global concern for our planet and world poverty. Another 22 percent expressed other private reasons for their vegetarianism.30 Thus, it seems that campaigns based on personal health are most successful

94


so far, but we can expect that once active, vegetarians become increasingly aware and interested in other reasons for a plant-based diet like farm animal treatment, environmental pollution, and climate change. Similar general sociodemographic characteristics are behind all forms of political consumerist food activism. More women, people between 25 and 40 years of age, the highly educated, those with higher incomes, urban residents, and even pet owners are more involved in various political consumerist food activities. Particularly women stand out as an increasingly important group, especially in countries where political consumerism is high. Survey research shows that women, more than men, are more knowledgeable about health issues and care more about the consequences of consumption for animal rights and child labor.31 Consumers’ attitudes about food are, obviously, changing, and this change is leading them to purchase alternative food in supermarkets. The overall sale of major fair trade food products was nearly eight times higher in 2005 than in 1997.32 The sale of organically grown labeled products is also on the rise, and consumers spend more of their money on these products.33 Global sales of organic food quadrupled to $40 billion within the last 10 years. The demand for organic food products is concentrated, with the big consuming G7 countries34 alone accounting for more than 80 percent of the total sales. However, whereas actual behavioral change is visible and citizens appear to be more open to choosing labeled over conventionally produced food, their market share remains relatively low. So, for example, the market shares of organic food consumption compared with the entire food market is highest for Switzerland at 4.5 percent, followed by Germany, and Austria and Denmark with around 3 percent, but hovers around 1 to 2 percent in other countries of the Western Hemisphere.35 In sum, whereas the sale of labeled food products is clearly on the rise, they have not penetrated major markets and remain at small though increasing market shares overall. Yet, regardless of small market share, agribusiness has taken notice. Several mainstream global supermarkets—Wal-Mart, Safeway, Tesco, and others—now carry organically labeled, fair traded, and MSC goods. Multinational food corporations—Nestle, Dole, Del Monte, and others—certify some of their products. But as with other market share data, certified goods do not dominate their assortments. Interestingly and perhaps because of its founding as a partnership between a market-friendly environmental organization and a global food corporation, MSC-labeled products are more widely distributed. As of late 2006, 467 MSC labeled products were available in the food market. It labels 6 percent of the world’s total edible wild capture or about 3.5 million tons of fish and shellfish, and about 25 large supermarket retailers (including big names like Wal-Mart, Safeway, Marks & Spencer, Tesco, and Sainsbury) purchase MSC-certified marine food.36 This is a higher market penetration compared with most other food labeling schemes. The certification revolution does not only affect consumers and global agribusiness. International governmental organizations (e.g., the World Bank), the European Union, and different national governments are following suit and changing their procurement policies to include fair trade, by supporting fair trade and organic production directly, and even by insisting on selling fair trade coffee in cafeterias in government buildings. The conclusion is that political consumerist campaigns are paying off. But do these changes have the desired effect? In other words, is food activism aiding the struggle against child labor in agriculture, improving working conditions


95

in agriculture, and protecting the environment? Again, fair trade production will be used to answer this question. Studies show that farmers benefit materially and socially from fair trade.37 Its guaranteed fair price gives, for instance, fair trade coffee farmers a significantly higher income than other ones. The fair trade price “social premium,” which FLO-I encourages coffee co-ops to use for local development investments, has gone to economic diversification, community infrastructure, social community development, and education scholarships, or has been distributed evenly among co-op members. Fair trade—like all political consumerism—is not flawless, and improvements are necessary. Demand in industrial countries is still limited, not all farmers wanting to certify their products can do so, the FLO model is criticized as a top-down affair, and farmers in the global south (i.e., the developing world) do not have enough say and decision-making power. But most important, fair trade (and this goes for all food activism) cannot—and is not intended to—solve the structural problems of global food production. Yet even with these limitations and flaws, political consumerist food activism has put sustainable consumption on the global food agenda and has developed innovative mechanisms that help solve complex problems in the global food system.

CONSUMERS, SUSTAINABLE CITIZENSHIP, AND FOOD DEMOCRACY Multinational agribusiness and globalized food production have turned consumer choice about what to eat into a decision-making effort. Consumers from industrialized nations, in particular, now shoulder responsibility for global developments and problems. This responsibility may sound daunting, but the food activism discussed in this chapter shows how each and every consumer can contribute by making small, good, clean, and fair quality food choices. For Slow Food, these small contributions are an “act of civilization and a tool to improve the food system.”38 Surveys show that in growing numbers consumers in the industrialized world agree. They engage in boycotts and buycotts, change their lifestyles, and voice their concerns about the politics of food publically. They are questioning the steady supply of affordable and abundant global food. Supermarkets have become an arena for these consumers to vent concern and motivate others to act. Political consumerist food activism is contagious. More people engage in it, more labeling schemes are in operation in more countries today, and the market share of labeled food is small but rising. Governments are also participating more actively. Some observers are skeptical. They maintain that agribusiness’ interest is a form of corporate takeover that slows down and even impedes the march toward sustainable food production and consumption. For others, this warming of transnational agribusiness is a sign that they too have begun to understand the responsibility that they must take to solve the human rights, animal welfare, and environmental problems tied to the globalization and industrialization of food production. Their small steps in addressing these problems are given as evidence of the “certification revolution.” But the consumer, corporate, and government trend toward sustainable food is more than that. It is part of broad-based global efforts now under way to solve the dual problems of overconsumption in the global north and underconsumption in the global south and to apply the fundamental right of all humans to have an

96


adequate, safe, and nutritious supply of food. Private food consumption has been directly linked to climate change and environmental problems. The year 2008 is marked with increased food scarcities, food riots in developing nations, and producer protests in the industrialized nations. Today, it is hard to get around the centrality of this fundamental right to food globally. The new terms “food democracy” and “food citizenship” mark this centrality. Civic projects, such as the Food Democracy Network Society in British Columbia, Canada, take on this challenge. In the Western nations, they imply that consumers should demand better quality food, not more choices of food from globalized and industrialized agriculture. These civic groups encourage consumers to help change multinational agribusiness operations and turn around bad government agricultural policy through labeling schemes and other market-based mechanisms. Attention is, therefore, cast on the role that consumers can and must play in better “farm to the fork” policy globally. This chapter discusses how concern over food stretches the spatial, temporal, and material bounds of the private lives of consumers. Food shopping and eating habits have become part of what is now called “sustainable citizenship,” another new idea that stresses the personal responsibility of each individual for the total relationship between their political, social, economic, and natural environment.39 This responsibility knows no political, territorial, or economic bounds and signifies that the wealthier nations must think about how their food consumption not only affects their own health and well-being but that of families and communities around the globe. Food shopping and other consumer choices have become a junction filled with opportunities to decide about which path to take for taste, convenience, affordability, and global responsibility. Political food consumerist campaigns and labeling schemes call on consumers to make the link between themselves and others.

NOTES 1. World Summit on Sustainable Development, Plan of Implementation 2002 (adopted on September 4, 2002, Paragraph 14), http://www.environment.gov.za/ Documents/Documents/Summit_ImplementationPlan/wssd_pi_12-22.htm (accessed July 29, 2008). 2. United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, “Biodiversity and Agriculture” in The International Day for Biological Diversity (May 22, 2008), http://www. cbd.int/ibd/2008/?tab=1 (accessed July 17, 2008); ILO (International Labor Organization), Symposium on Decent Work in Agriculture September 15–18, 2003, http://www.ilo. org/public/english/dialogue/actrav/new/agsymp03/index.htm (accessed July 18, 2008). See also FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), Food, Agriculture & Decent Work. ILO & FAO Working Together, http://www.fao-ilo.org/ (accessed July 29, 2008). 3. Monroe Friedman, Consumer Boycotts: Effecting Change through the Marketplace and the Media (New York; London: Taylor & Francis, 1999). 4. Baby Milk Action, “Nestle-Free Zone,” http://www.babymilkaction.org/resources/ boycott/nestlefree.html (accessed June 30, 2008); Killer Coke Campaign, “Campaign to Stop Killer Coke,” http://www.killercoke.org/ (accessed May 17, 2008); Human Rights Watch, “Following the Supply Chain: The Link between Child Labor and the Coca-Cola Company,” in The Complicity of Sugar Mills and the Responsibility of Multinational Corporations (2004), http://www.hrw.org/en/node/12067/section/6 (accessed January 4, 2009).


97

5. Culture jamming (also called ad-busting) uses corporate imagery in consumer society to alert consumers about the environmental, ethical, and social justice problems of production and consumption. It criticizes corporations in humorous ways and changes their logotypes and marketing slogans to reveal the politics behind products. 6. Free Range Studios, http://www.freerangestudios.com/ (accessed June 5, 2008). 7. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), “Murder King Campaign,” http://www.goveg.com/corp_murderk.asp (accessed July 10, 2008). 8. PETA, “Kentucky Fried Cruelty Campaign,” http://www.kentuckyfriedcruelty. com/ (accessed July 29, 2008); Humane Society of the United States, Factory Farming Campaign, “Wendy’s Attitude toward Animal Welfare: Frosty,” http://www.hsus.org/ farm/news/ournews/wendys_frosty.html (accessed July 17, 2008); Stop Killer Coke Campaign, http://www.killercoke.org/newflyers.htm (accessed July 29, 2008). 9. George Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1993). 10. Michael E. Conroy, Branded! How the “Certification Revolution” Is Transforming Global Corporations (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2007). 11. OCA (Organic Consumers Association), “Unchain Your Heart,” http://www. organicconsumers.org/valentines/index.cfm (accessed July 8, 2008). 12. Ibid. 13. Marie-Christine Renard, “Fair trade: Quality, Market and Conventions,” Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003): 87–96. 14. For general information on Oxfam’s gifts see Oxfam International, “Oxfam Unwrapped,” http://www.oxfam.org/en/getninvolved/unwrapped (accessed July 29, 2008); Global Exchange, Every-bunny Loves Fair Trade!!, http://www.globalexchange. org/campaigns/fairtrade/cocoa/easter2006.html (accessed July 7, 2008). 15. Fair Trade Foundation, “Fair Trade Towns,” http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/get_ involved/campaigns/fairtrade_towns/default.aspx (accessed July 1, 2008). 16. Cathy Roheim and Jon G. Sutinen, Trade and Marketplace Measures to Promote Sustainable Fishing Practices (Issue Paper No. 3, International Center for Trade and Sustainable Development, Geneva, Switzerland, 2006). 17. Sebastian Matthew, “When Sandals Meet Suit: Letter from Sebastian Matthew, Executive Secretary of ICSF to Michael Sutton, Director, Endangered Seas Campaign, WWF International, August 7, 1997,” Samudra January (1998): 31–35. 18. MSC (Marine Stewardship Council), MSC Environmental Standard for Sustainable Fishing, http://www.msc.org/about-us/standards/msc-environmental-standard (accessed August 7, 2008). 19. Bruce Philips, Trevor Ward, and Chet Chaffee, eds. Eco-labelling in Fisheries: What Is It All About? (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003). 20. Ronald T. Libby, Eco-Wars: Political Campaigns and Social Movements (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991). 21. Sierra Club, “Clean Water and Factory Farms: Inhumane Treatment of Farm Animals,” http://www.sierraclub.org/factoryfarms/factsheets/inhumane.asp (accessed June 6, 2008). 22. Viva (Vegetarians International Voice for Animals), “Welcome to Viva,” http:// www.viva.org.uk/ (accessed July 16, 2008). 23. Ibid. 24. Carlo Petrini, Slow Food: The Case for Taste (Irvington: Columbia University Press, 2006); Cittaslow, http://www.cittaslow.net/sezioni/Rete%20Internazionale/ (accessed July 29, 2008).

98


25. European Social Survey, “Cross-National Social Scientific Survey in 20 European Countries” (2003), http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/ (accessed July 29, 2008). 26. Michele Micheletti and Dietlind Stolle, “Politiska Konsumenter: Marknaden € Tillsammans. Tjugosju Kapitel om Politik, Som Arena F€or Politiska Val,” in Ju Mer Vi Ar Medier Och Samh€alle, ed. S€oren Holmberg and Lennart Weibull, Report No. 34 (Gothenburg, Sweden: SOM Institute, 2004), 103–16; Michele Micheletti and Dietlind Stolle, “Swedish Political Consumers: Who They Are and Why They Use the Market as an Arena for Politics,” in Political Consumerism: Its Motivations, Power, and Conditions in the Nordic Countries and Elsewhere (TemaNord 517, 2005): 145–65. 27. Business Wire, “Eating it Up: Organic Market Booms as Consumers Seek Healthier, More Natural Food and Drink” (November 12, 2007), http://findarticles. com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2007_Nov_12/ai_n21095138 (accessed July 29, 2008). 28. Dietlind Stolle and Michele Micheletti, “Warum Werden K€aufer zu ‘Politischen Verbrauchern?’ ” Forschungsjournal Neue Soziale Bewegungen 18, no. 4 (2005): 41–52; Daniel Miller, The Dialectics of Shopping (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). 29. “Animal Welfare Survey, 2005,” http://ec.europa.eu/food/animal/welfare/euro_ barometer25_en.pdf (accessed July 29, 2008). 30. “Do You Consider Yourself a Vegetarian?” Time/CNN Poll (July 7, 2002), http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020715/poll/ (accessed July 29, 2008). 31. Dietlind Stolle and Michele Micheletti, “The Gender Gap Reversed,” in Gender and Social Capital, ed. Brenda O’Neill and Elisabeth Gidengil (London: Routledge, 2005), 45–72. 32. Jean-Marie Krier, Fair Trade in Europe 2005, http://www.european-fair-tradeassociation.org/efta/Doc/FT-E-2006.pdf (accessed in July 2008). 33. Helga Willer and Minou Yussefi, The World of Organic Agriculture: Statistics and Emerging Trends 2007 (Germany: IFOAM, 2007). 34. The G7 countries are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. 35. Ibid.; For organic production, see Ulrich Hamm, Friederike Gronefeld, and Darren Halpin, Analysis of the European Market for Organic Food (Aberystwyth: University of Wales, 2002). 36. MSC, Annual Report 2005/6, http://www.msc.org/documents/annual-reportarchive/MSC_annual_report_05_06.pdf/view (accessed June 12, 2008). 37. Sarah Lyon, “Fair Trade Coffee and Human Rights in Guatemala,” Journal of Consumer Policy 30, no. 3 (2007): 241–61; Douglas Murray, Laura T. Raynolds, and Peter Leigh Taylor, “One Cup at a Time: Poverty Alleviation and Fair Trade Coffee in Latin America” (Colorado State University, Fort Collins, 2003), http://www.colostate. edu/Depts/Sociology/FairTradeResearchGroup (accessed June 12, 2008). 38. Slow Food,” “Manifesto for Quality” in Slow Food: Welcome to Our World Companion,” http://www.slowfood.com/about_us/img_sito/pdf/Companion08_ENG.pdf (accessed June 30, 2008). 39. Ruth Lister, “Inclusive Citizenship: Realizing the Potential,” Citizenship Studies 11, no. 1 (2007): 49–61.

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Conroy, Michael E. Branded! How the ‘Certification Revolution’ Is Transforming Global Corporations. Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishers, 2007.


99

Friedman, Monroe. Consumer Boycotts: Effecting Change Through the Marketplace and the Media. New York; London: Taylor & Francis, 1999. Libby, Ronald T. Eco-Wars: Political Campaigns and Social Movements. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. Micheletti, Michele. Political Virtue and Shopping: Individuals, Consumerism, and Collective Action. New York: Palgrave, 2003. Princen, Thomas, Michael Maniates, and Ken Conco. Confronting Consumption. London: The MIT Press, 2002. Ritzer, George. The McDonaldization of Society. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1993. Shopping for Human Rights. Special issue of Journal of Consumer Policy 31, no. 3 (2007). Stolle, Dietlind, Marc Hooghe, and Michele Micheletti. “Politics in the SuperMarket—Political Consumerism as a Form of Political Participation.” International Review of Political Science 26, no. 3 (2005): 245–69.

Web Sites Baby Milk Action, http://www.babymilkaction.org/. Consumers’ International, Coffee Campaign, http://www.consumersinternational.org/ Templates/Internal.asp?NodeID=95754&int1stParentNodeID=89650&int2ndParent NodeID=94997?NodeID=94997. Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International, http://www.fairtrade.net/; http://www. european-fair-trade-association.org/efta/Doc/FT-E-2006.pdf. Free Range Studios, http://www.freerangestudios.com/. IFOAM, http://www.ifoam.org/. Killer Coke Campaign, http://www.killercoke.org/. Marine Stewardship Council, http://www.msc.org/. McSPOTLIGHT, http://www.mcspotlight.org/. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, http://www.peta.org/. Sierra Club, http://www.sierraclub.org/factoryfarms/. Soil Association, http://www.soilassociation.org/. Vegetarian Resource Group, http://www.vrg.org/index.htm. Welfare Quality Science and Society Improving Animal Welfare, http://www.welfare quality.net/everyone.


7 Choosing Quality: The Knowledge-Intensification Shift JoAnn Jaffe The following commentary on baking by a forty-eight-year-old supermarket baker expresses the ambiguous status of knowledge in the commercial-industrial food system today: People coming in the [bakery] shop [to work] now won’t be able to learn what I was able to learn and I didn’t get to learn what the guys before me knew. It’s getting really difficult to find somebody who knows what they’re doing . . . it’s a balancing act. You still need a feel, [but] we use the mixes and the bases and who knows how those work and how to fix them when they go wrong. We do a few basic things. [He pulls out a 100 lb. batch of French White bread dough]. It will be turned into white bread, kaiser rolls, baguettes, could be crusty rolls and many others, depending on the shape and whether it’s baked on a bare pan or paper . . . it’s the same thing with the Canadian Grain mix. The trend is for bakeries to move to frozen breads that you proof and bake, or that are partially pre-baked. We do some of that, particularly the breads we can’t get mixes for like multigrain or the specialty breads that sell maybe a dozen in two weeks.1

From one perspective, each successive generation seems to know less about their craft and to depend more on manufactured products to produce what they formerly made relying mostly on their own expertise. From another perspective, the market seems to be filled with more variety than ever—implying a broadening of knowledge even though the plethora of choices may be more apparent than real. Contemporary consumers seem to know more about food, health, and the environment, and to demand more quality characteristics based on that knowledge. These demands present opportunities for those who recognize in consumer concerns an opening to remake a piece of the food system. After 25 years of relatively slow growth, the agrifood sector is now experiencing a new round of intensified accumulation based on selective responses to public concerns about health, food safety, environmental impacts, animal welfare, and

102


rural decline.2 These quality-focused projects take place in the context of rapid technological change, new product introductions, and the creation of new product subsectors—all intended to improve competitive positions, increase market share, and achieve greater flexibility and control through the rationalization of every phase of the production process. Food manufacturing and preparation processes are standardized so that they can be carried out by minimally skilled, low-wage workers. The knowledge that is deployed is a technical, abstract knowledge, mostly controlled by the designers of ingredients, machines, and production lines. The shifting of the terrain of competition toward knowledge-intensive, patentable technologies accelerates the incorporation of results of strategically targeted, technoscientific research and development. This turn to knowledge-intensity, and to particular attributes and claims of quality, intersects with a dual strategy of creating and exploiting niche markets, while also selling in mass markets that persist for certain staple commodities. Standardized and predictable prepared foodstuffs are produced for all market segments, while new market niches or segments are constantly being created. To make space for novel products, existing tastes, preferences, and traditions have been overthrown or reworked.3 As more foods are manufactured rather than being made from scratch, they are modified with an eye toward using standardized and interchangeable basic inputs (starches, sweeteners, extenders, fiber sources, and so on) in manufacturing processes.4 The result is a homogenization of diets despite surface appearances to the contrary. In much of the world, many people now consume substantially similar diets. Regional and ethnic specialties are diluted and made palatable to mouths now accustomed to the tastes and textures of fat, sugar, and salt.5 Moreover, diets are subject to a class bifurcation, in which the majority consumes processed, high fructose, bulk-commodity foods with large quantities of genetically modified and pesticide-treated ingredients, and the relatively well-to-do eat higher quality specialty and specially prepared products.6 Some people have been unwilling to accept the “deskilled,” passive relations of consumption and constrained choices imposed by these practices.7 One result of this resistance by certain consumers and producers has been a shift toward more knowledgeable production and consumption as exemplified in the movement toward artisanal foods, such as breads and cheeses, and specialty varieties of fruits, vegetables, and grains. Artisanship in this context represents an engagement with the sensory attributes of foods, craftsmanship, hands-on work, variable products, and high standards. It often involves creation with older techniques, machines, or varieties. In raising and responding to questions of quality, however, the contemporary development of artisan production has proceeded through a double movement. In some cases, specific social conditions make artisanship a strategy that has the potential to build alternatives to the present system. In other cases, it provides new spaces for profit-making by agri-industry by turning this production into another niche market—and, in the process, it blurs the boundaries of artisan production. Which face of artisanship has the upper hand in any particular instance may have everything to do with the relations of agrifood knowledge and intellectual property undergirding these options.

Choosing Quality: The Knowledge-Intensification Shift

103

DYNAMICS OF AGRIFOOD KNOWLEDGE The feelings of this 60-year-old woman of mixed Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal ancestry tell us something about the role of early experience in developing tastes: I love saskatoon berries [Amelanchier alnifolia, also known as service berries], which I ate as a kid, but the flavor of blueberries is just too strong. Especially the wild berries from up north. I really prefer the big industrial blueberries that are more bland. I had to throw out a bag of wild blueberries that was stinking up my freezer, because the smell was just too strong. It made me sick every time I opened my freezer.

Her ancestors would have depended on the wild blueberry to add to meat from hunting and trapping to make pemmican, a winter staple. She, however, grew up eating the food of urban Canada. Ingested from our earliest moments, the blander salty, sweet, and fatty flavors of industrial food conditions us to prefer a mild palate and to reject the stronger flavors of wild or nonengineered foods. Much of what we understand about the world, and our place in it, is rooted in the experience of our bodies. The nature of our embodiment is that substantial learning happens through interactions with the world outside ourselves, becoming our “second nature” without our specifically trying to acquire knowledge or skill.8 The resulting capacities are not those that lend themselves to verbal explanation and likely they will escape conscious awareness until we make a mistake or find ourselves doing something we are unable to explain, such as riding a bike. While embodied knowledge may be characterized as discovery of self and nature, practical knowledge can be thought of as apprenticeship.9 It is through watching and imitation that we learn practical knowledge and skills, including complex combinations of motor skills and judgment, such as those that are displayed when baking bread from scratch (particularly without a recipe), and social skills that are needed when moving from one social context to another. Along with embodied knowledge on which it depends, it is often described as “knowing how” in opposition to the “knowing what” of discursive knowledge. Discursive knowledge is developed through language and meaning created through talking, listening, and, especially, writing and reading. It has the potential to allow knowledge to be divorced from context and experience. Cookbooks are good examples of discursive knowledge—the extension of technical rationality is shown in the transformation of recipes from listed collections of ingredients to their measurement expressed in exact quantities. The development of science and technology, as well as technological rationality embedded in industrial capitalism, both depend on the development and transmission of discursive knowledge. In practice, science and technology often depend on the embodied and practical knowledge of scientists, engineers, and technicians. People’s agrifood knowledge and skill develop in the context of particular social sites and relationships, and in this way, they are intrinsically local as well as social. Agrifood knowledge thus is highly relational and reflects the culture from which it arises. Early experiences develop tastes. While later years can modify them, family plays an important role in constructing tastes by exposing children to particular diets, which themselves are produced by different socioeconomic and cultural

104


constraints, conditions, and possibilities.10 These then become expressed as preferences. Tastes are strongly influenced by culture, wealth, region, and gender, and they also play a strong role in reproducing social differences. People develop strong aversions to particular flavors, foods, cuisines, appearances, and food combinations that are not local to their social group, which serves to develop social boundaries. This drive for social distinction complements a drive for conformity as people use consumption to show that they belong to particular groups or have certain identities, but also try to distinguish themselves from those in groups whose social position is closest.11 People in lower social positions may imitate those in positions above them, however, leading those in the higher positions to abandon some foods and move on to new options in their own quest for distinction. Corporate agribusiness contributes to this dynamic process of distinction with the constant development of new or pseudo-novel foods. Agribusiness recognizes the wealth-stratified nature of consumption and targets its products accordingly, with some novel products aimed at wealthier consumers and others directed at those not so wealthy.12 In parallel, many alternative practices are structured by class. Specialty products and special experiences such as farmers markets, which are aimed at increasing returns to farmers and shortening supply chains, tend to be targeted at privileged or relatively high-income consumers. Strategies focused on low-income consumers concentrate on lessening consumers’ dependence on prepared and packaged foods and developing the skills to transform commodity foods into quality meals. The more one is distanced from necessity, the more one is free to enjoy food without being concerned about the balance between money spent and belly filled. The rich, thus, pursue and refine a taste for luxury. Those with cultural sophistication (or “high cultural capital”), but with relatively moderate incomes—in distinction from the truly wealthy—are more likely to consider a wide variety of objects as being deserving of aesthetic appreciation and to hold an abstract aesthetic sense in which many things theoretically could be considered worthy of appreciation. Particularly for younger people, education does not so much mean that one will cook daily or eat well as it does that one will be willing to eat foods in styles that are considered foreign, high status, and not typically “comfort foods.”13 Conversely, the consumption of foods that carry symbolic status or display particular quality characteristics can be a way for individuals to signify new identities or to “social climb.” Low-income consumers tend to rely on the complex of foods that are subsidized and cheap, which are apt to be made from bulk commodities and provide a high calorie count per dollar spent.14 Economic necessity encourages people to eat prepared foods. This is a risk-avoidance strategy in that flavors are predictable and engineered to be satisfying to a palate conditioned to like industrial food. It is a reliable way to vary one’s diet and try novel foods, whereas preparing new foods may require new knowledge and demand an investment that may not be recouped if one does not like the novel food.15 Broadly speaking, food production practices are structured by the logics and justifications of two different settings. The first is the setting of conviviality, in which production and consumption are oriented toward the provisioning and eating activities of families and households. It is structured by the logics of status and identity, comfort and care, familiarity and traditions. Many current alternatives to


105

the dominant industrial system emerge from this setting, with activists anxious to reclaim the social and cultural roles of food and agriculture. The second is the setting of commercial-industrial food production, structured primarily by the business rationality of capitalist production and marketing. This setting is dominated by logics of efficiency and productivity, with standardization, flexibilization, rationalization, calculability, and predictability important design criteria for products and processes. It is characterized by a disembedding of knowledge in which embodied and practical knowledge of food producers across the food system is replaced by discursive knowledge allied with the products of science and technology. Industrial bread bakers today, for example, find that their hands punch buttons of control panels rather than dough, which itself has been created using precisely calculated recipes of components of partially unknown composition.16 Many chefs and cooks warm the frozen products of food service companies or have been replaced by unskilled machine-minders in fast-food restaurants.17 Many agrifood workers experience a gap between what they know and what is necessary to know to be autonomous and in control of their labor process. Fewer people are able to create legitimate knowledge, and fewer people are able to gain access to it. This centralization of knowledge comes at a cost. All knowledge is embedded in social contexts, but one can distinguish between that which is locally embedded (also referred to as “situational” or “local” knowledge) and that which is more abstract, procedural, and applicable to a wide variety of contexts and which emerges in more technical or scientific contexts. The latter knowledge, however, may not contribute to the proficiency, autonomy, or creativity of the knower in particular local contexts. Knowledge and its products often confront food producers as “black boxes” all across the food system.18

THE TURN TO QUALITY AS KNOWLEDGE-INTENSIVE PRACTICE Quality is multidimensional; what is considered “quality” depends on the goals and standpoint of the evaluator. Conventional approaches divide quality into three components: objective elements, subjective aspects, and perceived quality. Objective elements are those that would be the same to anyone who measured them, such as nutritional content, bacterial load, and pesticide residues. Their measurement is normally accomplished through scientific analysis, and they are often the target of regulation and standards. Subjective elements, which also could be the object of standards, are those evaluations that differ based on individual consumer preferences, such as appearance, texture, and flavor. They take into account few factors and are evaluated as simple taste attributes—does the food have the right amount of saltiness, fattiness, or sugariness? They include some superficial exterior properties—is the food nonblemished, a good shape, and the right color? Perceived quality is based on opinion or image of the good and is often the subject of branding and advertising.19 The commercial-industrial agrifood system combines these approaches with the macro-quality orientations of low cost, convenience, consistency, reliability, and predictability to guide food development. This focus is consistent with the “food-as-fuel perspective,”20 which views food as routine consumption leading to short-term satisfaction.21

106


Conventional approaches treat qualities as intrinsic to the good itself. Through another lens, complex socioeconomic processes can shape those goods that come to be described as having particular qualities and others not. These are contested, discursive processes in which interests and goods come together to create rankings that, by favoring some values over others, redistribute power and advantage across the agrifood chain. Quality is a lens through which products, processes, and people are judged—a good apple implies a good grower with good practices.22 Being the result of contestable processes, these quality assignments are always provisional and open to change.23 Conventional approaches correspondingly regard consumers as if they all had the same pregiven preferences24 and as if their interests were satisfied at the moment of consumption. They view the capability of consumers to consume as competent, the acquisition of knowledge and information about quality as untroubled, and the communication between consumers and producers as unproblematic. Agrifood corporations, however, tend to see consumers as malleable—the focus of tremendous effort—from product and marketing research, to branding, advertising, and packaging.25 Agrifood corporations seek to solidify old preferences into brand loyalties and to incorporate the already-developed tastes of consumers into new allegiances. Brand loyalty reduces competitive pressures for the brand and thereby allows corporations to charge more. Corporations use symbols, metaphors, and stories to help consumers place themselves in relation to these products, to imagine who they would be by buying a particular product.26 Corporations draw on these already-constituted understandings of consumers and reformulate and repackage them to get them to buy and to consent—to the product in particular and consumerism in general. People use consumption to accomplish many things, from signifying status, confirming identity, conveying love, remembering parents, and showing self-control to providing nutritious and healthy food. Consumption is structured by the interpenetrating logics of conviviality and the commercial-industrial system and its strategies, technologies, and products.27 The result is socially constructed consumers, who may lack the information, knowledge, and analytical frameworks needed to make informed decisions, and whose attention to quality is shaped by the latest concerns of the commercial-industrial system—although not always in the desired ways.28 Different consumer judgments of quality are supported by different kinds of knowledge. Some knowledge is immediately available to consumers through the experience of consumption. One knows, for example, that the bread is white, soft, and tasty. One may lack the ability to judge whether these characteristics are good or bad, but the act of seeing and eating will give consumers access to information, including whether they like it or not.29 Other quality judgments are supported by knowledge not immediately accessible through direct experience. In these cases, quality refers to credence attributes that derive from scientific, social, ethical, and environmental commitments. It takes knowledge on the part of the producer to produce a product that satisfies the quality demand and on the part of the consumer to know to make that demand. Where these kinds of quality judgments are not part of the deep culture in which agriculture and food are embedded, they may require third-party involvement to bridge the knowledge gap between field or factory and fork, both in terms of setting standards and of verifying that the standards have been met.


107

Quality concerns provide a link between producers and consumers. The supply of quality, and information about it, logically precedes demand because in a marketplace, consumers cannot express preferences for nonexistent things. The best that consumers can do is to recombine preexisting elements.30 Furthermore, the messages consumers can send regarding quality via the medium of purchasing decisions are blunt, at best. How do sellers know which of many potential messages buyers are trying to convey through purchase or nonpurchase? In the last 25 years, civil society has acted as a vehicle whereby collective consumer concerns can be expressed in public arenas.31 Activists have expanded notions of quality into extrinsic categories of the social, ethical, political, and environmental, providing discursive foundations for consumer demands beyond the narrow basis of quality judgments presently at play in mass markets. In some cases, they have refocused attention on intrinsic characteristics, such as flavor, texture, and nutrition. Attention to quality has provided openings for alternative value chains to operate alongside or beyond conventional systems.32 In relation to agrifood systems, reembedding is about putting into play principles of conviviality and reducing the degree to which purely economic considerations are determinate. Reembedding must address how food networks and chains are qualitatively linked to social, economic, and political issues and how values beyond profit can assert claims in agrifood systems. Reembedding does not necessarily imply a more just agrifood system, however. What is required is that the agrifood economy be embedded in more equitable social relations and subordinated to democracy and ecosocial justice. Maria Fonte33 offers a framework that helps explain why particular quality concerns and conventions are adopted within different agrifood knowledge contexts based on research on local food networks in the European Union.34 She identifies two general approaches to the development of local foods and relates them to the social and cultural importance of agriculture and food in the area. The reconnection perspective, typical of Northern Europe, emphasizes deriving quality from rebuilding links between producers and consumers and reembedding agriculture into the interpersonal world. In places where export agriculture and perhaps specialization are long-standing practices, with an absence or loss of food culture and knowledge and no outlet for local agricultural production, the task is to revive locally oriented agriculture and rebuild people’s social and cultural connections to agriculture and food. This approach is characterized by explicit documentation of quality characteristics of foods and the processes that produce them. This is necessary because some of the new characteristics being produced are credence qualities and because, in these contexts, people tend not to know enough to ascertain quality on their own. Activities that bring local food to local people, such as farmers markets and organic food boxes, exemplify the reconnection perspective. The origin of food perspective, typical of Southern Europe, is a territorially based strategy of local development meant to revitalize socially and economically marginal areas. In this case, local has been expanded to include tradition and history; what is local, and thus of quality, is that which shares the “raw materials, taste, and dishes” of food traditions that form a robust part of the embodied and practical knowledge of cultures. This view of local goes beyond the view of food as essential to sociality to regard it as the rudiments of deep identity and patrimony. In local markets with knowledgeable producers and consumers, trust and communication provide the assurance of quality. According to Fonte,35 in these regions,

108


multidimensional commitments to the quality of food and of the processes that produce it are implicitly part of a knowledgeable agrifood culture in which food consumption and agricultural production grow up together, as part of the cultural fabric of place. Acquaintance with foodways, culture, practical knowledge, and tradition take the place of certification that guarantees quality at a distance. Although some local products are produced and remain in local regions, many enter global value chains and are consumed as elements of diets and social life far removed from their origins.36 This shift, in which product and process remain linked to the local area and tradition but local evaluation is not possible, requires a shift in knowledge relations. At a distance, the product is no longer embedded in the practical knowledge of consumers, and possibilities of trust, shared culture, and communication are eroded. Long value chains require movement to discursive knowledge, with the simultaneous introduction of scientific experts and technicians to establish and measure relevant quality characteristics.37 Many of these products enter the market with labels of origin, which connect qualities presumed inherent in regional cultures and environments with labels only available to those products from the region.38 These products may be subject to certification—private and public—guaranteeing that products or production processes meet culinary, environmental, or social quality standards. These efforts depend on a knowledgeable and skilled consumerate base to support the different kinds of quality produced. These approaches draw on strategies linking quality to distinguishing characteristics that command premiums in the marketplace—a focus of innovations across the agrifood sector. Quality certification, however, has an ambivalent character. Certification that reduces quality to a set of technical characteristics, as seen in organic production, permits capital to subject quality to processes of standardization and rationalization. Certification has the potential to flatten existing diversities in products, processes, and crop and animal varieties that are sources of creative variation in local foods by regulating their production and content. Certification may favor some producers over others because of the relative advantage of some in meeting the additional capabilities or costs associated with meeting quality standards. Conversely, being able to carve out spaces where the establishment of quality monopolies is possible may allow local producers a bulwark against their appropriation by commercial-industrial interests. Changing the agrifood system requires constructing new quality through an engagement with a different kind of politics—one that links quality to the more broadly conceived multifunctionality of agriculture and food.39 Building alternative approaches involves creating new meanings—and thus, one might presume, new possibilities for action—in five interrelated dimensions of the politics of quality. These fields include information (what we know), science and technology (how we know), knowledge (the context and focus of concern), communication (how we represent what we know), and standards and innovation (appropriate judgments and values).40 In each dimension, the questions of who decides and who controls the process are of utmost importance. The process of negotiating over and consolidating meanings around quality characteristics gradually endows them with an objective character.41 One might argue that commercial-industrial systems—in league with dominant conventions in science and technology—have usurped processes of qualification and made them essentially one-sided. However, “the questioning of the legitimacy


109

of the ‘institutions’ which provide knowledge about food: mothers as the experts, public agencies and even ‘science,’ which together functioned in a way that guaranteed the productivist model of industrialization and the safety of food during the so-called modern period,”42 has reopened questions of quality and brought them back into the political arena. Alternative approaches to agrifood systems have the potential to democratize and broaden notions of quality beyond that which is possible in conventional commercial-industrial systems. This points to the importance of movements reopening questions about the meaning and significance of food and agriculture, and of knowledgeable consumers and producers supporting a transition to deep-quality politics.

RED FIFE WHEAT: A COMMON PROPERTY RESOURCE The rediscovery of Red Fife, the original commercial variety of wheat grown in Canada, provides an interesting case from which to view issues of knowledge and quality. Wheat is the most important cultivated crop in Canada by area and by contribution to gross domestic product.43 It is the single most important source of plant protein in the world and the second highest volume of cereal grain produced after corn.44 The importance of wheat is due to its use in cereal, bread, pasta, pastries, beer, animal feed, and now as feedstock for biofuel production. One of the earliest domesticated plants, wheat has been the most important staple crop in modern history, having been key to the establishment of the world food economy as well as to the formation of many settler nations.45 Saskatchewan is the source of 60 percent of wheat grown in Canada. Much of that is hard red spring wheat, planted in May or June, harvested in early fall, and destined for flourmills and bread factories at home or (especially) abroad. The few varieties that are most important crystallize a complex mix of quality considerations that combine the interests of growers, processors, and, presumably, eaters within a commercial-industrial economy. To be acceptable to all of these interests, a good bread wheat variety must combine yield, milling quality, baking quality, and appropriate alpha-amylase content, which affects the conversion of starch to sugars in dough.46 Wheat yields are a complex mix of multigenetic factors, agronomic practices (especially timing at planting), weather, and soil type. Milling quality is a balance between flour yield and lightness of color. Lightness is important because quality is determined by white bread being the largest use of bread wheat. Baking quality combines measures of elasticity (strength) of gluten, volume and crust of the loaf, and quantity of water able to be absorbed by the dough.47 Varieties considered to be of highest baking quality are those suited “to production of the conventional light and fluffy breads of the conventional marketplace.”48 Few wheat varieties have the genetic potential to combine all of these qualities, and genetic expression depends on environmental conditions and agronomic practices.49 A small percentage of wheat produced will end up at artisan bakeries. Although there is no agreed-on or regulated definition of artisan, which allows this term to be appropriated by industrial bakeries, according to most artisan bakers, bread can only be called “artisan” if it is weighed, rounded, shaped, and slashed by hand, and then baked on the hearth.50 In these bakeries, the concern for craft and complex flavor shape the baker’s assessment of quality. Artisan bakers often favor wheat varieties with different qualities than those preferred by commercial industry. For

110


example, artisan bakers generally prefer lower-protein wheats, as high-gluten flours may not support the use of preferments and the long fermentation associated with artisan breads.51 High-gluten flours are particularly good for producing highvolume breads that rise quickly in a pan52 and for withstanding the rigors of industrial mixing.53 Artisan breads gained some limited popularity in the early 1970s with the rise of social movements that rejected industrial approaches to agriculture and nutrition and that favored “whole, natural” foods. In recent years, artisan breads— either real or so-called—have become widely popular along with other quality foods such as extra-virgin olive oil and premium dark coffees. Today, the fastest growing segment of the bread sector is the supermarket and industrial “artisan” category.54 Many artisan bakeries that were once small and local have been acquired by the commercial agrifood industry. A notable example is LaBrea Bakery, credited with helping to reintroduce artisan bread to the North American public and which was purchased by the Irish agribusiness conglomerate IAWS in 2002.55 Its products are now produced as prebakes that can be finished in-store and offered as fresh artisan products from scratch. They are now sold in more than 2,500 supermarkets in the United States.56 Saskatchewan has few strong food traditions. Its rural sector is dominated by family-based export agriculture—primarily wheat, but also other grains and livestock—and has experienced rural depopulation and farm concentration at accelerating rates since the mid-1970s. Here, alternative quality implies the reconnection perspective: organic, sold in local farmers markets or food co-ops, relatively small scale, and presumably healthy and nutritious. It may also imply few preprepared foods; vegetarian diets or, at least, nonindustrial livestock; and a core population of somewhat knowledgeable consumers and producers willing to try nontraditional products. Heritage varieties of foods (meaning before 1950) are becoming fashionable, especially in a few products, such as tomatoes, that are considered to be the most degraded in taste or for visual appeal. The culinary basis to support a widespread transition to quality, however, is arguably limited. Red Fife wheat is rooted in local value chains,57 but distinguished as a quality product and traded—albeit in extremely limited quantities—in national and global value chains. The first common bread wheats in Canada were grown from seed that individual farmers saved and reproduced on their own. Although the origin of Red Fife is shrouded in mythology, some say that in 1842 David and Jane Fife of Ontario planted wheat seeds they received from a friend in Scotland.58 They noticed that one plant in a plot of what they had thought was winter wheat was actually hard red spring wheat. They reproduced this wheat from one plant, which gave rise to a hardy, disease-resistant, high-yielding variety possessing excellent milling and baking qualities and exceptional flavor according to the requirements of the period.59 It was introduced into western Canada in 1882, where it remained the leading variety until 1908 when its progeny, Marquis wheat, replaced it, primarily due to its earlier ripening.60 Red Fife is an ancestor of many improved British, French, and U.S. wheat varieties.61 Limited amounts of Red Fife once again became available to Saskatchewan farmers when a wheat breeder planted one pound of seed in 1988 as part of the Heritage Wheat Project, a preservation trust of seven early Canadian wheat strains. About 13 years later, the main Saskatchewan grower organized a group of


111

26 small and medium-size producers into the Prairie Red Fife Wheat Organic Growers Co-operative.62 These are, in essence, artisan farmers who produce small amounts of special quality products that will be used by alternative and qualityseeking consumers and artisan food producers. Red Fife’s profile was raised when the Vancouver Island Slow Food1 Chapter succeeded in its campaign to place the wheat in Slow Food’s 2003 Ark of Taste. It is furthermore Canada’s first and only Slow Food Presidium.63 With foods that are designated as presidia, Slow Food replaces official certification with their guarantee that these products will meet process and product quality requirements, but do so in ways that contribute to the social and ecological diversity and knowledge that created the presidia food.64 Saskatchewan farmers produced more than 500 tons of Red Fife wheat in 2007, up from 70 tons in 2004.65 Although negligible compared with total spring wheat production of almost 6 million tons, producers of Red Fife received a price of more than 50 percent more per bushel compared with hard red spring wheat in 2007.66 Furthermore, studies show Red Fife producing comparable or better yields to widely planted modern cultivars such as 5602HR or ACBarrie under organic management.67 People disagree in their assessment of Red Fife’s quality characteristics. Some artisanal bakers consider Red Fife to be “a fantastic baking wheat because it is low in gluten and it has a crumbing effect when ground into flour—meaning that it makes a hay yellow crumb—with a scent of herbs like anise and fennel. In the mouth, it has an herby, spicy flavour to it.”68 Other artisanal bakers report not liking the taste of Red Fife and finding it difficult to work with. They talk about having trouble getting it to rise properly if it is the only variety in use or without the addition of white flour or dough conditioners.69 A study comparing Red Fife to wheats used in industrial baking rates it as having the poorest baking quality because of its low protein content and low flour yield—meaning that too much material has to be removed to make white flour.70 Variety registration is the gatekeeper for the grain system in Canada. The Canadian Wheat Board is the federal orderly marketing agency that sells all western Canadian wheat and barley destined for human consumption. The Wheat Board sells only registered grain. This translates into approximately 20 percent of the world’s wheat trade, with annual revenues above $4 billion.71 Red Fife, however, is not on the list of varieties of Canadian Red Spring Wheat registered with the Canadian Grain Commission, so it cannot be sold through conventional channels.72 Heritage varieties appear to be ineligible for registration because of a combination of factors. Although Red Fife has a common core of subjective qualities, as a landrace,73 its desirable characteristics appear to be due to interactions and redundancies of multiple genes. Together, these genes express particular traits (known as horizontal resistance) as opposed to one gene being responsible for one trait (vertical resistance) that can be easily identified through testing, as is the case with contemporary breeding.74 Moreover, neither the process nor the outcome of traditional cross-breeding can be patented. They are considered by the courts of Canada “neither new nor an invention, but rather a natural biological process which occurs according to the laws of nature.”75 In effect, Red Fife is an open-source wheat with genetics that make it difficult to monopolize by commercial interests. Red Fife growers use the producer direct-sale system set up by the Wheat Board for organic farmers. This system keeps grain out of the conventional elevator

112


system and avoids cross-contamination with nonorganic products. Farmers then sell their Red Fife wheat by declaring it to be (animal) feed wheat, which acknowledges that it is not registered. Although this puts limitations on how Red Fife can be marketed, it also may be a strength, as this is what keeps it from being easily appropriated. It is not clear whether present efforts by some Red Fife advocates to extend the patenting system to encompass traditional, farmer-bred varieties will succeed, but their conservation as common property represents a partial movement away from commodification and is likely key to providing a bulwark against conventionalization, or their co-optation by the commercial-industrial system.76 Some artisan producers treat quality as a property that can be made proprietary and from which rents can be derived. This strategy turns these distinguishing characteristics into things, something to be regulated and controlled, encouraging standardization where previously the product had diversity. Ironically, efforts to control and standardize efface the very artisanship—the embodied and practical expertise—that through the interaction with diverse conditions, applications, and responses builds deep quality knowledge. This has the effect of creating “frozen commodities” that reflect static notions of the real conditions and culture that originally produced the product. At present, producers can command a premium for Red Fife because it is a fashionable specialty product that allows artisan bakers to gain a competitive market position. In the words of one baker, “Red Fife is a nostalgia product, a peasant flour that today produces an expensive bread. Having Red Fife on the label guarantees you’ll sell your bread, even if it’s just 20%.”77 Ideas of quality and local tend to imply a “small is beautiful” approach. But nothing prevents that value added from being captured equally by large centralized producers. Indeed, the additional costs associated with quality may favor the large producer who has enough volume to spread those costs across the enterprise or who might have the specialized connections necessary to provide an outlet for the quality product. The legal and intellectual property issues related to Red Fife make it unlikely that industry will appropriate this product, but in the quest for something new to offer the public emulating the privileged consumer, the industry could just as easily promote another named “quality” variety.

REFLECTIONS ON QUALITY AND KNOWLEDGE Constructing successful agrifood alternatives to the current system involves creating new knowledge contexts for agrifood practices. In some cases, this will mean developing new relationships to food in which attention to the multiple dimensions of quality is broadly supported by embodied and practical knowledge. In other cases, this means reinforcing or recreating traditions in ways that do not allow them to become frozen or open to monopolization by rent-seekers. The success of Red Fife as an alternative, for example, depends on its uptake by artisanal and home bakers who have a deeper appreciation of the multidimensional aspects of quality than that offered by conventional supermarket breads, including its relation to preserving the livelihoods of artisanal farmers. At present, industrial producers have been able to take advantage of the shift to quality bread to realize large margins as they appropriate the meanings of artisanship in the face of indeterminate definitions and unaware consumers.


113

By highlighting the fact that all varieties are not the same, the move to Red Fife has made consumers and producers more aware of the role of wheat varieties in constructing bread quality. Many quality-stream products are based on proprietary knowledge and on branding that mixes liberal quantities of image and imaginary with some characteristics that have substantive importance. Because the impetus is fundamentally commercial, the efforts are focused on privatizing the benefits of knowledge rather than on sharing information that might help all participants make more savvy choices. In the end, consumers wind up purchasing socalled quality products that may be lacking in certain important dimensions of quality that impinge on human and animal welfare, as well as other spheres of environmental and social concern. Similarly, producers end up foreclosing the potential for knowledge about quality to become a vehicle for wider social enrichment. Consumers may have more quality consciousness, but may not be aware of how to best carry out their concerns. By being unwilling or unable to truly share information with their customers and patrons, producers lose an opportunity to get informed feedback and form a partnership in developing products and processes. A real transition to quality will require consumers as well as producers who have deep knowledge across the issues. Expanded conceptualizations of quality will need to be developed and supported with knowledgeable and skillful partners in the food system, including a publicly oriented range of researchers who will use common intellectual property as a basis for building the public good.

NOTES 1. All quotes are from a research project, “Thought for Food: Essential Skills and Food System Performance,” funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC, Canada). Participant’s identities have been disguised to protect anonymity and confidentiality. 2. Harriet Friedmann, “From Colonialism to Green Capitalism: Social Movements and Emergence of Food Regimes,” in New Directions in the Sociology of Global Development, ed. Frederick H. Buttel and Philip McMichael (Oxford: Elsevier, 2005), 227–64. 3. JoAnn Jaffe and Michael Gertler, “Victual Vicissitudes: Consumer Deskilling and the (Gendered) Transformation of Food Systems,” Agriculture and Human Values 23, no. 2 (2006): 143–62. 4. Harriet Friedmann, “Distance and Durability: Shakey Foundations of the World Food Economy,” Third World Quarterly 13, no. 2 (1992): 371–83. 5. Donna R. Gabaccia, We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). 6. Jaffe and Gertler, “Victual Vicissitudes.” 7. Ibid. 8. Margaret Archer, Being Human: The Problem of Agency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 9. Ibid. 10. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984). 11. Ibid. 12. Jaffe and Gertler, “Victual Vicissitudes.”

114


13. Omar Lizardo and Sara Skiles, Beyond the Distinction Myth: Rethinking the Relevance of Bourdieu’s Class Theory for the Sociology of Taste (University of Notre Dame, 2007). 14. Adam Drewnowski and Anne Barratt-Fornell, “Do Healthier Diets Cost More? (Policy Update),” Nutrition Today 39, no. 4 (2004): 161–68. 15. JoAnn Jaffe, “Understanding Food Knowledge and Domestic Skills: Three Generations in the Family Kitchen” (paper presented at the annual meeting of Agriculture and Human Values, New Orleans, June 4–7, 2008). 16. Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc, 1998); Anonymous, personal communication, 2007. 17. Ester Reiter, Making Fast Food (Montreal, Kingston: McGill-Queens’s University Press, 1991). 18. Harry P. Diaz and Bob Stirling, “Degradation of Farm Work on the Canadian Prairies,” in Farm Communities at the Crossroads: The Challenge and the Resistance, ed. Harry P. Diaz, JoAnn Jaffe, and Bob Stirling (Regina, SK: CPRC Press, 2003), 31–44. 19. Vickie Vaclavik and Elizabeth Christian, Essentials of Food Science (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2003). 20. Jaffe, “Understanding Food Knowledge.” 21. Gianluca Brunori, “Local Food and Alternative Food Networks: A Communication Perspective,” Anthropology of Food S2 (2007), http://aof.revues.org/document430. html. 22. After Elizabeth Ransom, “Defining a Good Steak: Global Constructions of What Is Considered Good Meat,” in Agricultural Standards: The Shape of the Global Food and Fiber System, ed. Jim Bingen and Lawrence Busch (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Press, 2006) 159–76. 23. Mark Harvey, Andrew McMeekin, and Alan Warde, “Quality and Processes of Qualification,” in Qualities of Food, ed. Mark Harvey, Andrew McMeekin, and Alan Warde (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. 192–208. 24. Gilles Allaire, “Quality in Economics: A Cognitive Perspective,” in Qualities of Food, ed. Mark Harvey, Andrew McMeekin, and Alan Warde (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. 61–93. 25. Tim Lang and Michael Heasman, Food Wars: The Global Battle for Mouths, Minds, and Markets (London: Earthscan, 2004). 26. Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974). 27. Jaffe, “Understanding Food Knowledge.” 28. Jaffe and Gertler, “Victual Vicissitudes.” 29. Their attention still may have been directed to particular features and not others. 30. Allaire, “Quality in Economics.” 31. Lang and Heasman, Food Wars. 32. At present, the most important movement for extrinsic quality is the one for fair trade; however, for the moment, it appears to be feasible in only a narrow range of specialty value chains. 33. Maria Fonte, “Knowledge, Food and Place: A Way of Producing, a Way of Knowing,” Sociologia Ruralis 48, no. 3 (2008): 200–222. 34. See Corazon Project, http://www.corason.hu (accessed August 29, 2008). 35. Fonte, “Knowledge, Food and Place.” 36. These products are called “locality” foods by Brunori, “Local Food.”


115

37. See Maria Fonte, “Local Food Production and Knowledge Dynamics in the Rural Sustainable Development” (local food production input paper for the Working Package 6, CORASON Project, 2006), www.corason.hu, for a similar argument. 38. Elizabeth Barham, “Towards a Theory of Values-based Labeling,” Agriculture and Human Values 19, no. 4 (2002): 349–60. 39. Michael Gertler and JoAnn Jaffe, “Agri-Food System Performance: Competing Frameworks and Development Alternatives” (paper presented at the meeting of the Rural Sociological Society, Manchester, NH, July 27–31, 2008). 40. Brunori, “Local Food.” 41. Ibid. 42. Allaire, “Quality in Economics,” 61. 43. Statistics Canada, “Farm Cash Receipts, 2008,” http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/ cst01/agri03a.htm; Statistics Canada, “Field and Specialty Crops, 2008,” http://www40. statcan.ca/l01/cst01/prim11a.htm. 44. USDA (United States Department of Agriculture), “World Agricultural Production, 2007),” www.pecad.fas.usda.gov/wap_current.cfm. 45. Harriet Friedmann, “The Political Economy of Food: The Rise and Fall of the Postwar International Food Order,” The American Journal of Sociology 88 (1982): S248– S286. 46. F. Lupton, “Advances in Work on Breeding Wheat with Improved Grain Quality in the Twentieth Century,” Journal of Agricultural Science 143 (2005): 113–16. 47. Stephan Symko, “From a Single Seed: The Quality of Wheat, Flour and Bread” (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 1999), http://www4.agr.gc.ca/AAFC-AAC/ display-afficher.do?id=1181313724319. 48. Brenda Frick, “Going with the Grains” (January 2007), http://www.organicag centre.ca/NewspaperArticles/na_cog_grains_bf.asp (accessed August 26, 2008). 49. H. Mason, A. Navabi, B. Frick, J. O’Donovan, D. Niziol, and D. Spaner, “Does Growing Canadian Western Hard Red Spring Wheat under Organic Management Alter Its Breadmaking Quality?” Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 22 (2007): 157–67. 50. Maggie Glezer, Artisan Baking (New York: Workman/Artisan, 2000). 51. Jeffrey Hamelman, Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2004); Anonymous, personal communication, 2008. 52. Hamelman, Bread; Anonymous, personal communication, 2007. 53. Anonymous, personal communication, 2008. 54. Katherine Bryant, “Modern Art,” Restaurant Business 103, no. 7 (2004): 60–61. 55. This process is reminiscent of earlier processes of labor and workshop centralization. IAWS merged with Zurich-based Heistand Holding AG in August 2008. Together they form the Arytza Group, the global leader in value-added baked goods, http://www.labreabakery.com/affiliates.aspx (accessed September 12, 2008). 56. Julia Moskin, “Taking the Artisan out of Artisanal: Good Bread Goes Commercial,” New York Times, March 10, 2004. 57. This point is somewhat ironic because many local foods in Saskatchewan are either imports or diasporic foods adapted into local socioecological contexts. 58. Sharon Rempel, “Red Fife Wheat” (Canadian Encyclopedia Online, 2008), http:// www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0010468. 59. Red Fife is apparently a descendent of (Ukrainian) Halychanka wheat. 60. Marquis has since been replaced by other varieties. 61. Bob Belderok, “Developments in Bread-Making Processes,” Plant Foods for Human Nutrition 55 (2000): 1–14.

116


62. Sharon Rempel, “The Heritage Wheat and ‘Red Fife’ Projects: Developing Community Wheat Projects Linking Consumers, Artisan Bakers, Pastry Chefs and Organic Farmers to Heritage Varieties of Wheat” (2007), www.grassrootssolutions.com. 63. Slow Food is a nonprofit, member-supported organization founded in Italy in 1989. Primary activities of Slow Food are to rediscover and catalogue heritage foods threatened with extinction by placing them in the Ark of Taste and to develop projects around these foods, called presidia, with local artisan producers. The theory behind presidia is that foods with economic importance should be given the means to be preserved. 64. Fondazione Slow Food per la Biodeversita, http://www.fondazioneslowfood.it/ eng/arca/dettaglio.lasso?cod=547&prs=PR_1192. 65. Rempel, “The Heritage Wheat and ‘Red Fife’ Projects.” 66. Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food, “Spring Wheat Production and Value” (2008), http://www.agr.gov.sk.ca/apps/agriculture_statistics/HBV5_Result.asp; Heliotrust, “Red Fife: The Grandmother of Wheat,” http://heliotrust.squarespace.com/storage/ Red%20Fife%20article.pdf. 67. J. C. Pridham, M. H. Entz, R. C. Martin, and P. J. Hucl, “Weed, Disease and Grain Yield Effects of Cultivar Mixtures in Organically Managed Spring Wheat,” Canadian Journal of Plant Science 87 (2007): 855–59. 68. Jack Klassen, “Return of Red Fife Wheat Bodes Well for Organic Producers” (quoted in Action Committee on the Rural Economy, 2005), http://www.ei.gov.sk.ca/ acre/Stories/RedFifeWheat.asp. 69. Personal communication, artisan bakers (2007, 2008). 70. Brenda Frick, “Going with the Grains,” Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada, http://www.organicagcentre.ca/NewspaperArticles/na_cog_grains_bf.asp (accessed April 24, 2009. 71. Canadian Wheat Board, www.cwb.ca. 72. Rules governing the sale of heritage varieties in other countries, such as France, also limit the commercialization of Red Fife. 73. Landraces are domesticated varieties of plants and animals adapted to local climate, culture, disease, and pests. They have been developed by communities and farmers through traditional breeding methods. 74. Raoul Robinson, Return to Resistance (Ottawa, ON: International Development Research Centre, 1995), http://www.idrc.org.sg/en/ev-9339-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html. 75. James Mallett, “Patentability of Seed Varieties” (2003), http://www.grassroot solutions.com/heritage-wheat/patents.html. 76. Julie Guthman, Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). 77. Personal communication, artisan baker (2008).

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Fonte, Maria. “Knowledge, Food and Place: A Way of Producing, A Way of Knowing.” Sociologia Ruralis 48, no. 3 (2008): 200–222. Glezer, Maggie. Artisan Baking. New York: Workman/Artisan, 2000. Harvey, Mark, Andrew McMeekin, and Alan Warde. Qualities of Food. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005.


117

Jaffe, JoAnn, and Michael Gertler. “Victual Vicissitudes: Consumer Deskilling and the (Gendered) Transformation of Food Systems.” Agriculture and Human Values 23, no. 2 (2006): 143–62. Lang, Tim, and Michael Heasman. Food Wars: The Global Battle for Mouths, Minds, and Markets. London: Earthscan, 2004. Nestle, Marion. Food Politics. How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition And Health. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Vileisis, Ann. Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost the Knowledge of Where Food Comes from and Why We Need to Get It Back. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2007.

Web Sites Grassroots Solutions, www.grassrootssolutions.com. Slow Food International, www.slowfood.com.


PART II Culture


8 Sustaining Regional Food Systems and Healthy Rural Livelihoods Gail Feenstra and Jennifer Wilkins The past century has seen a dramatic change in how our food is produced, processed, and distributed. Industrialization, globalization, and concentration have shaped agricultural production, food processing, and retailing. Tens of thousands of food products developed from a diminishing set of commodities compete for shelf space in supermarkets where a year-round supply of fresh and processed foods from around the world is the norm. Interrelated trends are intensifying within the food system: obesity and dietrelated diseases, food-borne illness, inequity and social injustice, economic imbalances, increasing food costs, and energy and other natural resource limits. As public concern about the food system and its impacts escalates, communities across the United States are creating alternatives to how food is grown, distributed, and consumed. These new food systems explicitly incorporate sustainability as a priority. The manifestations of sustainable food systems are varied; however, their values are consistent: health (environmental, personal), equity (working conditions to community food security), and regional identity. These characteristics are woven throughout the “new generation” food systems emerging from rural towns to urban centers. Although vulnerable in some ways, these food systems are restructuring in ways that sustain public health, the natural resource base, economic vitality, and the social fabric of communities. The food system, then, is at an interesting and critical juncture. While it has become globalized and concentrated, the emergence of local community-based food systems suggests a counterforce. Whether these emerging food systems flourish will depend in large part on community engagement, consumer demand, and public policy.

THE BACKDROP Sustainable, regional food systems exist in the shadow of a dominant food system that has been shaped by at least three interrelated trends: (1) industrialization, (2) globalization, and (3) economic concentration.

122


Industrialization For the last century, agriculture has become more mechanized, technological, and larger in scale.1 Average farm size more than tripled from 1900 to 1997 from 146 acres to 487 acres, and the total number of farms decreased from more than 5.7 million to 1.9 million in the same period.2 The percentage of the U.S. population living on farms dropped from 39 percent in 1900 to less than 2 percent in 1990.3 From the narrow perspective of yield per acre, agriculture has become more productive. However, not all farms have shared equally in terms of profitability. Midsize family farms, in particular, are disappearing from the landscape.4 Kirschenmann and colleagues suggest that the midsize farm enterprises—those generating between $100,000 and $250,000 annually—are too small to compete in the vertically integrated commodity markets and too big and specialized to take advantage of direct markets. As data from coast to coast indicate, these farms are fast becoming “endangered.”5 As these farms are either lost to development or consolidated with other holdings, along with them goes the infrastructure—that is, the local processing facilities, input suppliers, and small businesses that accompany family farming enterprises. In addition, regions lose diversified farmland, crops, and soils that provide ecosystem services, such as wildlife, carbon sinks, and the ability to hold water and reduce erosion. To the extent that these small and midsize family farms are associated with sales within their geographic regions, when they fail, communities lose access to foods with the place-based values increasing numbers of consumers are demanding.6 Globalization Lyson linked the emergence of a global food system beginning about the midtwentieth century to the growth of nationally organized food corporations. He describes, “A wave of mergers among food processors, input suppliers, and marketers resulted in a tremendous consolidation of power in the food sector.”7 These mergers resulted in large, multinational food corporations, functioning in a global food economy and sourcing and transporting foods coast to coast and country to country. The typical morsel of food we eat has traveled 1,500 to 2,500 miles from farm to fork.8 For the most part, the dominant food system is no longer based on regional production, processing, and distribution, but rather on global markets that depend on efficiency and least-cost suppliers to remain viable. Economic Concentration in the Food System Today, a relative few multinational corporations control the majority of the agrifood markets from seed to table. Since the mid-1980s, Heffernan and Hendrickson have been collecting data on the market share of the four largest processing firms for many of the major commodities produced in the U.S. Midwest, as well as dairy and food retailing.9 According to economists, when four or fewer firms control 40 percent or more of an industry’s market, that sector loses characteristics of a competitive market. This holds true in a number of food commodities, including beef packing (81 percent), soybean crushing (80 percent), flour milling (61 percent), pork packers (59 percent),

Sustaining Regional Food Systems and Healthy Rural Livelihoods

123

and broilers (50 percent).10 Heffernan and Hendrickson maintain that the consolidation of the food system is organized around five or six “global food chain clusters,” occurring as a result of horizontal and vertical integration and global expansion. Examples of these clusters include Cargill/Monsanto/Kroger, DuPont/ConAgra, and Novartis (Syngenta)/ADM.11 Kroger, once the largest U.S. retailer, is now second only to Wal-Mart, which claimed $98.7 billion in U.S. sales in 2006, compared with Kroger’s $58.5 billion. In 2005, the top five food retailers controlled 48 percent of supermarket sales.12

FOOD SYSTEM IMPACTS: HEALTH, JUSTICE, AND THE ENVIRONMENT The implications of industrialization, globalization, and economic concentration have been profound. The oft-touted consumer benefits—particularly an abundant, cheap, and consistent food supply—have come at a cost. Key drivers inspiring food system change emanate from its detrimental impacts, particularly on public health, equity and social justice, and natural resource conservation and renewal. Crisis in Public Health As a result of the integrated, industrial global food system, many U.S. consumers have easy access to too much food or the wrong kind of food, and have become, as Michael Pollan describes in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, “industrial eaters.”13 Per capita daily servings of added fats and oils in the U.S. food supply have more than doubled from 1909 to 2000. Total per capita consumption of added caloric sweeteners— 150 pounds of sugar annually—increased 20 percent between 1970–1974 and 2000. One particular sweetener, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), has risen dramatically in that time period to almost 63 pounds per capita per year.14 Although our diet is not solely to blame for our health problems, long-term health impacts of eating habits are increasingly clear. Diet-related diseases along with physical inactivity constitute leading causes of preventable death (15 percent of total deaths), just below smoking (18 percent of total deaths).15 Nearly two-thirds of American adults are overweight or obese.16 Since the 1970s, the rate of childhood overweight or obesity tripled to almost 20 percent for some age-groups.17 Obese children are more likely to become obese adults, threatening Americans’ long-term health profile. Direct and indirect health care costs of obesity are estimated at $117 billion.18 Agricultural practices can also negatively impact public health. According to the American Public Health Association (APHA), “there is clear evidence of the human health consequences due to resistant organisms resulting from nonhuman usage of antimicrobials.”19 APHA also issued a policy statement warning about negative public health impacts stemming from the source of most U.S. beef, pork, and chicken: Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). CAFOs have been associated with declines in community economic and social well-being, which undermine the foundations of community health.20 CAFOs annually require city-scale sewage treatment, impose a nitrogen burden on the environment, and contain by-products, including heavy metals, antibiotics, pathogenic bacteria, nitrogen and phosphorus, as well as dust, mold, bacterial endotoxins, and volatile gases. APHA has urged

124


federal, state, and local governments “to impose a moratorium on new CAFOs until additional scientific data on the attendant risks to public health have been collected and uncertainties resolved.”21 While small- and large-scale food production and processing systems are both vulnerable to accidental (or intentional) contamination with bacteria and other toxic substances, the centralized nature of the dominant food system aggravates the consequences of such problems when they do occur. Every year 5,000 deaths, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 76 million illnesses are caused by food-borne illnesses within the United States. The recent rash of food recalls provides tangible evidence of weaknesses in the U.S. food safety system and ample cause for an erosion of public confidence in the government’s ability to keep food safe. Concerns about Social Justice From living and working conditions of farm and food system laborers to food security for low-income inner-city residents, the impacts of the food system on health and livelihoods are increasingly problematic. Recent studies in California show that many farmworkers suffer from poor health even though they are young and physically active. They have high rates of serum cholesterol, high blood pressure, anemia, obesity, and dental problems. They are exposed to high levels of agricultural chemicals and suffer from pesticide poisonings. Many lack health insurance.22 The general situation for urban residents in low-income communities is depressingly similar. Obesity, diabetes, and other diet-related diseases are more common than in the general population, and poverty exacerbates these conditions. Innercity and rural residents often find themselves in “food deserts,” areas that lack grocery stores that carry wholesome food. As Winne carefully outlines in Closing the Food Gap,23 the poor in both urban and rural areas pay more for food and have less access to quality products. Both factors lessen their ability to use government food assistance dollars effectively. One common thread running through both urban and rural populations is that for the poor, often ethnic minorities, the food system is not meeting their basic needs. Many communities are not “food secure,” a condition at the household level in which “all members have access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.”24 Natural Resource Limits Prime farmland continues to disappear across the landscape in the United States, replaced by houses, shopping malls, and other nonfarm uses. The American Farmland Trust’s studies show that farmland is disappearing at an alarming rate— two acres per minute from 1992 to 1997. If trends of the 1990s continue and estimates are accurate, the Central Valley of California can expect to lose another 882,000 acres of farmland to urbanization and “ranchettes.” Productive capacity will be reduced by about $814 million per year with a total cumulative loss of $17.7 billion in farm gate sales.25 One of the most limited natural resources, particularly in the arid west, is water. In California, population increases, drought, decline in the Sierra snowpack, and court orders to limit water transfers in order to protect endangered fish species all contribute to restricted water for food production.26


125

Crisis in Energy and Carbon Emissions Energy is one of the most critical resources associated with food production in this century. In the United States, approximately 10 percent of the energy used annually is consumed by the food system. Most of transportation, food processing, storage, and tillage, not to mention our reliance on petroleum-based agricultural chemicals, are dependent on fossil fuel. According to Heinberg, “over 400 gallons of oil equivalent are expended to feed each American each year.”27 When we add up the energy costs of food production, processing, and transport, the current food system consumes approximately seven calories of fossil-fuel energy for every calorie of food energy produced.28 So, what allows this to happen? To maintain our current food system “standard of living,” we are using up the world’s energy and other natural resource reserves as well as our human communities.

EMERGING SUSTAINABLE, REGIONAL FOOD SYSTEMS It is possible to grow and eat food in ways that protect the environment, conserve energy, preserve family farms, support our farm and food system workers and rural communities, and promote healthful eating and community food security. One option is for citizens, policymakers, and others to begin to plan for healthy, livable communities by thinking about their food supply in terms of a local or regional, sustainable food system. Communities from coast to coast are already engaged in this challenge in a variety of ways. Consumer Interest in Local Food Interest in local food has increased so dramatically in recent years that a new word was coined to describe someone who strives to dine on foods grown within a one hundred-mile radius of where they live: “locavore.” Survey research suggests that consumers believe local fruits and vegetables are fresher, look better, and taste better than produce imported from other regions or countries.29 The Hartman Group, a consumer research firm, found that for 55 percent of consumers, whether the food to be purchased is “locally grown” was more important than whether it is “organically grown.”30 Responding to demand, supermarkets are increasing sales of foods produced within their states and regions.31 What Does a Sustainable, Regional Food System Look Like? According to a definition by the University of California Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, a sustainable food system is based on values and practices that simultaneously achieve the following: • Ensure agriculture systems that are both productive and ecologically sound. • Provide access to an adequate, affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate diet. • Provide all those working within the food system with equitable economic rewards and safe and dignified working and living conditions within healthy communities.

126


• Promote food and agricultural businesses and organizations that strengthen local and regional economies and communities. • Engage and empower citizens in becoming actively involved in the food system and policy decisions affecting it. In this context, we define a sustainable food system as one that is environmentally sound, economically viable, socially just, and geographically bounded. Communities, nonprofits, researchers, city planners, and businesses nationwide are beginning to support the values of stewardship and sustainability by putting their energies into designing and implementing sustainable food systems. Strategies include farmers markets, community-supported agriculture, regional marketing and placebased labeling, farm-to-school and farm-to-institution programs, community gardens and urban farms, and food policy councils (FPCs), as well as innovative combinations of the above. Most of these strategies create direct marketing opportunities for regional growers to sell products to the public, institutions, or retail outlets and simultaneously encourage social and cultural connections that contribute to more sustainable communities. The term “civic agriculture,” coined by Lyson, encompasses many of the multiple benefits these direct marketing strategies provide.32 Farmers Markets Farmers markets, one of the most common and widely available venues for linking local farmers directly with consumers, have been growing in number and popularity over the past decade, providing valuable opportunities for thousands of fulland part-time farmers. In 2007, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) counted more than 4,680 farmers markets nationwide, benefiting more than 19,000 small and midsize family farmers, thousands of consumers, and hundreds of communities. In addition to the direct economic benefits to growers, farmers markets also bring healthful food directly to consumers, create tourism destinations, allow money to be recirculated in a local economy, and provide a setting for community celebrations and gatherings.33 An important way in which farmers markets connect urban and rural people is by bringing healthful food to low-income communities (community food security). The USDA funds two subsidy programs—one for pregnant and lactating women and their children (Women, Infant and Children Farmers Market Nutrition Program—FMNP) and the other for seniors (the Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program—SFMNP), providing coupons to low-income people to purchase fresh produce at farmers markets. Food stamps also may be used at farmers markets and, in some markets, bring in a sizable portion of the revenues. Case studies in California highlight how some of these programs work in ethnic neighborhoods. According to one study of the Stockton, California, farmers market, low-income Southeast Asian residents have easy access to fresh, seasonal, locally produced produce, fish, chicken, and other food products at reasonable prices.34 Community-Supported Agriculture Another strategy for creating an even more committed connection between consumers and growers is through community-supported agriculture (CSA). This


127

strategy relies on consumers paying in advance for a “share,” or portion of the year’s harvest, which they receive in weekly installments throughout the season. In the early models, a farmer would add up all the costs of production and agree on a division among customer-shareholders. In many instances today, the arrangement is more akin to a “subscription,” where members pay a particular fee for a month, a quarter of a year, or a season in exchange for weekly shares from the farm. The CSA movement has picked up momentum since it was introduced in the northeastern United States from Japan and Europe in the mid-1980s. An estimated 1,200 CSA farms nationwide now participate in this unique alliance between farmers and consumers. The original goals of CSA included saving family farms and the environment; increasing fresh, local produce in members’ diets; and providing a consumer-based option for resistance to the dominant agrifood paradigm; however, a number of researchers have questioned whether these goals have been fully realized.35 Whatever the economic and political changes that have resulted from the CSA movement, thousands of committed consumers have emerged and begun to change the way they think about the food system. Perhaps even more important, as Ostrum suggests, is the “transformative potential” of the CSA movement and its ability to work toward “democratizing” the agrifood system in local settings.36 Regional Marketing Programs Across the country, programs are emerging to identify for consumers where foods are produced and simultaneously to provide a price premium for growers, with product differentiation based on a sense of place. These regional brands can be as local as a valley within a county or as large as a region encompassing several states. They all, however, offer farmers a way to add value to their products and meet a growing demand for “place-based” foods. Barham suggests these “valuesbased labeling” programs are motivated by a growing need to re-embed the agrifood economy in the larger social economy.37 A study of 13 programs that exist throughout California was conducted in 2005 and 2006.38 Each program has a distinctive label describing where the products are from. In addition to the label, programs have several common goals, including (1) increased production of local products, (2) increased consumer awareness of local agriculture, (3) improved local infrastructure for marketing and distribution, and (4) technical expertise for growers who want to explore this marketing dimension. All of the programs studied were voluntary, membership-based associations, some of which were nonprofit organizations. Although core members were farmers and ranchers, program organizers recognized the benefit of having a diverse membership base, including retailers, restaurants, consumers, nonprofits, university partners (particularly Cooperative Extension), and other local organizations. Marketing and education activities varied and included many creative ideas, such as an “agroart” festival, locally sourced dinners for the public, farm and range tours, and local tastings. Funding also varied; however, all agreed that a part-time staff person coordinating these programs was important. The biggest challenges faced for expanding these initiatives were time, resources, and local politics. It requires persistence to work through challenges and see positive results—at least five years, according to

128


some program organizers. For most of the programs studied, however, participants generally felt the efforts were worth it. Among the biggest benefits cited were new opportunities for networking within and outside of the agricultural community. More research is needed to measure long-term impacts of these organizations and their contributions to communities. In addition to the local labels developed in California and around the country, most states have marketing programs that promote their food and agricultural products.39 A 2006 study found that of the 44 states with an agricultural identity branding program, the main objectives were to promote the state’s products, increase consumer consumption of these products, and develop new markets and businesses. The challenges were similar to county-level programs—dealing with funding constraints for staffing and activities, and building consensus among participants with diverse points of view. The advantages were also similar—most programs were viewed positively as contributing to statewide agriculture and developing a higher market share for growers. Some local labeling programs have pursued a hybrid between a local and state program, by adopting state-recognized labels of origin. As Barham describes in the case of the producers of Charlevoix in Quebec, this new label is actually a form of intellectual property recognizable at the global level. This “place-making” label can integrate the social, economic, and environmental goals of a location as its products enter a global marketplace.40 Farm-to-School Programs The last decade has seen rapid growth in kindergarten through twelfth-grade (K–12) school districts in North America that are interested in serving farm fresh food in their cafeterias to provide healthy food to children in school meal programs, while simultaneously providing a market for small and midsize family farmers. These programs are improving their school food environments by sourcing locally grown farm fresh ingredients for school meals, starting school gardens, recycling and composting, including nutrition and food education in classrooms or cafeterias, and conducting farm tours for school children. As of July 2008, the National Farm to School Network had identified more than 2,000 farm-to-school programs in 39 states. More than 8,700 schools and 1,900 school districts are involved.41 Resources abound documenting the benefits, challenges, and impacts of farm-to-school programs in many states.42 A recent review of farm-to-school evaluation studies suggests that these programs contribute to more healthful eating patterns among children, as well as to more diversified income streams for regional growers. Successful farm-to-school programs tend to have three key ingredients: (1) active leadership, (2) complementary partnerships among diverse community stakeholders, and (3) creative, resourceful use of assets.43 Additionally, regionally based mid-tier food distributors can play an important role in making procurement options more economically viable for schools.44 As the cost of initiating and maintaining such programs is often still more than many school districts can afford on their own, supplementary income in the form of grants or donations is necessary. The future of these programs will be determined by whether public and private funds, leadership, and local, state, and federal policies support ongoing farm-to-school development.


129

Farm-to-Institution Programs The farm-to-school movement has fueled a broader movement to purchase locally grown, sustainable foods for cafeterias at other institutions, including colleges, universities, hospitals, corporate cafeterias, and prisons. There has been a big growth in this arena in the last five years; as with farm-to-school programs, initial work began in other institutions at least two decades ago. The advantage for institutions other than K–12 schools is that they are often less restricted financially, because they often do not depend on government subsidies like the School Meals Program or the Commodities Program to purchase foods. The Economic Research Service estimates that Americans spent $556 billion on food away from home in 2007 and at least 14 percent of that is captured by institutions (about $77 billion).45 Farm-to-institution programs can create win-win situations for farmers and consumers. As with schools, customers have access to fresher foods, while farmers benefit from new market niches. So far, these markets have been largely untapped by small and midsize farms. New research results from a California study that interviewed college students, food service managers, farmers, and distributors show farm-to-institution programs hold potential as long as farmers, distributors, and food service buyers address transaction costs and distribution issues.46 The surveys show that college students and food service managers are interested in local and sustainably produced foods. Twenty-eight percent of colleges surveyed in California have local produce buying programs and another 22 percent are developing them. In-depth case studies of food service directors showed that, on average, food service buyers purchased about 26 percent of their produce from local growers in 2006 (about $226,000 per institution per year). Research from this study showed that smaller colleges currently buy the most produce (as a percentage of total produce purchases) from local growers, and they tend to use smaller “nonprofit allied” distributors and direct purchases from growers to accomplish this. Significant challenges have surfaced in the logistics, timeliness, and consistency of the delivery system, as well as the seasonality, bidding regulations, liability insurance, and understanding and valuing of local food, but new solutions are emerging.47 Case study interviews48 showed that nearly 70 percent of food service buyers considered “quality” to be an advantage of working with local growers, and more than 60 percent mentioned “supporting the local economy” as an advantage. It is interesting that the California study and a similar Colorado study found that price is not the most important criterion in purchasing decisions; quality is.49 Many feel that the advantages are worth the time it takes to establish new working relationships and new purchasing protocols for a portion of their business.

Values-based Supply Chains New models for “values-based supply chains” are emerging across the country. Values-based supply chains are institutional purchasing arrangements whereby an agreed-on set of environmental, social, and economic values drive the provision— from production to marketing—of a given product or service. In value chains, partnering businesses form long-term networks and work together to maximize these values for the partners and customers.50

130


Examples of value chains include the New Seasons Market, a regional grocery chain in Portland, Oregon, that is committed to a Northwest regional food economy; Country Natural Beef in the Pacific Northwest; Ozark Mountain Pork in Missouri; and the Organic Valley of Farms headquartered in Wisconsin. In a study of these and other value chain models, Stevenson and Pirog identified several “best practices.” The most successful value chains include high levels of performance and trust, a shared vision, transparency with respect to information and decisionmaking, and ample recognition of the contributions made by strategic partners. To see values-based supply chains succeed in the future, the authors suggest that attention should be paid to achieving the following: (1) differentiation and pricing structure; (2) a sufficient volume and supply of high-quality products; (3) adequate capitalization and competent management; (4) technical, research, and development support; and (5) meaningful standards and consistent certification. Community Gardens and Urban Farms Many of the strategies outlined thus far have involved rural farms producing food and selling it to urban dwellers through various marketing venues. Food production can also happen much closer to urban centers and can involve urban consumers in producing their own food. In the first instance, “urban farms” are enterprises in which food production within the city limits is organized to provide food for many families. These farms range from independent sites on the urban edge that derive their main source of income from local consumer sales such as Fairview Gardens51 in Goleta, California, to those such as the Food Project in Boston, Massachusetts,52 or Red Hook Community Farm in Brooklyn, New York,53 that involve youths or low-income residents in growing their own food. Since these urban farms are so close to their constituents, many include an education and experiential component that often is funded by an associated nonprofit organization. Through these programs participants learn how food is grown using sustainable production practices and how it can be marketed directly to consumers or shared with local food banks. Community gardens provide benefits similar to urban farms. Community gardens have proliferated throughout urban centers nationwide and have served many different functions, from providing food security, neighborhood development, and strengthening ethnic or cultural connections, to forming a connection with the environment and enhancing public spaces.54 Most importantly, they provide fresh, wholesome food to community residents and opportunities for positive, healing interactions among people. In a study of the association between household participation in a community garden and fruit and vegetable consumption among urban adults, “adults with a household member who participated in a community garden consumed fruits and vegetables 1.4 more times per day than those who did not participate, and they were 3.5 times more likely to consume fruits and vegetables at least 5 times daily.”55 In many urban neighborhoods, community gardens are located on a separate lot near housing. However, in some developments, edible landscaping and gardening have become a central feature of the community. In such communities, gardening is part of a larger sustainable community design that is consistent with the Ahwahnee community design guidelines, which are considered a positive alternative to urban sprawl. Village Homes in Davis, California,56 is considered part of the New


131

Urbanism that focuses on creating human-scale neighborhoods better able to meet residents’ social needs.57 Along with a new vision for pedestrian-friendly urban design, accessible and beautiful public spaces, community gathering places, and landscapes that celebrate local history, these new developments also encourage the production, processing, and consumption of local food. All of these alternative approaches to food marketing and acquisition are considered key elements of local and sustainable food systems. Whether they exist in communities often depends on how engaged stakeholders are in assessing assets, identifying needs in the current food system, and developing concrete steps or plans to meet those needs.

CONNECTING SUSTAINABLE REGIONAL FOOD SYSTEMS TO COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT Food System Analysis and Planning In the last decade, professional planners have begun to view the food system as an important component to community design.58 Planners use tools such as GIS (geographic information system) mapping and zoning to plan for infrastructure and transportation systems that support a more sustainable community food system. Some strategies also detail how low-income residents can better access food in their communities. Additionally, the planning community has adopted a set of decisionmaking guidelines that include food systems in community plans.59 These guidelines will contribute to a built environment that supports a more sustainable food system.

Meeting Consumer Food Needs: Adequacy of Local Supplies Efforts to make food systems local or regional often raise the question of food self-reliance. How much of the food needs of the people living in a defined area can be provided by local agriculture? The exercise of analyzing food needs and agricultural capacity can often enlighten food system planning and lead to additional questions worthy of exploration. One study of food self-reliance was conducted for the Canadian province of British Columbia.60 The 2006 report concluded that “B.C. farmers produce 48 percent of all foods consumed in B.C. and produce 56 percent of foods consumed that can be economically grown in B.C.” This might be considered a measure of the province’s food self-reliance. When researchers considered what consumers should eat, based on Canada’s Food Guide to Healthy Eating, however, food self-reliance dropped to 34 percent largely because fruit and vegetable is currently below recommended levels. A similar conclusion was reached in comparisons of New York State fruit and vegetable production with New Yorkers’ food consumption, and how much is recommended in the Food Guide Pyramid.61 New York vegetable farmers produce enough vegetables to provide 38 percent of total demand. In a similar analysis for fruit, researchers found that New York fruit production could meet only 18 percent of the fruit New Yorkers demand, plus 256 million pounds of “surplus” of a few crops—namely, apples and cherries—that were produced in excess of consumption. Both of these analyses suggest opportunities for increasing food self-reliance by

132


orienting current and future agricultural production toward local consumer food preferences as well as dietary guidelines. The studies highlight the need to protect land from development and to bring available land into production of high-value, high-nutrition specialty crops. Economic Development Impact of Local Food Self-Reliance One of the potential benefits often ascribed to local or regional food systems is the contribution they make to community economic development. In the past decade, research has begun to document and measure this economic benefit. Several recent studies have looked at potential income and job growth from a shift in food consumption toward local sources. An 18-month study was conducted by the Michigan Land Use Institute and the C. S. Mott Group at Michigan State University to assess the impact of efforts to increase sales of fresh, local foods in Michigan on employment and personal income across the state. The study found that such a shift in marketing would generate 1,889 new jobs across the state and result in $187 million in new personal income.62 Another study assessed the potential net economic impacts that could accrue to Iowa from each of four scenarios of fruit and vegetable production and direct and grocery sales to consumers.63 For each scenario the economic impact was calculated. In one scenario in which Iowans ate five servings of fruits and vegetables per day and ate solely local produce for three of the five servings, the total economic output came to $331.2 million, including $123.3 million in total labor income, which generated 4,484 total jobs in Iowa.64 This report shows that “by substituting in-state production for out-of-state purchases, money that otherwise would have left the state remains in the state. Keeping money in the state is desirable because money that leaves the state rarely returns. Money that remains in the state has an economic multiplier effect on the whole economy.”65 This strategy of “import substitution” and capturing the economic benefits is at the core of many efforts to rebuild local and regional food systems. Building a Policy Framework for Local Sustainable Food Systems Should public schools serve food produced by local farmers? Should farmland near communities be protected from development? Should good food be more affordable than calorie-rich products in local food stores? What incentives exist in communities to establish food markets in areas with limited access to wholesome food? These and other food system related questions are ideal for local and state Food Policy Councils (FPCs) to entertain. Federal law sets a framework for action, but it cannot provide a local response to the needs and interests of consumers and farmers or respond to the natural, economic, and cultural conditions of a particular place. Hence the need for, and value of, state and local FPCs. Because FPCs are generated locally or at the state level, they reflect place-specific participation and process. For example, an FPC may be an official advisory body on food system issues to a city, county, or state government, or it may be a grassroots network focused on educating the public, coordinating nonprofit efforts, and influencing government, commercial, and institutional practices and policies on food


133

systems. However, all FPCs “bring together stakeholders from diverse food-related areas to examine how the food system is working and propose ways to improve it.”66 The first city-level FPC was founded in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1982 to address food system problems experienced by community members. Soon after, FPCs began in St. Paul, Kansas City, Charlotte, Philadelphia, Hartford, Austin, Los Angeles, Syracuse, Portland, Seattle, and Toronto. A number of state-level FPCs have also formed—Connecticut, Iowa, Utah, New Mexico, and North Carolina. New York now has several FPCs, and a number are emerging in California, Oregon, Oklahoma, Michigan, Maine, and Colorado. The issues FPCs address and the decisions they reach are as diverse as the constituents they represent. As an example, in December 2005, the City Council of Oakland authorized the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability to develop an Oakland food policy and plan enabling the city to get 30 percent of its food from local area food production. Its goal is to establish a sustainable food system in Oakland, thereby addressing food security, public health, local agriculture, energy efficiency, environmental resource preservation, zero waste, and community and economic development, and to increase food literacy through education, outreach, and advocacy. Are Regional Food Systems the Only Answer? While strategies to “relocalize” food supplies can provide multiple benefits, this framework is only a partial answer to making food systems more sustainable. If we examine the definition of sustainability, the alternative production, marketing, analysis, education, and policy options suggested here may not lead to achieving all the goals. As Allen has pointed out, broader policy reforms, especially targeting social justice, are also needed.67 “Localness” alone may, in fact, lead us astray unless we uncover and name the other dimensions of a sustainable food system that are important, for example, food democracy, control of decisions affecting our food system, social justice, and community empowerment. Although we want to avoid what Born and Purcell call the “local trap,”68 we agree with Hinrichs’ rationale for pursuing regional food systems strategies: Remaking the food system then suggests neither a revolutionary break nor a radical transformation but rather deliberate, sometimes unglamorous multipronged efforts to do things differently. Seen together, these initially isolated efforts to remake the food system begin to form a platform from which people might continue to work.69

Such work provides encouraging signs of change that motivate us and provide a sense of hope as we come together to create a sustainable food system for ourselves and our children.

NOTES 1. Steven C. Blank, The End of Agriculture in the American Portfolio (Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1998); Rick Welsh, “The Industrial Reorganization of U.S. Agriculture” (Policy Studies Report no. 6, Henry A. Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture, Greenbelt, MD, 1996).

134


2. USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture), National Agriculture Statistics Service, “Trends in U.S. Agriculture,” http://www.usda.gov/nass/pubs/trends/farmnumbers. htm (accessed January 3, 2009). 3. Ibid. 4. Fred Kirschenmann et al., “Why Worry about the Agriculture of the Middle?” in Food and the Mid-Level Farm: Renewing an Agriculture of the Middle, ed. Thomas A. Lyson, G. W. Stevenson, and Rick Welsh (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008). 5. Kirschenmann et al., “Why Worry about Agriculture,” 7. 6. Eileen Brady and Caitlin O’Brady, “Consumer Considerations and the Agriculture of the Middle,” in Food and the Mid-Level Farm: Renewing an Agriculture of the Middle, ed. Thomas A. Lyson, G. W. Stevenson, and Rick Welsh (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008); Robert Feagan, “The Place of Food: Mapping Out the ‘Local’ in Local Food Systems,” Progress in Human Geography 31, no. 1 (2007): 23–42. 7. Thomas A. Lyson, “Civic Agriculture and the North American Food System,” in Remaking the North American Food System: Strategies for Sustainability, ed. C. Clare Hinrichs and Thomas A. Lyson (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007): 19–32. 8. Brian Halweil, “Home Grown: The Case for Local Food in a Global Marketplace” (paper no. 163, Worldwatch Institute, Washington, DC, 2002). 9. William Heffernan, Mary Hendrickson, and Robert Gronski, “Consolidation in the Food and Agriculture System” (Report to the National Farmers Union, 1999), http://home.hiwaay.net/~becraft/NFUFarmCrisis.htm; Mary Hendrickson et al., “Consolidation in Food Retailing and Dairy: Implications for Farmers and Consumers in a Global Food System” (report to the National Farmers Union, 2001). 10. Phil Howard, “Consolidation in Food and Agriculture: Implications for Farmers and Consumers,” The Natural Farmer (Spring 2006). 11. Ibid., 18; Heffernan, Hendrickson, and Gronski, “Consolidation.” 12. William Hendrickson and Mary Heffernan, “Concentration of Agricultural Markets” (report to the National Farmers Union, April 2007), http://www.nfu.org/wpcontent/2007-heffernanreport.pdf. 13. Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (New York: Penguin Press, 2006): 90–99. 14. Judy Putnam, Jane Allshouse, and Linda Scott Kantor, “U.S. per Capita Food Supply Trends: More Calories, Refined Carbohydrates, and Fats,” FoodReview 25, no. 3 (2002): 2–15, http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/FoodReview/DEC2002/ frvol25i3.pdf. 15. Ali H. Mokdad et al., “Actual Causes of Death in the United States 2000,” The Journal of the American Medical Association 291 (2004): 1238–245, http://dying.about. com/causes/tp/actual_death.htm. 16. National Center for Health Statistics, “Prevalence of Overweight and Obesity among Adults: United States, 2003–2004” (Health and Stats, 2006), http://www.cdc. gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/hestats/overweight/overwght_adult_03.htm. 17. CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), “Overweight and Obesity: Overweight Prevalence,” http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/childhood/prevalence. htm. 18. Elizabeth Frazao, “High Costs of Poor Eating Patterns in the United States,” in America’s Eating Habits: Changes and Consequences, ed. Elizabeth Frazao, Agriculture Information Bulletin No. 750 (Washington, DC: USDA, Economic Research Service, 1999): 5–32, http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aib750/. 19. American Public Health Association, “Helping Preserve Antibiotic Effectiveness by Stimulating Demand for Meats Produced without Excessive Antibiotics” (Policy


135

Statement 2004–13, 2004), http://www.apha.org/advocacy/policy/policysearch/default. htm?id=1299. 20. Jan L. Flora et al., “Social and Community Impacts in Iowa State University and the University of Iowa Study Group,” Iowa Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations Air Quality Study (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2002), 147–63. 21. American Public Health Association, “Precautionary Moratorium on New Concentrated Animal Feed Operations” (Policy Statement 2003–7, 2003), http://www. apha.org/advocacy/policy/policysearch/default.htm?id=1243. 22. Don Villarejo, “Suffering in Silence: A Report on the Health of California’s Agricultural Workers” (Davis, CA: CIRS, 2000) cited in Guzman et al., A Workforce Action Plan for Farm Labor in California: Toward a More Sustainable Food System (report to the Roots of Change Fund, 2007), http://www.cirsinc.org/Documents/Pub0707.1.pdf. 23. Mark Winne, Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008). 24. USDA, ERS (Economic Research Service), “Food Security in the United States: Measuring Household Food Security,” http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodSecurity/ measurement.htm (accessed August 7, 2008); Sue Ann Andersen, ed., “Core Indicators of Nutritional State for Difficult to Sample Populations,” The Journal of Nutrition 120 (1990): 1557S–1600S. 25. American Farmland Trust, “What’s Happening to Our Farmland?” (Farming on the Edge Report, n.d.), http://www.farmland.org/resources/fote/default.asp; American Farmland Trust, “Where is the Central Valley Heading? Projection of Current Trends,” The Future Is Now: Central Valley Farmland at the Tipping Point?, http://www.farmland. org/programs/states/futureisnow/projections.asp. 26. The Polaris Institute, “Water Stewardship: Ensuring a Secure Future for California Water” (California Agricultural Water Stewardship Initiative, 2008), http://www. agwaterstewards.org/Water_Stewardship.pdf. 27. Richard Heinberg, “Threats of Peak Oil to the Global Food Supply #159” (paper presented at the FEASTA Conference, “What Will We Eat as the Oil Runs Out?” Dublin, Ireland, June 23–25, 2005). 28. Martin C. Heller and Gregory A. Keoleian, “U.S. Food System Factsheet” (Ann Arbor: Center for Sustainable Systems, University of Michigan), http://css.snre.umich. edu/css_doc/CSS01-06.pdf. 29. Jennifer L. Wilkins, Jennifer C. Bokaer-Smith, and Duncan Hilchey, “Local Foods and Local Agriculture: A Survey of Attitudes among Northeastern Consumers: A Survey of Northeast Consumers” (Ithaca, NY: Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University, 1996). 30. Hartman Group, Inc., “Organic Food & Beverage Trends 2004: Lifestyle, Language & Category Adoption,” Pub ID: HAR1032427 (Bellevue, WA: The Hartman Group, Inc., 2004). 31. Packaged Facts, “Locally Grown Foods Niche Cooks Up at $5 Billion as America Chows Down on Fresh” (press release June 20, 2007), http://www.packagedfacts. com/about/release.asp?id=918. 32. Thomas A. Lyson, Civic Agriculture: Reconnecting Farm, Food and Community (Medford, MA: University Press of New England, 2004). 33. Agricultural Marketing Service, “Farmers Markets: Wholesale and Farmers Markets, United States Department of Agriculture,” http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/ams. fetchTemplateData.do?template=TemplateC&navID=FarmersMarkets&rightNav1=Far mersMarkets&topNav=&leftNav=WholesaleandFarmersMarkets&page=WFMFarmers MarketsHome&description=Farmers%20Markets&acct=frmrdirmkt; Gail Feenstra,

136


“The Roles of Farmers’ Markets in Fueling Local Economies,” Gastronomic Sciences January, no. 2 (2007): 56–64. 34. Christopher C. Lewis, “The Saturday Stockton Certified Farmers Market: An Urban Community Market” (Direct Marketing, UC Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, 2001), http://www.sarep.ucdavis.edu/cdpp/stockton.htm. 35. Patricia Allen et al., “Shifting Plates in the Agrifood Landscape: The Tectonics of Alternative Agrifood Initiatives in California,” Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003): 61–75; C. Clare Hinrichs, “Embeddedness and Local Food Systems: Notes on Two Types of Direct Agricultural Markets,” Journal of Rural Studies 16 (2000): 295–303. 36. Marcia Ruth Ostrom, “Community Supported Agriculture as an Agent of Change,” in Remaking the North American Food System, ed. C. Clare Hinrichs and Thomas A. Lyson (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 99–120. 37. Elizabeth Barham, “Towards a Theory of Values-based Labeling,” Agriculture and Human Values 19 (2002): 349–60. 38. Erin Derden-Little and Gail Feenstra, “Regional Agricultural Marketing: A Review of Programs in California” (Local Food Systems in a Global Environment, UC Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, 2006), http://www.sarep. ucdavis.edu/cdpp/foodsystems/MarketingReportFinal_5_10.pdf. 39. C. Clare Hinrichs and Eric Jensen, “State Labeling of Food and Agricultural Products: Organization, Governance and Outcomes” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Rural Sociological Society, Louisville, KY, August 10–13, 2006). 40. Elizabeth Barham, “The Lamb That Roared: Origin-labeled Products as PlaceMaking Strategy in Charlevoix, Quebec,” in Remaking the North American Food System, ed. C. Clare Hinrichs and Thomas A. Lyson (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007). 41. National Farm to School Network, “Welcome to National Farm to School Online,” http://www.farmtoschool.org/ (accessed July 25, 2008). 42. Barbara C. Bellows, Rex Dufour, and Janet Bachman, “Bringing Local Food to Local Institutions: A Resource Guide for Farm-to-School and Farm-to-Institution Programs” (ATTRA), http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/PDF/farmtoschool.pdf. 43. Anupama Joshi, Andrea A. Azuma, and Gail Feenstra, “Do Farm to School Programs Make a Difference? Findings and Future Research Needs,” Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition 3, no. 2, 3 (2008): 229–46. 44. Betty Tomoko Izumi, “Farm to School Programs in Public K-12 Schools in the United States: Perspectives of Farmers, Food Service Professionals, and Food Distributors” (PhD dissertation, Michigan State University, 2008). 45. USDA, ERS, “Food Away from Home, Table 3: Food CPI, Prices and Expenditures,” http://151.121.68.30/Briefing/CPIFoodAndExpenditures/Data/table3.htm. 46. Patricia Allen et al., “Bringing Students, Farmers and Food Service to the Table” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society, New Orleans, LA, June 4–8, 2008). 47. Allen et al., “Bringing Students”; Mary B. Gregoire, et al., “Iowa Producers’ Perceived Benefits and Obstacles in Marketing to Local Restaurants and Institutional Foodservice Operations,” Journal of Extension 43, no. 1 (2005): article # 1RIB1, http:// www.joe.org/joe/2005february/rb1.shtml; Harriet Friedmann, “Scaling Up: Bringing Public Institutions and Food Service Corporations into the Project for a Local, Sustainable Food System in Ontario,” Agriculture and Human Values 24 (2007): 389–98. 48. Allen et al., “Bringing Students.” 49. Amory Starr et al., “Sustaining Local Agriculture: Barriers and Opportunities to Direct Marketing between Farms and Restaurants in Colorado,” Agriculture and Human Values 20 (2003): 301–21.


137

50. G. W. Stevenson and Rich Pirog, “Values-Based Supply Chains: Strategies for Agrifood Enterprises of the Middle,” in Food and the Mid-Level Farm: Renewing an Agriculture of the Middle, ed. Thomas A. Lyson, G. W. Stevenson, and Rick Welsh (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008): 119–43. 51. Fairview Gardens, http://www.fairviewgardens.org/. 52. The Food Project, http://www.thefoodproject.org/. 53. Lisa McLaughlin, “Inner City Farms,” The New York Times Magazine, July 24, 2008, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1826271,00.html. 54. Laura Lawson, City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardening in America. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). 55. Katherine Alaimo et al., “Fruit and Vegetable Intake among Urban Community Gardeners,” Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 40, no. 2 (2008): 121. 56. Mark Francis, Village Homes: A Community by Design (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003). 57. Judy Corbett and Michael Corbett, Designing Sustainable Communities: Learning from Village Homes (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2000). 58. Kami Pothukuchi and Jerry Kaufman, “Placing Food Issues on the Community Agenda: The Role Of Municipal Institutions in Food Systems Planning,” Agriculture and Human Values 16 (1999): 213–24. 59. Jerry Kaufman, Kami Pothukuchi, and Deanna Glosser (in consultation with American Planning Association members), “Community and Regional Planning: A Policy Guide of the American Planning Association” (adopted by APA Legislative, Policy Committee, and Chapter Delegates, APA National Conference, Philadelphia, PA, 2007), http://www.planning.org/policyguides/food.htm. 60. British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, “B.C.’s Food Self-Reliance: Can B.C.’s Farmers Feed Our Growing Population?” (2006), http://www.southlandsin thealr.ca/b-c-s-food-self-reliance (accessed August 7, 2008). 61. USDA, Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, “Food Guide Pyramid: A Guide to Daily Food Choices” (1992), http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/Fpyr/pmap.htm (accessed July 28, 2008). 62. C. S. Mott Group, Eat Fresh and Grow Jobs (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 2006). 63. Dave Swenson, “The Economic Impacts of Increased Fruit and Vegetable Production and Consumption in Iowa: Phase II” (prepared for the Regional Food Systems Working Group Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, 2006), http://www.leopold. iastate.edu/pubs/staff/health/health.htm (accessed August 18, 2008). 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. 66. World Hunger Year, Food Security Learning Center, “Food Policy Councils, 2008,” http://www.worldhungeryear.org/fslc/faqs/ria_090.asp?section=8&click=1 (accessed August 18, 2008). 67. Patricia Allen, Together at the Table: Sustainability and Sustenance in the American Agrifood System (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004). 68. Brandon Born and Mark Purcell, “Avoiding the Local Trap: Scale and Food Systems in Planning Research,” Journal of Planning Education and Research 26 (2006): 195–207. 69. C. Clare Hinrichs, “Introduction: Practice and Place in Remaking the Food System,” in Remaking the North American Food System, ed. C. Clare Hinrichs and Thomas A. Lyson (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 1–15, 5–6.

138


RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Halweil, Brian. Eat Here: Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket. Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute, 2004. Hinrichs, Clare, and Thomas A. Lyson. Remaking the North American Food System: Strategies for Sustainability. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008. Kingsolver, Barbara. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. Patel, Raj. Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power, and the Hidden Battle for the World’s Food System. London: Portobello Books Ltd., 2007. Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. New York: Penguin Press, 2006. Pollan, Michael. In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. New York: Penguin Press, 2008. Roberts, Paul. The End of Food. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2008. Smith, Alisa, and J. B. MacKinnon. Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally. New York: Harmony Books, 2007. Weis, Anthony. The Global Food Economy: The Battle for the Future of Farming. London: Zed Books, 2007.

Web Sites Community Food Security Coalition, http://www.foodsecurity.org/. Food System Research Group, University of Wisconsin-Madison, http://www.aae.wisc. edu/fsrg/. Local Harvest, http://www.localharvest.org. World Hunger Year, Food Security Learning Center, http://www.worldhungeryear.org/ fslc/.

9 Social Movements: Slow Places, Fast Movements, and the Making of Contemporary Rurality Daniel Niles In September 2004 the often sleepy grounds of Mexico City’s Monument to the Revolution were briefly brought to life. A group of campesinos was using the monument’s cement embankments as a staging ground for a protest and occupation of several government ministries concerned with rural development. Some had donned their best shirts and hats for the occasion, but many had arrived as if straight from their fields, in their rubber boots, patched pants and thin shirts open wide at the neck. Most came with only a few pesos in their pockets or tucked into their brassieres, yet prepared to stay for the duration. They slept on the monument grounds under a large canvas tarp that provided shelter from the cold fall rain, if not the wind, or on their buses until such time as the demonstration organizers were granted hearings with the appropriate government ministries. Then the group would discuss whether or not their objectives had been or would be realized, and whether they should return to their towns, villages, and hamlets, at least for the time being. The presence of an unaffiliated estadounidense (U.S. citizen) wandering through the campesino crowd generated a fair amount of interest and commentary, and plenty of invitations to stop and talk for a while. Conversation often turned to the United States. Almost all of these rural people, especially the men, had been to the United States and knew it well. It is now rare to meet in the Mexican countryside a man of mature age who has not lived in and between Oregon, Idaho, California, and Colorado, or increasingly Illinois, North Carolina, New York, and even Maine, for 2, 8, 20 years, or more. Such men and women have passed half a lifetime as shadow labor in the United States. Rural women who have not been to the States themselves have husbands, sons, and daughters, sometimes all of their sons and daughters, absent for years on end often with little or no contact sometimes, gone forever to another life, or to a faraway death. Fewer of the campesinos on the monument grounds had been to Mexico City. In the small groups standing around or squatting comfortably, varied commentary discussed the cross-dressed prostitutes now visible in the early night, general fear of crime, and the shadowed streets, and no confidence in the capital’s food. Some

140


resolved not to venture into the surrounding neighborhood at all: the Monument to the Revolution would be their island. Before long, a small group of farmers from Michoacan struck out for a protest several blocks away, one of several occurring simultaneously at different buildings in the central city. The group stuck closely together as it moved quickly beneath the polished-glass high rises and across the ill-lit striated avenues, sometimes suspiciously devoid of traffic. As we crossed one median after another, someone joked that here I was the coyote—the cunning characters on whom most migrants depend to guide them across the U.S. border—and that even in Mexico’s capital, the campesino is always on the run. We arrived at the offices of SAGARPA (the Secretary of Agriculture, Cattle Ranching, Rural Development, Fisheries, and Food), where several hundred campesinos were cramped between the pulsing avenue and the glass ministry high-rise building. Most of the lights were turned off; the functionaries had long since slipped out the back. Only a few police guarded the front door and the brightly lit street-level showroom in which choice pieces of folk art and other items—some obviously updated to appeal to more urbane taste—were on display at top-dollar prices. The campesinos, whose home regions I could sometimes guess based on a particular style of hat or blouse, quickly made their initial point, calling out Presente!—We’re here!—in response to a speaker who called off the names of the Mexican states. Even though most people had arrived earlier that day and were in good spirits, after a short while, there did not seem to be much to do—the office lights were mostly turned off, few other people passed on the sidewalk—and it appeared that the whole demonstration might dissipate at any moment in the chill air. Then, it seemed mostly to keep spirits up, a group of campesinos with dented horns and drums set into their instrument, mounting an impromptu huapango (or village fête) right there on the avenue. Despite the “constant change” in Mexico’s countryside, and the morbid predictions for the future of its people,1 what Bonfil Batalla2 called Mexico Profundo, or deep Mexico, still exists and remains largely rural or indigenous. This Mexico is still the source, or at least the referent, of much Mexican popular art and culture, and often at the base of what is considered most quintessentially Mexican. Here, in the darkened streets of the strange capital, flickering in the glass of the ministry showroom and propelled by the band’s ragged tunes, the shuffle-dance of a few bold couples, and the encouraging shouts and whistles from the crowd, the assembly took on a strangely un-protest-like feel: the deep contrast and irony between the well-lit “folk” culture managed, promoted, and updated at will by the state, and the folk themselves seemed lost on no one. Displacing the standard practical and political demands, at least for the moment, were country people unabashedly celebrating themselves in the political center of the nation that claims to represent them. That rural people would have cause to protest the plans of an authoritarian, rapidly modernizing, and technocratic state should come as no surprise. Their reasons for doing so in different periods have been well described in various contexts.3 One of the classic texts on rural rebellion and political economy is James Scott’s The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia.4 It describes the series of peasant rebellions against colonial powers in 1930s and 1940s Burma and Vietnam as fundamentally conservative: their objective was to

Social Movements

141

reestablish the variety of social and economic arrangements that had ensured a minimum income to all. In such settings, [t]he appeal [of rural rebellion] was in almost every case to the past—to traditional practices—and the revolts I discuss are best seen as defensive reactions. Such backward-looking intentions are by now a commonplace in the analysis of peasant movements. As Moore, citing Tawney, put it, “the peasant radical would be astonished to hear that he is undermining the foundations of society; he is merely trying to get back what is rightfully his.”5

In essence, Scott’s thesis is that colonialism violated rural peoples’ sense of themselves as producers of their own livelihoods and patterns of social reproduction. This thesis is still pertinent to rural social protest today. But the implication that such action is referenced to the past alone, to “closed and autonomous utopia,”6 that it has no engaged or substantive interest in the wider political and economic conditions, and that it certainly offers no proposal for alternative political economies, is now plainly out of date. On the contrary, contemporary agrarian politics look to the future, combining awareness of human-ecological interdependence with political-economic critique and a strong sense of cultural potential. For example, Via Campesina, an international alliance of small farmers and rural peoples, is a mass political movement. The food-centered Slow Food1 organization is a kind of social network with goals beyond those of most social networks. Both Via Campesina and Slow Food emerged in response to the dominant course of twentieth-century agricultural development, a course that has—with few exceptions—seen the steady undermining of the structural conditions that would support small-scale producers, so that now the very idea of agrarian society is in jeopardy.7 Rural places have come to be seen as little more than sources of raw materials and sinks for urban and industrial waste, or to be of value in spite of rural peoples themselves.8 Via Campesina organizations experienced this devaluation of rural people and places at the point of production, as support for small farmers has declined along with the percentage of the food dollar that stays on-farm, and as local products have been displaced from local markets. In contrast, Slow Food began its critique of industrial agriculture and food systems from the point of consumption: it rejected the very food produced in industrial food systems—the “rivers of grain”—as a false abundance that transformed the gastronomic and social experiences of cooking and eating into banal, pleasureless acts. Via Campesina and Slow Food attempt to change this course of development. In its place, they struggle to create circuits of small-scale agrobiodiverse agricultural production and rich food cultures, each of which supports the other. Both organizations blend place-based development projects with international networking and solidarity, and thus can operate consistently in local, national, and international contexts. However critical are their practical actions and proposals, these organizations also attempt to reassess and reassign the meanings associated with food production and consumption, and of the role of rural peoples in these processes. In this sense, both are guided by a vision of rural places and peoples, and of the wider circuits of food production and consumption in which much of the planet is ultimately

142


involved, which is simultaneously preservationist and prefigurative. Their great project is to discover what could be called “contemporary rurality.”

NEW RURAL MOVEMENTS Via Campesina Via Campesina is a grassroots rural popular movement calling itself, and calling for, “the country people’s way” to rural social and ecological change. Its roots stretch back to the early 1990s, when it was formed out of a series of exchanges and collaborations between farmer organizations in the Americas and Western Europe. These organizations had decades of experience in all kinds of rural development projects, and yet their participants—and rural peoples more generally— had seen steady declines in their living conditions in the previous decades of stateled agricultural development.9 The organizations that would form Via Campesina took an early interest in the conditions of farmers in different places and began to explore the similarities in their experience that might allow them to work together. For one, they noted that local development had become increasingly intertwined with, and subject to, policies and forces operating beyond national borders. They sensed their organizational weakness at this important transnational scale and also realized that influencing such highly fluid transnational authorities as the World Trade Organization (WTO) would require a whole new bag of movement tools. Via Campesina was formed to take up the task of organizing a coherent presence for farmers at the transnational scale, and especially to confront the ideology of neoliberalism10 as it was applied to rural and agricultural development.11 Via Campesina quickly established itself as an authentic voice of rural peoples, and has become a point of reference at high-level forums, such as WTO Ministerials or meetings of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations Committee on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Its prominence is largely due to its first major campaign (dating to 1996) for “food sovereignty,” a plan for farmer-centered agricultural production and rural development.12 Food sovereignty addresses the micro and macro policies that could support relatively localized circuits of food production and consumption as a basis for rural economic development and cultural survival. It is therefore opposed to neoliberal development—that is, development based on narrow interpretation of international competitive advantage rather than directed to satisfy objectives that are debated through an accessible political process. In clear contrast to the kind of agricultural development designed within the WTO (which favors trade-based development, even requiring nations to import a certain percentage of their food), food sovereignty claims the rights of nations to determine the agricultural and food policies that best meet the needs of it citizens. On this level, Via Campesina clearly sees the nation-state as a useful buffer to undesirable advances in transnational governance, even as its organizations are often involved in entrenched negotiations with their national governments. Its stance against neoliberal development puts Via Campesina at odds with the most powerful interests in the food and agricultural industries, the landed elites of many developing countries, and the ubiquitous conventional wisdom regarding the inherent superiority of free markets.

Social Movements

143

Rather than streamlining international trade in the food products most easily produced in an industrial food system, and so smoothing the ground for further expansion of the empty landscapes of industrial agriculture, food sovereignty supports “busy” agrarian landscapes with production primarily corresponding to local, national, and regional patterns of food production. It involves a profound change in practical and conceptual orientation. According to Peter Rosset, a former director of the Institute for Food and Development Policy (better known as Food First), To me the most important thing about food sovereignty are local and national markets. Just totally rejecting the whole ideology of export production. Not that there shouldn’t be any exports, but as that being the driving force behind agricultural policy, as if a farmer’s be-all and end-all is to manage to export. Completely rejecting that because, looking at farmers in the third world, only a tiny minority of wealthy farmers benefited from policies that favored exports, while a huge majority of farmers would benefit if there were policies that supported production for domestic markets. And so [Via Campesina] finally said, look all this ideology sounds great but the bottom line is it’s benefiting 3% and we’re 97%. It’s displacing us: the more that the 3% grows the more we get pushed off our land. Then U.S. and European farmers realized that in the export boom in the US and Europe from the early 1970s on, even if the volume exported from both areas went up dramatically, farmer incomes had actually declined. You hear American or European farmers saying “now we produce twice as much as we did before, and we earn half as much,” and the figures actually support those kinds of ratios. That’s when family farmers in the U.S. begin to reject this ideology of “feeding the world.” First of all they’re getting screwed in the process, as I said, and then they start to have conversations and dialogues with farmers in the third world and realize that [the same exportcentered ideology is] screwing them too. So food sovereignty says, wait a minute, it’s not access to other people’s markets that we need, it’s access to our own markets. This mania of exportation at cheap prices is driving us all out of our local markets. It’s driving crop prices down, creating a global food market where the lowest price, whoever self-exploits the most, is the one who “gets ahead” (because even the one who gets ahead is going broke at the same time). So food sovereignty finally says “Enough! We can’t take this anymore. This is complete bull. We’ve been sold hook, line and sinker into this ideology of export and it’s just wrong.”13

It is worth stressing that food sovereignty is a vision for agrarian societies. Put slightly differently by a Via Campesina organizer in Mexico: As distinct from other campesino movements, we [in Via Campesina] assert, shall we say, the campesino way of life, and the right to be campesino, to continue to be the producers and suppliers of our own foods. We are not searching for the best economic conditions in which to buy maize, but in which to continue producing maize.14

It is largely due to the sensibility and flexibility of the food sovereignty platform in the context of global economic liberalization that Via Campesina has expanded both within and beyond its initial core area of operations. In recent years the locus of Via Campesina activity has notably shifted to Asia. One of the innovations in Via Campesina organization is that the headquarters are designed to rotate, and they shifted from Honduras to Indonesia in early 2005. The move corresponded to an increase in Via Campesina activity in the region because of the affiliation of

144


large, well-organized, and active farmer organizations in India, Indonesia, the Republic of Korea, and the Philippines in the early 2000s. The 2006 conference on food sovereignty in Nyeleni, Mali, demonstrated that African farmer organizations also increasingly view their national predicaments through an international lens and seek common counterproposals to conventional development.15 Beginning in 2004, Via Campesina mounted a second campaign in defense of public access to seeds, which are described as the common inheritance of humankind, and as critical to the cultural, ecological, and economic past and futures of rural peoples.16 As distinct from the proposal for food sovereignty, which is in large part directed toward the policymaking world, the seeds campaign can be seen to be primarily oriented toward rural peoples themselves. The seeds campaign highlights the fact that rural peoples are de facto stakeholders—and so legitimate participants—in the debates surrounding privatizations and sensible use of natural resources. The campaign asserts the role of rural peoples in the generation and maintenance of biodiversity, and of rural communities as actual and potential stewards of rural natural resources. According to the same Mexican Via Campesina organizer quoted above, I think that the seeds campaign has two ends. One, it has a real cultural importance, because it makes it clear that we are biodiverse, and that there is real wealth and real importance within campesino territories. Demonstrating this I think gives us strength and credibility because it shows that we are not just talking about any old thing; all of these plants are valued by and attractive to many food and pharmaceutical companies. On the other hand, the seeds campaign internationalizes the ownership of those genetic resources. Now a seed is no longer the exclusive patrimony of Mexico, no, but one that fellow producers in Brazil or Guatemala or Costa Rica can have as well. And they can have it as part of their patrimony. Between ourselves this sharing is no problem. With luck [one of our plants] will serve as a nice forage crop there, or has medicinal qualities, or is well adapted to a particular altitude in some other place. This wealth can be shared.17

Though the campaign is relevant to contemporary debates surrounding intellectual property rights and genetic engineering, its wider project is to develop the political potential within the idea of a peasant way of life. It attempts to mobilize cultural ties to seeds, food, social life, and landscapes, and to promote these as a kind of collective wealth that is of significance to the wider world, that is indeed the basis of worldwide food security. A goal of the seeds campaign is to insert rural communities into the contemporary world not as “backward,” relentlessly “traditional,” “underdeveloped . . . have-nots,” but as active participants in, and contributors to, the circuits of life on which all humanity is dependent. The phrase “la Via campesina” (literally “the country peoples’ path or road”) in addition to being a metaphor for a kind of development, has something of the sense of a political journey as well. The two campaigns describe the principal characteristics of Via Campesina. While it is deeply entrenched in the structural conditions—local, national, regional, and transnational—of rural development, it also attempts to expand the conceptual and practical space in which the place of rural peoples in contemporary development can be reconsidered. In both campaigns, Via Campesina is revealed as a

Social Movements

145

place-based social movement of rural peoples with explicitly internationalist agenda. It is not against globalization per se, but rather against the kind of globalization that centers on urban and industrial development and leaves little opportunity for viable rural social life. It is not necessarily antimodern, but it is against the kind of modernity that is taken as the opposite of all that is traditional. It is against the (false) choice of “either modernist development or social and economic stagnation” and against the view of traditional cultures implicit in that problematic. Via Campesina represents an evolution in the character of local and national rural popular movements.18 Farmer organizations can no longer be assumed to be purely parochial, conservative, and averse to change or contact with the outside world.19 Certainly one of the remarkable features of Via Campesina is that it has managed to extend the reach and influence of disparate local and national farmer organizations and to develop a coherent analysis of rural development that can be articulated at strategic points, without overextending its constituent organizations. In organizational skill, it has proven itself to be as fluent in the digital age as most nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), while its analysis of international trade dynamics and WTO negotiations is as detailed as that of any academic. At the same time, it is a popular movement: its influence within the WTO, FAO, or most other organizations is entirely related to its ability to mobilize people. To be taken seriously, it must literally manifest its legitimacy in the streets, and so mass mobilization is its primary strategy.20 As a movement, it must deliver some real advantage to the people in the streets to remain credible with them. It therefore is involved in a whole field of activity beyond that necessary for the FAO or other smaller, specialized NGOs or think tanks—it must maintain a popular movement. While Via Campesina has focused its energies on the international context, its constituent organizations have never left off the tasks of local and national organization. These organizations are willing to engage with the state but are more cautious than party-based peasant federations were about incorporation into state policies and projects. They are also cautious about incorporation in NGO-led projects, even as they have learned from close contact with NGOs.21 Many contemporary farmer organizations now attempt to deal directly with the state almost as if they were agencies with development projects of their own. Even while engaged in bitter struggles with local landlords and local governments, farmer organizations sometimes tailor their proposals to suit federal mandates, for example, when they stress the foreign exchange benefits that will accrue to the state through their plans for export-production of coffee, or some other product.22 Peasant organizations now present themselves not as poor peasants seeking handouts from the state, but as frustrated agricultural entrepreneurs and potential agents of agricultural modernization. They highlight the contrast between themselves, small farmers eager to increase production, and the large rural landholders who often prefer superexploitation of their workers to real productive investment in their grand estates.23 As mentioned above, local and national farmer movements increasingly recognized that what were formerly largely sectoral or national issues (such as land reform) have become increasingly exposed to influences from transnational entities. As part of Via Campesina, farmer organizations attempted to delegitimize new transnational governance, especially that led by the WTO, on the basis that in its neoliberal guise it is undemocratic, corporate-driven, and ecologically reckless.24 Via Campesina charges that designs to privatize seeds, water, common

146


lands, and plants amount to a commodification of the entire agrarian landscape, and thus deny and exclude the communal knowledge and practices involved in the creation of the very resources now declared private property. Via Campesina organizations have responded to such development by opposing it on the ground and at the international forums where it is discussed, advocated, or legitimized. As described in one Via Campesina document: Regarding WTO, World Bank and IMF, Via Campesina has a “confrontative strategy.” The goal is to de-legitimize these institutions and decrease their influence. Via Campesina does not engage in dialogue or consultative processes with these institutions as these efforts do not bring any positive changes and would contribute to [these groups’] legitimation [sic].25

Via Campesina attempts to negotiate with organizations that may serve as a counterreference to neoliberal development. In 2002 the International Planning Committee (IPC) of the NGO Forum on Food Sovereignty (held concurrently at the FAO World Food Summit Rome þ5) initiated a dialogue with FAO Director General Jacques Diouf. Via Campesina saw both potential risks and benefits in direct collaboration with the FAO: The risks of this undertaking are the following:

• The dialogue is turned into a “public relations” act that mainly serves the interests of the institution, negatively affects our political profile and absorbs significant leadership capacities that are needed elsewhere. • At the international level the FAO may make all kinds of interesting commitments. However, at the national level the FAO may still behave as before by supporting policies that are contrary to our objectives. Potential advantages could be the following:

• We could use this institution to introduce important issues like food sovereignty, land reform, rights to seed, etc. into the governmental debate. This could be done by having more progressive governments introduce these issues (on our behalf) to the FAO. This would help to break the governmental consensus on the neo-liberal policies. • We could mobilize resources for concrete initiatives at the national/regional level. • We could generate “official” research capacity and analysis that strengthens our criticism of the current neo-liberal policies.26

In addition to attempting to delegitimize inflexible institutions and negotiate with potential allies, Via Campesina organizations have consistently put intensive pressure on their respective national representatives when they travel to international meetings. National agricultural ministers, for example, know that when they are off in far-off convention centers, they will have to face the masses on their ministry doorsteps when they return home. Via Campesina is composed of thousands of rural organizations and many tens of millions of rural people, making it by far the largest social movement in the world, and one with unprecedented influence, as demonstrated in its ability to establish dialogue with the director of the FAO. Yet when I visited its international headquarters in 2004 (then located in Tegucigalpa, Honduras), it had a staff of

Social Movements

147

three. In national contexts, one is often hard-pressed to locate it—perhaps its name will be called out through a bullhorn at some provincial demonstration, more often not. In most contexts it is submerged or embedded within local organizations. Via Campesina suddenly materializes before one’s eyes at international actions and events. It could be seen as the international expression of local and national movements rather than a discrete organization unto itself: it emerges from its constituent organizations when necessary, but it is still contained within them. And yet it exists with a reach and fluidity perfectly befitting the digital age. So in Via Campesina one finds a rare example of an organization with NGO-like organizational capacity, but without NGO-like divisions in leadership and analysts, without the proclivity to produce long reports, with few overhead costs, no calls for donations, and no donor agencies with long lists of criteria to satisfy. It is massand place-based, but also internationalist; its project is to create the conditions that will allow viable agrarian societies to emerge from within.

Slow Food In 1989 Carlo Petrini, a leftist Italian intellectual and food journalist, founded Slow Food in reaction to the opening of a McDonald’s in the center of old Rome. The group took “fast food” as its enemy; hence its use of the English “slow food.” It is a network of producers, restaurateurs, retailers, and consumers of “culturally significant” foods endangered by the corporatization of food production and what it views as the homogenization of food tastes. It has from its beginnings associated quality food with traditional ingredients and preparations. Unlike most other gastronomic associations, Slow Food never went for “high” cuisine.27 The Slow Food network sought to protect particular breeds of animals, geographically specific varieties of fruit and vegetables, and specific techniques of producing particular cheeses, honey, sausages, salt, oils, and a variety of products significant to local gastronomic tradition. Slow Food later evolved into the first “ecogastronomic movement,” its initial promotion of traditional products, recipes, and food techniques deepening through understanding that the quality, and indeed the very existence, of such foods is directly linked to the wider landscapes in which they are produced.28 A primary vehicle for Slow Food in its early years was the wine of the Piedmont region.29 The local winemakers were trying to improve the quality of their wine; but without an established reputation for fine wines, they found it difficult to sell at prices that would support the more careful production required. Winemakers decided they had to help people to appreciate that their local wine could match the standard of more famous wine from other regions. Slow Food concurred with this emphasis on taste education and began to promote Piedmont wines by writing about them in newspapers and hosting organized tastings. At this point, the group could be considered as a culturally conservative organization similar to many others around the world attempting to prevent the loss of traditional culture. As the European Union constituted its powers in Brussels in the late 1990s, such questions of cultural homogenization and democratic processes came to the fore across Europe. In Italy, they crystallized around food. Slow Food was quick to grasp the significance of, and participate in, public campaigns, such as the one mounted to save lardo after the food was declared unhygienic by health

148


authorities in the European Union (EU).30 Lardo, a spiced pork fat cured in the dank house basements found in the central Italian “marble villages,” became symbolic of localism, rusticity, and even national identity, all of which were opposed to a rationalized, homogenized, bureaucratic—and potentially lardo-less—new Europe. In this context, in which seemingly banal phytosanitation legislation became representative of state intrusion into everyday life, passions ran high. As one newspaper article of the time pungently framed the lardo conflict, “[t]he European Union ruins Italian cuisine.”31 Similarly, after the same EU body determined that all cheese in the EU market be pasteurized before sale, Slow Food mounted a campaign in defense of “raw milk” cheese (perhaps the first political campaign in history raised in defense of bacteria). According to Slow Food, there are good bacteria and bad bacteria; by killing off as many bacteria as possible, pasteurization affects the taste of a cheese, and diminishes the very flavors that make it unusual and interesting to eat in the first place. Slow Food charged that such legislation would endanger the entire field of activities associated with small-scale cheese production and consumption. Not only would the EU rules affect the kinds of cheese people could eat and enjoy (and the wider gastronomic culture of which such foods were a part), such regulation would have negative economic effect on small farmers. It would inadvertently affect the working landscapes in which such foods were produced. It is this kind of attention to a whole field of activities, the intertwined social and ecological processes surrounding the consumption of a particular food, that distinguished Slow Food from most every other gastronomic association. Slow Food documents began to describe loss of foods not just in terms of dietary change, but in terms of “extinction.”32 When a food is lost, according to Slow Food, a whole cultural and ecological complex is at risk of extinction, including (1) the loss of food flavor itself and of the knowledge-base or culture that esteems a particular flavor; (2) loss of specific varieties of a plant or animal, and knowledge of methods of food production; (3) loss of knowledge of the environmental context and conditions associated with particular foods; and (4) loss of rural livelihoods and potentially of entire rural communities. Finally, as a consequence of all of these elements, there is (5) loss of the working landscapes in which such foods were produced and which are associated with a place and the way of life found there. In short, according to Slow Food, when traditional foods disappear, there is a subtle but profound loss of both material and immaterial culture, a smoothing-over of differences in the world, a thinning of available experience. Slow Food has two key operations designed to preserve idiosyncratic but emblematic foods: the Ark of Taste and the presidia.33 The presidia are the actual projects Slow Food creates to support the production and consumption of traditional foods. A presidium may simply be a project organized or coordinated by Slow Food: “Sometimes all it takes to conserve a product is to bring together surviving producers and make them visible, helping them to communicate the gastronomic excellence of their products and fetch more remunerative prices for them.”34 In other cases, Slow Food may make a more substantial intervention, such as providing some equipment or infrastructure necessary to a group of producers. As of early 2008, there were 196 presidia in Italy and an additional 105 presidia in 41 countries around the world. One Italian presidium in support of an alpine honey demonstrates the interplay of social and ecological dynamics now of interest

Social Movements

149

to Slow Food. This honey is made by bees gathering nectar in alpine pastures at an altitude of more than 1,200 meters: “[w]hen it was the custom to take livestock to graze in well looked after mountain pastures, the vegetation in general, hence the bees too, drew benefit. Today the mountains are depopulated, the pastures are less well looked after and the best shrubs have no space to grow.”35 Whether providing infrastructural support or simply promoting the specific qualities of a particular food, the goal of the presidia is to link disparate individual producers or already existing groups of producers with people who will consume artisan food products. Here it is worth noting that current Slow Food literature avoids the term “consumer,” with its passive-aggressive connotation (the consumer, a category that includes most everyone on the planet, creates demand but is rarely related to the production that comes as a result). The presidia are meant to directly link individuals into the production of a product, to enroll people who eat a food and so continue to request its production, as “co-producers.” The Ark of Taste, in contrast to the discrete operations of the presidia, is a comprehensive and ongoing project; it is an atlas of endangered foods. It is composed of “[p]roducts of excellence threatened by industrial standardization, by hyper-hygienist laws and the deterioration of the environment.”36 Yet the Ark of Taste is not intended as a kind of eulogy to extinct foods; it is meant to call attention to unique foods as a kind of cultural wealth, to demonstrate the fragility of that wealth in the face of standardized diets. As in Via Campesina’s seeds campaign, for Slow Food, preservation of food cultures can be achieved only through human activity in—not their absence from—environments. The campaigns for lardo and raw milk cheese, the presidia, and the Ark of Taste represent the kind of savvy action characteristic of Slow Food. They select highly symbolic yet tangible issues and products likely to gain popular attention and sympathy. They use their connections in the press to publicize their actions. Slow Food has its own impressive mechanism for publicity, beginning with its Web site and office of media communication, and including a quarterly magazine and many smaller publications produced by individual convivia (the smallest unit of Slow Food affiliation). Despite its careful strategizing and publicity—or perhaps because of its wide success—Slow Food has had to address the suspicion that it celebrates a kind rusticated, proletarianized, hedonistic elitism. In the U.S. context, for example, food quantity has long substituted for food quality, to speak of quality or healthy food—or, more important, to look behind a particular food or dish to examine the processes involved in its production—was to be either a snob or an ascetic. Slow Food denies both charges, and it appears to have made substantial headway in the home country of the supersize diet: in 2001, there were three U.S. convivia (in Manhattan, New York; New Orleans, Louisiana; and the San Francisco Bay Area/Napa Valley, California); in 2008, there are more than 170, in addition to a number of similar food-based endeavors, such as the Iowa PlaceBased Foods project.37 Slow Food communicates concern that the idiosyncratic qualities of particular places may be written out of existence from afar, but it also attempts to stop this cultural erosion through its campaign of taste education. In 2003, Slow Food required each of its convivia to support a school garden. This garden initiative signals Slow Food’s intent to shake off its reputation as an up-market phenomenon and to work more directly and generally to improve popular appreciation of, and

150


demand for, quality food. In the course of their actions, they have expanded the significance of food localism and the wider relevance of food-based politics.38 One key, but easily overlooked, element in Slow Food is its celebratory character: in the view of its adherents, taking pleasure from eating well is not simply a selfish act, nor one simply linked to individual survival, but one in which wider communal and ecological relationships can be acknowledged and affirmed. In this sense, Slow Food puts the consumer front and center in the problems of conventional agriculture and attempts to assert individuals and communities as co-producers of vital social and ecological life.

THE PROBLEM OF CONTEMPORARY RURALITY Via Campesina and Slow Food are very different organizations. Via Campesina is a mass movement: its organizations are involved in land occupations, crop burnings, and street protests; its activists and participants are sometimes subject to violent repression by the state or local shadow forces.39 It has struggled to establish the voice of small farmers in the highly politicized arena of trade and international politics—and it has stressed in dramatic form that this struggle involves life and death. Slow Food, on the other hand, is a movement-network. It tends to eschew the highly charged settings in which Via Campesina operates, and instead it supports projects whose goal is to deepen the aesthetic experience of food. What do the two groups have in common? Both Slow Food and Via Campesina were formed in a shifting global political context that has empowered the jurisdiction of distant, nonelected rule-making institutions at the expense of individuals and communities. Both organizations are opposed to the kind of globalization that entails relentless standardization, homogenization, and mechanization, with the marketplace elevated as the supreme adjudicator of all worthy things. Both have attempted to seize the processes of change and make them available for discussion, evaluation, and debate. In both organizations, the celebration of food culture, of the everyday and communal practices of cooking and eating, is notable. Both espouse the shared meal as the center of family and communal life, and both seek to deepen consideration, finally, about the goals that guide economic development. Viewed synthetically, Slow Food and Via Campesina activities reveal an orientation toward the future that is both preservationist and prefigurative. Their preservationism is clear: they want to preserve themselves, their communities, their agrarian livelihoods, and their landscapes. They are not just conservationist. For example, in their view, the biodiversity on which all agriculture depends is not something to be conserved in seed banks, nature preserves, and the like. Instead it must be preserved through human activity—not absence—as people make habitats in which plants and animals can thrive. Via Campesina demonstrates that in many contexts the future of such agricultural habitats depends on small farmers having enforceable legal title to land, access to the cultural-ecological resources historically produced therein, and access to viable economies through which the value of such resources can be realized. The range of pragmatic demands that have long been at the center of agrarianism, such as access to credit, training programs, basic infrastructure, the right to unionize when working for cash, and legal recourse

Social Movements

151

against poachers, encroachers, drug traffickers, and corrupt officials and their associated violence, are still valid as well.40 The action of each group also demonstrates the realization that the viability of their projects and movements is linked to extralocal processes and social groups. The movements are prefigurative, then, in the sense that they understand quite clearly that their cultural and economic survival requires a dense network of alliances and affiliations with all kinds of popular and private groups operating at national, regional, and international scales. They not only make pragmatic decisions to negotiate in conventional forums and operate in conventional markets, but also expend much energy in inventing new social relationships, new institutions, and new kinds of exchange. They share a general commitment to nonhierarchical, nondeterministic relationships that enable cooperative strategizing without truncating local experience. These movements have a sense that the quality of these distant alliances—and so the strength of the whole—will depend on the integrity of its individual parts. Finally, both preservationist and prefigurative impulses are found in the attempt to create a new vision for rural places. Adequate food production and consumption can be considered as a necessary precondition to development (as in the discourse of “food security”)41 or as containing within it clues of the kind of social, ecological, and economic relations that define a quality of development. Although they can be interpreted as doing so, the campaigns and projects described here, and the wider vision for development of which they are a part, do not essentialize impoverished rurality as the authentic condition of rural peoples. Instead they seek to improve the quality of rural life itself. The goal is not to transform rural life into something else entirely, but to find the ideas, infrastructures, and policies that will allow this future rural life to emerge from within. While open to—and even dependent on—exchange with the outside world, Slow Food and Via Campesina pose the problem of something that in the age of free market liberalism is viewed with spitting contempt: the question of endogenous development. One Southern Mexican Via Campesina peasant-activist told me that what his community was really struggling for was the space in which “to create ourselves.” This seems a most simple definition of endogenous development. Yet the very idea of such an approach to development (as “alternative” or “postdevelopment”) is sometimes treated with contempt, as consummate naivete, and has led to an intellectual circumstance in which “any alternative . . . sounds like a return to past oppression or like a Utopian design for noble savages.”42 The question of contemporary rurality puts urban and rural as interdependent and mutually constitutive, even if these and other key words of development often appear as antinomies—urban versus rural, modern versus traditional, development versus conservation, agricultural production versus intact habitat. The problem in creating contemporary rurality is the problem of conceptualizing, and acting intentionally within, the actual cultural, economic, and biophysical flows that constitute places. If people have contempt for the ideas of alternative kinds of development, and so for the movements out of which such ideas emerge, the range of available solutions to the very real problems of agricultural development is diminished, and so too is understanding of human-environmental relationships, on a grand scale.

152


NOTES 1. Roger Bartra, Agrarian Structure and Political Power in Mexico (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1993). 2. Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, Mexico Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996). 3. Eric Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969). 4. James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1969). 5. Ibid., 10–11. 6. Ibid., 3. 7. Alain de Janvry, The Agrarian Question and Reformism in Latin America (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1981); William W. Cochrane, The Development of American Agriculture: A Historical Analysis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993); Harriet Friedmann, “What on Earth Is the Modern World-System? Foodgetting and Territory in the Modern Era and Beyond,” Journal of World-Systems Research 11, no. 2 (2001): 480–515. 8. Paul E. Waggoner, “How Much Land Can Ten Billion People Spare for Nature?” Proceedings, National Academy of Sciences 125, no. 3 (1996): 73–93; Rhys E. Green et al., “Farming and the Fate of Wild Nature,” Science 307 (2005): 550–55. 9. Harriet Friedmann, “The Political Economy of Food: The Rise and Fall of the Postwar International Food Order,” American Journal of Sociology 88s (1982): 248–86; Harriet Friedmann and Phillip McMichael, “Agriculture and the State System: The Rise and Decline of National Agricultures,” Sociologia Ruralis 29, no. 2 (1989): 93–117; IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development), Rural Poverty Report 2001: The Challenge of Ending Rural Poverty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 10. “Neoliberalism” is a general term used to describe the ideology adopted by many prominent policymakers, intellectuals, and institutions in the 1980s and 1990s to do away with what they saw as inherently inefficient state-management of economic life (e.g., through social security programs, resource management programs, industrial development programs, environmental protection programs, and the like) in favor of market-based allocation of resources. In relation to agriculture, neoliberal economic arguments—that opening agricultural production up to global competition would increase production and lead to lower food prices—were used as justification for ending support programs to small farmers around the world, and for stripping down tariffs or other instruments that were seen (rightly or not) as barriers to trade. 11. Annette Aurelie Desmarais, La Via Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants (Halifax, NS: Fernwood Publishers, 2007). 12. Via Campesina, Food Sovereignty: A Future without Hunger (Rome: 1996); Via Campesina, “Final Declaration of the World Forum on Food Sovereignty” (paper presented at the Forum Mundia sobre Soberania Alimentaria, Havana, Cuba, September 3–7, 2001); Michael Windfuhr and Jennie Jonsen, Food Sovereignty: Towards Democracy in Localized Food Systems (Bourton-on-Dunsmore, UK: ITDG Publishing, 2005). 13. Peter Rosset, personal interview, Oaxaca, Mexico, September 5, 2004. 14. Enrique Espinoza, personal interview, Patzcuaro, Mexico, November 15, 2004. 15. See Nyelini 2007, http://www.nyeleni2007.org. 16. Via Campesina, “Seed Heritage of the People for the Good of Humanity” (from the Women (sic) Seed Forum in South Korea, September 4–11, 2007), http://viacampesina.

Social Movements

153

org/main_en/images/stories/pdf/seed_heritage_of_the_people_for_the_good_of_humanity. pdf (accessed August 10, 2008). 17. Espinoza, personal interview, 2004. 18. James Petras, “The New Revolutionary Peasantry: The Growth of Peasant-led Opposition to Neoliberalism,” Z Magazine, October 1998, http://www.zcommunica tions.org/zmag/viewArticle/13452 (accessed August 10, 2008). 19. Jarius Banaji, “The Farmers’ Movements: A Critique of Conservative Rural Coalitions,” Journal of Peasant Studies 21, no. 3, 4 (1994): 228–45. 20. Via Campesina, IV International Via Campesina Conference: Brazil, Sao Paulo, 14th to the 19th of June 2004, Themes and Issues for Discussion (Tegucigalpa, Honduras: Secretaria Operativa de Via Campesina, n.d.). 21. Marc Edelman, Peasants against Globalization: Rural Social Movements in Costa Rica (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999). 22. Nuria Costa, UNORCA: Documentos para la Historia (Mexico, DF: Costa-Amic Editores, S.A., 1989). 23. Neil Harvey, The Chiapas Rebellion: The Struggle for Land and Democracy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998). 24. Via Campesina, “Impact of the WTO on Peasants in Southeast Asia and East Asia,” http://viacampesina.org/main_en/images/stories//lvcbooksonwto.pdf (accessed August 10, 2008). 25. Paul Nicholson, IV International Via Campesina Conference: Brazil, Sao Paulo, 14th to the 19th of June 2004, Themes and Issues for Discussion (Tegucigalpa, Honduras: Secretaria Operativa de Via Campesina, n.d.), 19. 26. Ibid., 21. 27. Partly due to the organization’s success, though, some traditional foods can be so expensive that it amounts to the same thing. 28. Carlo Petrini, Slow Food: The Case for Taste (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). 29. Piedmont is the home region of Petrini and several other founders of Slow Food, whose national and international headquarters are located in Bra, a town of about 15,000 not far from Turin. 30. Alison Leitch, “The Social Life of Lardo: Slow Food in Fast Times,” The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 1, no. 1 (2000): 103–18. 31. Ibid., 110. 32. Slow Food, The Presidia (Bra, Cuneo, Italy: Slow Food International Office, 2000). 33. Slow Food has mounted several other endeavors as well. In recent years, a biannual gala event, the TerraMadre Festival, has grown to become the signature event of Slow Food’s international activities. The convivia are the local associations of Slow Food members; they may host events of their choosing in support of Slow Food objectives. The University of Taste offers courses in taste and food education—developing appreciation for quality foods is one of Slow Foods explicit goals, as mentioned below. 34. Slow Food, The Presidia, 2. 35. Ibid., 23. 36. Ibid., 2. 37. See Iowa Placed-Based Foods, http://www.iowaartscouncil.org/programs/folk-andtraditional-arts/place_based_foods/index.htm. 38. Melanie E. DuPuis and David Goodman, “Should We Go ‘Home’ to Eat? Toward a Reflexive Politics of Localism,” Journal of Rural Studies 21 (2005): 359–71. 39. Jo~ao Pedro Stedile, “Landless Battalions,” New Left Review 15 (May/June 2005): 77–104; Angus Wright and Wendy Wolford, To Inherit the Earth: The Landless

154


Movement and the Struggle for a New Brazil (Oakland, CA: Food First Books, 2005); La Via Campesina, “Annual Report: Violations of Peasants’ Human Rights: A Report on Cases and Patterns of Violances [sic] 2006,” http://www.viacampesina.org/main_en/ images/stories/annual-report-HR-2006.pdf (accessed August 10, 2008). 40. Stedile, “Landless Battalions”; Jose Bove, “Farmers against Food Chains,” New Left Review 12 (November/December 2001): 89–101. 41. “Food security” has come to mean “the right of everyone to have access to safe and nutritious food” (see, for example, the FAO’s Rome Declaration on World Food Security). “Access” is the operative term: there is no necessary or explicit attention to the conditions or kind of agricultural production. 42. Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (London: Calder and Boyars, 1973).

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Bove, Jose, and François Dufour. The World Is Not For Sale: Farmers Against Junk Food. London: Verso, 2001. Cochrane, William W. The Development of American Agriculture: A Historical Analysis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Desmarais, Annette-Aurelie. La Via Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2007. Edelman, Marc. “Transnational Peasant and Farmer Movements and Networks.” In Global Civil Society 2003, ed. Helmut Anheier, Marlies Glasius, and Mary Kaldor, 185–220. London: Oxford University Press, 2003. Friedmann, Harriet, and Phillip McMichael. “Agriculture and the State System: The Rise and Decline of National Agricultures.” Sociologia Ruralis 29, no. 2 (1989): 93–117. Petrini, Carlo. Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean, and Fair. New York: Rizzoli Ex Libris, 2007. Stedile, Jo~ao Pedro. “Landless Battalions.” New Left Review 15 (2005): 77–104. Wallerstein, Immanuel. “New Revolts against the System.” New Left Review 18 (2002): 29–39. Weiss, Tony. The Global Food Economy: The Battle for the Future of Farming. New York: Zed Books, 2007. Wright, Angus, and Wendy Wolford. To Inherit the Earth: The Landless Movement and the Struggle for a New Brazil. Oakland: Food First Books, 2003.

Web Sites Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration, http://www.etcgroup.org/. Focus on the Global South, http://www.focusweb.org/. The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, http://www.iatp.org/. Land Research Action Network, http://www.landaction.net/. Slow Food International (with links to national branches), http://www.slowfood.com/. Via Campesina, http://www.viacampesina.org/.

10 Gender, Generations, and Commensality: Nurturing Home and the Commons Lynn Walter A RELATIONAL CONCEPT OF HOME Industrial commodity production and market consolidation in prevailing agrifood systems are distancing us as consumers from the sources of food in the natural and social environments, from agricultural and culinary knowledge rooted in an ecosystem, and from our capacity as informed citizens to shape agrifood policy. The global reach and the systemic nature of these processes call for countervailing strategies that can ignite a synergy between sustainable agrifood systems and healthy people, communities, and environments. While many prospective catalysts are examined in Critical Food Issues, here the focus is on the significance of sharing food and commensality (i.e., eating together) to sustain intergenerational relations of care, commitment, and cooperation so vital to this synergy. Fundamental intergenerational relations between parents and children are enacted in the sharing of food and other provisions. As parents feed their children, they create home as a time and place where sharing food across the generations is the norm. When we share food and eat together beyond the boundaries of everyday commensality, we expand the relations of home to embrace extended kin and community. In a critical sense, sharing sustenance is a practical meaning of kinship. Espousing this idea, Navajo consider that Just as a mother is one who gives life to her children through birth, and sustains their life by providing them with loving care, assistance, protection, and sustenance, kinsmen are those who sustain each other’s life by helping one another, protecting one another, and by giving or sharing of food and other items of subsistence. Where this kind of solidarity exists, kinship exists; where it does not exist, there is no kinship.1

This understanding of the consequence of sharing food and commensality supports a relational concept of home. In this relational sense, home is a locus of gender and generational interests—most significantly, those of mothers and children, whose arrival initiates what Van Esterik identifies as mothers’ “right to feed” and

156


children’s “right to be fed.”2 From this perspective, home signifies neither a nostalgic refusal to see problems within it nor a walled-off denial of interdependence with the world beyond its threshold.3 Rather, home raises critical questions of gender and generational rights and responsibilities in a context that is as often filled with conflict as it is with cooperation. Moreover, it identifies those rights and responsibilities with relations enduring over the lifetimes that entwine the past, present, and future well-being of the generations. The significance of this conception of home for addressing critical food issues is that it relates the gender and generational rights and responsibilities to provide for one another’s sustenance over time to our mutual responsibility to build on the legacy of past generations, ensure the capacity of the present generation of caretakers to share food, and nurture the commons for the well-being of future generations. Everyday and ceremonial meals enact the gender and generational relations of home in its key formations—from the source of culinary traditions to the scene of commensality and homecooking and the heart of subsistence in the natural world. In its elemental form, home is oriented toward the immediate and long-term future—reproducing the next generation by providing for and socializing children. Through memory and culture, home is also about the past—intertwined with the cuisines of parents, grandparents, and ancestors rooted in the ecology of their home places and imbuing food with the tastes of home. In this sense, to be homeless is to lack interpersonal connection to the food we eat, its history, its place in an ecosystem, the people who made it, and those with whom we might share it. To our detriment, we are becoming increasingly homeless. We are spending less time cooking and eating together and more time snacking while multitasking alone in cars and at work stations.4 We are turning to highly processed industrial food and away from homecooking and hospitality. We are losing the skills needed to grow and prepare foods from our own culinary traditions and filling childhood memories of home with artificial flavors and colors.5 By themselves, these trends diminish our capacity to understand and address the impact of agrifood production, consumption, and distribution processes on the well-being of humanity and the environment.6 Magnifying their impact are institutional constraints that (1) tie food security to having a steady job with a living wage, (2) increase time pressure and work-family conflicts on parents and children, (3) intensify the mass marketing of highly processed foods, particularly those marketed to children, and (4) reduce public resources for programs that provide some measure of security and time to families.7 The burden of these constraints falls disproportionately on women, especially low-income women and their children. The continuing reality is that mothers spend more time on food provisioning than fathers do; and low-income parents face greater food insecurity with less access to affordable, good-quality food and, often, less time to purchase, prepare, and share it.8 For example, residential homelessness makes feeding their children and maintaining the relations of home an unbearable burden on parents. Depending on our resources then, we confront the time bind and work-family conflicts in relationship to sharing food and eating together in disparate ways. A conventional recourse is to rely on processed foods, time management, and multitasking in efforts to create home out of the possibilities offered by the prevailing agrifood system. This approach ultimately relies on the work and time of

Gender, Generations, and Commensality

157

low-waged, flexible workers in agriculture, food processing, and retailing and, thus, politically implicates all consumers in the quality of their lives. At the same time, as a strategy that distances us as consumers from food production, procurement, preparation, marketing, and the environment, it diminishes our capacity as citizens to shape agrifood policies democratically. Significantly, women have taken leading roles in shaping agrifood production and reproduction in more democratic directions—in agricultural and retail labor movements, community food security coalitions, artisanal production of organic and local foods, community-supported agriculture, and fair-trade programs.9 However, these alternative approaches also take time and can create a triple burden— in the labor force, in the home, and in democratic action—on those who engage them. It is in this light that strategies to promote caring, committed, and cooperative relationships through sharing food and eating together must attend to gender, generational, class, and other inequities in agrifood systems. The balance of this chapter examines several customary and groundbreaking ways that sharing food and commensality nurture the relations of home at the intersection of class, gender, and generational rights and responsibilities. These are discussed in three sections: (1) community kitchens and gardens, (2) cohousing and ecovillages, and (3) Slow Food and Tsyunhehkwa. In different ways, each opens home to gender, generation, class, and other justice claims by extending the relations of home to wider commensal circles and by building on the heritage of past generations to sustain the well-being of present and future ones.

STRATEGIES FOR NURTURING HOME AND THE COMMONS Community Kitchens Quebec, Canada A community kitchen is the general term for various types of community-based cooking programs, among which are collective kitchens.10 In Quebec, collective kitchens are small groups, typically of five or six low-income women, who plan meals, pool their resources to buy food in bulk, and cook together in large quantities at a church, school, or a community-center kitchen. Then they take it home to feed themselves and their families or enjoy some of it together on site and take the rest home. In 1984, in Montreal single mother Jacynthe Ouellette, along with her sister-in-law and a neighbor, began to purchase food and cook it together; and in 1986 she and Diane Norman, a community nutritionist, began to promote this idea through the formal development of community kitchens in Montreal.11 Quebec now has more than 1,330 collective kitchens12 and Canada has as many as 2,500 collective kitchens.13 In 1990, further development of the collective kitchens in Quebec led to the founding of the Regroupement des Cuisines Collectives du Quebec (RCCQ, Quebec Collective Kitchens Association), a nonprofit organization aimed at promoting collective kitchens in Quebec. The values promoted by the collective kitchens in RCCQ include “self-sufficiency, empowerment, dignity, democracy and social justice.”14 Interviewed for a recent study of community kitchens in three Canadian

158


cities, participants reported that they experienced an increase in food security as well as learning more about cooking from scratch, becoming more informed readers of food labels, increasing the variety of foods consumed, and including more vegetables in their meals. Significantly, they appreciated the social dimension of the collective kitchens and the dignity they experienced in the collective kitchen, as opposed to the stigma attached to getting provisions from food banks.15 In Canada, participation in collective kitchens has been associated with building networks of friendship and social support and sharing of community resources along with increased parenting skills and self-esteem.16 In Quebec, where collective kitchens have flourished, some have spawned food-buying clubs, catering businesses, and community restaurants.17 Community kitchens are exemplified by groups who get together less frequently to prepare meals and learn about cooking healthy and affordable meals. Some community kitchens serve particular populations, such as people with mental health problems or new immigrants. For example, the Sahwanya Community Kitchen was created in 2007 in Vancouver by African immigrant women with HIV. During monthly gatherings, the members and their children enjoy the food that they have prepared there. After the meal, women share ideas, strength, and challenges. Their motto is to “break the chain of isolation and pull together for our common good.”18 Some leaders expressed the view that such community kitchens have eased negative stereotypes about immigrants.19 Lima, Peru The organizers of collective kitchens in Quebec drew their inspiration from the comedores populares in the poverty-stricken barrios that ring many Latin America cities, where they have served much larger and poorer populations than in Canada.20 Peru, like many Latin American countries in the 1980s and 1990s, experienced (1) national debt crises, (2) runaway inflation of food prices and concomitant increases in malnutrition and hunger, and (3) international creditormandated cutbacks in state-supported social welfare programs. As Hays-Mitchell notes, “the most vulnerable populations of Peru frequently converge in the lives— and homes—of low-income women, as their households commonly include elderly and youthful dependents.”21 These were the women who organized collective kitchens to sustain their families. In Peru, local women, with the support of donated provisions and organizational coordination from the Catholic Church and other religious organizations, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), political parties, and national feminist organizations, have organized to promote food security and advance other forms of social provisioning and community infrastructure.22 Among the best known examples of this grassroots mobilization by women are the collective kitchens of Lima, Peru.23 As of 2003, there were 5,000 comedores populares in the Lima metropolitan area and almost 16,000 in Peru. The 5,000 collective kitchens in Lima have at least 100,000 women participants serving 480,000 food rations daily to approximately 6 percent of the population.24 While the original goal of the members of collective kitchens in Lima was contributing to their own family food security, the women of the various collective kitchens began to organize and develop alliances across families. Some twenty to thirty women work together in


159

each collective kitchen, taking turns in leadership, purchasing provisions, and cooking, typically in a member’s kitchen. Collective kitchens were later organized into city federations and confederations by regions.25 From collective food provisioning and in collaboration with feminist organizations, the collective kitchen members’ goals expanded to nutritional and health education, women’s rights, leadership development, and community planning and organizing.26 This strategic development characterized autonomous collective kitchens and grassroots organizations that were less constrained from the top down by government agencies, political parties, or religious groups.27 Discussion Molyneux’s distinction between practical gender interests and strategic gender interests is useful for an analysis of the goals of collective kitchens.28 Practical gender interests are derived inductively from the pressing needs of women that arise from their place in a gender division of labor. Strategic gender interests are deduced from analyses of ways to end women’s subordination. In the case of the comedores populares, organizing to address their practical need for food for themselves and their families led members to formulate analyses of long-term strategic gender interests as well. Specifically, they have turned from the gender division of labor, which assigned personal responsibility to wives to cook for their husbands, toward a collectivized responsibility, sometimes in the face of their husbands’ expressed objections. They also created new forms of cooperation among female kin, friends, and neighbors as well as new settings in which to develop their own analyses of strategic gender interests.29 Marıa van der Linde, an Anglican nun who helped start the first comedores in Peru, gave the following assessment of their impact on the women who have sustained them: “I know they will never go back to being stuck in their houses, never. They have learnt a lot, about their rights, their capabilities, about organizing. Maybe it won’t be comedores anymore, but it will definitely be something else.”30 From “home” as a place of confinement for women, collective kitchens have opened doors to neighbors, friends, extended kin, and even strangers who come to share food together and support one another in social provisioning. From a way to feed their families under conditions of extreme poverty to an organization capable of acting collectively, the sheer numbers of comedores populares and independent organizations have attracted the attention of the state and political parties. State and party have been interested in harnessing their strength by controlling the distribution of food aid. From this clientelist relationship to the state the criticism is derived that the comedores populares have not been able to change the prevailing political and economic power structures. Another criticism is that they do not challenge the gender role stereotype of mothers as the ones responsible for feeding their children. On the other hand, by acting collectively as women, the members gained new confidence in their own abilities as women to act independently from their husbands, a development that is especially important in situations of domestic violence.31 Furthermore, they have used this collective power to promote their common interests within their community as a whole. Given the much better economic and political position of women in Canada, it is telling that the collective kitchens there have confronted similar gender and class contradictions. In the Canadian community kitchens, however, there are both more

160


male and more middle-class women members, an indication of the spread of an organizational form from low-income women to middle-class women and to men.32 Collective kitchens as livelihood strategies and as strategies for community development can be a catalyst for a sustainable agrifood synergy when supported by those that address low-income women’s practical and strategic gender interests as well as their class interests in food security.33 One supportive structure would be access to land and capital resources to develop income-generating activities and cooperative childcare facilities from their comedores either through state or nongovernmental organization (NGO) support or through microcredit programs. Another is for food aid in the form of surplus commodities to be replaced with financial assistance to purchase local food and to grow their own.34

Community Gardens United Kingdom Community gardens are typically set aside and supported by a city government for its residents to grow some of their own food. Community gardens encourage men and women, low-income people, and new immigrants to nurture the commons. Nurturing the commons is a strategy for supporting a relational concept of home that connects caring for children to caring for common resources. Like the collective kitchens of Latin America, community gardens were originally developed to address food insecurity among low-income groups. The collective kitchens of Lima, Peru, were established when people from rural areas could no longer support themselves on their small plots and moved to the city in search of jobs. This process of urbanization along with the concentration of agricultural land in the hands of fewer farmers began in Great Britain in the sixteenth century and proceeded through four centuries of enclosures—that is, confiscations by large estates of the common lands used by peasant farmers. To address the abuses, malnutrition, and civil unrest that resulted, the General Enclosure Act of 1845 called for allotments of garden plots to landless urban immigrants. Peaking during World War II at 1.4 million allotment gardens in the United Kingdom, numbers gradually declined until the 1970s, when a resurgence of interest in community gardens began.35 In the United Kingdom in the late 1960s, 96.8 percent of the allotment gardeners were men, many of them low-income, and by then elders, who continued to contribute to their family’s well-being by providing fresh fruits and vegetables. In contrast, the renewal of interest in community gardens has been characterized by an increase in number of women gardeners from 3 percent in the 1960s to 15 percent in 1993, and much higher in some regions. An increase also has been seen in the number of low-income women from ethnic minorities. Women gardeners are more likely than men to bring their children with them to the gardens. And British women of Asian heritage are more likely to garden collectively, thereby experiencing social benefits as well as the benefits of consuming more fresh fruits and vegetables. Women community gardeners tend to use fewer herbicides and synthetic fertilizers than men, which may, in part, reflect a generational difference between men and women gardeners, who tend to be younger.36 Nevertheless, in the United Kingdom, where women represent only 5 percent of the farmers, they constitute 50 percent of those who farm organically, a trend not uncommon throughout the organic sector in other


161

countries.37 This pattern of women being interested in organic gardening is found across ethnic groups and social classes in the United Kingdom.38 Cape Town, South Africa In Sub-Saharan Africa, where women have long been associated with subsistence farming,39 their ability to farm has been constrained by lack of access to land and other resources, a problem with multiple sources, including a colonial history, customary land inheritance patterns, the AIDS epidemic, war, land concentration in commercial agriculture, cuts in social services, and urbanization. Federici argues that rural development schemes that support export commodities and devalue subsistence farming have led women to shift their subsistence farming into urban areas.40 All of these factors affected women gardeners of southern Africa.41 Xhosa women who work “food gardens” in townships of Cape Town, South Africa, have powerful reasons for maintaining their gardens, in spite of their rather limited commercial returns. These reasons include comfort from the violence in the townships, a sense of stability, more control over household food supply, and empowerment through the development of social networks and community development.42 Through their gardens these women were able to exert more influence over household food choices. Also, although many of their gardens are not community gardens, strictly speaking, the women nevertheless work their gardens collectively, going in turn from one to another. In this way they developed social networks that they have been able to use to address patriarchal forms of oppression. For example, they gathered together to enforce the legal prosecution of a rape case. As their numbers grew, they attracted the attention of Abalimi Bezekhaya (Planters of the Home), a Xhosa NGO working on the development of urban agriculture and the environmental quality.43 Through such connections, some urban gardeners have moved from survival to subsistence to livelihood gardening.44 Christina Kaba, project coordinator for a community garden project, identified access to land and compost as their greatest constraints in this progression to livelihood gardening. In response, she and others created the Powerlines Project, which claimed unused land under the power lines.45 Their practice reflects gender interests in both its practical and strategic forms. As an example of the strategic interest, they are beginning to question gender roles that once confined them to their home. One of the Fezeka community gardeners, Phillipina Ndamane, states, “Before the garden we were sitting in our houses . . . the garden is strengthening us; it’s why we are here every day.”46 Interestingly, Kaba reports that she has started a new project that includes men gardeners, who are also eager to participate.47 Support for community gardens comes from the city of Cape Town, which has approved an urban agricultural policy, and from NGOs. Pat Featherstone of Soil for Life, one of the environmental NGOs helping to build township gardens, states that “[t]here’s so much that goes on in these communities that makes it really difficult to garden . . . in fact, it’s not about growing food, it’s about growing people.”48 Discussion Community kitchens and community gardens reflect a relational concept of home in which sharing the labor and the fruits of cooking and gardening not only

162


provides for women and their children, but also for neighborhoods and cities. The creation of community kitchens and gardens parallels women’s collective action in establishing more interpersonal relations between farmers and consumers, as, for example, in community-supported agriculture.49 These activities expand the relations of home by expanding the commons, the land and places where people work together to provide food for their families and communities. Furthermore, they develop the knowledge base of the participants in the skills to grow and prepare food and the connection of these processes to those of the natural environment. For those women and men who can derive a livelihood from such strategies, time is not an insurmountable barrier to their participation. For the many who cannot derive such a livelihood, community kitchens and community gardens need the support of other social formations, like the food justice movement and city planners in Cape Town and the environmental NGOs in South Africa. These supportive structures might also include ones like cohousing, which make it easier to grow, cook, and share food by working together at a home place.

Cohousing and Ecovillages Denmark Cohousing is a living arrangement whereby private houses or apartments are connected to one another by the residents’ shared stewardship of the commons and by their cooperative participation in community services, especially shopping, cooking, and cleaning up in the community dining facilities. Other community services might include childcare, laundry, and gardening. Cohouses are typically initiated, owned, worked, and managed by the residents. The key qualities of cohousing are as follows: (1) common facilities, (2) intentional neighborhood design, (3) participatory development process, and (4) total resident management.50 In its most recent incarnation cohousing began in the 1970s in Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands, where it is now a part of the regular mix of housing options.51 It has since spread throughout northern Europe and to the United States and Canada.52 Estimates are that cohousing developments numbered 7,000 around the world by 2005.53 An earlier version of cohousing, known as collective housing in Sweden, was promoted by the prominent Swedish social welfare advocate Alva Myrdal as an answer to its population crisis of the 1930s by making it easier for women to manage the double burdens of employment as well as childcare and housework. Collective housing consisted of apartments with paid staff providing the cooking, cleaning, and childcare.54 This type of collective house still exists, especially in senior housing. However, the more recent forms of cohousing follow the principle that all adults, men and women, be coresponsible for community duties like cooking, yard and garden work, cleaning, and childcare. Contemporary cohousing in Denmark and Sweden tends to be smaller than collective housing, typically with fifteen to fifty private household residences.55 At first, cohousing residents were mostly middle-class because (1) cohousing was largely new greenfield construction, (2) there was little government support for it, and (3) lending agencies were reluctant to loan money when the ability to claim equity from the property seemed unclear. A 1981 Danish law permitted groups to apply for a government-sponsored loan to


163

establish limited equity cooperative housing with a minimum of eight household units. This has diversified the population in cohousing by income and family status with more single-person and single-parent households. The entry of speculative developers into cohousing has diversified the stock of subsidized cohousing.56 The residents point to several factors that initially drew them to cohousing and keep them living there. One is the balance between private housing and community.57 This balance between privacy and community may be especially important to low-income and minority families who have often experienced the outside world as threatening.58 Parents want a way of life that not only makes it easier to care for children, but also provides an enriching experience for everyone; and many claim to have found that in cohousing. Among the benefits residents cite for cohousing is that it improves the children’s capacity to be more independent, to have more friends, and to have more “parents.” In fact, one of the first public rationales for cohousing was published in a 1967 newspaper editorial titled “Children Need 100 Parents.”59 No doubt, many parents would like to have one hundred co-parents, although some do complain about neighborhood children intruding into their private space. Single women and single mothers especially feel more secure living in their own home while knowing so many people all around them.60 In Denmark a comprehensive array of supports for employed parents— public childcare, generous parental leaves, and universal health care, among other social welfare programs—places cohousing in especially fortuitous context.61 Also, Denmark has gone further than most countries toward encouraging fathers to take equal responsibility for family meals, clean up, and childcare. Vestbro found that the housekeeping tasks are more equally distributed between women and men in cohousing than other residential forms. He suggests that cohousing may liberate men from the psychological constraints of patriarchy, allowing them to be more attuned to their emotions and to the needs of their co-residents.62 Meltzer’s research on environmental awareness among cohousing residents confirms that the design of the facilities, the ease of interaction, and the sharing of resources all support greater environmental awareness and the adoption of conservation practices.63 Their collective environmental awareness has led some Danish cohousing advocates to take another step toward nurturing the capacity of the natural environment to support future generations with the creation of ecovillages, for example, at Munksgard outside of Roskilde, Denmark.64 Munksgard was established in 2000 with environmentally sound forms of building construction and daily operation of the 100 houses.65 Denmark may well have the most ecovillages per capita of any country. This achievement is tied to its longer experience with cohousing as well as its early adoption of alternative energy policies after the 1973 oil crisis. The Danish Association of Sustainable Communities, a network of Danish ecovillages established in 1993, counts 51 members today. One of its missions, to bring about “awareness of global interconnectedness,” ties the interests of local people to the welfare of the global commons.66 Discussion Cohousing addresses the time burden on mothers by extending the commensal circle to the residential community and the work of food provisioning to all adults. In its ecovillage form, cohousing situates food provisioning in the context of carework

164


for the environment and global commons. Their success is based on a structure that respects privacy and supports the bonds between parents and children by expanding the social capital of both. For cohousing to be widely available it would have to be retrofitted to central city neighborhoods and be affordable to people in lower-income households. If the Danish experience is to serve as a model for such developments, it should be noted that cohousing and ecovillages began as grassroots rather than topdown projects and that government social welfare programs have made Denmark’s overall housing patterns relatively inclusive of lower-income households.67 As cohousing and ecovillages expand the relations of home from household to community to the global commons, their support of the intergenerational relations between parents and children remains central to their effectiveness, just as it is with community kitchens and gardens. However, nothing in these strategies deliberately extends the intergenerational relations of home to past generations in terms of agriculinary traditions grounded in the ecosystems of home places. That they have not done so reflects patterns of urbanization and migration as well as the taken-for-granted nature of culture in general and culinary traditions in particular. As commercially processed foods replace traditional culinary practices linked through time to regional ecosystems, the accumulated legacy of agrifood knowledge that past generations have bequeathed to the well-being of the present one is eroding. Strategies that consciously connect the relations of home from past generations to present ones could strengthen the relations linking the present generation to the well-being of future ones. Transnational organizations like Slow Food and many indigenous food community programs offer strategies that build on traditional agrifood systems in ways that contribute to sustaining the intergenerational relations of home for the long-term future. Slow Food Slow Food stands out among alternative agrifood strategies for its recognition of the value of the contributions of past generations to the culinary heritage of the present as well as for its stress on commensality as an aspect of an aesthetic of slow food. Slow Food, which was established by Carlo Petrini in Bra, Italy, in 1989, has since expanded to a transnational network with more than 85,000 members in 132 countries, and with more than 1,000 local chapters, called convivia.68 Convivia cultivate the appreciation of pleasure and quality in daily life by gathering regularly to share the pleasure and conviviality of meals of local food, building relationships with producers, campaigning to protect traditional foods, organizing tastings and seminars, encouraging chefs to use local foods, choosing producers to participate in international events and promoting taste education in schools.69

Slow Food’s goals are to promote “good, clean, and fair” food in practices that connect agricultural producers with co-producers (i.e., consumers) and to preserve smallscale producer livelihoods based on co-producer support for their artisanal products. As part of its philosophy of ecogastronomy, Slow Food supports its presidia and Ark of Taste projects. The Ark of Taste consists of agrifood products certified by Slow Food as deserving of and able to benefit from their assistance in preservation. The presidia goals are to assist producers in promoting artisanal products, diverse regions, ecosystems, techniques, and crop varieties.70


165

Italy In its original home place in Italy, Slow Food’s goal of promoting closer relations between producers and co-producers, its opposition to fast food, and its call for a slower pace of life all tie the sensual qualities of food to its natural, social, and cultural context. In its convivia form, Slow Food also connotes the sustaining, noncommodified relationships of caring and solidarity, reinforced by commensality. Its basic convivia form promotes sharing food and eating together as aspects of a process that will preserve and promote good quality and good taste in food. However, because artisanal products tend to be more expensive than mass-produced ones, and food provisioning—from shopping to cooking and cleaning up—is typically more timeconsuming for home cooks using “slow” ingredients and traditional culinary practices, critics have called on Slow Food to consider how these gender and class inequities might be addressed.71 Recent Slow Food initiatives like Terre Madre, a network of “food communities,” professional cooks, and universities that supports small-scale producers worldwide, indicate that, as an organization, it is broadening its approach to linking producers and co-producers within and across cultures and classes and is becoming more aligned with critical consumption.72 Nevertheless, the fact that gender hierarchy remains relatively unexamined within Slow Food testifies to the powerful symbolic and practical association of women in Italy with familial food provisioning and men with commercial agrifood production. Before Slow Food was created, the Italian women and men Counihan interviewed for her studies of food and family in twentieth-century Florence appreciated the pleasures of the table as part of an aesthetic of food that served intergenerational interests through carework.73 As Counihan explains, “meals were important because they affirmed family, produced sociability, and conveyed sensual and convivial pleasure on daily and special occasions.”74 Commensality created relations of intimacy that “implied reciprocity, care, and serious commitment.”75 Clearly, Italian women have long valued and tried to maintain the relations of home through sharing food and eating together enough to devote their time to it. However, the very low birthrate (9.3 per 1,000) in Italy demonstrates the limits to the accommodations Italian women will make as individuals to maintain the relations of home—many Italian women are now having only one child. And in Italy, too, women are turning to convenience foods to save time, when they do not call on their own mothers to help make homecooking work the way it had for generations by shopping, cooking, and caring for their children and grandchildren.76 Even in its own home place in Italy, it is clear that for Slow Food to sustain an ecogastronomy politics that effectively builds on the culinary legacy of past generations and traditional knowledge of artisanal agrifood production, it must also confront the gender inequities of the present and provide more support for the caretaker.

Discussion Confronting the gender inequities in Slow Food will necessitate a reconstruction of those aspects of its cultural heritage that take homecooking and Italian women’s familial carework for granted, while highlighting and celebrating the work of professional chefs and artisanal food producers. Kittay argues that supports are needed from the larger society that would make it possible for parents in

166


whatever household forms to combine a sustainable livelihood with the care, commitment, and cooperation that it takes to sustain the relations of home.77 The form these societal supports might take include community kitchen and gardens, cohousing and ecovillages, and feminist revisions of Slow Food, because each of these strategies places a high value on sharing food and eating together—critical practices of the relations of home. Another path is reflected in programs by indigenous nations to promote community-wide food security based on agriculinary traditions.

Tsyunhehkwa Oneida Nation of Wisconsin People from more community-based forms of agrifood production, like the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, traditionally conceive of agricultural production, food provisioning for the household, sharing food, and commensality as complementary processes. The Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, a sovereign First Nation with lands in and around Oneida, Wisconsin, developed Tsyunhehkwa (pronounced, “Joon-hey-qwa”; translated, “Life Sustenance”) with goals similar to Slow Food but within a cultural heritage of matrilineal kinship, egalitarian gender formations, subsistence agriculture, and community-wide patterns of food sharing.78 Historically, women cultivated subsistence gardens while men provided game. Although nineteenth- and early twentieth-century assimilation pressures for men to take up cash-crop farming reoriented gender relations somewhat, women continued to tend the traditional corn fields.79 And, the ideal relations of home continued to include not only the immediate household but also kin, neighbors, friends, and acquaintances in community-wide practices of sharing food and eating together.80 This cultural heritage provided a foundation upon which to revitalize their contemporary food community around white corn. According to Slow Food, a food community is “people involved in the production, transformation, and distribution of a particular food, who are closely linked to a geographic area either historically, socially, or culturally.”81 Like their northern neighbors, the White Earth Band of Chippewa in Minnesota, who are working to preserve their wild rice,82 Oneida are undertaking through Tsyunhehkwa to revitalize food crops from their agricultural and culinary traditions. White corn, which is grown, processed, and distributed by Tsyunhehkwa, is one of the Three Sisters of Oneida Creation, along with beans and squash.83 Tsyunhehkwa demonstrates ways to participate in the Three Sisters gardening, harvesting, and other agrifood projects and to improve the health status of Oneida and others. Tsyunhehkwa manager Jeff Metoxen and a staff of thirteen work with elders, youth, and others in the community to enhance food quality, community health, food security, and self-sufficiency for the nation as a whole. Tsyunhehkwa’s goals are not only to reintegrate white corn into Oneida meals, but also to participate in the “rejuvenation” of an integrated agrifood, health, and well-being complex, expressed in the Three Sisters.84 To this end, it participates in the Oneida Community Integrated Food Systems (OCIFS), which also includes the Oneida Nation Farm, Apple Orchard, Food Distribution/Pantry, Grants, and Oneida Health Center.85


167

Discussion Since Tsyunhehkwa is a department of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, its intracommunity connections and links to the surrounding nonindigenous communities are more inclusive than Slow Food, even in Slow Food’s home region of Piedmont. The Oneida Nation of Wisconsin relocated from their homeland in New York in a colonial process that made it increasingly difficult to provide themselves with culturally appropriate and healthy food. To overcome the food insecurity and health problems that have resulted from this past, Tsyunhehkwa and OCIFS are participating in a “healing history” to address contemporary health issues, like the extremely high diabetes rates among North American indigenous peoples, with programs that place meals in the context of holistic cultural and social traditions.86 In this process, they participate in projects by indigenous peoples around the world to promote food sovereignty. According to indigenous peoples in Atitlan, Guatemala, Food Sovereignty is the right of Peoples to define their own policies and strategies for the sustainable production, distribution, and consumption of food, with respect for their own cultures and their own systems of managing natural resources and rural areas, and is considered to be a precondition for Food Security.87

This definition, from the Declaration of Atitlan, a 2002 consultation of indigenous peoples in Atitlan, Guatemala, ties indigenous food sovereignty not only to rights in land, clean water, and other natural resources but also to the survival of cultures and communities. Like Slow Food, Tsyunhehkwa recognizes the value of agrifood traditions and their grounding in regional ecosystems, although neither proposes to return to the past. Rather, their intent is to respect and recycle the accumulated wisdom of the past generations, build on it, and bestow it to the future.

AT HOME IN THE COMMONS When DuPuis and Goodman ask “Should We Go Home to Eat?” they challenge advocates of localist, alternative agrifood strategies to reflect critically on issues of inequality and injustice within their home communities.88 Underlying this challenge is the recognition that ultimately home cannot be a “haven in a heartless world” because it is entangled in the world and all of its problems.89 We need home nonetheless, not as a nostalgic retreat from a hostile world, but as a fundamental interpersonal nexus between the generations and a primary locus of rights and responsibilities for food security. Without these relations, we are homeless in the most profound sense—that is, without an intergenerational nexus of support, without the interpersonal relations that connect us to past generations or to future ones. And, as Wilk notes, “In a global economy of constant flow and movement, homeless is powerless, at the mercy of the tides and currents.”90 Homelessness, in this sense, diminishes our capacity to fulfill the “right to food,” “right to feed,” and “right to be fed,” rights identified with the food sharing and commensality of the relations of home.91 The ability to realize these rights depends on the power and empowerment of those responsible for their interpersonal fulfillment.

168


The strategies discussed in this chapter—community kitchens and gardens, cohousing and ecovillages, Slow Food and Tsyunhehkwa—open home to justice claims of fairness and equality based on the value of well-being through the connections of gender and generational carework. Each one extends the commensal circles beyond the nuclear family and, by practicing more inclusive interpersonal food sharing, enhances the capacity of the relations of home to ensure food security over the generations. These examples demonstrate that home as the nexus of interpersonal care, commitment, and cooperation, where sharing food and commensality are critical practices, can ignite a synergy between sustainable agrifood systems and healthy people, communities, and environments. As a whole, they represent a range of strategies that nurture the relations of home in the commons.

NOTES 1. Gary Witherspoon, Navajo Kinship and Marriage (University of Chicago Press, 1975). 2. Penny Van Esterik, “Right to Food; Right to Feed; Right to Be Fed: The Intersection of Women’s Rights and the Right to Food,” Agriculture and Human Values 16 (1998): 225–32. 3. Power is a dimension of the relational practice of gendered intimacy expressed in homemaking. For example, meals are sometimes the scenes of patriarchal power in the form of abuse of women and children. Meals can also be the setting of female empowerment through the embodied knowledge of cooking and the practice of sharing food and children’s power through demanding or refusing to be fed. 4. Alan Warde et al., “Changes in the Practice of Eating: A Comparative Analysis of Time-Use,” Acta Sociologica 50, no. 4 (2007): 363–85. 5. Ann Vileisis, Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes from and Why We Need to Get it Back (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2008). 6. Mary Story et al., “Creating Healthy Food and Eating Environments: Policy and Environmental Approaches,” Annual Review of Public Health 29 (2008): 253–72. 7. Jerry A. Jacobs and Kathleen Gerson, The Time Divide: Work, Family, and Gender Inequality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); Susan Linn and Courtney L. Novosat, “Calories for Sale: Food Marketing to Children in the TwentyFirst Century,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 615, no. 1 (2008): 133–55. 8. Alan Warde et al., “Changes in the Practice of Eating.” 9. Patricia Allen and Carolyn Sachs, “Women and Food Chains: The Gendered Politics of Food,” International Journal of Sociology of Food and Agriculture 15, no. 1 (2007): 1–23; Silivia Federici, “Women, Land-Struggles and Globalization: An International Perspective,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 39, no. 1, 2 (2004): 47–62. 10. Rachel Engler-Stringer and Shawna Berenbaum, “Exploring Food Security with Collective Kitchens Participants in Three Canadian Cities,” Qualitative Health Research 17, no. 1 (2007): 75–84, 75. 11. British Colombian Institute for Co-operative Studies at the University of Victoria, “The Canadian Community Kitchen Movement,” http://www.bcics.org/node/154 (accessed September 23, 2008). 12. RCCQ (Regroupement des cuisines collectives du Quebec), http://www.rccq.org/ (accessed September 17, 2008); Kelly Ebbels, “Cooking up New Collective Kitchens,” McGill Daily, February 16, 2007, http://www.mcgilldaily.com/view.php?aid=5464 (accessed September 23, 2008).


169

13. RCCQ, http://www.rccq.org/; Rachel Engler-Stringer and Shawna Berenbaum, “Exploring Food Security with Collective Kitchens Participants in Three Canadian Cities,” Qualitative Health Research 17, no. 1 (2007): 75–84, 75. 14. RCCQ, http://www.rccq.org/. 15. Engler-Stringer and Berenbaum, “Exploring Food Security.” 16. Rachel Engler-Stringer and Shawna Berenbaum, “Collective Kitchens in Canada: A Review of the Literature,” Canadian Journal of Dietetic Practice and Research 66, no. 4 (2005): 246–51. 17. Rachel Engler-Stringer, “Collective Kitchens in Three Canadian Cities: Impacts on the Lives of Participants” (Saskatoon, CA: Community-University Institute for Social Research, 2006), http://www.usask.ca/cuisr/docs/pub_doc/health/Engler-Stringer. pdf (accessed September 12, 2008). 18. Jeanne Nzeyimana, “Sahwanya Community Kitchen: Bringing African women with HIV together in Vancouver,” Canadian Women’s Health Network Winnipeg, 10, no. 2 (2008): 22, http://www.cwhn.ca/network-reseau/10-2/10-2pg9.html (accessed September 17, 2008). 19. Engler-Stringer, “Collective Kitchen in Three Canadian Cities.” 20. Lucie Frechette, “Les Cuisines collectives du Perou: 20 ans d’entraide et de developpement solidaire,” Economie et Solidarites 29, no. 2 (1998): 124–39. 21. Maureen Hays-Mitchell, “Resisting Austerity: A Gendered Perspective on NeoLiberal Restructuring in Peru,” Gender and Development 10, no. 3 (2002): 71–81, 71. 22. Intermonoxfam, “Mujeres cocinando el futuro de Peru,” http://www.intermonoxfam. org/es/page.asp?id=2257 (accessed September 17, 2008); Amy Lind and Emi McLaughlin, “Peru,” in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Women’s Issues Worldwide: Central and South America, ed. Amy Lind (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003), 411–38, 419. 23. Lind and McLaughlin, “Peru.” 24. Cecilia Blondet and Carolina Trevilli, Chucharas en Alto, Del Asistencialismo a Desarollo Local: Fortaleciendo de la Participacion de las Mujeres (Lima, Per u: IEP, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2004), http://www.iep.org.pe/textos/DDT/DDT135.pdf (accessed September 20, 2008). 25. Amy Lind and Martha Farmelo, “Gender and Urban Social Movements: Women’s Community Responses to Restructuring and Urban Poverty” (Paper no. 76, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, New York, 1996). 26. Annalise Moser, “Happy Heterogeneity? Feminism, Development, and the Grassroots Women’s Movement in Peru,” Feminist Studies 30, no. 1 (2004): 211–37; Maxine Molyneux, Change and Continuity in Social Protection in Latin America: Mothers at the Service of the State? (Gender and Development Programme, Paper No. 1, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, New York, 2007), http://www. unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/search/BF80E0A84BE41896C12573240033C541?Open Document (accessed September 20, 2008). 27. Lind and Farmelo, “Gender and Urban.” 28. Molyneux, Maxine, “Mobilization without Emancipation? Women’s Interests, the State, and Revolution in Nicaragua,” Feminist Studies 11, no. 2 (1985): 227–54. 29. Roelie Lenten, Cooking under the Volcanoes: Communal Kitchens in the Southern Peruvian City of Arequipa (Amsterdam: CEDLA Publication, 1993). 30. Moser, “Happy Heterogeneity?” 233. 31. Molyneux, Change and Continuity. 32. Ebbels, “Cooking up New Collective Kitchens.” 33. Agnes R. Quisumbing et al., Women: The Key to Food Security (Washington, DC: Food Policy Report, the International Food Policy Research Institute, 1995).

170


34. Lenten, Cooking under the Volcanoes. 35. “Allotment History: A Brief History of Allotments in the UK,” Allotment Growing, http://www.allotment.org.uk/articles/Allotment-History.php (accessed September 21, 2008). 36. Susan Buckingham, “Women (Re)construct the Plot: the Regen(d)eration of Urban Food Growing,” Area 37, no. 2 (2005): 171–179, 173. 37. Buckingham, “Women (Re)construct”; Mathilde Schmitt, “Women Farmers and the Influence of Ecofeminism on the Greening of German Agriculture,” in Gender and Rurality, ed. Sarah Whatmore, Terry Marsden, and Philip Lower (London: David Fulton Publishers, 1994), 102–116. 38. Buckingham, “Women (Re)construct.” 39. FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), “Women, Agriculture and Rural Development: A Synthesis Report of the Africa Region” (Rome: FAO, 1995), http://www.fao.org/docrep/x0250e/x0250e00.htm (accessed October 3, 2008). 40. Federici, “Women, Land-Struggles.” 41. Rachel J. Slater, “Urban Agriculture, Gender and Empowerment: An Alternative View,” Development Southern Africa 18, no. 5 (2001): 635–50. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. Helen Kilbey, “South Africa: A Quiet Revolution Fuelled by Organic Vegetables,” AllAfrica.com, January 9, 2008, http://allafrica.com/stories/200801090151.html (accessed October 3, 2008). 45. Sarah Ward, “Organic Gardeners Uplift Poor Communities,” AGENDA 72 (2007): 47–49. 46. Kilbey, “South Africa”; Soil for Life, http://www.soilforlife.co.za/ (accessed October 3, 2008). 47. Ward, “Organic Gardeners.” 48. Kilbey, “South Africa”; Soil for Life, http://www.soilforlife.co.za/. 49. Laura DeLind and Anne E. Ferguson, “Is This a Women’s Movement? The Relationship of Gender to Community-supported Agriculture in Michigan,” Human Organization 59, no. 2 (1999): 190–200; Betty L. Wells and Shelley Gradwell, “Gender and Resource Management: Community Supported Agriculture as Caring-Practice,” Agriculture and Human Values 18, no. 1 (2001): 107–119. 50. Kathryn N. McCamant and Charles R. Durrett, “Cohousing in Denmark,” in New Households, New Housing, ed. Karen A. Franck and Sherry Ahrentzen (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1989), 95–126. 51. Ibid. 52. Dick Urban Vestbro, “From Collective Housing to Cohousing: A Summary of Research,” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 17, no. 2 (2000): 164–78. 53. Kenneth Mulder, Robert Constanza, and Jon Erickson, “The Contribution of Built, Human, Social and Natural Capital to Quality of Life in Intentional and Unintentional Communities,” Ecological Economics 59 (2006): 13–23. 54. Vestbro, “From Collective Housing.” 55. Ibid. 56. McCamant and Durrett, “Cohousing in Denmark.” 57. Clare Cooper Marcus, “Site Planning, Building Design and a Sense of Community: An Analysis of Six Cohousing Schemes in Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands,” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 17, no. 2 (2000): 146–63. 58. Sherry Ahrentzen, “Housing Alternatives for New Forms of Households,” in Under One Roof: Issues and Innovations in Shared Housing, ed. George C. Hemmens, Charles J. Hoch, and Jana Carp (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 33–48.


171

59. Hildur Jackson, “Children and Cohousing: The Birth of an International Social Movement,” Permaculture Magazine 52 (Summer 2007): 27–29. 60. Megan Salhus, “Women in Co-housing Communities,” Women & Environments International Magazine no. 70/71 (Spring/Summer 2006): 70–71; Alison Woodward, “Communal Housing in Sweden: A Remedy for the Stress of Everyday Life?” in New Households, New Housing, ed. Karen A. Franck and Sherry Ahrentzen (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1989), 71–94. 61. Lynn Walter, “The Future of Social Welfare in Denmark,” in Speaking Out: Women, Poverty, and Public Policy, ed. Katherine A. Rhoades and Anne Statham (Madison: University of Wisconsin System Women’s Studies Librarian, 1998), 119–28. 62. Dick Urban Vestbro, “Collective Housing for the Emancipation of Men?” (paper presented at the International Association for People-Environment Studies Conference, July 7–9, 2004), http://iaps.scix.net (accessed October 4, 2008). 63. Graham Meltzer, “Cohousing: Verifying the Importance of Community in the Application of Environmentalism,” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 17, no. 2 (2000): 110–32. 64. Munksga˚rd, http://www.munkesoegaard.dk/index.html (accessed October 4, 2008); Hildur Jackson, “From Cohousing to Ecovillages: A Global Feminist Vision?” Communities 127 (Summer 2005): 42–48. 65. Munksga˚rd, http://www.munkesoegaard.dk/index.html. 66. Landsforening for kosamfund (The Danish Association for Sustainable Communities), http://losnet.dk/_ny/forside.asp (accessed October 5, 2008). 67. Matthias Till, “Assessing the Housing Dimension of Social Inclusion in Six European Countries,” Innovations 18, no. 2 (2005): 153–81. 68. Slow Food 2008, Welcome to Our World: Slow Food Companion, http://www.slow food.com/about_us/img_sito/pdf/Companion08_ENG.pdf (accessed November 1, 2008). 69. Ibid., 10. 70. Slow Food, “Our Mission,” http://www.slowfood.com/about_us/eng/mission.lasso (accessed November 2, 2008). 71. Janet Chrzan, “Slow Food: What, Why, and to Where?” Food, Culture, & Society 7, no. 2 (2004): 117–32; Lynn Walter, “Slow Food and Home Cooking: Toward a Relational Aesthetic of Food and Relational Ethic of Home” (paper presented at the 2nd International Conference on Sustainable Consumption and Alternative Agri-Food Systems, May 27–30, 2008, University of Liege, Arlon, Belgium). 72. Roberta Sassatelli and Federica Davolio, “Politicizing Food Quality: How Alternative Is Slow Food Vision of Consumption?” (paper presented at the 2nd International Conference on Sustainable Consumption and Alternative Agri-Food Systems, May 27–30, 2008, University of Liege, Arlon, Belgium). 73. Carole M. Counihan, Around the Tuscan Table: Food, Family, and Gender in Twentieth Century Florence (New York: Routledge, 2004). 74. Ibid., 121. 75. Ibid., 134ff. 76. Walter, “Slow Food.” 77. Eva Feder Kittay, Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency (New York: Routledge, 1999). 78. Tsyunhehkwa, http://www.tsyunhehkwa.org/ (accessed October 25, 2008). 79. Jack Campisi, “The Wisconsin Oneidas between Disasters,” in The Oneida Indian Journey: From New York to Wisconsin, 1784–1860 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), 70–84.

172


80. Thelma McLester, “Oneida Women Leaders,” in The Oneida Indian Experience: Two Perspectives, ed. Jack Campisi and Laurence M. Hauptman (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1988), 108–125. 81. Terra Madre, http://www.terramadre2006.org/pagine/rete/ (accessed November 2, 2008). 82. Save Wild Rice, http://savewildrice.org/history (accessed November 2, 2008). 83. Carol Cornelius, Iroquois Corn in a Culture-based Curriculum: A Framework for Respectfully Teaching about Cultures (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1999). 84. Diana Peterson, “Three Sisters Gardening: Rejuvenating a Traditional Food System with the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin” (master’s thesis, Environmental Science and Policy, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, 2005). 85. Oneida Community Integrated Farm Systems, http://ocifs.oneidanation.org/ (accessed October 25, 2008). 86. Laura Wilcox, “Healing History: North America’s Indigenous Peoples Look to the Past to Find Healthier Future,” http://heifer.org (accessed November 2, 2008). 87. “Declaration of Atitlan, Indigenous Peoples’ Consultation on the Right to Food: A Global Consultation, Atitlan, Solola, Guatemala, April 17–19, 2002,” http://www. treatycouncil.org/new_page_5241224.htm (accessed November 1, 2008). 88. E. Melanie DuPuis and David Goodman, “Should We Go Home to Eat? Toward a Reflexive Politics of Localism,” Journal of Rural Studies 21 (2005): 359–71. 89. Christopher Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995). 90. Richard Wilk, Home Cooking in the Global Village (Oxford: Berg, 2006), 203. 91. Van Esterik, “Right to Food.”

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Allen, Patricia, and Carolyn Sachs. “Women and Food Chains: The Gendered Politics of Food.” Journal of Sociology of Food and Agriculture 15, no. 1 (2007): 1–23. Barndt, Deborah, ed. Women Working the NAFTA Food Chain: Women, Food & Globalization. Toronto: Second Story Press, 1999. Counihan, Carole M. Around the Tuscan Table: Food, Family, and Gender in Twentieth Century Florence. New York: Routledge, 2004. DeVault, Marjorie L. Feeding the Family: The Social Organization of Caring as Gendered Work. University of Chicago Press, 1991. Kim, Grace. “Culture: A Retrospective of Danish Cohousing.” The Co-Housing Association of the United States, 2008. Available at http://www.cohousing.org/docs/ 2008/denmark_retrospective.pdf. Van Esterik, Penny. “Right to Food; Right to Feed; Right to Be Fed. The Intersection of Women’s Rights and the Right to Food.” Agriculture and Human Values 16 (1998): 225–32. Warde, Alan, Shu-Li Cheng, Wendy Olsen, and Deal Southerton. “Changes in the Practice of Eating: A Comparative Analysis of Time-Use.” Acta Sociologica 50, no. 4 (2007): 363–85.

Web Sites Abalimi Bezekhaya, http://www.abalimi.org.za/ (a Xhosa urban agricultural and environmental NGO).


173

ECDQ.tv Catholic Church of Quebec, “Community Kitchens in Peru Video.” http:// www.ecdq.tv/en/videos/443cb001c138b2561a0d90720d6ce111. Fresh Choice Kitchens, the Community Kitchen program of the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society, http://www.communitykitchens.ca/main/?communityKitchens (community kitchens video). Munksga˚rd, Danish Ecovillage, http://www.munkesoegaard.dk/index.html. Regroupement des cuisines collectives du Quebec, http://www.rccq.org/. Slow Food, http://ww.slowfood.com. Tsyunhehkwa, http://tsyunhehkwa.org.


11 Cultural Differences in Food Preferences Regan A. R. Gurung Every Saturday during the summer, the Green Bay (Wisconsin) farmer’s market is awash in color: rich varieties of flowers, verdant leafy greens, and the requisite set of crafts and knick-knacks. There is a clear majority among the assembled party of farmers displaying their wares. The farmer’s market is dominated by Hmong Americans, with tables overflowing with pumpkin vines, pea tendrils, amaranth, Chinese broccoli, bok choy, mustard greens, water spinach, and other herbs. The Hmong people originally lived in the hills of the Laos People’s Democratic Republic in Southeast Asia. In 1975, Laos fell to communist forces, and 150,000 Hmong fled to refugee camps in Thailand and then to America. In fact, the American government promised the Hmong asylum in exchange for their help in fighting the Vietnam War. Correspondingly, thousands of Hmong men, women, and children immigrated to America and settled primarily in California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The Hmong were farmers in the hills of Laos and brought their traditions with them. Across America, it is not surprising to see the Hmong tending small plots of land and growing their own produce, even in the busiest of American cities. For example, in Massachusetts, Hmong and Cambodian immigrants are active beneficiaries of the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project.1 Since 1998, the project has helped farmers access land and grow crops that are native to their homelands. Growing your own food and selling the excess to make a living is not a new idea. Before the rise of technological innovation and conglomerate food industries, most of the world subsisted in such a way. Most of the immigrants to America brought their own food-raising traditions with them. The American Indians, earliest inhabitants of the Americas, also have a rich tradition of working the soil. In fact, looking at cultural differences in nutrition and eating habits reveals connections to the soil and between food and culture that have considerable significance for the sustainability movement. More often than not, traditional cultural dietary prescriptions, farming traditions, and diets reveal sustainable patterns. The example of the Hmong highlights the fact that some cultural groups have different relationships with food than others. The Hmong diet is

176


primarily vegetarian and heavily dependent on what is produced in the home garden. What are other cultural differences in food preferences? What are the implications for sustainability? This chapter will focus on different cultural groups that have distinct food preferences and prescriptions for healthy eating. After clarifying how I use the term “culture,” I shall briefly discuss the development of food preferences following an overview of philosophical differences to nutrition that form the underlying basis for eating behavior. Whereas the Chinese and Taoist approach focuses on balance of yin and yang foods and the Indian-Ayurvedic tradition focuses on matching food to body type and season, the Western approach aims to balance nutritional value. I will then briefly review how different religions also have different prescriptions for eating. Each section will discuss implications for how food is produced and consumed. As the globe embraces multiculturalism, migration and immigration are changing food preferences with implications for health and sustainability.

WHAT IS CULTURE? What do your mother, your region, your best friend, and your religion have in common? They each constitute a way that you are socialized and compose elements of culture. Take parents, for example. Whether we do something because they told us to (e.g., “Eat your greens!”) or exactly because they told us not to (e.g., “Don’t eat too much ice cream”), they have a strong influence on us. If our friends frequent fast-food establishments, we will be more likely to do the same. Similarly, religions have different prescriptions for what individuals should and should not do. Muslims should not eat pork or drink alcohol. Hindus are prohibited from eating beef. Even where we live can determine our habits and can predict the diseases we may die from as studied in detail by the area of health geography. Parents, peers, religion, and geography are a few of the key determinants of our behaviors and are examples of what makes up our culture. There are many definitions of culture; Soudijn, Hutschemaekers, and Van de Vijver analyzed 128 definitions.2 Culture can be broadly defined as a dynamic, yet stable, set of goals, beliefs, and attitudes shared by a group of people.3 Culture can include the social construction of similarities in physical characteristics (e.g., skin color), psychological characteristics (e.g., levels of hostility), and common superficial features (e.g., hair style and clothing). Culture is dynamic because some of the beliefs held by members in a culture can change with time. However, the general culture stays mostly stable because the individuals change together. These beliefs and attitudes can be implicit, learned by observation, and passed on by word of mouth, or they can be explicit, written down as laws or rules for the group to follow. The most commonly described objective cultural groups are categorized by ethnicity, race, sex, and age. The most recent census data list the population of the United States as being around 302 million. That number can be broken down along different cultural lines. An example of a “cultural group” that most people tend to think of first is race. Of that 302 million population, approximately 13 percent are African American or black, approximately 4 percent are Asian American (including Americans of different Asian backgrounds such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Indian), and approximately 1 percent are American Indians or Native Americans. The remaining

Cultural Differences in Food Preferences

177

82 percent of the population are considered European American or white and include people of Latin American and Spanish ancestry. Commonly referred to as Latinos, the preferred term, or Hispanic (a term applied to this ethnic group by the U.S. government in the 1980 Census), the truth is that people in this same group have their own names for their groups depending on which part of the United States they live in and their specific country of origin. For example, Hispanic is preferred in the southeast and much of Texas, New Yorkers use both Hispanic and Latino, and in Chicago, Latino is preferred.4 Each ethnic group has distinct cuisines and food preferences, as I shall describe later. A second type of culture is religion. Of the 302 million Americans, the absolute majority are Christians, accounting for 84 percent (57 percent Protestant and 27 percent Catholic). The next largest percentage of Americans do not have any religious affiliation (8 percent). The rest are Jewish (2 percent) and a number of smaller groups (e.g., Hindu). Although there are different subcultures, such as agegroups, socioeconomic status, geographic regions, biological sex, and gender, ethnic and religious differences are most directly tied to differences in food preferences.

DEVELOPMENT OF FOOD PREFERENCES Have you wondered why you like certain foods and dislike others? A part of our food preferences are biologically programmed.5 Humans have two completely innate preferences: we innately prefer sweet and salty tastes and are adverse to sour tastes. In general, our experiences and exposure to food determine the bulk of our preferences. If the context in which you were given broccoli was positive, you probably will develop a preference for broccoli. If you always were forced to eat your beans, you probably will develop an aversion to beans. If you were raised near a cheese factory, you probably will develop a preference for cheese. Basic reward and punishment and sociocultural factors also play a large role in the development of our food preferences.6 Children growing up in families who eat together often develop healthier eating habits (and are healthier adults too).7 Foods used as rewards (e.g., clean your room and you get your ice cream) or paired with fun social events or holidays (e.g., Mom’s spice cake at Christmas) automatically become preferred. A recent study of more than one thousand children showed that the ethnicity of the parents and correspondingly ethnic food preferences also influenced what children ate.8 Changes in food marketing and availability are the most recent and blatant environmental factors influencing eating.9 The fast-food industry has been “supersizing” its offerings. For a small increase in costs, fast-food chains generate a large profit from the public, many of whom like to get large servings. The influence of larger servings in restaurants is seen as one component of an industrial way of life because it tends to be localized to industrial countries. As proof of the ills of “Western living,” researchers10 compared Pima Indians in the United States with Pima Indians living in a rural part of Mexico. The U.S. Pima Indians had a mean body mass index (BMI) of 35.5. The Mexican Pima Indians had an average BMI of 25.1. Similarly, the Navajo Indians of New Mexico are experiencing rising cases of gallbladder infection and other diet-related problems.11 How much food does a person really need? The actual amount of food in a recommended serving may surprise you.12

178


Whereas overeating and the obesity epidemic in America may not directly seem to relate to sustainability, one cannot help but wonder whether eating healthier portions would help sustainability. Evidence suggests that our biology holds within its DNA code remnants of times in our evolutionary history when food availability was not a given. Correspondingly, we evolved to eat more when food was available because we did not know when food supplies would extinguish because of drought or pestilence. Today, the ready availability of food is almost directly tied to obesity levels. Most overweight people eat more than healthy weight people and often do not even realize the quantities they consume. That said, overweight people do not eat more of just anything. A variety of social and psychological factors influence how much we eat and when.13 For example, we eat more when we are stressed or hassled.14 Taste and quality are particularly important. Studies suggest that overweight individuals actually prefer (and eat) more fat than healthy weight people. Be warned, though; most people eat more if they are given larger servings.15 Furthermore, a greater variety of foods presented leads to greater quantities consumed by individual eaters.16 If only one type of food is available at a meal, people eat a moderate amount of it. If a second food is introduced, the amount of the new food eaten will be more than if it was presented by itself. This phenomenon is called sensory-specific satiety. Even thinking that more variety is available can make you eat more. Brian Wansink showed that people will eat more jelly beans when they are mixed up (and there seems to be more variety) than when a number of varieties are served separately.17 Simply changing the cost of foods makes a difference too.18 The cheaper the food is, the more people will eat, which even applies to healthy items such as fruits. These general factors associated with food preference and eating have been shown to be relatively constant worldwide; however, philosophical approaches to nutrition and eating do vary significantly. What we eat often is deeply tied to our cultural backgrounds. Throughout history, many cultures have ascribed healthpromoting powers to certain foods, and many religions have followed specific dietary practices. Chinese “herbs of immortality” were a popular fad among the ancient Egyptians. These herbs have a modern manifestation in the Chinese herbs that are promoted to bodybuilders in health food stores. Different cultures have different beliefs about what should be eaten. Cultures including the Chinese believe that some foods are hot and others are cold. This belief refers to a food’s influence on health and well-being, not to the temperature or spiciness of foods. Cold foods include most vegetables, tropical fruits, dairy products, and inexpensive cuts of meat (e.g., rump). Hot foods include chili peppers, garlic, onion, most grains, expensive cuts of meat, oils, and alcohol. Just as the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Guide Pyramid balances nutritional value, cultures such as the Chinese and the ancient Indians suggested eating foods to balance energy levels. Most non-Western cultures believe that the type of food eaten needs to balance the type or condition of the person. For example, pregnancy is considered a “hot” condition during which many Latinos typically avoid hot foods, believing this will prevent the infant from contracting a “hot” illness, such as a skin rash. In contrast to the Latino beliefs, the Chinese believe that pregnancy is a “cold” condition during which the expectant mother should consume hot foods to keep in balance and remain healthy. In the next section, I will describe three major world philosophies and their relation to eating. In each,


179

good nutrition is seen as a valuable component of health, and I have framed the discussion of food around health.

WESTERN NUTRITION The USDA’s earliest attempts to inform consumers about how much protein, fats, and carbohydrates to consume date back to the early 1900s. The first food guide was published in 1916 and consisted of five major groups. The economic problems of the Great Depression in the 1930s greatly influenced families’ buying habits as they had to balance price and nutrition. Affordable foods were often low in nutritional value. To alleviate this situation, the USDA released buying guides with 12 food groups in the 1930s. Over the next several decades, the number of food groups changed from seven in the 1940s to four in the 1950s and 1960s and then back to five in 1979 with the “Hassle-Free” Foundation diet. The Food Guide Pyramid, as seen on bread packages and cereal boxes through mid 2005, was introduced in 1984 with six food groups. The 1984 configuration was revised in the early 1990s based on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (DHHS) Surgeon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health. The report included the recommendations of a panel of nutritional experts selected by the USDA and the DHHS. This pyramid established the basic principles of a balanced diet designed to help people maintain or improve their general health and reduce the risk of diet-related diseases. The pyramid, although easily recognized, was not well used or well understood. Because of problems with understanding the pyramid, cultural variations needed for it to apply to all Americans, and a large amount of new nutritional research, the pyramid as many middle-age adults knew it was discontinued. The DHHS released an updated set of nutritional guidelines for Americans in January 2005, complete with a new pictorial guide revamping the pyramid, now called MyPyramid. A modified version for older adults was released in January 2008. Key changes include explicitly urging the consumption of more whole grains, a variety of fruits and vegetables, and an increase in physical activity. Instead of the horizontal bands of the old pyramid, rainbow-colored bands now stream down. Food groups are represented by six different colors: Orange for grains, green for vegetables, red for fruits, yellow for oils, blue for milk products, and purple for meat and beans. The bands are wider for grains, vegetables, fruit, and milk products to remind people to eat more of them. Instead of one band for all, twelve individually tailored models outline the food guides for different age groups and for men versus women. The food guides show foods typically eaten by North Americans to illustrate the USDA and DHHS recommendations. The pyramid suggests the types and amount of foods to eat each day. Four factors were considered in establishing the serving sizes (e.g., eat two to three servings of fruit): (1) typical portion sizes from food consumption surveys, (2) ease of use, (3) nutrient content, and (4) traditional uses of foods. Although a single serving of one type of fruit may have more calories than a single serving of another, the number of different serving sizes was kept to a minimum to make the pyramid easy to use. The fourth factor, “traditional uses of food,” makes you consider the fact that different cultural groups all have different traditional foods. To compensate for this fact, Oldways Preservation and Exchange Trust of Cambridge, Massachusetts,

180


developed food pyramids for different cultural groups. The Mediterranean, Asian, and Latino diet pyramids, as well as a Native American food pyramid, incorporate habits of various ethnic groups in the United States The main difference between these pyramids and the standard USDA pyramid is that the culturally diverse pyramids illustrate proportions of food to be consumed and not exact serving sizes. Furthermore, the Oldways pyramids show foods specific to the different cultures and suggest consumption amounts over a period of two to three days, weeks, or even months, in contrast to the USDA guide.

TRADITIONAL CHINESE BELIEFS To better understand Chinese prescriptions for eating, one needs to gain a good sense of the philosophy behind Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), where what you eat directly ties to your health. Two main systems categorize the forces identified in TCM that influence health and well-being: yin and yang and the five phases. According to one Chinese philosophy, all life and the entire universe originated from a single unified source called Tao (pronounced “dow”). The main ideas about the Tao are encompassed in a 5,000word poem called the Tao Te Ching written about 2,500 years ago that describes a way of life from the reign of the Yellow Emperor, Huang Ti. In fact, Chinese medicine is based on The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine (approximately 100 B.C.E.). The Tao is an integrated and undifferentiated whole with two opposing forces—the yin and yang—that combine to create everything in the universe. In TCM, health is the balance of the yin and yang, the two complementary forces in the universe. Yin and yang are mutually interdependent, constantly interactive, and potentially interchangeable forces. Each yin and yang contains the seed of the other. The circle represents the supreme source or Tao. Yin translates to “shady side of a hill,” whereas yang translates to “sunny side of the hill.” Yin is traditionally thought of as darkness, the moon, cold, and female, whereas yang is thought of as light, the sun, hot, and male. In TCM, ten vital organs are divided into five pairs, each consisting of one “solid” yin organ and one “hollow” yang organ. TCM practitioners believe that the yin organs—the heart, liver, pancreas, kidney, and lungs—are more vital than the yang organs, and dysfunctions of yin organs cause the greatest health problems. The paired yang organs are the gallbladder, small intestine, large intestine, and bladder. A healthy individual has a balanced amount of yin and yang. If a person is sick, his or her forces are out of balance. Specific symptoms relate to an excess of either yin or yang. For example, if you are flushed, have a high temperature, are constipated, and have high blood pressure, you have too much yang.19 The yin and yang are often translated into hot and cold (two clear opposites), referring to qualities and not temperatures. To be healthy, what you eat and drink and the way you live your life should have equal amounts of hot qualities and cold ones. Balancing hot and cold is a critical element of many different cultures (e.g., Chinese, Indian, and even Mexican), although the foods that constitute each may vary across cultures. Some “hot” foods include beef, garlic, ginger, and alcohol. Some “cold” foods include honey, most green leafy vegetables, potatoes, and some fruits (e.g., melons, pears).


181

The five phases or elemental activities refer to specific active forces and illustrate the intricate associations that the ancient Chinese saw between human beings and nature. Energy or qi (pronounced “chee”), another critical aspect of TCM, moves within the body in the same pattern as it does in nature with each season and with different foods helping to optimize energy flow within the body. The five elements of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water each link to a season of the year, a specific organ, and a specific food. Each element has specific characteristics, is generated by one of the other forces, and is suppressed by another. For example, wood generates fire that turns things to earth that forms metals. The heart is ruled by fire, the liver by wood, and the kidneys by water. Fire provides qi to the heart and then passes qi onto the earth element and correspondingly the stomach, the spleen, and pancreas. Thus, what you eat can influence your different organs and your well-being in general.

AYURVEDIC NUTRITION Many herbal supplements in use today came into prominence because of ancient Ayurvedic writings, and various health care products on the market that tout natural bases (e.g., Aveda products) have roots in Ayurveda, a traditional Indian holistic system of medicine. Although you do not see as much explicit evidence of this form of medicine in North America (i.e., you do not find Ayurveda shops in Little India parts of cities corresponding to Chinese herb shops in Chinatowns), many Americans practice forms of Ayurveda. Ayurveda originated more than 6,000 years ago in India and was considered a medicine of the masses.20 In fact, the basic ideology underlying Ayurveda still influences how health is viewed by many of the billion inhabitants of India today. Many Indian Americans even use the prescriptions of Ayurveda in daily life (e.g., swallowing raw garlic is good for you and chewing on cloves helps toothaches), and many European Americans are using Ayurvedic practices such as yoga and natural supplements. The first two major Ayurvedic texts, the Charaka Samhita and the Sushruta Samhita, have been dated to 1000 B.C.E., although Ayurvedic practices are also referred to in the Vedas (3000 to 2000 B.C.E.), ancient Indian texts containing the wisdom of sages and sacrificial rituals. The Charaka Samhita has 120 chapters covering such diverse areas as the general principles of Ayurveda, the causes and symptoms of disease, physiology and medical ethics, prognosis, therapy, and pharmacy. Ayurveda was developed by Charaka. Charaka described four causative factors in mental illness—namely, (1) diet (incompatible, vitiated, and unclean food); (2) disrespect to gods, elders, and teachers; (3) mental shock caused by emotions such as excessive fear and joy; and (4) faulty bodily activity. Thus, Ayurveda considers a biopsychosocial approach in formulating causative factors in mental disorders. Charaka, while emphasizing the need for harmony between body, mind, and soul, focused on preventive, curative, and promotive aspects of mental health. Ancient Indian court physicians further developed Ayurvedic practices and were given vast resources because the health of the king was considered equivalent to the health of the state. Ayurvedic medicine was well developed by the time of the Buddha (500 B.C.E.) and the rise of Buddhism. Jivaka, the royal physician to the Buddha, was so well known that people actually became Buddhists so he could treat them. When Alexander the Great invaded India in

182


326 B.C.E., he even took Ayurvedic physicians back to Greece with him. The use of Ayurveda flourished until the year 900 when Muslim invaders came into India and created a new form of medicine called Unani, a combination of Greek and Ayurvedic medicine with Arabic medicine.21 Ayurveda continued in different forms even after European forces invaded India around 1500, bringing Western medicine with them. The use of plants and herbal remedies plays a major part in Ayurvedic medicine. About six hundred different medicinal plants are mentioned in the core Ayurvedic texts. Just knowing the name of the plant is not enough. The texts even prescribe how the plant should be grown (e.g., type of soil and water) and where. The use of plants to cure is perhaps one of the key areas in which Ayurveda is practiced in North America. Western drug companies have used a number of plants originally used in India to cure diseases. For example, psyllium seed is used for bowel problems, and other plants are used to reduce blood pressure, control diarrhea, and lessen the risk of liver or heart problems. A substance called forskolin, isolated from the Coleus forskohlii plant, has been used in Ayurveda for treating heart disease, and its use has now been empirically validated by Western biomedicine. TCM and Ayurveda share many basic similarities. Ayurvedic science also uses the notion of basic elements: five great elements form the basis of the universe. Earth represents the solid state, water the liquid state, air the gaseous state, fire the power to change the state of any substance, and ether, simultaneously the source of all matter and the space in which it exists. Each of these elements can either nourish the body, balance the body serving to heal, or imbalance the body serving as a poison. Achieving the right balance of these elements in the body is critical to maintaining a healthy state. These elements also combine to form three major forces (“doshas”) that influence physiological functions critical to healthy living. Ether and air combine to form the Vata dosha, fire and water combine to form the Pitta dosha, and water and earth elements combine to form the Kapha dosha. Vata directs nerve impulses, circulation, respiration, and elimination. Pitta is responsible for metabolism in the organ and tissue systems as well as cellular metabolism. Kapha is responsible for growth and protection. We are all made up of unique proportions of Vata, Pitta, and Kapha, which cause disease when they go out of balance. These three doshas are referred to as humors or bodily fluids and correspond to the Greek humors of phlegm (Kapha) and choler (Pitta). There is no equivalent to the Greek humor blood, nor is Vata (wind) represented in the Greek system. Similar to the meridians in TCM, the existence of these forces is demonstrated more by inference and results of their hypothesized effects than by physical observation. Vata, Pitta, and Kapha are also associated with specific body type characteristics. Of critical relevance to this chapter is that what you eat directly influences the doshas and corresponding health. The Ayurvedic philosophy has clear-cut prescriptions and nutritional guidelines based on essential body types. You determine your body type, and then eat accordingly. Each of the three major philosophies of nutrition described above influence the eating habits of the adherents to their systems. All three philosophies are constant in suggesting moderation and both Ayurvedic and Chinese systems recommend consuming the freshest produce possible—growing it yourself is the best, and also eating small quantities of meat (the wilder the better). These major common prescriptions can be satisfied by sustainable practices. In addition to these major


183

philosophical approaches, there are also clear-cut religious prescriptions regarding food. It is this component of culture that I turn to next.

RELIGIOUS PRESCRIPTIONS TO EATING Two of the world’s religions have strict prescriptions about what their adherents should or should not eat. Jewish and Islamic dietary laws have many similarities and both significantly influence what food is grown and how food is processed and consumed. All Orthodox and some conservative Jews follow Kashrut, dietary laws set down in the Torah (Jewish written law and sacred texts) and explained in the Talmud, a record of discussions pertaining to Jewish law. Most of us are probably more familiar with the term kosher. This is the popular term used to signify what is “fit” for consumption according to Kashrut. Food that qualifies is often packaged with the kosher symbol. There are four major categories of Kashrut dietary laws. First, there is a clear list of animals that are permitted to be eaten. Mammals that have a completely cloven foot or that regurgitates may be eaten (e.g., all cattle, deer, goats). Only fish with fins and scales are allowed (e.g., no catfish, sharks, or shellfish). In addition, certain parts such as blood and fat that is separate from flesh are not to be consumed. Second, the meat of permitted animals is only allowed if the animal is killed by a special process (shehitah) that is quick, relatively painless, and minimizes the amount of blood left in the body. Animals with blemishes or disease are avoided. Third, there are clear prescriptions for how food is cooked. Meat has to be prepared by removing forbidden parts and after soaking in water and covering it with kosher salt. Separate dishes and utensils are often used for meat versus dairy. Food has to be examined to ensure that it does not contain insects or worms, and processed food must be packed under the supervision of a rabbinical authority. Finally, meat and milk products are not to be eaten together. Meat can be eaten an hour after dairy products, but dairy products can only be eaten six hours after eating meat. Islam, the second largest religious group in the world, has a similar set of strict prescriptions for eating. Documented in the Koran, the Islamic dietary laws are referred to as Halal. To Muslims, followers of the Islamic faith, eating is considered a form of worship. Consequently, there are clear prescriptions of not just what to eat but how much to eat as well. Muslims are advised to not eat more than twothirds of their capacity. Foods that are not permitted, or haram, include all animals that catch their prey with their mouths and birds of prey that seize their prey with their talons. Similar to kosher prescriptions, animals must be killed in a humane way. In particular, the person killing the animal must say “In the name of God, God is great” at the time of the slaughter. Many Muslims do not eat meat if they cannot ascertain that is has been killed in the correct manner. Drinking stimulants such as coffee and tea, as well as smoking, is discouraged, and alcoholic drinks are prohibited. Other religious groups also have dietary restrictions though not as extensive as Jews and Muslims. Many Hindus, for example, do not eat meat to avoid inflicting pain on animals. Hindu scriptures (Laws of Manu) do not prohibit eating meat but state that abstaining from meat and wine will be beneficial for physical, mental, and spiritual health. Although some Hindus eat meat, beef is avoided as the cow

184


is considered sacred. Pork is rarely eaten. In direct relevance to sustainability issues, cows are raised primarily for milk and dairy needs.

CONCLUSION The link between culture and sustainability has been made before. For example, a 1997 UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) conference focused on culture and sustainable development in the Pacific. Speakers at that conference discussed the political and economic ramifications of fostering cultural practices in light of sustainability issues, but food and agriculture was not part of the discussion. As described in the preceding sections, there are vast differences in how food preferences develop, philosophical approaches to nutrition, and religious prescriptions regarding eating. Many of these philosophies of nutrition exist in concert with historical patterns of agricultural practices. The Hmong farmers are but one example of how agricultural practices vary by ethnicity and nationality. The other elements of culture can affect sustainability as well. As discussed, many Hindus (practitioners of Ayurveda) modify their diets based on seasons. Certain foods are recommended for each season. These foods often match what is naturally grown in that particular season and in that particular area, making these ancient prescriptions common practical sense. In the modern age, we can get carried away with trying to “eat local,” while ignoring the natural growing cycle of plants, wisdom inherent to many ancient philosophies of food. For example, you may want to buy locally grown cucumbers, but if cucumbers are not native to where you live and are grown in greenhouses that require additional energy expenditure and resources, you are not doing the environment any favors. In such cases it may be prudent to buy cucumbers grown where they are naturally abundant, even if this means buying from another country. Of course, the alternative is to only eat what is in season (returning to Ayurvedic principles). The notion of eating what is in season also resonates clearly with the TCM approach to eating and health. According to the Chinese, it is important to live in concert with nature. Health is best achieved when human beings are acting in concert with the seasons, that is, eating what is seasonal. In fact, both the Chinese and Indian traditions suggest that optimal health and balance is achieved only when we are eating what is in season. This consequently precludes the use of aggressive chemical fertilizer and artificial means for growing. It also advocates the use of sustainable farming, which is thought to produce the healthiest produce. I have focused on a few specific cultures, the Chinese and Indian traditional systems in particular, but many more examples demonstrate ways that food, culture, and sustainability interact. Patricia Klindienst spent three years traveling the United States gathering the stories of immigrants who used their gardens to retain their cultural heritages. In growing their own produce, her interviewees are prime examples of how cultural traditions can foster sustainable agriculture. Whether Mexican Americans in New Mexico, Gullah elders in South Carolina, Polish and Japanese Americans in Washington State, or Indian and Italian Americans in California, Klindienst’s gardeners are prototypes of how sustainability can be made operational.22 Although universities and colleges in North America have offered courses and programs in food and culture for some time now, the link to sustainability has yet to be made. It is but a short step from cultural differences in nutrition and eating to


185

the basic agricultural practices that vary as a consequence. Perhaps a closer look at the differences in ethnic and religious practices as described in this chapter can provide fertile ground for the development of interventions to bolster sustainable agriculture. If we can capitalize on culturally diverse nutritional practices that are naturally sustainable and support the reemergence of these practices, we add a new dimension to food studies and set the stage for a more sustainable pattern of living.

NOTES 1. Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education, http://www.sare.org/publica tions/limited-resource/profile2.htm. 2. Regan A. R. Gurung, Health Psychology: A Cultural Approach (San Francisco: Cengage, 2010). 3. David Matsumoto, “Key Issues in Culture,” in Getting Culture: Incorporating Diversity Across the Curriculum, ed. Regan A. R. Gurung and Loretto Prieto (Arlington, VA: Stylus, 2009). 4. Earl Shorris, Latinos: A Biography of the People (New York: Norton, 1992). 5. Linda M. Bartoshuk, “The Biological Basis of Food Perception and Acceptance,” Food Quality and Preference 4 (1993): 21–32. 6. Rickelle Richards and Cherry Smith, “Environmental, Parental, and Personal Influences on Food Choice, Access, and Overweight Status among Homeless Children,” Social Science and Medicine 65 (2007): 1572–583; Graham Finlayson, Neil King, and John Blundell, “The Role of Implicit Wanting in Relation to Explicit Liking and Wanting for Food: Implications for Appetite Control,” Appetite 50, no. 1 (2008): 120–27; Lucy Cooke, “The Importance of Exposure for Healthy Eating in Childhood: A Review,” Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics 20 (2007): 294–301. 7. Debra L. Franko et al., “What Mediates the Relationship Between Family Meals and Adolescent Health Issues,” Health Psychology 27, no. 2 (2008): S109–S117. 8. Mozhdeh B. Bruss et al., “Ethnicity and Diet of Children: Development of Culturally Sensitive Measures,” Health Education and Behavior 34 (2007): 735–47. 9. Susan Linn and Courtney L. Novosat, “Calories for Sale: Food Marketing to Children in the Twenty-First Century,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 615 (2008): 133–55; Corrina Hawkes, “Regulating Food Marketing to Young People Worldwide: Trends and Policy Drivers,” American Journal of Public Health 97 (2007): 1962–1973. 10. Gurung, Health Psychology. 11. Lori Alvord and Elizabeth Cohen Van Pelt, The Scalpel and the Silver Bear: The First Navajo Woman Surgeon Combines Western Medicine and Traditional Healing (New York: Bantam, 2000). 12. USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture), http://www.mypyramid.gov/. 13. Wolfgang Stroebe, Dieting, Overweight, and Obesity: Self-Regulation in a Food-Rich Environment (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2008). 14. Daryl. B. O’Connor et al., “Effects of Daily Hassles and Eating Style on Eating Behavior,” Health Psychology 27 (2008): S20–S31. 15. Brian Wansink, Koert van Ittersum, and James E. Painter, “Ice Cream Illusions Bowls, Spoons, and Self-Served Portion Sizes,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 31 (2006): 240–43. 16. Brian Wansink and Jeffrey Sobal, “Mindless Eating: The 200 Daily Food Decisions We Overlook,” Environment and Behavior 39 (2007): 106–123.

186


17. Brian Wansink, Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think (New York: Bantam, 2007). 18. Myles S. Faith et al., “Toward the Reduction of Population Obesity: Macrolevel Environmental Approaches to the Problems of Food, Eating, and Obesity,” Psychological Bulletin 133, no. 2 (2007): 205–226. 19. Ted, J Kaptchuk, The Web That Has No Weaver: Understanding Chinese Medicine (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000). 20. Robert E. Svoboda, Ayurveda: Life, Health, and Longevity (New Delhi: Penguin Press, 2004). 21. Farokh Erach Udwadia, Man and Medicine: A History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000). 22. Klindienst, Patricia, The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic Americans (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006).

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Anderson, Eugene Newton. Everyone Eats: Understanding Food and Culture. New York University Press, 2005. Civitello, Linda. Cuisine and Culture: A History of Food and People. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons, 2008. Counihan, Carole, and Penny Van Esterik, Eds. Food and Culture: A Reader. London: Routledge, 1997. Gabaccia, Donna R. We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. Goodall, Jane, Gary McAvoy, and Gail Hudson. Harvest for Hope: A Guide for Mindful Eating. New York: Time Warner, 2006. Goyan Kittler, Pamela, and Kathryn P. Sucher. Food and Culture: A Nutritional Handbook. San Francisco: Wadsworth, 2000. Klindienst, Patricia. The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic Americans. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006. Menzel, Peter, and Faith D’Aluisio. What the World Eats. Berkeley, CA: Tricycle Press, 2008. Root, Waverly, and Richard De Rochemont. Eating in America. Hoboken, NJ: Ecco Press, 1995.

Web Sites Eating in America, http://www.eatinginamerica.de/. Ohio State University, College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, “Cultural Diversity: Eating in America Hmong,” http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg Fact/ 5000/5254.html. Ohio State University, College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, “Cultural Diversity, Eating in America Amish,” http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-Fact/ 5000/5251.html.

12 Images of Sustenance in Contemporary Literature Aeron Haynie There was just enough headroom for him to stand. He ducked under a lantern with a green metal shade hanging from a hook. He held the boy by the hand and they went along the rows of stenciled cartons. Chile, corn, stew, soup, spaghetti sauce. The richness of a vanished world. Why is this here? The boy said. Is it real? The Road, Cormac McCarthy1

Food is essential for human life and has been an integral part of the stories we tell, from the lotus eaters and heroic feasts in Homer’s Odyssey to Oliver Twist’s plaintive request for more gruel to McCarthy’s description of the miraculous appearance of generic canned food in a postapocalyptic America. Food is a primal motivation, a method of characterization, a form of symbolism, a rich source of metaphor, and a way of making characters’ lives more textured, more real to readers. Novels about food—which take place in the mind, but evoke the reader’s physical appetite— challenge Western philosophers’ views that “human existence is bifurcated into two realms or substances: the bodily, on the one hand; the mental or spiritual, on the other.”2 Representations of food often make literary characters’ lives more concrete, more material. Eating is both a common ground and a site of difference: we all eat, but what we eat and how we eat can demonstrate our ethnicity, religious beliefs, gender, or social status. Food is so central to Western culture that food metaphors are used to describe every aspect of life: from Sappho’s description of love as “bittersweet” to the simile “as American as apple pie.” As literary critic Mary Ann Schofield argues, food can be used to transform the abstract into the concrete, to articulate things that are difficult to express; “the food rhetoric objectifies the ineffable qualities of life.”3 Literature about food has a long and rich history. The popularity in the United States of recent nonfiction about food, such as Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, and the film Supersize Me, indicates a growing concern about what we eat. At the same time, representations of food in literature have begun to reflect concerns about the

188


politics of hunger, environmental threats to the source of food production, and the necessity of protecting our food sources.4 How can we farm more sustainably? What pressures do farmers face from agribusiness? What happens to children around the world who do not have enough to eat? What would it be like to live in a radically destroyed environment? As this chapter will demonstrate, literature does not merely report (often dire) conditions of hunger, migration, and environmental damage; it has the ability to imaginatively transform, creating possibilities and celebrating alternatives. In this chapter, I will discuss five recent American novels that powerfully imagine contemporary food issues: Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer, Ruth Ozeki’s All Over Creation, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Dave Eggers’s What Is the What, and Louise Murphy’s The True Story of Hansel and Gretel. Only two of these novels—Kingsolver’s and Ozeki’s—could be classified “environmental novels”; thus, these novels demonstrate the importance of food as a subject in mainstream (critically acclaimed, popular) contemporary literature, not merely in environmental literature. Obviously, this list is not exhaustive, as food has become an increasingly popular topic in fiction today.5 Each of these novels proposes that the solution to global food problems lies in creating communities of commensality, or ideal societies of nonbiological extended families in which everyone is fed. In addition to illustrating hunger, migration, and environmental damage, each of these novels figures absent mothers, yet each imagines substitutes for the traditional mother figure, signaling a need to think creatively if we wish to sustain ourselves. At first glance, these novels seem topically unrelated; after all, what does Eggers’s novel about a Sudanese “lost boy” have in common with Ozeki’s narrative about an Idaho potato farmer and his estranged daughter? Yet despite the range of subject matter—postapocalyptic America, Sudanese refugees, family farming, and World War II—each novel represents food as a central motivating force, and all are permeated by anxieties of scarcity and moments of surprising abundance. Ultimately, these novels illustrate radical possibilities—some horrifying, some uplifting, some domestic, some global in scope—of what the future of food might mean. Barbara Kingsolver has addressed environmental and political issues in all of her fictional works.6 Prodigal Summer is her recent novel and the most explicit in its environmentalism. The novel weaves the stories of three sets of characters: Deanna, a middle-age wildlife biologist cut off from human society; Lusa, a young widow who inherits her new husband’s farm after he tragically dies; and Garnett, an elderly widower passionate about saving the American chestnut tree. While each of these characters has a vital relationship with the natural environment, at the beginning of the novel, each character is profoundly alone. In the course of one profligate summer each character’s relationship to nature beguiles them into lasting human contact: Deanna has a passionate affair with a much younger hunter, Lusa becomes a part of her late husband’s rural family, and Garnett finally claims his grandchildren (and discovers the surprising charms of his combative, organic-farming neighbor). Throughout the novel, images of producing and consuming food symbolize the characters’ movements toward community and wholeness. In the sections titled “Moth Love,” Lusa feels alienated from the rural farming family she has recently married into. Newly widowed after less than one year of marriage, she feels rejected by her rural in-laws. Lusa is not sure she wants to take charge of running the family farm, and she certainly doesn’t want to grow tobacco, the one reliable cash crop. However, Lusa becomes more and more connected to

Images of Sustenance in Contemporary Literature

189

this tightly knit extended family and to the land which was so treasured by her husband. These connections are represented, in large part, through scenes of preparing and consuming food. Many conversations occur in Lusa’s kitchen as she cans fruits and vegetables from her prolific garden. Although seen by her in-laws as a citified outsider, Lusa has a natural affinity for growing things: Red and yellow peppers glowed like ornaments on their dark bushes, and the glossy purple eggplants had the stately look of expensive gifts. Even the onions were putting up pink globes of flower. During all the years of childhood she’d spent sprouting seeds in pots on a patio, she’d been dreaming of this.7

Lusa becomes an expert gardener, even develops a radical plan to raise goats that actually proves profitable, eventually earns respect from the farming community, and learns to appreciate their less-educated wisdom. Lusa’s first real relationship in this new environment is with her sister-in-law, Jewel, an exhausted single mother. Jewel’s first act of intimacy is to ask Lusa to feed her two kids when she works late. Thus, Lusa’s ability to grow food allows her to nurture her husband’s niece and nephew: “ ‘I’ve got tomatoes put up, spaghetti sauce—maybe twenty quarts—and I’m freezing broccoli, cauliflower, you name it. Tons of corn. Your kids ate their own weight each in corn last night, by the way.’ ”8 Feeding children is a primary act of nurturing in all of the novels discussed in this chapter and Lusa’s care of Jewel’s children incorporates her into this extended family. At the end of the novel, Lusa plans to legally adopt these children when Jewel dies of cancer. Surrogate motherhood is one of the many ways that the novel implies that inclusion and diversity are necessary to sustain an ecosystem. The novel shows how the introduction of nonnative elements, while sometimes destructive— two of the deaths in the novel may have been caused by the use of insecticides— can produce a healthier community, as when Lusa resurrects the Widener family farm. Deanna Wolfe—whose chapters are titled Predator”—is a 47-year-old divorced wildlife biologist who lives alone in a primitive cabin high in the mountains. After her affair with a young hunter, she unexpectedly becomes pregnant. This pregnancy symbolizes the abundance of nature and challenges the separation between scientist and animal. In Kingsolver’s novel, people’s lives are part of the life cycle of nature. As Suzanne Jones has argued, “Kingsolver’s greatest success in this novel is in helping readers to see the human and nonhuman interdependencies in an ecosystem. . . . The similarity between humans and animals that Kingsolver calls attention to here is repeated in multiple ways throughout the novel.”9 Initially, Deanna is attune to the wildlife around her and is able to accurately analyze animal scat, but unable to recognize her own body’s hungers. She subsists on a minimalist diet and often forgets to eat: “[She] ate cold ravioli out of a can while she finished recording her notes. To hell with the body’s cravings.”10 Deanna’s physical desire for a young hunter upsets her quiet existence and proves that she is subject to natural mating laws as well: “It was the body’s decision, a body with no more choice of its natural history than an orchid has, or the bee it needs.”11 Although this bird-and-the-bees explanation of human reproduction is cliched, Kingsolver’s detailed, scientifically accurate descriptions of nature—the habits of moths’ reproduction, morel growing, goat farming, and the flora and fauna of southern Appalachia—make this novel rich with the specificity of place. Just as

190


people are described in animal terms, the natural landscape is personified, as when she describes the particular presence of the mountains in southern Appalachia: People in Appalachia insisted that the mountains breathed, and it was true: the steep hollow behind the farmhouse took up one long, slow inhalation every morning and let it back down through their open windows and across the fields throughout every evening—just one full, deep breath each day.12

Although occasionally lyrical, Kingsolver’s prose does not romanticize the environment; with her background in evolutionary biology and ecology she is too knowledgeable an author to present a na€ively idealized view of the natural world. For example, Lusa realizes that the pretty honeysuckle growing on her barn must be torn down, and Deanna discovers the snake that she defended has eaten a nest of baby birds. The title “Prodigal” clearly refers to nature’s abundance, yet also recalls the biblical parable of the prodigal son who returns after squandering his inheritance and is joyously welcomed by his father. Tellingly, the prodigal son’s poverty while he is away is described in terms of a lack of food. When he returns, expecting nothing, his father instead orders his servants to kill the fatted calf and prepare a feast to welcome his son home.13 Similarly, the three main characters in Kingsolver’s novel are welcomed back into the lives they once rejected: Lusa returns to the farming ways of her ancestors; Deanna becomes a mother at 47 and comes down from the mountain to join her childhood community; Garnett is reunited with the grandchildren of the son he had rejected. Each character experiences rebirth and renewal through connections to the land and human community; thus the novel suggests that if we return to earlier forms of farming, we will be welcomed with a bounteous feast. All three narratives also stress the importance of parenting, and motherhood in particular. Yet Prodigal Summer does not romanticize farming nor suggest a return to the traditional, nuclear family; the families established at the end of the novel are nonbiological, extended, and somewhat unconventional. This linking of human and environmental ecosystems also occurs in Ruth Ozeki’s recent novel, All Over Creation. Composed of an even more diverse group of characters, Ozeki’s novel illustrates the struggles of beleaguered small farms and the economic pressures they face, the toxic danger of modern agribusiness practices, and the complex network of human relations involved in farming. This human ecosystem includes Lloyd Fuller, a potato farmer in Liberty Falls, Idaho; his Japanese wife, Momoko, who raises exotic plants and heirloom seeds; their estranged daughter, Yumi, and her three children; their farmer neighbors the Quinns; “The Seeds,” an itinerant group of anarcho-environmental activists; a public relations man working for a corrupt agribusiness; and assorted townspeople. The narrative threads are numerous, but all of the characters finally converge, literally and figuratively, at Lloyd Fuller’s farm. All Over Creation is not as celebratory as Prodigal Summer; it is set in Idaho, a farming landscape that is less lush and more spare and unrelenting. The plot, although madly comical in places, can also be darker. We learn that Lloyd Fuller’s prodigal daughter, Yumi, left home at 14 after getting pregnant by her high school teacher. Too afraid to tell her parents she was pregnant, Yumi was subtly coerced by her teacher into having an abortion and then was cast out by her father. When she returns years later with her three children to care for her dying father, it is clear that he still judges her decision to terminate her pregnancy (instead of seeing her as a victim). When an environmentalist


191

describes agribusiness’s plans to create a “plant [that] kills its own embryo,” Lloyd replies pointedly: “A life is a life. . . . It is God’s gift! How can you be so careless?”14 This is a conservative character’s view, and not necessarily the view endorsed by the novel itself. However, Yumi is portrayed as a negligent mother who is reprimanded by her neighbor, Cass Quinn, a farmer’s wife who is unable to have children, I just think you’re being a really lousy mother to them right now. They way you carry on, it’s like you forget they even exist. You don’t know how lucky you are, and I just can’t stand to watch you treat such a blessing with such . . . such carelessness.15

It is hard not to read this as an anti-abortion message, when babies are likened to the precious heirloom seeds that must be protected. However, Ozeki’s novel refuses easy moral judgments; every character has flaws, yet the novel treats them with compassion (even, to a small extent, Yumi’s former teacher). Like Prodigal Summer, this novel’s representation of families is inclusive; Cass finally adopts the baby of one of the environmentalists after his girlfriend dies, suggesting that unexpected alliances can be the most generative and that the best families are not always biologically determined. All Over Creation offers a message that is similar to the one found in Prodigal Summer: rid the land of harmful pesticides and genetically engineered crops and preserve biodiversity. The novel shows how a coalition of traditional farmers, counterculture environmentalists, and committed gardeners can be formed. The moment of greatest community occurs during the July 4th Idaho Potato Party at Lloyd’s farm when traditional farmers and hippie activists come together. Part “BeIn,” part Boston tea party, and part farmers’ convention, this gathering is a wonderfully utopian vision of how diverse groups might come together to take back control of the nation’s agriculture. At this gathering, Lloyd gives an impassioned speech about the dangers of tampering with the natural processes of reproduction: “I have always assumed that whatever base corruptions man has inflicted upon nature, there were certain of our Maker’s laws, sacred and inviolable, that even man could not breach. In this assumption we have been sadly mistaken.”16 Ozeki’s novel thus warns of technology’s potential for permanently destroying the environment, while also demonstrating the ways that people can change to become more responsible and knowledgeable stewards of the land. If Ozeki’s novel warns against the dangers of tampering with nature, Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Road, describes in horrific detail what it might be like to live on an environmentally devastated Earth. In this savage vision of the future, a nameless father and son struggle to stay alive in a postapocalyptic American landscape. In this barren future, nothing grows, and those left alive are reduced to scavenging among the ashy ruins of the former civilization for sustenance. The rich environment of the Earth has been made “barren, silent, godless,”17 a “cauterized terrain . . . cold [enough] to crack stones.”18 No full explanation is given of the event that destroyed the Earth, just the father’s memory of “a long shear of light and then a series of low concussions [and] . . . a dull rose glow in the windowglass.”19 The few survivors exist in a primitive state of bare subsistence, many becoming bands of lawless cannibals. Amidst this novel’s grand questions of the nature of evil, the destruction of the Earth, and the possibility for human tenderness, food is the central focus of the main characters. The father and his young son travel down an endless road with

192


little hope for survival: “Mostly he worried about their shoes. That and food. Always food.”20 All contemporary judgments about the quality of food have been leveled; in this novel all food is precious, whether it is a lone morel mushroom or a can of Coca-Cola. Food is both a relic of the lost richness of the Earth and a reminder of the civilization that has vanished. Most of all, food is evidence of the love between the father and his son, a love that separates the characters from the brutality around them. Because the planet has been destroyed, finding food is a small, unexpected miracle. In one such scene, after witnessing unspeakable horrors, the father stumbles across a hidden bunker filled with canned food: Crate upon crate of canned goods. Tomatoes, peaches, beans, apricots. Canned hams. Corned beef. Hundreds of gallons of water in ten gallon plastic jerry jugs. Paper towels, toiletpaper, paper plates. Plastic trashbags stuffed with blankets. He held his forehead in his hand. Oh my God, he said.21

At first the boy cannot comprehend the appearance of so much food: “Why is this here? The boy said. Is it real?”22 Because the novel so compellingly describes a world with no sustenance, these simple cans of ordinary food become miraculous to the reader as well. By putting these objects into this particular context, McCarthy has managed to transform food into the uncanny. McCarthy’s prose, with its alliterative consonants, transforms this list into an incantation. In a land where nothing grows, humans have become food to other humans. McCarthy expertly evokes human’s primal fears of cannibalism. As the father and his son grow unbearably hungry, we feel the danger of others’ hunger. Critic Margaret Vissers argues that the fear of cannibalism lies behind many of our elaborate food rituals: Somewhere at the back of our minds, carefully walled off from the ordinary consideration and discourse, lies the idea of cannibalism—that human beings might become food, eaters of each other. . . . Behind every rule of table etiquette lurks the determination of each person present to be diner, not a dish. It is one of the chief roles of etiquette to keep the lid on the violence which the meal being eaten presupposes.23

This threat of violence permeates McCarthy’s novel, and each new encounter offers the possibility of either life-giving food, or unspeakable horrors. In one of the most horrifying moments in the novel, the father and son stumble upon a “charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on [a] spit.”24 The scene hints that the cannibals are purposely breeding women to harvest this human crop. This gruesome scene echoes an earlier scene where the boy and his father stumble upon dried ham in an old smokehouse, which is described as “like something fetched from a tomb.”25 The similarity in the description of the infant’s corpse and the ham blurs the line between carnivores and cannibals, and suggest the inherent violence involved in all meat consumption. However, the boy and his father—who are never given names in the novel—staunchly define themselves as noncannibals: We wouldn’t ever eat anybody, would we? [The boy asks] No. Of course not. Even if we were starving? We’re starving now.26


193

Their decision not to become cannibals sets them apart, as if they alone stay human. Critic Maggie Kilgour has argued, “’the cannibal is the individual’s ‘alien’ against which he constructs his identity.”27 Although the father does kill to defend his son and refuses to help a child they encounter, his assertion that they will not eat people marks them as moral. Seemingly the only noncannibals alive, the father and son create a minisociety of two, “each the other’s world entire.”28 We learn that the boy’s mother committed suicide rather than face this horrifying new world, thus there is no maternal presence, and this seems fitting in this barren world. He and his father’s refusal to eat other humans could also be read as a refusal to incorporate outsiders. In one uncharacteristic exchange, the boy insists that they help a blind man they encounter on the road and give him some of their food. Giving food to this man is this only nonviolent encounter they have with other humans until the end of the novel. Tellingly, the father and his son do not share a meal with this man; they merely give him food, since to break bread with him would imply a greater bond. It is only after the father’s death that the son joins another group of survivors, thus allowing himself to be absorbed into a larger community (which includes a surrogate mother). McCarthy’s novel, although futuristic and imaginative in its depiction of brutality, seems aware that the horrors it describes are not just imaginary. In the middle of the novel, the boy is described as “something out of a deathcamp.”29 The father and son in The Road are survivors of a type of holocaust, and the poignancy of the father-son bond echoes Eli Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir, Night. In both texts, the love between the fathers and sons allows them to cling to life beyond hope. Each book also ends with the death of the father and the son’s entrance into a new, questionable future.30 It is tempting to read McCarthy’s novel as “speculative fiction,” as an attempt to imagine the future. However, although a nuclear holocaust has not occurred, McCarthy’s description of a journey through brutal violence and extreme deprivation is already occurring in parts of the world, as Dave Eggers’ provocative and profoundly moving novel, What Is the What, shows. Although most of the novels discussed in this chapter have been set in the United States, it is now imperative to connect national and international food issues. Dave Eggers, a noted American writer of ultrahip, writerly texts, has done just this. He has written a novel that broadens the often narrow scope of American concerns. Although classified as fiction, this novel is based on the real experiences of a Sudanese man, Valentino Achak Deng, who collaborated with Eggers31 to describe his experiences as one of the “Lost Boys.” Abruptly orphaned and entirely alone during a violent civil war, thousands of boys in southern Sudan were forced to survive alone in a hostile environment, and these boys are some of the most traumatized war victims in history.32 Around 3,800 of these Lost Boys were relocated to the United States, and many have told their stories. Because Deng was only seven when he was forced to flee his village, and thus could not recall every, conversation or detail, he and Eggers decided to craft the novel as fiction. Eggers’s ability to imaginatively recreate Deng’s childhood perspective is a testament to his powers of invention and empathy, and the novel allows Western readers to identify with a character in radically different circumstances. Separated from his parents after militiamen burn his village, Deng ventures across a hostile landscape in an extraordinary journey that, similar to McCarthy’s narrative, seems almost too horrific to be borne. During the journey, the children are preyed on by soldiers, lions, landmines, militia, and even crocodiles. Like the

194


characters in McCarthy’s novel, Deng’s journey becomes an effort to survive unlivable circumstances, and many of the boys he traveled with did die from violence, disease, or starvation. Even in the refugee camps (where Deng lived for 13 years), food is still scarce: people are given only one meal a day. Deng matter-of-factly describes the effects of an inadequate food supply: “We young people went to school, tried to stay awake and concentrate on one meal a day.”33 Similarly, in McCarthy’s novel, we see the painful process of starvation as the father and son fail to find enough food: “The boy’s candlecolored skin was all but translucent. With his great staring eyes he’d the look of an alien.”34 In both books, starvation makes the characters appear less human. In Sudanese culture, sharing food is expected. One of the fallouts of the violent civil wars is the disruption of traditional habits of sharing food. As the boys pass through villages, they have grown so thin that they no longer look human; and some of the villagers mock them, referring to their emaciated shapes as “eggs sitting on top of twigs” and “spoons walking.”35 Strangely, even these descriptions of starvation utilize food metaphors. Still, their traditions of sharing food are so engrained that the leader of the boys asks each village chief for a meal. In one village the chief, afraid that the boys are rebels, refuses to feed them and violence ensues. During their arduous trek to the promise of safety in Ethiopia, the boys become scavengers, eating elephant meat, baby birds from nests, and whatever else they find. Both McCarthy’s and Eggers’s novels contain a couple of hopeful scenes when characters find food. In What Is the What, Deng is temporarily taken in by a mysterious man who feeds him groundnuts from a secret hole under his carpet. As he leaves, the man gives Deng a “perfectly round and fresh” orange; and oranges become part of Deng’s fantasy of the abundance he will find in Ethiopia: “As we drew closer to the border, my expectations had come to include homes for each of us, new families, tall buildings, glass, waterfalls, bowls of bright oranges set upon clean tables.”36 As one can imagine, Ethiopia proves a severe disappointment. While the boys are safer, the conditions are harsh. Even relocating to Atlanta proves hazardous, thus proving true the Dinka creation myth that choosing the unknown leads to misery. The title of the novel comes from a Dinka creation myth in which god offers mankind a choice between a known quantity (cattle) and an unknown possibility. According to the myth, the Dinka choose the cattle, which they knew would provide them with nourishing food and which “carried something godlike within themselves.”37 So the first man and woman knew they would be fools to pass up the cattle for this idea of the What. So the man chose cattle. . . . [God] was testing the man, to see if he could appreciate what he had been given, if he could take pleasure in the bounty before him, rather than trade it for the unknown.38

This myth foreshadows Deng’s descent into the “what,” or the unknown, after his village is destroyed and traditional society unravels. Similar to Christian myths of the land of milk and honey, this Dinka myth centers on a stable source of food: an ideal society is one in which people are fed. As Barbara Kingsolver has argued, “The decision to attend to the health of one’s habitat and food chain is a spiritual choice. It’s also a political choice, a scientific one, a personal and convivial one.”39 Eggers’s


195

telling of Deng’s story transforms an abstract political situation into a personal, lived experience. Eggers’s novel, like McCarthy’s, distills the complex social-historical problems into a clear, persistent question: who will feed this child? The images of unprotected children in The Road and What Is the What are horrifying. Both texts represent worlds in which the parents cannot fulfill the primal act of parenthood: feeding their child and keeping him from being prey. This ultimate crime of abandoning one’s child and leaving him to be cannibalized is depicted in the classic fairy tale, “Hansel and Gretel.” In the original Grimm brothers’ tale, a famine leads a father and mother to abandon their son and daughter in the forest. The most memorable part of the story is, of course, the children’s discovery of a house made of gingerbread and candy. After gorging on this nonnutritious food, the children are taken in by a witch who attempts to cook them in her oven. Later versions of the tale change the mother into a stepmother, suggesting that the image of a mother abandoning her children was intolerable. Some critics, such as Bruno Bettelheim and Jack Zipes, have argued that the mother and the witch both represent the mother figure, a projection of a child’s worst fear. Both the witch and the mother forsake their roles as nurturers and instead selfishly choose to assuage their own hunger by sacrificing the children. Louise Murphy’s novel, The True Story of Hansel and Gretel: A Novel of War and Survival, is a retelling of the story of Hansel and Gretel. In this novel Hansel and Gretel are the assumed names of two Jewish children who are sent into the woods of Poland by their father and stepmother to avoid capture by the Nazis during World War II. This novel modernizes the classic fairy tale, and it challenges the negative stereotype of the stepmother and the old woman. In Murphy’s novel, after their parents drop them off in the woods, urging them never to reveal their identities as Jews, the children discover a tiny house in the forest. They are taken in by Magda, whom the villagers call a witch, an old woman who lives in a hut in the primeval Bialowieza forest, one of the oldest in Europe, filled with bison, wild boar, lynx, wolf, fox, and numerous bats.40 Magda’s chapters, titled “The Witch,” begin and end the novel, giving her authority in this version of the story: “The story has been told over and over by liars and it must be retold.”41 Her rustic house is not made of gingerbread; instead she feeds the children her own simple fare of wartime Poland: “potatoes and bread and . . . hot water with ground rye in it.”42 Her folk knowledge and distance from the village help save the children, who eventually are reunited with their father. In Murphy’s novel, mother-figures are prevented from nurturing the children by the hardships of war, prejudice, and violence, and their deaths are not punishment but self-sacrifice. As in the original fairy tale, the children blame the stepmother for their abandonment, but the novel presents the stepmother as a more complicated figure, a pragmatic and fierce woman who ultimately proves heroic. The most extreme revision of the original fairy tale is when the “witch’s” oven becomes the children’s refuge. Magda hides them inside it when the Nazis storm her house. Initially fearful, the children trust Magda and sit carefully in the hot oven, trying to keep their backs from burning on the metal sides. After the Nazis leave, the children flee the burning house and travel through the woods until they eventually are reunited with their father. As in the original fairy tale, the stepmother has died, only in Murphy’s novel the reader knows that the stepmother died trying to save her stepdaughter’s life.

196


Meanwhile, the “witch,” Magda, is killed in the ovens of the concentration camp; and her gruesome death makes real the horror of the original fairy tale, in which Gretel pushes the witch into her own oven and leaves her to die: “The air was full of something that burned her skin and lungs. She kept opening her mouth and taking air in, but the air wasn’t air anymore.”43 In Murphy’s novel, the oven is still a place of death, but it is also a place of maternal safety and nourishment, the womb of the surrogate mother. These double images—of the cottage’s oven and the concentration camp ovens—mirror the original fairy tale’s mixing of the magical and the deadly, the candy house and the cannibal. Even Murphy’s prose is evocative of the fairy tale’s supernaturalism, as shown in Magda’s last thoughts: “Wild ponies. A kiss salted by tears. The scent of raspberry syrup in a bottle. Oranges. Two lost children who come to your house in the dark forest.”44 In this novel, particular foods, not abstract concepts of goodness or love, represent the joy of living. In switching perspectives from child to adult, Murphy’s novel shifts the original fairy tale’s perspective from that of the abandoned children to the stepmother and the woman who takes them in. Both women enter into surrogate motherhood involuntarily during a time when caring for these children threatened their own lives. The loss of the mother permeates each of the books discussed in this chapter. Prodigal Summer contains two sets of motherless children; All Over Creation contains the tragic death of a newborn’s mother; in What Is the What, Deng is separated from his mother; in The Road, the mother commits suicide rather than watch her child die. These mothers’ absences are profound and signal the importance of the maternal. It would be facile to read this emphasis on the material as merely symbolizing a concern for “mother Earth.” Instead, I propose that each novel’s imaginative representation of surrogate motherhood—Lusa feeding Jewel’s children in Prodigal Summer; Cass adopting Charmey’s baby in All Over Creation; the boy in The Road being taken in by another family; the representation of Deng’s various humanitarian foster parents in What Is the What; as well as Magda and the stepmother’s bravery in The True Story of Hansel and Gretel—suggests broadening the definition of motherhood to include our global responsibility to feed all children. Literature allows readers to imagine themselves as different characters in various time periods and settings, often in a more visceral way than by reading nonfiction. Through reading these recent novels about food, we are able to experience life as a farmer, an activist, and a Sudanese refugee. For just a few days, we immerse ourselves in an alternate reality that can broaden our awareness of contemporary food issues. These novels also imagine the consequences of current food policies, and offer hopeful possibilities for solutions.

NOTES The author is grateful for the research assistance of Morgan Bloohm. 1. Cormac McCarthy, The Road (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), 139. 2. Susan Bordo, Anorexia Nervosa: Psychopathology as the Crystallization of Culture, ed. Carole Counihan (New York: Routledge, 1997), 230. 3. Mary Anne Schofield, Cooking By the Book (Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1989), 2.


197

4. Food production has been represented in novels before, most notably in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906), but it has not been as popular a focus as in today’s novels. 5. Most notably, this chapter will not discuss the many novels that examine the gender issues of food, such as Judith Moore’s Fat Girl, Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate, Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions, many novels by Margaret Atwood, and Michael Cunningham’s The Hours. 6. Most recently, in Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Kingsolver chronicles her family’s year of eating locally. 7. Ibid., 374–75. 8. Ibid., 375. 9. Suzanne Jones, “The Southern Family Farm as Endangered Species: Possibilities for Survival in Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer,” The Southern Literary Journal 39, no. 1 (Fall 2006): 83–97. 10. Kingsolver, 65. 11. Ibid., 24. 12. Ibid., 31. 13. Bible (Luke 15:11-32). 14. Ruth Ozeki, All Over Creation (New York: Penguin, 2003), 266–67. 15. Ibid., 390. 16. Ibid., 301. 17. Ibid., 4. 18. Ibid., 14. 19. Ibid., 52. 20. Ibid., 17. 21. Ibid, 138. 22. Ibid., 139. 23. Margaret Vissers, The Rituals of Dinner (New York: Penguin, 1991), 34. 24. McCarthy, The Road, 198. 25. Ibid., 17. 26. Ibid., 128. 27. Maggie Kilgour, From Communion to Cannibalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990). 28. McCarthy, The Road, 6. 29. Ibid., 116. 30. The end of McCarthy’s novel contains many parallels to Weisel’s memoir: the sons’ inability to give their fathers proper burials and the son’s rejection of traditional religion are contained in both. 31. Proceeds of What Is the What are used for Deng’s college education, and the rest go to improving the lives of Sudanese. 32. Between 1983 and 2005, the civil war of Sudan killed roughly 2 million civilians and displaced 4 million. More than 200,000 children and women were enslaved, and many young boys escaped into jungles and made the long journey alone to refugee camps. 33. Dave Eggers, What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achek Deng (New York: Vintage, 2007), 371. 34. Ibid., 129. 35. Ibid., 143. 36. Ibid., 256. 37. Ibid., 62. 38. Ibid., 62.

198


39. Kingsolver, Foreword to The Essential Agrarian Reader, ed. Norman Wirzba (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003), xvii. 40. Bialowieski National Park, http://www.staff.amu.edu.pl/~zbzw/ph/pnp/bial.htm. 41. Louise Murphy, The True Story of Hansel and Gretel: A Novel of War and Survival (New York: Penguin, 2003), 1. 42. Ibid., 41. 43. Ibid., 252. 44. Ibid., 297.

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Carver, Raymond. A Small, Good Thing, Where I’m Calling From. New York: Vintage, 1989. Eggers, Dave. What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achek Deng. New York: Vintage, 2007. Esquivel, Laura. Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances, and Home Remedies. New York: Doubleday, 1992. Gilbert, Elizabeth. Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia. New York: Viking, 2006. Kingsolver, Barbara. Prodigal Summer. New York: HarperCollins, 2000. McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Vintage Books, 2006. Moore, Judith. Fat Girl: A True Story. New York: Plume, 2006. Murphy, Louise. The True Story of Hansel and Gretel: A Novel of War and Survival. New York: Penguin, 2003. Ozeki, Ruth. All Over Creation. New York: Penguin, 2003.

Web Sites Alimentum, The Literature of Food, http://www.alimentumjournal.com/. College English, Special Topic: Food, http://www.ncte.org/pubs/journals/ce/contents/ 125133.htm. The Guild of Food Writers, http://www.gfw.co.uk/. PBS, The Meaning of Food, http://www.pbs.org/opb/meaningoffood/. Research Centre for the History of Food and Drink, http://www.arts.adelaide.edu.au/ centrefooddrink/.

13 Indigenous Knowledge Systems Esther Katz With globalization, industrial foods are now reaching even remote places in the world. Yet, the tendency to make diets more uniform throughout the planet has generated opposite movements that promote indigenous traditions of food production and consumption.

FOOD “DELOCALIZATION” AND ITS CONSEQUENCES In the early 1980s, the anthropologists Gretel and Pertti Pelto pointed out the process of food “delocalization,” the fact that food items are consumed far away from the place where they are produced.1 The process is not new, as markets and exchanges have always existed. However, since the nineteenth century, delocalization has been expanding, along with industrialization and improvements in transportation that have led to larger, more complex distribution networks, increasing levels of migration, and the development of a money-based economy and agroindustry. Food delocalization has been accelerating even more rapidly since the early 1980s. According to the sociologist Claude Fischler,2 consumers who are confronted with foods they cannot easily identify (industrial foods in particular), because they have not seen them growing or being processed, suffer from what he called “gastro-anomy.” Since “you are what you eat,” the consumer questions his own identity. The lack of control by the consumer over food production and its origin has raised fears in recent decades, in particular with the case of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE, “mad cow disease”). The question of taste has also been raised, especially in Southern European countries. Fruits and vegetables, which are transported over long distances, even within the same country, are often picked green, kept in cold chambers, and matured with gas. They are far from being as tasty as fruits and vegetables that were picked ripe and consumed the same day. Efforts have been made to improve the taste of industrially produced foods, but their taste still does not compare to the taste of fresh, local food.

200


Gretel and Pertti Pelto showed that, in most cases, the new foods make the wealthy people’s diet richer and the poor’s poorer, since the new foods tend to replace—and displace—more nutritious traditional foods, thus leading to health problems, made even more serious by the reduction in physical activity. The industrial foods, in particular, usually contain more carbohydrates and fats that have dramatic consequences on the health of millions of people, causing them to be overweight or obese and leading to diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. These epidemiological problems have increased tremendously in the last two decades. The population of the United States had already been exposed to these problems before other countries. Industrial foods and drinks have been available in the United States for several decades, and most cities are designed in such a way that people use their cars for transportation instead of walking. Now, Mexico and Brazil are second and third in rank for obesity, and many countries are facing these same public health problems. In the United States, minorities with lower income are the most exposed to diseases linked to poor nutrition, in particular black Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans. In Mexico, where the increase in the rate of such problems has been tremendous, urban populations have been more exposed than rural populations have, but obesity and diabetes have been reported in rural areas too, and even in Indian communities in recent years, sometimes linked to migration to the United States.3

REINVIGORATING LOCAL FOOD KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS IN WESTERN EUROPE At the end of the 1970s in Western Europe, several types of movements arose that became even more important in the 1990s. These movements were reactions against food uniformity and industrialisation; they drew support for their critiques from the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Convention on Biodiversity and from public response to several food scandals, such as BSE. For example, associations and actions emerged that aimed at the promotion and conservation of biodiversity, including the Apple Munchers Association (L’Association des Croqueurs de Pommes). In Western Europe, there is an extensive diversity of apples and pears cultivated in individual gardens, while no more than ten varieties are widely commercialized. In 1978, when a terrible frost caused the loss of old orchards in Eastern France, an amateur gardener founded this association, as he realized that a whole heritage was at risk of disappearing. The association was composed of 6,000 voluntary members in 2005. Only 6 percent of these members have a profession linked to agriculture or fruit tree cultivation, but most do engage in cultivating at least one local variety of fruit tree in their region. The association is based on voluntary work. It organizes free courses on fruit tree cultivation, promotes agricultural trade shows and events, publishes technical bulletins, diffuses information on the risks of genetic erosion and the conservation of fruit tree biodiversity, and has contributed to the creation of conservatory orchards (vergers conservatoires).4 A few marginal farmers affiliated with the Farming Seed Network (Reseau Semences Paysannes) are reviving the cultivation of old varieties of wheat that they produce organically and process and sell locally (as “baker-farmers”). They exchange seeds and agricultural knowledge through this network, which includes old farmers who

Indigenous Knowledge Systems

201

have retained some of this knowledge, farmers who experiment with the cultivation of different varieties of wheat, and scientists. They oppose the French law that does not allow the commercialization of seeds and plant varieties not registered in the “Common Catalogue of Varieties of Agricultural Plant Species.” They lobby for the preservation of agrobiodiversity and for a change in the legislation.5 The Slow Food1 association also promotes food biodiversity, which describes itself as a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in Italy in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.6

It calls upon people to “rediscover the flavors and savors of regional cooking and banish the degrading effects of Fast Food.”7 Its forerunner organization, Arcigola, was created in 1986 to resist the opening of a MacDonald’s fast-food restaurant in the historical city center of Rome. Today, it has more than 85,000 members in 132 countries. An office was opened in 2000 in the United States. The last Terra Madre (Mother Earth) Slow Food festival occurred in Brazil in 2007. Globally, Slow Food promotes local artisans, local farmers, and local flavors through regional events such as Taste Workshops, wine tastings, and farmers markets. It promotes taste education and informs citizens about the risks of fast food, monoculture, and reliance on too few varieties and about the drawbacks of commercial agribusiness. It lobbies for the inclusion of organic farming concerns within agricultural policy and against the use of pesticides and genetic engineering. It encourages ethical buying in local marketplaces. Slow Food created the University of Gastronomic Sciences in northern Italy. Slow Food instituted two types of labels for outstanding food products: the Ark of Taste (to safeguard biodiversity, like Noah’s Ark) and the presidia. Since the Slow Food association has grown so large, some people now criticize it. They claim that Slow Food is no longer representative of local people and that its main goal has shifted to self-promotion.8 The use of Geographical Indications, more familiarly known as labels of origin (appellations d’origine), is reinvigorating local food production and knowledge systems.9 These labels, which originated in France at the beginning of the twentieth century from a law against origin fraud, were adopted by the European Union in 1992 and drew the interest of non-European countries after the Convention on Biological Diversity was signed. The primary aim of the 1905 law was to protect the production and commercialization of wines and liquors. It was established, for instance, that a Champagne wine could only be produced in the region of Champagne and other sparkly wines should be designated by another name. The labels of origin were later applied to cheese, meat products, and other food productions. Although labels of origin are legislated by state governments, European food producers have a hand in the process of designation. A producers’ union has to request that their product be labeled, and they have to define the characteristics of their product: its area of production, the type of production system (that has implications for the landscape), the traditional knowledge involved in its production and processing, and its characteristics and gustative qualities. The producers’ request goes through a heavy bureaucratic process, involving research and taste

202


panels representing the interests of the consumers. The certification requirement (cahier des charges) of the product is a result of a consensus between the producers and the other stakeholders. In France and other European countries, labels of origin have contributed to the preservation of rural heritage and the maintenance of agricultural landscapes. They enhanced local identities. They helped to maintain agricultural profitability in zones considered to be marginal, both through production and tourism. They helped traditional products remain in production, when they might have disappeared otherwise, thus preserving food diversity.10 The 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity declared that local communities and farmers should be granted specific rights to the genetic resources that they have developed. Several countries have found Geographical Indications a good tool to protect biodiversity, because it does not apply to the protection of a specific form of indigenous knowledge linked to the use of resources—which could grant rights to an ethnic group or a local community whose status would be difficult to define— but rather applies it to actual products linked to a territory.11 So far, in Mexico and Brazil, it has mainly been applied to agricultural products that are not in the hands of small farmers, such as coffee, wines, and liquors. The Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture is now trying to identify regional small-scale production items for which this type of certification would be appropriate. So far, this action by the ministry is totally unknown to producers and does not appear to consider the cultural aspects of the knowledge systems. In Mexico, the label of origin was granted to tequila as early as 1974. A recent study showed that the labeling has had rather negative impacts on the sustainability of production and on the economy of small farmers.12

REINVIGORATING LOCAL FOOD KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS ON THE AMERICAN CONTINENT In the United States, Native American associations have been trying to rejuvenate their traditional knowledge systems to return to better health and nutrition. Across the continent, First Nations have raised their voices, especially since the 1980s, but the phenomenon of promoting local knowledge and culinary heritage has occurred mainly in places where it had been lost. The nutritional status of Native Americans is dire in most American countries, including industrial countries like the United States and Canada, where poor nutrition and its consequences (obesity and diabetes) are serious problems.13 In Mexico and the Andes, the best lands were taken by the colonizers, while indigenous populations remained in the steepest or highest lands, with a limited access to permanent land tenure rights. They are struck by poverty in a higher proportion than nonindigenous and often suffer malnutrition.14 Nevertheless, they have retained a rich knowledge of their environment and, in particular, a rich agricultural knowledge. Both areas are centers of plant domestication and diversification. Mexico is known for its diversity in maize, beans, and chili pepper, and the Andes is known for its maize and potatoes and indigenous plants such quinoa, kiwicha, oca, and ullucu. The nutritional value of these plants has been rediscovered; quinoa, for instance, is now widely exported, and Peruvian chefs are creating elaborate dishes with Andean products in a Nouvelle Cuisine style, called Cocina novo-andina. In Mexico, indigenous people’s food is often seen as poor people’s food or abominable food—since they consume insects—but the national cuisine is actually


203

based on indigenous diet. Corn tortillas, beans, and chilli pepper are the core of the diet of all Mexican people. These are the basic foods of Indian and mestizo farmers and lower-income people, but they also are present in the meals of most middle-class people, although the middle-class diet may be richer or include more meat.15 Indigenous festive foods, such as meat cooked in earth ovens (barbacoa), mole (a thick chilli pepper sauce usually served with meat), or tamales (steamed corn dough often stuffed with meat and chilli pepper sauce) are also national festive foods. Because they are appreciated all over the country, they are still commonly eaten.16 In a protest against the establishment of a MacDonald’s fast-food restaurant in the center of the colonial city of Oaxaca in 2003, local people chose to counteract this symbol of North American capitalism and poor nutrition by an “orgy of tamales,” representing tasty food and Mexican heritage.17 It does not seem that indigenous people are otherwise trying to promote their local food, but they have not lost it yet. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was signed in 1992 between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, has had negative impacts on Mexican agriculture, as more North American products are being imported. Many Mexican indigenous and nonindigenous farmers have been migrating to the United States. Remittances sent by migrants from the United States are inducing change in food habits: rural people are eating more imported corn and beans, more meat, more industrial products, and fewer wild greens and locally grown fruit and vegetables.18 Emigration may lead to a loss of local agricultural knowledge and biodiversity. In Mexican cities, about 10 years ago, hot dogs, pizzas, and hamburgers started to replace tacos and tamales in street food stands. Poor nutrition has become a more serious public health problem than malnutrition. In these conditions, movements for the reinvigoration of healthy local food products are likely to appear. In the Amazon, natural resources are usually more abundant than in the highlands, and population density is much lower. In some areas, people may suffer hunger, but on the whole, local populations are better off than in the mountainous areas. Fishing and hunting contribute much larger portions of the people’s diet than in Mexico or the Andes, where consumption of animal proteins is fairly low. Many wild plants are available, and agricultural diversity is high, especially for fruit trees. In the multiethnic region of the Middle Rio Negro, for instance, about one hundred food plant species have been reported, including seventy-five varieties of cassava and different varieties of chilli pepper, pineapple, and yams.19 A nutritional research study in 2004 in an Awajun (Aguaruna) community in Peru demonstrated that this Indian population had a satisfactory diet, based on the exploitation of natural resources. Their diet was composed of boiled or grilled sweet cassava, plantain, peach palm, tubers, greens, mushrooms, insects, eggs, meat and fish, lightly fermented drinks of cassava, plantain or peach palm, as well as palm hearts and many fruits. They consumed only minimal quantities of purchased foods (less than 1 percent). In those Awajun communities where rice monocropping was practiced and had partly displaced traditional agriculture, an overall decrease in diet quality was observed.20 In forest communities of the Rio Negro, the quality of the diet may be compared to that of the Awajun. It is mainly based on fish and bitter cassava products. Chilli pepper, tubers, peach palm, and other palm fruits are often consumed as well as many other fruit species, insects, river turtles, and game. People have easier access to outside food than the Awajun do, but they do

204


not often purchase it, and they consume more on weekends or at festivals. It does not really threaten the local diet yet.21 The situation is different in towns of the same region. Presently, according to the national statistics, about 65 percent of the population of the Brazilian Amazon is urban.22 The population of the regional towns doubled or tripled in the last 15 years. Many people used to fish for an hour or two in the late afternoon, but now they do not find fish easily, so fishing is more in the hands of professional or semiprofessional fishermen who have to go farther to find fish. Agriculture is still practiced around the urban areas, but not every family has members engaged in this activity. Because agricultural products are rarely traded but rather exchanged, families who do not have members practicing agriculture and are short of time when involved in a salary work have a more limited access to fruit and tubers. They tend to purchase more outside food such as rice and beans, which are cultivated thousands of miles away in the south of the country, as well as pasta, canned fish and meat, salted beef, frozen chicken, bread, butter, and coffee, that is, food items of much lower nutritional quality. Moreover, urban dwellers have access to television and have often been educated in the Catholic missionary schools where they got used to “white people’s food.” Therefore, they place a higher value on this food and consume it on festive occasions.23 This situation has not yet induced a movement to reappropriate local knowledge systems, because these systems are still alive, but it has raised concerns among some inhabitants who long for foods they used to eat more often. The local indigenous associations are interested in applying to a registration of the local agricultural knowledge (including food knowledge) as part of the intangible heritage at the National Institute of the Historical and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN).24 This heritage label, in the food domain, has so far been applied to the knowledge of processing certain food products, such as Bahian acaraje, but not yet to a whole agricultural and food system. Other societies in the Amazon have lost part of their knowledge and their traditional diet. This is the case of the Xavante Indians of the Mato Grosso, who suffered a drastic change in food production and consumption in the seventies. They passed from horticulture, hunting, and gathering to rice cultivation. By stopping hunting and gathering, they dramatically reduced both their physical activity and the consumption of a great variety of wild plants. On the other hand, they increased their consumption of fat (with industrial oil) and carbohydrates (with locally cultivated rice and industrial sugar). According to a nutritional study conducted in the 1990s, the rates of overweight people, obesity, and diabetes were high in the communities that had gone through these changes in their subsistence.25 Some nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and scientists are now working with these communities to recuperate their sweet potato varieties and their edible wild plants. In southern temperate Brazil, the situation of the Guarani Indians is even more dramatic. Their lands have been encroached upon by cattle raisers and soybean producers. Their ancestral territories have been deforested, they often do not have enough land to cultivate, and they have lost varieties of corn, peanuts, and other food plants. Several Guarani groups now live on food aid from the state. It is obvious that, in these precarious conditions, they are struggling just to survive and to recuperate their lands. The reviving of their food knowledge depends on their access to land.26


205

Throughout the United States, in the last half of the twentieth century, indigenous food systems went through drastic changes. The effects of the destruction of an indigenous food system cannot be seen more clearly than in the case of the Tohono O’odham (Papago) community. We draw substantially on an article by Tristan Reader about this community’s nutritional situation and their action to rejuvenate their traditional food system.27 The Tohono O’odham, whose name means the “Desert People,” have lived for centuries in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and Mexico. Over countless generations their seminomadic ancestors depended upon customary subsistence practices of dryland farming, food storage, and harvesting the wild plants and animals to support their families in this arid environment. This way of life successfully sustained them as late as the 1920s when they were still farming over 10,000 acres using indigenous agricultural methods. According to Gary Nabhan, in his book The Desert Smells like Rain, from the 1920s the number of acres farmed using traditional techniques rapidly declined to 2,500 acres in 1949 to fewer than 100 acres today.28 At the same time, the Tohono O’odham also abandoned their customary foraging and food storage practices. The loss of their indigenous food system has had devastating consequences for the health of contemporary Tohono O’odham people. Traditional desert foods like tepary beans, mesquite beans, cactus buds, and chia seeds, which scientific studies have shown help regulate blood sugar levels, are no longer consumed. As they began to rely on federal food aid programs and processed food, their rates of adultonset diabetes skyrocketed. Today, at a rate of over 50 percent of the population, they have the tragic distinction of being the people with the highest incidence in the world of this debilitating disease. These changes in diet and subsistence base are correlated with destructive changes in their culture. Because Tohono O’odham culture is intricately intertwined with their subsistence practice, the decline of the latter has led to the loss of language, ceremonies, and ancient knowledge. The decline of the saguaro harvest and wine ceremony, a ceremony that brought forth the rain that made traditional agriculture possible, is a direct result of the Tohono O’odham people’s loss of a traditional local food system. As Tristan Reader, codirector of Tohono O’odham Community Action, notes regretfully, “there is no longer a reason to learn the songs which bring down the rain, no reason to bless the ground . . . no reason for a key element of Tohono O’odham culture to continue.”29 This pattern of the loss of traditional foods, subsistence, and culture to be correlated with declines in health status is not uncommon in indigenous communities throughout the United States. Encouragingly, many Native people in the United States, including the Tohono O’odham, are developing programs to “rejuvenate” traditional food systems. For example, the Tohono O’odham Community Food System, in conjunction with Tohono O’odham Community Action and various individuals, families, and organizations within the community, has begun to develop a program that builds upon the traditional agrifood system with new organizational forms. Their projects include: (1) establishing community gardens where traditional crops, farming methods, and traditions can be relearned and taught to the next generation, (2) supporting programs to help families grow traditional crops in their own gardens, (3) organizing trips to collect traditional wild foods and teach about their use, (4) “revitalizing” ancient flood plain fields, (5) sponsoring cultural events based

206


upon traditional food practices, and (6) developing markets to distribute traditional foods to local people and others. The various levels of these projects—from private family actions, to small enterprises and community institutions such as schools, hospitals, and elder care—provide various entry points into a renewal process that Tristan Reader states is intended to nurture “body and spirit for generations.”30 The Tohono O’odham Community Association is a member of the Indigenous Seed Sovereignty Network. This is a network of organizations that includes the Traditional Native American Farmers Association, Tsyunhehkwa Project at Oneida,31 New Mexico Acequia Association,32 Tesuque Pueblo, White Earth Land Recovery Project, and Native Hawaiian Farmers. Like the European associations described above, these organizations have been inspired by a growing worldwide movement, active in India and Bangladesh and other places, for food and seed sovereignty based on culturally and ecologically sustainable agriculture.33 Together, the associations of this network “are broadening and enriching their discussions related to traditional foods, diabetes, and community food systems.”34 They are working to restore traditional food knowledge and to create local food economies on the basis of traditional agricultural methods and seeds. They oppose efforts to genetically modify their traditional crops actively and the biopiracy of medicinal and other plants. According to Native Harvest, “From rescue of traditional corn and squash varieties and food preservation techniques at Oneida to broad-based political campaigns in the New Mexico State Legislature, to ongoing programs with our youth and elders, the Network is taking a leading role in preparing for truly sustainable local food economies.”35 One of the most visible associations of this network is the Traditional Native American Farmers Association (TNAFA). Based in New Mexico, it also develops projects outside of the United States with Mayan Indians of Belize. The aim of TNAFA is “revitalizing traditional agriculture for spiritual and human need.”36 TNAFA members believe that “family oriented farming is the best approach in developing a sound future in agriculture, which has always been at the heart of the community’s economy.”37 They encourage farmers to go back to the land and farm organically, using traditional methods. They provide training in permaculture, organic farming, and traditional seed saving and develop educational programs that demonstrate sustainable agricultural methods and the threats of GMO (genetically modified organisms) to native seeds.38 TNAFA was established in 1992 with the help of the Native Seeds/Search (NSS) association, based in Tucson, Arizona, and acting in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. NSS aims to preserve the crop genetic diversity of the region, through both ex situ (a regional seed bank) and in situ conservation programs, and it promotes the recuperation of lost varieties through their free exchange. At the regional level, NSS links scientists, indigenous and nonindigenous gardeners and farmers, and other associations such as the Tohono O’odham Community Association and TNAFA.

CONCLUSION Through this short panorama of traditional food revival in Europe and America, we have seen that globalization is leading to the same types of problems around the world with the loss of local varieties of plants and constantly increasing consumption of less-nutritious “delocalized” and industrial foods. People have to confront


207

the growing importance of GMO and seeds produced by large multinational companies. Unfortunately, in spite of supposedly promoting the conservation of genetic resources, some governments do not permit the free cultivation, circulation, and exchange of native seeds. The civil society, cultivators, and even amateur gardeners are essential for conserving food biodiversity. The role of scientists in demonstrating the importance of traditional knowledge and supporting these actions is crucial, too. On the American continent, indigenous people are holding rich knowledge on the environment and agrobiodiversity. As minorities, they have often suffered from the loss of land and poverty and from a lower status in the national societies. In the United States in particular, these groups are losing traditional ways of subsistence, which has led to dramatic increases in nutritional and health problems. Over the last decades, on the whole continent, indigenous people’s associations have been taking strength, exchanging experiences, and reviving their traditional knowledge. Their actions are not only for themselves but for humanity as a whole.

NOTES 1. Gretel Pelto and Pertti Pelto, “Diet and Delocalization: Dietary Change since 1750,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 14 (1983): 507–28. 2. Claude Fischler, L’Homnivore (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1990). 3. G. Olaiz et al., eds., Encuesta Nacional de Salud y Nutricion 2006 (Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Salud Publica/Secretaria de Salud, 2006); Miriam Bertran, Cambio Alimentario e Identidad de los Indıgenas Mexicanos (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Aut onoma de Mexico, 2005). 4. Les Croqueurs de Pommes, http://www.croqueurs-de-pommes.asso.fr/ (accessed January 30, 2009); Claude Scribe, “Les Croqueurs de Pommes (Apple Munchers Association),” in Biodiversity and Local Ecological Knowledge in France, ed. Laurence Berard et al. (Paris: INRA/CIRAD/IDDRI/IFB, 2005), 138–40. 5. Reseau Semences Paysannes, www.semencespaysannes.org/ (accessed January 30, 2009); Elise Demeulenaere, “Preface. Initiatives paysannes autour de la semence de ble: De la rehabilitation des varietes anciennes a la pratique collective d’une selection paysanne,” in Voyage autour des bles paysans (Reseau Semences Paysannes, 2008), 4–13; Guy Kastler, “The Reseau Semences Paysannes (Farming Seed Network),” in Biodiversity and Local Ecological Knowledge, 148–50. 6. Slow Food, http://www.slowfood.com/ (accessed January 29, 2009). 7. Ibid. 8. Slow Food, http://www.slowfood.com/; Wikipedia, “Slow Food,” http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Slow_Food#cite_note-4; Didier Chabrol, “Slow Food: Protecting and Promoting Taste,” in Biodiversity and Local Ecological Knowledge, 209–212. 9. “A geographical indication is a sign used on goods that have a specific geographical origin and possess qualities or a reputation that are due to that place of origin. Most commonly, a geographical indication consists of the name of the place of origin of the goods. Agricultural products typically have qualities that derive from their place of production and are influenced by specific local factors, such as climate and soil. Whether a sign functions as a geographical indication is a matter of national law and consumer perception. Geographical indications may be used for a wide variety of agricultural products.” World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), http://www. wipo.int/geo_indications/en/about.html (accessed January 24, 2009).

208


10. François Roncin, “The Birth of a Protection and Promotion Policy: The INAO Experience,” in Biodiversity and Local Ecological Knowledge, 175–80; Elisabeth Barham, “Translating Terroir: The Global Challenge of French AOC Labeling,” Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003): 127–38. 11. Valerie Boisvert, “International Protection of GIs: Challenges and Opportunities for Southern Countries,” in Biodiversity and Local Ecological Knowledge, 229–35. 12. Sarah Bowen and Ana Valenzuela Zapata, “Geographical Indications, Terroir, and Socio-Economic and Ecological Sustainability: The Case of Tequila,” Journal of Rural Studies 25 (2009): 108–119. 13. Harriet V. Kuhnlein and Olivier Receveur, “Dietary Change and Traditional Food Systems of Indigenous People,” Annual Review of Nutrition 16 (1996): 417–42. 14. Bertran, Cambio Alimentario. 15. Esther Katz, “Tortillas, haricots et sauce piquante: l’alimentation au Mexique,” Savoirs Partages (Agropolis Museum, Montpellier, 2004), http://museum.agropolis.fr/ (accessed January 30, 2009). 16. Esther Katz, “Alimentaç~ao indıgena na America Latina: Comida invisıvel, comida de pobres ou patrimônio culinario?” Mesa Redonda 13, A Comida e o comer na sociedade contemporânea: desigualdade, diversidade e diferença, (26th Reuni~ao Brasileira de Antropologia [RBA], Porto Seguro, Bahia, Brazil, June 1–4, 2008), http://www.abant.org.br/. 17. UITA, “El camino correcto. Pobladores de Oaxaca protestan contra MacDonald’s con orgıa de tamales” (UITA, Montevideo, August 28, 2002), http://www.rel-uita.org/ old/companias/mac%20donald/mexico.htm (accessed January 30, 2009). 18. Esther Katz, “Emigration, mutations sociales et changements culinaires dans le haut pays mixteque (Oaxaca, Mexique),” Anthropology of Food S4, Modeles alimentaires et recompositions sociales en Amerique Latine (2008), http://aof.revues.org/ (accessed January 30, 2009). 19. Laure Emperaire et al., “Diversite agricole et patrimoine sur le Moyen Rio Negro” (Paris: Actes du Bureau des Ressources Genetiques 7, 2008), 139–53. 20. M. L. Roche, H. M. Creed-Kanashiro, I. Tuesta, and H. V. Kuhnlein, “Traditional Food System Provides Dietary Quality for the Awajun in the Peruvian Amazon,” Ecology of Food and Nutrition 46, no. 5 (2007): 377–99. 21. Esther Katz, fieldnotes, 2007–2009. 22. Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatıstica, www.ibge.gov.br. 23. Esther Katz, fieldnotes, 2007–2009; Katz, “Emigration, mutations sociales”; Ludivine Eloy, “Diversite alimentaire et urbanisation: le r^ ole des mobilites circulaires des amerindiens dans le Nord-Ouest amazonien,” Anthropology of Food S4, Modeles alimentaires et recompositions sociales en Amerique Latine (2008), http://aof.revues.org/. 24. Laure Emperaire, Lucia van Velthem, and Ana Gita de Oliveira, “Patrim^ onio cultural immaterial e sistema agrıcola: o manejo da diversidade agrıcola no medio Rio Negro, Amazonas” (26th Reuni~ao Brasileira de Antropologia [RBA], Porto Seguro, Bahia, Brazil, June 1–4, 2008), http://www.abant.org.br/ (accessed January 30, 2009). 25. Sılvia Gugelmin and Ricardo Ventura Santos, “Ecologia humana e antropometria nutricional de adultos Xavante, Mato Grosso, Brasil,” Cadernos de Sa ude P ublica 17, no. 2 (2001): 313–22. 26. Sylvia Bahri, personal communication, 2008; Martin Tempass, “A Distribuc~ao de ‘Cestas Basicas’ para Os Mbya-Guarani: Impactos e Representac~ oes” (26th Reuni~ao Brasileira de Antropologia [RBA], Porto Seguro, Bahia, Brazil, June 1–4, 2008), http:// www.abant.org.br/ (accessed January 30, 2009). 27. Tristan Reader, “Reviving Native Foods, Health, and Culture: The Tohono O’odham Community Food System,” Oxfam America, February 3, 2003, http://www. oxfamamerica.org/whatwedo/where_we_work/united_states/news_publications/art4144.html (accessed January 30, 2009).


209

28. Gary Paul Nabhan, The Desert Smells like Rain: A Naturalist in O’odham Country (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2002). 29. Reader, “Reviving Native Foods.” 30. Ibid. 31. Association of the Oneida Indians of Wisconsin. In the Oneida language, Tsyunhehkwa means “life sustenance.” The white corn is very important in their culture. Tsyunhehkwa, http://www.oneidanation.org/tsyunhehkwa/. 32. New Mexico Acequia Association, http://www.lasacequias.org/2006/12/. 33. See Navdanya, founded by Vandana Shiva, an Indian scientist and a prominent figure in the alter-globalization movement. “Navdanya is actively involved in the rejuvenation of indigenous knowledge and culture. It has created awareness on the hazards of genetic engineering, defended people’s knowledge from biopiracy and food rights in the face of globalization.” (http://navdanya.org/ [accessed January 30, 2009]). 34. Native Harvest, http://nativeharvest.com/node/244. 35. Ibid. 36. Native Harvest, “Traditional Native American Farmers’ Association,” http:// nativeharvest.com/tnafa. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid.

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Berard, Laurence, et al. Biodiversity and Local Ecological Knowledge in France. Paris: INRA/CIRAD/IDDRI/IFB, 2005. Kuhnlein, Harriet V., and Olivier Receveur. “Dietary Change and Traditional Food Systems of Indigenous People.” Annual Review of Nutrition 16 (1996): 417–42. Lentz, Carola. “Changing Food Habits: An Introduction.” Food and Foodways 5, no. 1 (1991): 1–13. Nabhan, Gary Paul. The Desert Smells like Rain: A Naturalist in O’odham Country. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2002. Pelto, Gretel, and Pertti Pelto. “Diet and Delocalization: Dietary Change since 1750.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 14 (1983): 507–28. Reader, Tristan. “Reviving Native Foods, Health, and Culture: the Tohono O’odham Community Food System.” Oxfam America, February 3, 2003. Available at http:// www.oxfamamerica.org/whatwedo/where_we_work/united_states/news_publications/ art4144.html. Shiva, Vandana. Stolen Harvest: The Highjacking of the Global Food Supply. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000.


PART III Ethics


14 Food Security: Three Conceptions of Access—Charity, Rights, and Coresponsibility Lisa Heldke What does it mean for a community to guarantee all members—of every bodily configuration, economic position, race, ethnicity, and religion—access to genuinely adequate food—food that meets not only each person’s daily nutritional requirements, but also their cultural, religious, environmental, and other commitments? In the United States, more than 10 percent of the population experiences “low” or “very low” food security. Among African American and Latino households, and households with children headed by a woman, those percentages climb; more than 30 percent of woman-headed households and more than 20 percent of African American households experience some level of food insecurity at some point during the year each year.1 While the United States does not experience mass starvation or other, more dramatic forms of hunger, lack of access to food is a deep, prevalent, and serious threat to the health and well-being of the population as a whole, and of children in particular. This chapter examines the question from the perspective of three different social paradigms or frameworks, which I label “charity,” “human rights,” and “coresponsibility.” When access to food is considered in the contemporary United States, obstacles to adequate access are usually presumed to be economic; people do not have the food they need and want because they are poor or economically struggling. When I discuss the concept of access in this chapter, my focus is much broader; I mean it to include the particular kinds of obstacles or challenges faced by persons with disabilities; persons of minority faiths, races, and ethnicities; persons with allergies or sensitivities; and persons with particular moral, ethical, or nutritional commitments. Indeed, my understanding of access is intended to draw attention to the fact that each of us encounters such systematic obstacles to access, and would do well to understand our needs and wants as intimately related to those of other community members. Access, in short, is something that concerns us all. I contend that attending to these other kinds of access will create a deeper, more robust sense of genuine food justice, by linking people’s interests together and challenging the “us/them” thinking that prevails whenever we conceive of access as a problem or concern only for those on the margins of society.

214


In this chapter, I ask how each of the three paradigms conceptualizes access. The first two—charity and rights—are familiar and are invoked daily, for example, on the pages of newspapers in the United States. More specifically, the rights paradigm conceptually undergirds “antipoverty” or “antihunger” models of food access. Despite some obvious advantages the rights paradigm holds over charity, I will argue that the two are actually linked in a way that makes rights an inadequate framework for developing a robustly just notion of accessibility. The third paradigm is my own invention.2 I believe it offers the best way to conceptualize access, “best” in the sense that it is most able to promote genuine social justice by conceptually linking the needs and interests of persons from across societies. I will ultimately suggest that this paradigm provides some much-needed conceptual undergirding for an alternative movement for adequate food access, namely, the community food security (CFS) movement.3

DISABILITY AND FOOD INSECURITY Before examining the paradigms, I define two other terms that provide important background for my discussion here, namely, “disability” and “food insecurity.” Accessibility is often understood as that which mitigates disability; I am interested in thinking about how the concept of disability can help conceive food insecurity. To be disabled means that one cannot, in the words of disability theorist Susan Wendell, “perform activities to an extent or in a way that is either necessary for survival in an environment or necessary to participate in some major aspect of life in a given society.”4 By extension, one is food insecure when one’s diet specifically leaves one unable to “perform activities to an extent or in a way that is either necessary for survival in an environment or necessary to participate in some major aspect of life in a given society.” Borrowing and modifying Wendell’s definition illuminates conceptual ties between these two kinds of circumstances; it also invites us to reflect on the concrete and practical ties that exist between disability and food insecurity. A note is in order here about my choice to speak of food insecurity, rather than poverty. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has come under criticism for its decision to replace the word “hunger” with the expression “extremely low food security,” an expression that critics believe “sugarcoat[s] a national shame.”5 I may seem guilty of a similar sugarcoating, in choosing not to pair hunger (or perhaps poverty) with disability. Each of these terms—hunger and food insecurity—acts as a magnet or lens, to draw our attention to different phenomena in a society and to link them via different features. Neither term should be seen as a replacement for the other; rather, they serve as complementary or overlapping forms of analysis, both of which can usefully be employed to illustrate different aspects of the relevant terrain. Hunger focuses our attention on economic inequality. I focus on food insecurity because I am interested in paying attention to the diversity of forms food insecurity can take—including forms that are experienced even by people of considerable economic means, such as access to safe food, or culturally appropriate food (in the case of cultural minorities). I do so to disrupt the “us versus them” dynamic that too often characterizes discussions about access, especially when those discussions are framed in terms of charity or rights. To see these different kinds of insecurity as related to each other in significant ways need not blunt the impact of the problem of “real hunger,” but might instead create links of solidarity among persons

Food Security: Three Conceptions of Access

215

across the economic spectrum, as they come to understand their own food vulnerabilities as part of a network that leaves all at risk in one way or another.

THE THREE PARADIGMS In examining each paradigm, I consider the following questions: (1) What are the key principles upon which each is built? (2) How are persons conceived on this paradigm? (3) How do we understand access on this paradigm—that is, how does this paradigm secure for everyone the ability to perform duties or participate in major aspects of society? (4) What are the limitations of this paradigm, specifically with respect to the matter of access for disabled or food-insecure persons? Ultimately, I will argue that rights and charity paradigms share what is known as an “atomistic” (i.e., individualistic and self-contained) conception of personhood; a conception that does not work, whether it is being applied to the issue of disability or to food insecurity. The coresponsible paradigm, by contrast, understands persons relationally. Thus, this paradigm enables us to see relationships among different forms of marginalization (such as disability and food insecurity) and also to understand various forms of food insecurity as interrelated. The net result is a conception of access that is more useful for, and more productive of, deep and broad justice. Paradigm 1: Charity According to an everyday understanding of the concept, charity is voluntary, though some givers might understand themselves to be morally obligated (e.g., by religion) to provide for those “less fortunate.” On a charity paradigm, regardless of the obligations givers may have, recipients are not morally entitled to what they receive. The appropriate response to charity from recipients is gratitude for the benevolence of others. A hierarchical relation holds between benefactors and recipients; recipients are beholden (and thus often considered morally inferior) to their benefactors. Individuals may be morally motivated by altruism (a moral position in which one acts without regard to the benefits one may accrue) or egoism (a position on which all moral actions are understood to benefit the actor, either directly or indirectly). Egoism and altruism are here understood as polar opposites of each other, such that the presence of one motivation “dilutes” the other; charity is the ultimate altruism. On a charity paradigm, the moral worth of an action is tainted if one acts in the hopes of benefiting from it. The charity paradigm tends to treat conditions like poverty and disability as individual misfortunes that simply befall some unlucky people. No structural or systemic injustice calls for redress; only accident, bad luck, or moral laxity leaves some persons unable to “do for themselves.” Because these misfortunes are in no way the fault of society, it is not the responsibility of society to fix them. The choice of individuals or organizations in society to do so is supererogatory—above and beyond any reasonable call of duty. Access Given such an understanding of disability and food insecurity, the concept of access does not really belong in the vocabulary of the paradigm. To speak of access

216


presumes persons are entitled to goods or services, but this is just what the charity model does not grant to everyone. The charity model tends to clump those unable to provide for themselves into two groups: the “deserving” and the “undeserving.” The former are given gifts (not entitlements) to meet basic needs; the undeserving are left to fend for themselves—or are helped by the feckless, by those who are just too good for their own good, or (in some societies) by the government. Recalling Wendell’s definition of disability, we might observe that, in a just state, it is particularly the “major aspects of life” to which all members ought to have adequate access. The charity model could acknowledge the existence of such aspects, but it recognizes no particular right to participate in them, and decidedly no societal obligation for other members to enable you to exercise your right to participate. On the charity paradigm, disability and food insecurity are individual misfortunes that it is not the job of society to redress.6 It is your problem—and any loss society may experience because of your inability to participate goes unmentioned. Rather than access, the charity paradigm posits that disabled persons have “special needs,” where the meaning of “special” is defined against an often-unstated conception of “normal” personhood and of the “normal” responsibilities of a community. (Normal people ambulate with their own legs, for instance.) Others in the community have a “charitable duty” (or “opportunity”) to meet those needs (by providing transportation for those who cannot walk). Poor people also have “special needs” that arise because they happen not to have money. Charitable workers help them out of their own goodness. They hope that “the poor” are also “good” and therefore deserving, though at present in the United States, many sectors of the population harbor a strong suspicion that the poor are lazy and undeserving.7 (Note that in the United States, even so-named entitlement programs such as food stamps are viewed as charity; “government handouts” to people too lazy to “do an honest day’s work.”) In sum, a genuine notion of access has no real place on a charity model. Or, more precisely, those assumed to be “normal members of society” have all the access they need, and thus the notion is built right into what it means to be a “normal person.” Normal or ordinary persons are those who can freely access the goods and services of society to participate in the major aspects of life. Access, then, is just what everyone who is “normal” already has.8 “Special gifts, favors, and benefits” are what everyone who is not “normal” gets. Limitations The inadequacies of this concept, from a justice perspective, are evident. Charity does not set itself up to afford real justice for all members of a society; it gives us noblesse oblige. Charity offers no guarantee that marginalized persons will be able to participate in the activities that enable them to survive, or that constitute what Wendell calls the “major aspects of life.” Instead, it invites, encourages, or (rarely) demands some subset of society to grant them means of participation—through, for instance, “emergency” food providers. Their inability to participate fully in a society, and the failure of the charity paradigm to guarantee their participation by implementing structural social change, combine to leave marginalized persons second-class citizens at best. A second limitation is this: because benevolent gifts are just that—gifts—benefactors labor under no obligation to include recipients in decisions about the form gifts should take. It is up to them to decide how to extend their largesse.9 While I may


217

choose to pay attention to your cultural needs when stocking food in the emergency pantry, it is an act of benevolence for me to do so; as a recipient of charity, you have no “right” to expect culturally appropriate food—or nutritionally high-quality food. These limitations to the charity paradigm derive in part from the fact that it does not conceive of individuals’ well-being as necessarily and essentially connected to that of others—specifically, it does not see the well-being of a society’s privileged members as linked to that of its marginalized members. It is not conceptually required to acknowledge a loss—to the community or to its “normal” members—when other of its members are systematically incapable of participating in the life of that community, because, for example, they do not have access to safe and culturally appropriate food. Recognizing this limitation leads me to some observations about the conception of personhood embodied in the charity paradigm—a conception it shares with the rights paradigm. The fact that they conceive of personhood in similar ways is the chief reason I believe the rights paradigm is also incapable of supporting a notion of access that robustly advances justice—despite its association with the antipoverty-antihunger movement. Personhood on the Charity and Rights Paradigms Who or what counts as a person shifts over time; in the United States, for instance, the number considered “full persons” has expanded since our founding, but many people are still regarded as only “partial persons,” with rights not fully guaranteed by law, or not treated particularly seriously in practice. Being or failing to be a “full person” is directly connected to the rights one may or may not claim for oneself—in particular, the rights of access to those goods and services that enable one to function in society.10 Charity and rights frameworks share a conception of personhood rooted in the tradition of liberal individualism. We see its character in the charity model’s sharp division between egoism and altruism. The self is individual, atomic, and substantial, where “substantial” means it is an independent, free-standing substance possessed of certain essential attributes from which it cannot be separated. Relations among atomistic individuals are only indirectly relevant to their identity; to be, to exist, is not predicated on being in relation to others; relations are accidental, not essential aspects of persons. As philosopher Eva Kittay puts it, the exemplar or standard bearer of this model of personhood is the independent adult. All others are exceptions to their “rule,” with needs that must be understood derivatively. Of course all of us some of the time and some of us all of the time are exceptions to this state. Babies, old people, disabled people, people asleep, people who do not know how to grow their own food; all of us are dependent on others— most of the time, as it turns out. Despite its being held up as the standard on this paradigm, independence is in fact the anomaly. These two paradigms only adequately account for freely chosen relations between independent equals. As philosopher Annette Baier points out, Relationships between those who are clearly unequal in power, such as parents and children . . . , doctors and patients, the well and the ill . . . , have had to be shunted to the bottom of the agenda and then dealt with by some sort of “promotion” of the weaker, so that an appearance of virtual equality is achieved.11

218


In the charity paradigm, such promotions are voluntary, not mandatory. In the rights paradigm, they end up being mandatory, but the effect is much the same—the sense that one’s “equality” has an asterisk after it, indicating it is a special, “derived” equality, granted to one who does not come by it “naturally.” This model of the self contributes directly to the ways these two paradigms can conceptualize access, and the obligations of society to provide it. If personhood means independence, self-containedness, and equality with other persons, then full participation in a society will expect as much from all those who claim personhood. Charity and rights paradigms differ primarily with respect to the matter of what to do with persons who are not able to “measure up.” Conceptions of persons as disabled, for example, are rooted in highly contingent notions of “normal human bodies” (no one who does not have legs—but no Supermen either), and also in beliefs, understandings, and expectations about what a “normal society” should be expected to provide for all its citizens. On a charity paradigm, there is no need to provide either wheelchair ramps, or Superman-strong doors except as a “courtesy to our customers.” Once we established the Americans with Disabilities Act—an act embodying the view that disabled persons have a right to access— ramps are necessary to comply with the law, but there is no real budging on the notion that there is a set of things that “normal humans” need, and then a separate set of “special needs” items. The whiff of the supererogatory—the “above and beyond the call of duty”—remains about these items even when they are taken as rights; societies that provide them as a matter of course are “generous,” even “noble.” When it comes to food, we find similarly contingent, often ethnocentric senses of what count as a “normal” diet and “normal” human nutrition; likewise, there is a tendency to dismiss as “unnecessary” any dietary demands that are not part of the “normal perceiver’s” own frame of reference. Thus, a “normal” human may need a certain number of calories per day—but there is no “normal” need for those calories to be vegetarian, for instance, or to contain rice or millet—or, for heaven’s sakes, for them to be organic or fair trade. To demand such things is to demand “special privileges,” which “subnormal” or “provisionally normal” persons ought not do. Armed with this understanding of the notion of personhood it shares with charity, I turn now to examine the rights paradigm, and the conception of access it produces.

Paradigm 2: Rights A rights paradigm rests upon the notion that those defined as persons deserve some set of goods and other benefits essential to human flourishing. Those who count as persons are all “interchangeable,” insofar as the very same rights—but no more—extend to each one of them. Rights entail corresponding responsibilities, including those assigned to the society to ensure that all persons can exercise their guaranteed rights. With regard to access, this element of social responsibility is the chief difference between charity and rights paradigms. We see the rights paradigm embodied in documents like the U.S. Bill of Rights and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.12 Two features derive from it:


219

a model of justice that conceives of justice as equality (understood to mean “sameness of treatment”), and a concept of universality or universal applicability that is the flipside of equality. On this paradigm, we are all guaranteed access to the set of benefits deemed necessary for persons. A just society is one in which all persons are equally able to realize or act on their full range of universally recognized rights. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum uses the notion of “capacities” to describe this sense of justice, suggesting that all community members must have the opportunity to develop their human capacities (irrespective of whether they choose to do so).13 Many versions of this liberal individualist paradigm also hold that that the matters of who counts as a person and what count as foundational rights are themselves open to reevaluation and expansion. Indeed, this paradigm emphasizes that the demands of justice require us constantly to reevaluate the reasons that certain groups of beings are or are not granted full personhood status. This expansion clause distinguishes rights from charity; the rights paradigm is (often) invested in increasing the numbers of those who deserve full rights, and guaranteeing their ability to exercise them. This feature of the rights paradigm connects to its concept of access. Access If all those defined as persons are to be regarded as equals in society—that is, interchangeable and deserving of a universal set of rights—then those so designated must be able to move within that society, unfettered by the “peculiarities” or “nonstandard features” of their personhood. To bring in Wendell’s definition again, they must be able to participate in the major aspects of society (to the extent that they are interested) regardless of the configurations of their bodies or their minds or their bank balances. Access, on this liberal, rights-based definition, aims at making “nonstandard” persons “the same” in relevant respects, so that they are able to exercise their rights and participate in society to the extent that they want. My metaphor for this conception of access is the booster seat, a device that is intended, quite literally, to level the “eating field” at the dining room table. Booster seats make short children the “same” as adults—in one relevant respect. Examples of such social “booster seats” include, variously, wheelchair ramps, affordable festive foods for ethnic and religious holidays, large print texts, buses to grocery stores, and culturally appropriate nutrition assistance programs. Rights-based thinking explicitly underlies the antipoverty-antihunger approach to food security, as can be seen in the work of Patricia Allen, Julie Guthmann, and Elaine Power.14 Obviously there is much to praise in this conception of access—and much has been accomplished in its name. As I have already suggested above in my discussion of personhood, however, the paradigm is limited. Limitations The conception of access as universal and uniform that characterizes many defenses of a rights-based, welfare-state model of justice is untenable for a variety of reasons, the chief of which is that one size does not fit all. Such defenses tend to emphasize the importance of universal access, uniformity, and anonymity.15 However, uniformity can turn out to be just as much a problem as it is a solution.

220


Sameness of access is an inappropriate goal to set with respect to participation in the meaningful institutions of our society; we need appropriateness of access. To use “sameness” and “universality” as our starting points only builds them into the system as problems that must be resolved further down the line.16 Why? Because they create the presumption that, as humans, we are all “alike”—or should/could be— and thus that we all have the same needs. To the degree that your needs are bigger than, or different from, what I take to be the “norm,” I will resent you for taking up more than your share of resources to be “brought” to my “level.” With respect to anonymity, I agree that one kind of fairness and justice is enjoyed by the anonymous user of a universal, impersonal system; a fairness that is clearly evident when contrasting such a system to a personalized charity model that metes out benefits according to its own notions of who “deserves” such benefits. But to suppose that anonymity is all and only a benefit, and will always serve the interests of justice, is to ignore the fact that knowledge of the circumstances of particular individuals’ lives can be used to promote greater fairness, for example for those whose needs are particularly unusual, marginal, or otherwise easily overlooked or neglected. Upon what grounds can we build a conception of access with a deeper and more expansive sense of justice? In the final section of this chapter, I present my alternative social paradigm, the coresponsible option. Paradigm 3: Coresponsibility Overcoming the limitations shared by the rights and charity paradigms requires, at minimum, a different conception of personhood and also of the relation between person and society. The alternative paradigm I offer is a “fellow traveler” with other frameworks for social change that define persons as relational and that adopt a dynamic, fluid understanding of the relation between individual and community. This alternative conception of personhood (a conception that more accurately represents actual humans’ actual conditions) gives rise, in turn, to a different conception of justice and access. Personhood Central to the Coresponsible Option is its conception of persons as deeply relational—as quite literally constituted through and by their relations with others. To be is to be in relation, and relations take all sorts of forms. Eva Kittay identifies one significant form, namely, that of mother to child. As she puts it, everyone is, literally, some mother’s child, dependent on and—to greater or lesser extents— worthy of “a certain amount of care and connection.”17 Other dependency relations connect us to other humans, and to the rest of the natural world; most profoundly, every human depends on other living things for nourishment. The crucial point is that, unlike either rights-based or charity-based thinking, the coresponsible option makes relationality an essential feature of personhood, with independence a secondary or derived state. Because relationality in general—and dependence in particular—characterize every aspect of human being, this paradigm does not posit some standard-issue, independent “normal” human, with some “ordinary” set of human needs, as its “model person,” nor does it define all those who are perceived as failing to achieve


221

this (mythical, impossible) independence as “special needs” or “extraordinary” or “lazy and waiting for a handout.” (Of course, we all fail to achieve this independence. Only some of us are perceived to do so. For others, the strings of our dependence are rendered invisible, courtesy of the design of the system.) By starting from the fact of human dependence—by recognizing that, from cradle to grave, we all vitally depend on others in myriad ways—the paradigm makes room for all kinds of “normal” human being. We are all dependent—and we all have capabilities. These facts twine together in far more complicated ways than an atomistic sense of self, with its presumption of independence, allows us even to conceptualize. These recognitions lead to an understanding that who and what and how I am are matters complicatedly and inextricably linked to your identity—including your health and well-being. This claim is not meant to sound tidy and neat, as if the interests of such intertwined persons will always harmonically converge; they do not. The goal of rejecting an atomistic notion of personhood is not to eliminate conflicts and competitions, but rather to put them on a different footing—to understand them inside a different context. Such reframing will enable us to think about access differently. Rather than a kind of zero-sum calculus of interests, in which every “special requirement” you have results in a debit from my “ordinary needs,” a relational model of self performs the calculation quite differently. Access The coresponsible option acknowledges all humans’ reliance on others, rejecting the imaginary “autonomous person” as its model. Using Wendell’s definition, this means that, to the degree that any of us is “able bodied” or “food secure,” we are so only because we are already enmeshed in networks of support and assistance; only the presence of such networks enables us “to participate in [the] major aspect[s] of life in a given society.”18 Coresponsibility starts from this fact, and begins all consideration of access by acknowledging the dependency systems that already make possible our functioning—or, to put it more starkly, that mitigate our potential disability. Take one example: were I plunked into a fishing community, I would immediately become food insecure; in my present world, my inability to fish or otherwise produce my own food is neatly mediated by my relations to retail food providers.19 Coresponsibility rejects the notion that access should make all persons the “same” as some imaginary independent individual (the ethical and political norm of personhood). Instead of universality or sameness, coresponsibility goes for appropriateness of access. Appropriate access may well not look much like sameness at all. Conflicts over limited resources do not disappear in a coresponsible conception of access—the reason for choosing this paradigm is not that it eliminates dispute. Rather, the paradigm situates conflicts in a different context, one that moves away from “us versus them” thinking focused on competition for limited resources. By replacing independence and autonomy with dependence and relationality, by rejecting sameness as the goal of access, coresponsibility rejects the zero-sum calculus that turns all “special” needs into drains on the resources available for “normal” people. In its place, it understands the social context as one in which all persons recognize their well-being as complexly intertwined, such that others’ gains are just as likely to be their gains as well. This alternative calculus already can be seen at work, for example, in the acknowledgment that ensuring all children adequate

222


nutrition results in a host of long-term benefits for us as a society. Well-nourished children have a better opportunity to develop their physical, mental, and emotional well-being, which in turn enables them to participate in the life of their communities to the greatest degree possible. Appropriateness of access leads to a kind of “family resemblance” sense of what a society must provide for its members—and what they must provide for each other.20 Projects to guarantee access share no single underlying feature or goal. Instead, different approaches to access share different traits, much as members of a family share different, overlapping sets of traits with each other. This feature of the coresponsible option leads me to suggest that this paradigm provides the conceptual undergirding required by the CFS movement, which that has been criticized for lacking such a foundation.21 The CFS Coalition defines community food security as a movement dedicated to building strong, sustainable, local and regional food systems that ensure access to affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food for all people at all times. We seek to develop self-reliance among all communities in obtaining their food and to create a system of growing, manufacturing, processing, making available, and selling food that is regionally based and grounded in the principles of justice, democracy, and sustainability.22

The coresponsible option allows us to understand CFS as a family-resemblance model that links groups, interests, and challenges in irreducible ways. CFS draws our attention to the many ways people can be food insecure; it rests not on a list of fundamental capabilities or rights that “normal” human should have, but rather on a recognition of the linked, nested, intertwining ways in which we depend on each other. Recognizing the ways that all members of a community are affected by food insecurity of various forms can, in turn, lead to creative efforts to form coalitions that work for food security on multiple fronts simultaneously—that is, to resist “us versus them” thinking, in favor of a much more complicated understanding of who “we” are.

CONCLUSION Because charity and rights share a general notion of what it is to be a person, and because that notion rests on self-contained independence of body, mind, finances, and so on, the taint of noblesse oblige that infuses the charity model continues to permeate the rights model. Even here, guarantees of access for those deemed “nonstandard” are treated as special “add-ons” that enable people to “reach the bar” of normalcy. I submit that this taint will not easily go away on any liberal individualist model, which is why we need a different way to understand personhood. The paradigm of coresponsibility provides the framework needed for this alternative model. Budding illustrations of the coresponsible model might be seen in the work of such organizations as Missoula, Montana’s Garden City Harvest program and Boston’s Food Project. Both projects take a multifaceted approach to creating food-secure communities: growing food for area emergency food providers, offering garden plots for community members, creating training for youth in both gardening and leadership, and, for all who live in the community, producing sustainably-grown high-quality fresh vegetables.


223

NOTES 1. USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture), Economic Research Service, “Food Security in the United States: Conditions and Trends,” Food Security in the United States, http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodSecurity/trends.htm (accessed July 1, 2008). 2. See my “Food Politics, Political Food,” in Cooking, Eating, Thinking: Transformative Philosophies of Food, ed. Deane Curtin and Lisa Heldke (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1992), 303–327. 3. For information about the CFS movement, consult the Community Food Security Coalition Web site, http://www.foodsecurity.org (accessed July 1, 2008). 4. Susan Wendell, The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability (New York: Routledge, 1996), 23. 5. Elizabeth Williamson, “Some Americans Lack Food, but USDA Won’t Call Them Hungry,” Washington Post, Sec. A, November 16, 2006, http://www.washington post.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/15/AR2006111501621.html (accessed June 26, 2008). 6. Elaine Power notes that some versions of sustainable food systems intended to be progressive end up reinscribing the charity model—particularly its tendency to blame the victim—by stripping away the universal guarantees of welfare benefits and replacing them with options that “reinforce the individualistic ideology of neoconservative policies” (“Combining Social Justice and Sustainability,” in For Hunger-Proof Cities: Sustainable Urban Food Systems, ed. Mustafa Koc et al. (Ottowa: International Development Resource Center, 1999), http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-30587-201-1-DO_ TOPIC.html (accessed June 28, 2008)). Similarly, Patricia Allen and Julie Guthman criticize farm-to-school programs (understood as a part of the CFS movement), for their revival of neoliberal ideologies (“From ‘Old School’ to ‘Farm-to-School: Neoliberalization from the Ground Up,” Agriculture and Human Values 23 (2006): 401–415). It is important to pay attention to the ways in which any move to dismantle social welfare systems and replace them with more progressive and just alternatives can end up unwittingly doing just the reverse—the charge Allen and Guthman lay against farm-to-school programs. But I would argue that such results are by no means necessary; CFS efforts and sustainable food systems are not intrinsically linked to charity and neoliberalism. 7. The disabled have been seen as undeserving, in various ways. Historically, many disabilities were understood as God’s justice wrought upon a person. Today, there is a sense that many people “on disability” are “just faking it,” and are simply too lazy to work. 8. This claim sounds odd—and it should. Access tends to be used only to describe something that persons do not presently have—not to characterize something one already possesses unproblematically. 9. For more on this point, see Janet Poppendieck, “Charity, Justice and Emergency Food,” The Vincentian Center for Church and Society, http://www.vincenter.org/99/poppen. html (accessed June 28, 2008). 10. Loosely connected, conceptually, to the matter of who counts as a person is the matter of dessert; who deserves what. Even though the rights model is predicated on the assertion that rights attach to all persons as persons, in fact, even under its rule, the notion that people do or do not deserve their rights often holds sway. Thus, for example, entitlement programs in this country are treated as “handouts,” not as entitlements. The notion that people have a right to these things is only a thin veneer over a deep, often resentful, belief that “those people” are just getting “special favors,” whether it is accessible buses or food stamps.

224


11. Annette Baier, “The Need for More than Justice,” in Feminist Theory: A Philosophical Anthology, ed. Ann E. Cudd and Robin O. Andreasen (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005): 243–50, 248. 12. A recent theoretical expression of the rights paradigm can be found in the “capabilities approach” developed by Martha Nussbaum. Nussbaum presents a list of 10 “central human functional capabilities all citizens should have” to flourish with dignity. See “Women and Cultural Universals,” in Feminist Theory: A Philosophical Anthology, eds. Ann E. Cudd and Robin O. Andreasen (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005): 302–324, 310. 13. Nussbaum, “Women and Cultural Universals.” 14. Power, “Combining”; Allen and Guthman, in “From ‘Old School’ ”; and Patricia Allen, “Reweaving the Food Security Safety Net: Mediating Entitlement and Entrepreneurship,” Agriculture and Human Values 16 (1999): 117–29. 15. See Power, “Combining”; Nussbaum, “Women and Cultural Universals”; and Allen, “Reweaving,” for examples of this. Allen and Guthman, in “From ‘Old School,’ ” also revive the call for universals. They criticize CFS programs for their neoliberalism, a charge that is not without merit. Nevertheless, their advocacy of antipoverty and antihunger approaches sends us back to another form of liberalism, when they emphasize a “universal right to education,” equity, and universal access, an approach that is rooted in classical liberalism in ways that are every bit as problematic as the neoliberalism they believe is present in CFS. 16. I do not reject the possibility of anything like universals, but the universals for which this paradigm allows are the consequences of our social investigations, not the preconditions of them. We do not begin by assuming everyone is “the same” in some crucial respect; rather, we conclude that they are, and we do so on the basis of an investigation. See Alain Locke, “Cultural Pluralism,” in American Philosophies: An Anthology, ed. Leonard Harris, Scott L. Pratt, and Anne S. Waters (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002): 433–45. 17. Eva Kittay, “Vulnerability and the Moral Nature of Dependency Relations,” in Feminist Theory: A Philosophical Anthology, ed. Ann E. Cudd and Robin O. Andreasen (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005): 264–79, 274. 18. Wendell, The Rejected Body, 23. 19. The painter Paul Gauguin presents a vivid picture of the degree to which our abilities and our securities are context-dependent—and also of the degree to which we can tend to be oblivious to their context-dependence, and instead can mistake ourselves for independent, self-sufficient atomic units. When Gauguin moved to Tahiti for a time to paint, he found himself vulnerable in very short order: “two days later, I had exhausted my provisions; I had assumed that with money I would find all the food that I needed.” Paul Gauguin, The Writings of a Savage, ed. Daniel Guerrin, trans. Eleanor Levieux (New York: Viking, 1978), 81. Interestingly, this experience does not lead Gauguin to reassess his assumptions about the degree of his own independence and self-sufficiency. 20. “Family resemblance” comes from philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. See Philosophical Investigations, 2nd ed., trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997), 32e. 21. See, for example, Sharon Lezberg, “Finding Common Ground Between Food Security and Sustainable Food Systems” (paper presented at the Association for the Study of Food and Society/Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society Conference, June 1999): 24; Power, “Combining,” 5; and Allen and Guthman, “From ‘Old School.’ ” 22. Community Food Security Coalition, http://www.foodsecurity.org/.


225

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Allen, Patricia. “Reweaving the Food Security Safety Net: Mediating Entitlement and Entrepreneurship.” Agriculture and Human Values 16 (1999): 117–29. Allen, Patricia, and Julie Guthman. “From ‘Old School’ to ‘Farm-to-School’: Neoliberalization from the Ground Up.” Agriculture and Human Values 23 (2006): 401–415. Buchanan, Allen. “Charity, Justice, and the Idea of Moral Progress.” In Giving: Western Ideas of Philanthropy, ed. Jerome B. Schneewind. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Heldke, Lisa. “Food Politics, Political Food.” In Cooking, Eating, Thinking: Transformative Philosophies of Food, ed. Deane Curtin and Lisa Heldke. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. Koc, Mustafa, Rod MacRae, Luc J. A. Mougeot, and Jennifer Welsh. For Hunger-Proof Cities: Sustainable Urban Food Systems. Ottowa: International Development Resource Center, 1999. Available at http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-9394-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html. Lezberg, Sharon. “Finding Common Ground between Food Security and Sustainable Food Systems.” Paper presented at the Association for the Study of Food and Society/Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society Conference, June 1999. Poppendieck, Janet. “Charity, Justice and Emergency Food.” The Vincentian Center for Church and Society. Available at http://www.vincenter.org/99/poppen.html, 1999. Poppendieck, Janet. Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlements. New York: Viking, 1998. Wendell, Susan. The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability. New York: Routledge, 1996.

Web Sites Community Food Security Coalition, http://www.foodsecurity.org/. The Food Project, http://www.thefoodproject.org/. Garden City Harvest, http://gardencityharvest.org. Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First, http://www.foodfirst.org/. La Via Campesina, http://viacampesina.org/main_en/index.php.


15 Animal Welfare Andrew Fiala Concern for farm animal welfare is growing. In 2004, the state of California passed legislation banning the production and sale of foie gras, a delicacy produced by force feeding geese until their livers become diseased. In June of 2008—in response to videos of inhumane treatment of cattle made public by the Humane Society—Ed Schaffer, the U.S. secretary of agriculture, called for a ban on the slaughter of nonambulatory or “downer” cattle. In Europe, concern for animal welfare is even more mainstream. In 2004, David Byrne, the European commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection, stated that animal welfare can be improved with minimal cost. “The experience within Europe has shown that in many cases there are no significant additional costs in improving animal protection.”1 Indeed, the European Union (EU) has given a central place to animal welfare. The Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997 officially recognized farm animals as sentient beings whose welfare matters. Recent legislative efforts in the European Union are based upon this idea. And the European Union acknowledges the so-called five freedoms for farm animals:2 • • • • •

Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom

from hunger and thirst from discomfort from pain, injury, and disease to express normal behavior from fear and distress

Traditional animal husbandry practices took care to provide for animal welfare, as defined in this way.3 But the economic pressures of the global economy have made it more difficult to sustain traditional animal husbandry. So the intensive animal agriculture of the factory farm has created conditions in which concern for animal welfare is subordinated to the demand for increased productivity. In response, organic farmers and advocates of traditional husbandry have staged a minirevolution of sorts in the last decade. This movement produces free-range meat and eggs, organic milk, and so on. At the other end of the food production

228


line, organic restaurants and chains, such as Chipotle, and stores such as Whole Foods provide cruelty-free animal products.4 This developing concern for animal welfare comes as demand for cheap and nutritious meat is growing at a rapid pace. In North America and Europe, seventeen billion animals are killed every year for food. Americans alone kill more than eight billion animals per year for food. Every day in the United States, twenty-three million chickens, pigs, cows, and other assorted animals are slaughtered. That amounts to per capita annual consumption of: 51 pounds of chicken, 15 pounds of turkey, 63 pounds of beef, 45 pounds of pork, 1 pound of veal, and 1 pound of lamb. If we focus on pigs alone, we should note that demand for pork has been soaring in the United States and abroad. Eight million or so hogs are slaughtered every day around the globe.5 To satisfy our craving for meat, meat production must be intensified. And thus the vast majority of meat is produced via industrial animal agriculture, that is, on the factory farm. As industrial animal agriculture grows, activists concerned about animal welfare focus their energies in a variety of ways. The Humane Society is dedicated to the prevention of cruelty to animals, including the confinement and crating practices of the factory farm.6 More radical animal welfare activist groups include People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the Animal Liberation Front. These groups take direct action aimed at eliminating animal cruelty—from street theater to raids on animal laboratories. One novel sort of activism occurred in spring of 2008, when PETA offered a $1 million prize to anyone who could bring to market chicken meat grown in a test tube. The goal is to produce meat for human consumption without actually using animals. Now this may sound like a quixotic or even oxymoronic endeavor. But it points to the central problem of animal welfare. Contemporary animal husbandry uses sentient animals in a way that produces suffering. Until it is possible to produce meat without animals, then animal welfare will continue to be a central concern for all. Animal welfare is a broad topic. It includes questions about hunting and habitat preservation; animal entertainment, including horseracing, dog-fighting, and circuses; raising animals for furs; using animals in biomedical research; and breeding pets. Our focus here is animal agriculture, especially the intensive livestock operations or “factory farms” that provide the majority of our food. Intensive animal agriculture generates a number of ethical problems. Factory farms produce air and water pollution. They make use of controversial biotechnologies: from antibiotics and hormones to genetic engineering and cloning. And factory farms create labor and economic dislocations as they replace more traditional family farms. But factory farming also creates serious questions about the welfare of individual farm animals. There are two basic approaches to animal welfare: an instrumentalist or anthropocentric approach and a deeper, nonanthropocentric or animal-centered approach. The instrumental or anthropocentric approach is concerned with animal welfare only to the extent that animals serve human interests or satisfy human needs. Farmers are concerned with animal welfare in this sense because livestock represent capital investment and future profit. And consumers are concerned with animal welfare in this sense because they want cheap and nutritious meat. From this point of view, our duties to animals are at best indirect. The nonanthropocentric or animal-centered approach assumes that it makes sense to consider things from an individual animal’s point of view. Animal-centered

Animal Welfare

229

approaches hold that human beings have some sort of direct moral obligation to consider the well-being of individual farm animals. And this approach maintains that it makes sense to be concerned with animals for their sake and not merely for ours. This is explained in terms of concern to prevent cruelty or reduce suffering. The most radical form of the animal-centered approach wants to extend the idea of legal and moral rights to animals. We will consider here the sorts of assumptions that are made about morality and about animals on both sides. As we shall see, anthropocentric approaches to animal welfare can be used to justify intensive animal agriculture, while animal-centered approaches tend to maintain that factory farming—and meat consumption—is immoral.

THE FACTORY FARM AND ETHICAL VEGETARIANISM Everyone who consumes meat and makes a profit from its production has an interest in animal welfare: consumers and producers want meat that comes from healthy animals. Animal welfare in the mainstream is anthropocentric: it is focused exclusively on the production of cheap, tasty, and nutritious meat. Farmers want their livestock to live healthy lives, put on weight, and reproduce so that they might bring their products to market. And consumers want meat that is free from disease. The anthropocentric or instrumentalist conception of animal welfare found in the mainstream is concerned with the well-being of animals only to maximize return on investment and to satisfy the human desire for meat. Factory farms do provide for animal welfare. They keep animals safe from predators and parasites. They provide heat in the winter, plentiful food, and substantial doses of antibiotics. But this is all in an effort to keep animals healthy so that they might be turned from animals into meat. A deeper, more animal-centered approach to animal welfare concerns itself with the welfare of animals from a perspective that takes up the animal’s point of view. From this point of view, the concern is not cheap and plentiful meat. Rather the concern of deep animal welfare is in the quality of the lives lived by individual animals. From this perspective, the cheap meat of the factory farm comes at a substantial price in cruelty. Factory farms are not set up to deliberately torture animals. The cruelty of the factory farm is not sadistic or malicious. Industrial livestock operations are designed to produce cheap meat; and sadism or cruelty provide no profit. But the industrial production of cheap meat requires a drastic alteration in the natural life cycle of the animals on the factory farm. Those who are concerned with animal welfare in its deepest sense—authors such as Tom Regan, Peter Singer, and groups such as PETA—claim that the entire process is cruel insofar as it prevents farm animals from living normal or natural lives. From the animal’s perspective, the factory farm is an unnatural and cruel place because the factory farm is designed to prevent animals from acting on natural instincts and from satisfying basic drives. Farm animals are locked in cages, kept out of the sunshine, and prevented from touching the Earth. They are—contrary to their own natural tendencies—forced into proximity with others animals and are unable to escape from the stench of their own excrement. Even reproduction and birth are controlled by the use of artificial insemination and farrowing crates.

230


Moreover, animal agriculturalists are quite interested in creative breeding, genetic engineering, and cloning. And the resultant animals can be warped versions of natural animals: for example, animals bred to be so large that they eventually cannot stand up. Animals are also subjected to other more routine indignities and minor cruelties. Cattle are branded. Male pigs and cows are castrated without anesthesia. Chickens are debeaked and declawed to prevent them from injuring themselves and each other. And some animals—such as veal cattle and poultry raised for foie gras—are kept in complete confinement and are force fed diets that cause disease. When the time for slaughter comes, animals are crowded in trucks and moved in conditions that often result in such significant stress that many thousands of animals die yearly in transport.7 On the killing floor, these animals are stunned, hooked, hoisted, bled out, and skinned. The slaughter assembly line can cause significant damage to animals before they are dead: legs are often dislocated, poultry and swine are occasionally scalded alive, and downer cattle are dragged or forklifted into place. Although the law requires that mammals (with the exception of rabbits) be stunned before killing, 5 percent of the time the stunning fails and animals are hung, cut, and bled while still conscious.8 Even though industrial standards are aimed at minimizing cruelty when animals are killed, in an industrial process focused on speed and efficiency, mistakes are made and shortcuts are taken. Some people opt out of the animal economy altogether, choosing instead vegetarianism. Ethical vegetarians choose to avoid meat for principled moral reasons (unlike those who renounce meat for health reasons). Principled vegetarianism has grown in the Western Hemisphere in opposition to the development of factory farming. Although Eastern Hemisphere traditions such as Buddhism, Jainism, and some varieties of Hinduism have long held that it was virtuous to abstain from meat, industrial nations have a much deeper commitment to meat eating. Traditional Western agriculture was grounded on a stewardship or good husbandry model in which the farmer’s duty was to care for the animals and to be thankful for the goods that the animals provided in return. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, God created the animals and gave them to humanity to care for and to use. Indeed, vegetarianism was often associated with pagan or heretical views that venerated nature in a way that was deemed antithetical to Christian orthodoxy. But the factory farm leads us away from the stewardship model of animal welfare and pushes us in an instrumental direction in which animals are merely commodities to be used without care or thanksgiving. Some critics of contemporary animal agriculture choose to eat only animal products that are grown organically or that are produced under humane or “cruelty-free” conditions. Vegetarians avoid meat entirely. And vegans also avoid eggs and dairy. There are a variety of principled reasons to be a vegetarian.9 Some follow Regan and Singer in rejecting meat eating altogether, on the principle that killing animals is wrong. Others, such as Martha Nussbaum, are less concerned with killing itself than with the systematic cruelty of the factory farm and its perversion of the idea of stewardship. Other vegetarians are more concerned with the negative environmental impact of meat eating: meat production creates water and air pollution, including greenhouse gases. In 2006, a UN report claimed that “the livestock sector” produced more greenhouse gases than did transportation and that livestock operations contributed to habitat loss and environmental degradation. In 2008, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claimed that the world should convert to a vegetarian diet to combat global warming.10 Others are concerned with

Animal Welfare

231

the negative impact that intensive animal agriculture has on native animal species: concerned, for example, with the way the cattle industry in the American West has systematically destroyed wolf, bison, and prairie dog populations and habitats. Still others choose to eat lower on the food chain to leave a smaller footprint and to leave more grain and food available to fight hunger.11 And some feminists give up meat because they link meat to male dominance and the oppression of women.12 Vegetarians of all sorts agree that meat eating is simply not necessary for human health—since there are readily available nutritious alternatives. And if meat eating is not necessary for health, then there is no good reason to support an industry based on cruelty that produces what is basically a luxury good: meat. In response, meat eaters and producers will defend meat eating by claiming that meat and dairy are cheap and nutritious components of a healthy human diet. They will also claim that human beings are justified in using animals as food— especially if farming and slaughtering practices are undertaken with concern for animal welfare. Let us turn, then, to the justification of using animals and the anthropocentric versions of animal welfare.

FOUR PRINCIPLED DEFENSES OF ANTHROPOCENTRISM There are four principled ways to respond to the ethical concerns raised by vegetarians. That is, there are four basic ways to support the anthropocentric and merely instrumentalist approach to animal welfare. Ontological Claims The first response is to deny that animals are the sorts of beings who can suffer. This view is often associated with the early modern philosopher Rene Descartes, who famously claimed that animals were merely mechanical bodies—what he called machines or automatons.13 From this perspective, although animals exhibit pain behavior, this does not indicate any sort of mental or spiritual disturbance. It is “mere pain” without understanding or, as Peter Carruthers has described it, “unconscious pain.” From this point of view, animals cannot be said to “suffer,” where suffering is thought to mean the presence of pain plus other affective states such as anxiety and fear, as well as the idea that pain is not justified or desired. Descartes’ view makes sense in the context of Christian theology, which denies that animals have souls. While the stewardship model of the Christian tradition holds that animals have value insofar as they are created by God, the stewardship model also holds that there is an unbridgeable ontological difference between human beings and animals: animals are made for human uses and only human beings have eternal souls. From this point of view, those who claim that animal welfare matters in a nonanthropocentric sense make a category mistake. From their perspective, animals are simply not the sorts of things that have “welfare” in the human sense of the term. Indeed, we have a word for this category mistake: “anthropomorphism,” which is the tendency to project human features onto nonhuman objects. Defenders of a Cartesian sort of view—which denies that animals suffer—will claim that it is a mistaken anthropomorphism that makes us think that animals care about the quality of their lives or that animals can suffer from conditions such as we find on the factory farm.

232


Claims about Moral Concern Closely related to this is the second response, which claims that animal “suffering,” if we choose to call it such, is simply not a matter of moral concern. The Cartesian view can seem quite odd, especially for those who recognize that animal bodies and minds are quite similar to human bodies and minds. Animals bleed when cut. They feel hunger when left unfed. They can exhibit fear behaviors in response to smells, sounds, and threats. And social animals like dogs and horses can appear lonely, anxious, and so on. Indeed, animal experimentation in human biomedicine—including psychological and neurological experiments—assumes that animal physiology is similar to ours in these obvious ways. The second approach need not deny this sort of similarity. But it does deny that these elements of animal experience have moral import. The most influential proponent of this sort of approach is Immanuel Kant.14 Kant admits that it is possible to be cruel to animals. But on his view, morality is exclusively focused on human beings. We have direct duties only to other human beings. And any moral duty we have to animals is only indirect: the treatment of animals matters only when it has impacts on our behavior toward other humans. For Kant, cruelty to animals is wrong because it tends to encourage cruelty toward humans. Such an anthropocentric ethical theory will tell us that we have no moral obligation to take animal pain and suffering seriously. Anthropocentric ethics maintains a simple distinction: we are obliged to care directly about humans but not about animals. This sort of view can in fact result in a quite positive assessment of factory farming: factory farming is good if it fulfills the needs and desires of the human population. Contemporary theorists who defend this point of view include libertarians such as Tibor Machan, who argues that we only have obligations to ourselves (and to our kin and fellow humans); and that we have no obligations to other species.15

Claims about the Order of Nature Related to this is a third principled response, which holds some version of the view that animals are literally given to human beings for their consumption. This view can be traced back, in the Western tradition, to the idea found in Genesis, that God creates the animals for human usage. A more naturalistic or Darwinian approach would maintain that the struggle for survival that has led us to dominate the animals also entitles us to use them for our own purposes. According to proponents of this way of thinking, it might be true that animals suffer, and we might even feel compelled to minimize animal suffering (out of respect for God’s creation or out of a spirit of kinship with the animals). But from this perspective, animal suffering should not prevent us from making use of animals for our own benefit. A version of this theory can be found in Friedrich Nietzsche’s idea that predatory animals—including human animals—love their prey because they are good to eat.16 This view is anthropocentric in the sense that it claims that human beings are the focal point of creation or of evolutionary progress. From this perspective, it is our right (and maybe even our duty) to celebrate our dominion over the animals. Some take this view to an extreme that claims that human beings are by nature carnivorous hunters and that meat eating satisfies some deep primal desire in the human psyche.17 But even hunters are concerned with animal welfare, albeit in an

Animal Welfare

233

anthropocentric sense. Hunting clubs such as Ducks Unlimited protect wild animal habitat. And the ethics of hunting emphasize that a kill should be as clean as possible and that the meat and hides should be put to good use. Utilitarianism Perhaps the most sophisticated and complex way of articulating an anthropocentric approach to animal welfare is found in utilitarianism. Utilitarianism can be employed in defense of current agricultural practices. Utilitarian moral philosophy is based on the idea that it is good, as John Stuart Mill put it, to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number. A utilitarian would emphasize that intensive animal agriculture has produced vast benefits for human beings (and even for farm animals that would not exist, if it were not for farming).18 Humans live longer and healthier lives now than at any time in history, and the human population continues to grow, arguably as a result of an ongoing revolution in animal farming practices. Moreover, utilitarians might argue—as Mill does—that humans are capable of higher pleasures: only human beings can enjoy art, philosophy, and politics. Even our gustatory experiences consist of more complex and subtle pleasures than animals can ever experience—as witnessed by gourmet cooking and the rich social and psychological pleasures of fine dining. From this point of view, the savory taste of bacon, hamburger, and fried chicken—not to mention the subtle flavors of veal, lamb, or foie gras—provide for important human pleasures. Moreover, the protein and calories that come from animals make such an important contribution to human happiness and productivity, that the suffering caused by meat production is justified.

ANIMAL-CENTERED RESPONSES In response to these anthropocentric ideas, defenders of a more animal-centered approach to animal welfare can respond in a variety of ways. We will consider four responses here. The Darwinian Approach Defenders of animal welfare will argue that the anthropocentric claim that animals do not suffer runs counter to what we know about animal physiology and about the connections between and among species. Animal brains and bodies are similar to human brains and bodies. This similarity is assumed by those who use animal models in biomedical research. Moreover, the reason for this similarity has to do with our evolutionary connection. Mammals share much in common. Even the fishes and the birds share much in common with mammals. If one takes the Darwinian approach seriously, then the Cartesian argument that focuses on a deep ontological difference between humans and animals must be rejected. In the Descent of Man, Darwin himself argues that the differences between humans and animals are matters of degree and not of kind. Given our similar physiology and evolutionary heritage—as well as the adaptive advantage of the ability to experience pain and suffering—sufficient evidence warrants the assertion that animals experience pain, anxiety, and fear, and that they suffer from it.

234


David DeGrazia has concluded after an extensive review of the scientific and philosophical literature, “the available evidence suggests that most or all vertebrates, and perhaps some invertebrates, can suffer.”19 An obvious piece of evidence used to support this point of view is the fact that farm animal health does suffer under the stress of the factory farm and in transport from farm to slaughterhouse. Obvious signs of stress include chickens who peck each other to death, if their beaks are not removed; pigs who gnaw at the bars of their cages and bite each other’s tails out of boredom and frustration; and veal calves who crave iron to such an extent that they would lick their own urine if they were permitted to turn around.20 Animals have evolved in such a way that their brains and physiology are well adapted for certain conditions, and poorly adapted for others. In general, the predecessors of farm animal species have spent millions of years adapting to the wild and domesticated species several thousands of years adapting to captivity and cultivation. The changes in environment and behavior found in the factory farm represent a radical departure from the conditions for which evolution has bred farm animals. This gives us good reason to suspect that factory farming causes significant stress and suffering for the animals raised there. Moreover, some have argued that the Darwinian perspective can be used to undermine anthropocentric claims that humans are unique and special. James Rachels has argued in this way in support of a point of view that he calls “moral individualism.” Rachels’ idea is that species membership is an irrelevant factor in morality. He contends that, “how an individual should be treated depends on his or her own particular characteristics, rather than on whether he or she is a member of some preferred group—even the ‘group’ of human beings.”21 For example, humans with cognitive disability may have capacities that make them more similar to animals than to other humans. Rachels claims that if differences in basic capacities of individual members of a species are recognized, we will see that anthropocentrism is an unjustified prejudice. Utilitarianism We saw above that utilitarian approaches to ethics can in fact be used to justify meat eating and the factory farm, especially if utilitarianism is constrained in an anthropocentric way to focus primarily on the greatest happiness for the greatest number of humans. But utilitarians have long admitted that animal suffering matters ethically. If pain and pleasure are key indicators of morality, and animals experience pain and pleasure, then animal pains and pleasures should be included in any utilitarian calculation. We mentioned above that John Stuart Mill thought that human pleasures were qualitatively superior to animal pleasures. But other utilitarians have called this idea into question and have argued for equal consideration of animal pain and pleasure. Jeremy Bentham proposed a radical revision of our view of animals a few decades before Mill, by focusing on the capabilities possessed by individual animals and humans. A full grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? Nor Can they talk? But Can they suffer?22

Animal Welfare

235

If animals can suffer, then their suffering should be taken account of in any utilitarian calculation. Many contemporary utilitarians end up arguing against factory farming and in favor of vegetarianism because they maintain that the cost in animal cruelty is not outweighed by the benefit of meat consumption. This is especially true if the supposed benefits of meat eating are minor gustatory pleasures. In other words, if there are easy and nutritious meat substitutes, then there is no good reason to cause animal suffering in the production of meat. Peter Singer is the most famous contemporary utilitarian proponent of vegetarianism and critic of factory farming. Singer’s now classic book, Animal Liberation (first published in 1975), makes just such an argument. In a recent defense of his ideas, Singer states his view quite clearly: The only acceptable limit to our moral concern is the point at which there is no awareness of pain or pleasure and no conscious preferences of any kind. That is why pigs are objects of moral concern, but lettuces are not. Pigs can feel pain and pleasure, they can enjoy their lives, or want to escape from distressing conditions. To the best of our knowledge, lettuces can’t. We should give the same weight to the pain and distress of pigs as we would give to a similar amount of pain and distress suffered by a human being.23

Singer argues that animals deserve what he calls “equal consideration,” which means that animal pain and pleasure would have to be included in any calculation of “the greatest happiness for the greatest number.” Utilitarian defenders of industrial animal agriculture will either have to claim that the human pleasure of eating meat outweighs the animal suffering caused on the factory farm. Or, they can resort to denying that animals feel pain or suffer. Animal welfare advocates such as Singer claim that we have a moral obligation to give equal consideration to the interests and well-being of animals. If we fail to give equal consideration in this way, we are guilty of what Singer maligns as “speciesism.” Singer explains speciesism as “a prejudice or attitude of bias toward the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species.”24 Anthropocentric approaches to animal welfare remain speciesist because they do not give equal consideration to animal suffering.

The Aristotelian Approach One of the problems of the utilitarian approach is found in the sorts of crossspecies comparisons that Bentham, Singer, and others end up making. Their ideas can lead to odd conclusions in which some animals are treated better than some humans. For example, Bentham suggests that horses may be of more concern than infants. And Singer is notorious for condemning factory farming while also arguing that euthanasia for retarded human infants might be permissible. One of the problems here is the focus on equal consideration and moral individualism. In response to this problem, we might focus on understanding “species typical function,” and thus base our treatment on the natural norm for members of a given species. The idea of species typical function fits more closely with an Aristotelian approach to the issue. This approach looks into the normal or natural function of

236


a species and is not focused on the capacities of individuals. This approach still results in a radical critique of factory farming. Unlike the utilitarian approach that looks at pain and suffering, the Aristotelian account attempts to make sense of a broader conception of welfare or wellbeing. Anthropocentric accounts will tend to argue that welfare is a concept that only makes sense with regard to human beings: only humans have an interest in concepts such as well-being or quality of life because such concepts matter to us in a subjective way. But an Aristotelian approach is concerned with an objective inquiry into the question of whether a human being or an animal is living well. For the Aristotelian, objective criteria for well-being matter as much as subjective experience. Welfare literally means to fare well, do well, thrive, or flourish. Philosophers have reflected on this concept at least since the time of the ancient Greeks.25 Aristotle claims that happiness or flourishing occurs when a creature actualizes its purpose or function (Greek: telos). For Aristotle, a thing’s purpose or function is defined by its nature. So to understand welfare or well-being, we have to inquire into the natural capacities of the thing. A plant flourishes when it grows, flowers, fruits, and spreads its seeds. A human being flourishes when it actualizes its capacities as a rational, political animal. In the same way, we could say that a social animal, such as a pig, flourishes when it actualizes its natural capacities: when it grows, socializes, and reproduces. Bernard Rollin has made use of this sort of idea in his work on farm animal welfare. Rollin is quite sympathetic to the idea of good husbandry and the stewardship view of animal welfare. Traditional animal husbandry is supposed to help animals flourish in this Aristotelian sense. This view of animal welfare can still allow for a firm ontological distinction between animals and humans, because humans and animals have different natures. Nonetheless, Rollin describes a sort of humananimal “social contract” that was typical of good husbandry practices for thousands of years. Human farmers helped their farm animals to thrive by protecting them from predators and weather, providing them with nutritious food, and so on. In exchange, the animals provided the farmer with food, fiber, and toil. Rollin maintains that in traditional husbandry, animal interests and human interests coincided. It was in the interests of humans to help the animals fulfill their natural functions, to satisfy their own animal interests, and to provide for their welfare. Traditional husbandry decried cruelty to animals and even appointed rest days— the Sabbath—for animal laborers. The credo of traditional agriculture was, according to Rollin, “we take care of the animals—and the animals take care of us.”26 But Rollin argues that the factory farm has changed this equation in radical ways by preventing animals from fulfilling their natural functions. A further elaboration of this sort of idea can be found in the recent work of Martha Nussbaum. Nussbaum is sympathetic to Singer’s utilitarian approach. But her point of view is closer to Rollin’s view. Nussbaum asks us explicitly to return to Aristotle in trying to make sense of animal welfare. Aristotle was one of the first philosophers to take up the systematic study of animal life. He tells us that each of the wide variety of animals is marvelous, beautiful, and wonder-inspiring, because each is the embodiment of some unique purpose or function.27 From this perspective Nussbaum claims that sentient animals should be given the opportunity to live according to what she calls the natural “dignity of their species.” Nussbaum

Animal Welfare

237

concludes: “No sentient animal should be cut off from the chance for a flourishing life, a life with the type of dignity relevant to that species … all sentient animals should enjoy certain positive opportunities to flourish.”28 Like Rollin, Nussbaum is reluctant to completely condemn the system of intensive agriculture. Instead, Nussbaum concludes with a compromise position that attempts to include concern for animal welfare and global utilitarian concern for human health.29 Such a compromise would be criticized by Singer and others who argue that human health can be sustained by a purely vegetarian diet. The Kantian and Animal Rights Approach Moderate conclusions of the sort we find in Rollin or Nussbaum will appear insufficient for those committed to a more demanding idea of animal welfare. The Aristotelian approach can allow killing and consuming animals for food, so long as animals are raised in a way that affords them dignity and allows them to fulfill their natural capacities. And utilitarians such as Singer could allow for animals to be used if it turned out that there were serious human needs to be fulfilled by eating meat (say if there were no alternative sources of protein available). But all of this can seem insufficient if one believes that animals have rights that simply cannot be violated. Nussbaum derives her idea of dignity and respect for nature from the Aristotelian view that sees wonder and purpose in the natural world and its diverse species. But ideas about dignity and respect can be pushed even deeper. Concepts such as dignity and respect are often associated with a Kantian or deontological approach to ethics. We have seen that Kant claims—following upon insights that connect him to Descartes and to the history of the Christian tradition—that only human beings have dignity and are worthy of respect. But some philosophers have argued that animals are in fact the sorts of beings that are deserving of respect in the deepest sense of this term. The most famous proponent of such a view is Tom Regan, who first published his Case for Animal Rights in 1983. Regan claims that at least some animals are “subjects of a life,” by which he means that animals have the sorts of interior lives that allow them to understand themselves and to have an interest in their own continued existence. Another way of putting this is to claim that animals have a kind of intrinsic value, which means that it is wrong to use them for our purposes. When this sort of assumption is made, quite radical conclusions follow. Regan calls for the abolition of animal agriculture and animal testing in the laboratory: “the rights view will not be satisfied with anything less than the total dissolution of the animal industry as we know it.”30 If what Regan says about the intrinsic value of animals is true, then vegetarianism becomes obligatory; and it is not merely a personal choice: “Merely to content oneself with personal abstention is to become part of the problem rather than part of the solution.”31 Regan’s radical views have inspired the sorts of direct action taken by members of the Animal Liberation Front and others. But also within the legal system, the concept of animal rights has led some to argue for changes in the law. Steven Wise, for example, has called for the extension of the “legal convention” of rights to animals—especially for higher animals such as chimpanzees.32 Without this legal basis, authors such as Francione claim that it is impossible to press animal welfare

238


claims.33 The worry is that anticruelty laws that are based on merely indirect duties to animals will ultimately be ineffective. If obligations to animals are completely indirect and derivative of human ownership rights, then the owners of animals can simply claim that they can do whatever they want with their own property. It is true, of course, that we do have anticruelty and animal protection laws that make it illegal for humans to do certain things to their own animals. But these laws are usually directed at animals commonly kept as pets. And anticruelty statutes in most states are often written so that there are exemptions for “common farming practices,” including the use of confinement, farrowing crates, and so on.34 Proponents of the animal rights approach will claim that the only solution to the problem of animal cruelty is to give animals more obvious and strenuous protection under the law.

CONCLUSION Animal welfare activists can cite some recent successes, as noted at the outset, in expanding concern for animal welfare. But these successes are often met with strong resistance from those who make money from cheap meat as well as those who enjoy eating it. Self-interest is often at work in those who are resistant to thinking critically about animal welfare—perhaps more so than deep philosophical disagreements about the concept of animal welfare. Further progress must be made on both fronts: encouraging people to think more critically about the animals they consume, while also enabling people to imagine profitable and nutritious alternatives to factory farming. In the long run, humans must take the issue of animal welfare seriously. As our population grows and as the taste for meat spreads around the globe, more and more animals will become part of the meat production line. Even those whose concern for animals is entirely anthropocentric must realize the risks of meat production in terms of diseases such as E. coli and bird flu and in terms of pollution and other negative impacts that directly affect human health. The factory farm can indeed be criticized from an anthropocentric perspective. It also seems that we must take seriously the nonanthropocentric concern for animal welfare: animals experience pain and it makes good sense to talk about the quality of an animal’s life. Traditional animal husbandry acknowledged this. Traditional farmers and herdsmen directly cared for the animals that fed and clothed them. But in the age of industrial animal agriculture, we are disconnected from the animals that support us. Concern for animal welfare is thus an important part of a larger attempt to be mindful of what we are eating. Once we realize that billions of animals per year are raised in inhumane conditions and slaughtered for the minor human pleasure of tasty meat, once we see that nutritious alternatives to meat are readily available, then it becomes more difficult to justify the cost in cruelty of contemporary animal agriculture.

NOTES 1. David Byrne, Speech at the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), Paris, February 23, 2004, European Directorate for Health and Consumers, http://europa.eu/ rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/04/92&format=HTML&aged=0&lan guage=EN&guiLanguage=en (accessed August 15, 2008).

Animal Welfare

239

2. See “Animal Welfare: Fact Sheet” (March 2007), European Directorate for Health and Consumers, http://ec.europa.eu/food/animal/welfare/factsheet_farmed032007_en.pdf (accessed August 15, 2008). 3. See Bernard Rollin, Farm Animal Welfare: Social, Bioethical, and Research Issues (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1995). 4. See Peter Singer and Jim Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat (Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2006), chapter 12. 5. These figures are derived from Gary L. Francione, Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or The Dog? (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000), xx; Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy (New York: St. Martin’s, 2002), 30–31; and Gaverick Matheny, “Utilitarianism and Animals” in In Defense of Animals: The Second Wave, ed. Peter Singer (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 13. Francione and Scully both derive their data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 6. The Humane Society was founded in 1954. Related organizations include the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals International (SPCA) and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). The American SPCA dates from 1866 and claims to be the first organization concerned to prevent cruelty to animals founded in the Western Hemisphere. For SPCA, see www.spca.com; for ASPCA, see www.aspca.org. The SPCA is more concerned with the care of pets, while the Humane Society is more directly involved in issues of farm animal welfare. 7. Erik Marcus reports that 80,000 pigs die each year on the trip to the slaughterhouse. Erik Marcus, Meat Market: Animals Ethics, and Money (Boston: Brio Press, 2005), 33. 8. This figure is according to Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat, 67–68. For discussions of animal slaughter see Marcus, Meat Market, and Rollin, Farm Animal Welfare. 9. A useful summary can be found in Michael Allen Fox, Deep Vegetarianism (Temple University Press, 1999). Before this, a seminal article was published by Phillip Devine, “The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism,” Philosophy 53, no. 206 (1978): 481–505. For articles and vegetarian activism, see the International Vegetarian Union, http:// www.ivu.org/. 10. The United Nations report is found at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/index.html (accessed August 15, 2008). For discussion of IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri’s plea to “eat less meat,” see New York Times Magazine (April 20, 2008). 11. The most influential argument along these lines is James Rachels, “Vegetarianism and ‘the Other Weight Problem’,” in World Hunger and Moral Obligation, eds. William Aiken and Hugh LaFollete (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1977). 12. The best-known proponent of this point of view is Carol Adams. See Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (New York: Continuum, 1990); or Josephine Donovan and Carol J. Adams, eds., The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics: A Reader (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). 13. See Descartes, Discourse on Method, Part V, or his letters to Henry More in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Tom Regan criticizes Descartes in The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of California, 1983); John Cottingham offers a more sympathetic reading of Descartes in “A Brute to the Brutes: Descartes’ Treatment of Animals,” Philosophy 53, no. 206 (1978): 551–59. 14. See Immanuel Kant, “Duties to Animals and Spirits” in Lectures on Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); and see Regan’s discussion in The Case for Animal Rights.

240


15. Tibor Machan, Putting Humans First (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2004). 16. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (London: Vintage, 1989), First Essay, section 13. 17. See James Swan, In Defense of Hunting (San Francisco: Harper One, 1995). For critique, see Scully, Dominion. 18. See Jan Narveson, “Animal Rights Revisited,” in Ethics and Animals, ed. Harlan Miller and William Williams (Clifton, NJ: Humana Press, 1983). 19. David DeGrazia, Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 123. Also see Bernard Rollin, The Unheeded Cry: Animal Consciousness, Animal Pain, and Science, expanded ed. (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1998); Donald R. Griffin, Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness (University of Chicago, 1994). 20. See Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat. 21. James Rachels, Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 5. 22. Jeremy Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation (New York: Hafner, 1948), chapter XVII, 311. 23. Peter Singer, “Ethics Beyond Species and Beyond Instincts: A Response to Richard Posner,” in Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, ed. Cass R. Sunstein and Martha C. Nussbaum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 80. 24. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 2nd ed. (New York: Avon Books, 1990), 6. Updated discussion can be found in Peter Singer, In Defense of Animals: The Second Wave (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006). 25. For a recent discussion, see L. Wayne Sumner, Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 26. Rollin, The Unheeded Cry, 285. 27. Aristotle, On the Parts of Animals (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2004), Book 1, Section 5, 645a. 28. Martha C. Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, and Species Membership (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 351. 29. Ibid., 402–403. 30. Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, 395. Regan has updated his argument in Defending Animal Rights (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001). 31. Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, 353. 32. Steven Wise, Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Press, 2000). 33. Gary L. Francione, “Animals—Property or Persons?” in Animal Rights, ed. Sunstein and Nussbaum, 108–142, 108. 34. See Darian Ibrahim, “The Anticruelty Statute: A Study in Animal Welfare,” Journal of Animals Law and Ethics 1 (2006): 175.

RESOURCE GUIDE Suggested Reading Carruthers, Peter. The Animals Issue: Moral Theory in Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. DeGrazia, David. Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Animal Welfare

241

Machan, Tibor. Putting Humans First. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2004. Nussbaum, Martha C. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, and Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. Rachels, James. Created From Animals: the Moral Implications of Darwinism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Regan, Tom. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: University of California, 1983. Rollin, Bernard E. Farm Animal Welfare: Social, Bioethical, and Research Issues. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1995. Singer, Peter, and Jim Mason. The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter. Eramus, PA, and New York: Rodale, 2006. Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation, 2nd ed. New York: Avon Books, 1990. Sunstein, Cass R., and Martha C. Nussbaum, eds. Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Web Sites Humane Farming Association, http://www.hfa.org/about/index.html. Humane Society of the United States, http://www.hsus.org/. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, http://www.peta.org/. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal Welfare Information Center, http://awic.nal. usda.gov/. European Union Directorate for Health and Consumers Animals Welfare Site, http:// ec.europa.eu/food/animal/welfare/index_en.htm.


16 Stewardship of the Land Eric J. Fitch A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. —Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac1

Earth (Terra, Gaia) is our native world. Humankind evolved here physically, biologically, psychologically, socially, and culturally. Current understanding of the paleontological record places the emergence of the genus Homo at roughly 2.5 million years ago, and humans (Homo sapiens) emerged as a distinct species somewhere between 400,000 and 250,000 years in the past. Despite this longevity, modern society knows very little about the lives and social organization of our human ancestors beyond that of the most recent few thousand years. Written records go back five or so millennia, and the artifacts of human settlements a few thousand more. Before that, humans were organized into band, tribe, and clan, within which, in our omnivorous fashion, we hunted and gathered food and other necessities directly off the land. Ancient human numbers and ranges were limited by natural carrying capacity and interspecific competition for resources. The impact on the ecosystems we inhabited was also limited. Care for the land arose as the need for conservation of resources in their limited foraging and hunting areas. Survival needs often resulted in aboriginal peoples developing systems of “stewardship” based on spiritual kinship with the land. The development of human ability to make tools and transform the landscape through agriculture and domestication of plant and animal species changed humans’ dynamic with the land. As anthropologist Brian Fagan describes in his book The Long Summer,2 climatic conditions moderated over vast sweeps of the globe’s land areas, that is, the climate warmed and the areas where humans found tolerable or even ideal conditions expanded greatly. Human inhabitation and civilization spread from areas in and about the tropics to much of the land surface of the planet. As human’s technological prowess and social organization increased in intensity, humans went from being one species among many in dynamic balance

244


with their ecosystems to a species that dominates, controls, and, in some cases, demolishes delicate systems and the balances necessary for the land to sustain life. Part of this domination is from increased levels of consumption and part of this is from our sheer numbers. Both usually cause overtaxing of support resources, especially those associated with long-term intensive agriculture and animal husbandry. A great issue for debate is whether the damage that has been done to the Earth has happened because of the lack of an “owner’s manual” or the unwillingness to follow traditional wisdom of land conservation. It is clear from the worldwide damage done to the land and bioproductivity by overgrazing, farming in ways that destroy soil fertility, and other destructive land-use practices, that access to and implementation of a “planet-keeping” manual is sorely needed. This is the point at which land stewardship advocates diverge in terms of the origin of the concepts of conservation. Some would argue that this “manual” or “land ethic” has long existed in the religious and social traditions that underlie the modern concept of stewardship, particularly stewardship of the land found in the religions and folk wisdom of indigenous peoples around the globe. Traditions of folk knowledge and ethical management of the land (i.e., stewardship ethics) arose from multiple roots. Others believe that concepts of land stewardship are exclusively science based and arise from observing the consequences of past destructive practices. What is land stewardship and what does it entail? Is it based on theology and philosophy, science and observation, or parts of both schools? In Europe and especially America, the answer, as practiced, is all of the above. Stewardship as a concept can be summarized as the moral-ethical responsibility to care for the land to conserve its fertility for current and future generations. Of all the essentials for human life on this world, clean air, potable water, clothing, shelter, and, of course, food, all rely to one degree or another on fertile soils and the products of life that grow within and upon them. What it takes to grow crops and raise livestock is not merely “dirt” as the uninitiated think of it, but instead is a complex dynamic matrix made up of organic and inorganic materials, water, air, and living organisms. Arable lands are comparatively rare, and prime farmland is a very rare and valuable commodity. Farmlands are often fragile and easily destroyed by abuse. As humans increased in numbers and spread to actively inhabit and farm all but one of the Earth’s continents and many of her isles, the hand of humanity and our techniques to bring forth food from the land often depleted the land of its fertility, leaving behind wasteland. In some, but not all, cultures throughout the world, observations of this began to emerge in the folktales and stories from ancient times. Included in these observations were the glimmerings of ethical and moral systems recognizing that for humans to survive and thrive in permanently settled communities, the land could not be treated as something having an infinite capacity to absorb abuse, but something that was precious and fragile and that must be cared for as we care for our own lives. The identity of persons as individuals and groups attached to a specific place that was theirs helped to generate this collective sense of duty and obligation. This is not to say that a stewardship ethic can naturally or easily come to people as they move into systems of fixed settlement and agriculture. Evidence supports the notion that early humans and especially early human efforts at agriculture were not at all successful in maintaining long-term arability of the

Stewardship of the Land

245

land. W. C. Lowdermilk in his work Conquest of the Land through 7,000 Years3 documented how one ancient civilization after another, from North Africa through Asia to the Americas, fell after the destruction of their soils through overuse and abuse. Often, the concept of stewardship came about part and parcel with the establishment of some type of formalized religion with doctrine, dogma, and magisterial authority addressing the relationship(s) of humans to nature. Whether through revelation or reason, “guidelines” for ethical behavior or “right living/right action” seemed to arise first within cultures in the context of faith. In ancient polytheistic faiths, these guidelines for behavior would be tied to the lessons of faith associated with agrarian and Earth deities. In later faiths, both monotheistic and polytheistic, more reciprocal relationships between God, humans, and the rest of Creation evolved and were dispersed and accepted as wise teachings. After all, something must be able to counterbalance the normal human tendency to overtax resources as Garrett Hardin points out in his brilliant, influential, and controversial article, “The Tragedy of the Commons.”4 What better way to “encourage” people to treat the land well than through reverence for God’s (the Gods’) wishes? Stewardship has been differentially defined but with similar goals in many faith traditions. To elaborate on how these traditions evolved and became actualized in faiths throughout the world would require an entire book. Here, the focus will be how the concepts of land stewardship as a religious and a secular practice evolved in Europe and North America. Stewardship as a word in the English and French languages can be traced to roots in such earlier words as stigward, stigweard, and seneschal. Even today these words indicate a person with a special (royal or even divine) charge to wisely oversee, protect, and preserve something of value. One place in which one can see the import that is not directly religious is in the Arthurian legends. Sir Kay, King Arthur’s stepbrother, became later in life Arthur’s seneschal or steward. The role of the seneschal was a great honor with great responsibility. Not only was this knight’s duty to maintain the order of the king’s house, but he was to protect his lands, castle, and family when the king was abroad, especially in time of campaign (war). A poorly chosen steward could lead to tragedy, including the worst-case scenario of being outflanked by the foe and returning from war to find one’s family, home, and land destroyed by a vengeful enemy. As European cultures evolved through the Middle Ages, the role of steward was less that of a warrior and more of the trusted and empowered manager of the king’s estate and lands. This strain of stewardship ethic came to dominate European thinking on land stewardship in both faith and society: an honored and trusted position with duties to the land and to current and future generations depending on those lands for sustenance. Modern Western concepts of stewardship arose in social contexts permeated by the influence of Catholicism and later by Protestant Christianity and by the social and cultural traditions of medieval through Renaissance Europe. The Christian church was meticulous in its instructions to the faithful, especially in matters that could bring it into conflict with the oversight of secular royal authority. Instruction on how to manage the lands, even those controlled by the churches, was a tricky business, especially when the teaching was based not solely on scripture but also on scholarship and insights that were being incorporated into faith tradition. When the Church did act, it did so on the highest authority in scripture and tradition so as to be perceived as being apolitical. Scholars in the church-sponsored

246


monasteries and universities preserved, dispersed, and built on older knowledge including the practical arts of agriculture, forestry, viticulture, and so on. In the schools and churches, especially during Rogation Days and other times of prayer for the land, for crops, for harvest, and so on, there were opportunities to teach and demonstrate how to best manage the land. Rogation Days are part are the Christian liturgical calendar, notably that of the Catholic and Anglican Faiths. They were initially a substitution for the pagan Roman festival of Robigalia during which time in the spring adherents of the old faith prayed to the gods for success planting and growing crops. In the Christian tradition, Rogation Days were observed on April 25 and the three days leading up to Ascension Thursday when the clergy blessed the fields and the congregation fasted and prayed for good crops. Rogation comes from the Latin “to ask.” These liturgies and prayers created time and space where both ethical and practical management of the land could be preached and taught. Fortunately for clerics in the Middle Ages and through today, the Scriptures provide firm instructions to do this type of teaching; to paraphrase the prophet Ezekiel, “if they have but eyes to see and will to act.” Stewardship has been differentially defined but with similar goals in many faith traditions. In the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), the scriptural roots of land stewardship can be traced back to Mosaic instruction laid out in the Hebrew Scriptures in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Torah, which are also the first five books of the Christian Bible. In particular, in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, direct instructions are given with regard to human responsibility to the land. In Exodus 23:10-11; Leviticus 25:1-7; and Deuteronomy 15:111, 31:10-1, the rules and traditions of the Sabbatical years are presented to the people. Just as humanity was commanded to rest from labor every seven days, people were commanded to let the land rest every seven years. In addition to the Sabbatical years, in Leviticus 25:8-55 and Numbers 36:1-9, a further tradition of the Jubilee Year is put into the law of the people. In the Jubilee Year, every seven times seven plus one years (50), the land is to be redistributed so that justice may be met for both land and for men. These early laws set the framework linking the ideals of soil conservation and social justice. Further examples are given throughout the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures that draw on the agrarian cultures of the ancient Near East. God is often described in terms such as farmer, shepherd, or viticulturalist. The “goodness” of God is emphasized by his care for the land, the sheep, or the vines. The story of Exodus, the 40 years of testing in the desert, comes to a conclusion as the younger generation gets to enter the Promised Land, a land of milk and honey in the Book of Joshua. As the Hebrews became the Israelites and their identity as a people were tied to that land, religion played a key role in defining the practices that kept both healthy. Jesus of Nazareth, as documented by his disciples, communicated his messages of faith to his followers within the context of the Jewish culture. Much of his teaching was embedded in nature-based parables, again contrasting a good and loving God who as a worker of the land cared for that land so that it would bring forth good fruit. The primary emphasis of the stories was of course the refinement of the faith, understanding the relationship between the people and God, but what was not lost was the relationship between man and nature, particularly the “good” Earth.


247

Parallel dogmatic and liturgical support for stewardship can be found in diverse theological and philosophical traditions throughout the world. In the Vedic scriptures of the Hindu faith, direction can be found to support land and water stewardship, especially with regard to the rivers and forests of the Indian subcontinent. In Shinto, specific lands and waters are considered sacred, as is the balancing of one’s spirit with nature itself. Likewise, in Buddhism, the paths of right action are parallel to respect for the Earth. In the Aboriginal faith of Australia, few things are more sacred than the Land, and nothing is more important than learning to live wisely with nature. Although not all of these have experienced the same historical intertwining of faith and public leadership toward land stewardship, in some multicultural societies such as the United States, the traditions and beliefs of nonChristian faith with regard to land and nature have often been incorporated within the overall message of the public agencies. The teachings of First Peoples (Native Americans and Native Canadians) have been incorporation into public stewardship outreach in the United States and Canada. In Western traditions that rest heavily on the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, religious practices and social responsibility reinforced each other. In the early Catholic Church, through the Middle Ages, and in some places even today, religious duty and land stewardship are clearly intertwined. This is not to say that good land stewardship necessarily went hand in hand with the spread of Christianity. Certain strains of theology arose that emphasized different parts of scripture and led to conflicting interpretations. This conflict was clearly delineated in historian Lynn White Jr.’s seminal article in the journal Science: “The Historic Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.”5 He demonstrated that as a practical matter, scriptural, and theological arguments have been promulgated within various strains of Christianity to support a dominion or domination of the Earth’s resources on the one hand and a stewardship relationship on the other hand. A dominion-based theology (or at least practices that attempt to find some justification in theology) emphasize an interpretation of the first creation story in the Book of Genesis in which God instructs humans to “fill the Earth and subdue it” (with an emphasis on the “subdue”). Observation of the practices that have been used to cultivate croplands and pastures, especially in the last two centuries of technology-driven agriculture (mechanized, chemically saturated, industrialized, and bioengineered) would certainly seem to argue that in Europe and the United States where Christianity has been the dominant faith, the dominion model has won out. Adding to this dominion-based view were the social phenomena of the industrial revolution and urbanization of the population. America went from being an agrarian nation to an industrial nation. The people became divorced from the land, and all too often, so did the teaching and preaching in their churches. Rogation Days began to be dropped from churches’ liturgical calendars and were retained only in some rural areas. As fewer people felt and believed they had the type of connection to the land that is often part of the core identity of farmers and ranchers, priests and ministers shifted away from stewardship to other matters of theological import in teaching and preaching. This absence of a connection to the land by more and more people in society, and the conflict between stewardship and dominion within the teaching of the broad Christian community came to a head in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. Ongoing colonization of North America brought traditional

248


farming practices to places ill-suited to European and eastern U.S. norms and practices. Land destruction from soil erosion became epidemic, especially in areas of the West that came to be called “the Dust Bowl.” Even though these Western dry lands were the focus of initial concern, they were far from being the only degraded lands. Water-driven erosion was stripping soil from fields on steep grades throughout the country. Southern states’ streams bled red with the runoff of spring rains. New England and Midwest farms were losing significant amounts of their “A horizon” or topsoil to erosive forces as well. With the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression, fears arose not about people being able to afford food, but of the very ability of the nation to continue to grow the food to feed the people. Land (soil) stewardship became a revitalized watchword in public forums and the halls of government. Existing research and education organizations were directed to develop techniques and disseminate information on how to continue to engage in farming, grazing, forestry, and all other production activities while preserving the integrity and fertility of the land. The public Agricultural and Natural Colleges found at the Morrill Land Grant Universities and their Experiment Stations and Cooperative Extension Services led the way. Extension agents provided a key service in taking the best soil conservation management practices and teaching them in public forums in agricultural communities. They often worked closely with churches and primary and secondary schools to “spread the word” as well. Churches often played significant roles in the education process in large part because of respect for their teaching authority and the ability to provide the faith-based component of rationale for land stewardship. Even today, Soil and Water Conservation Week program materials contain materials for use in sermons and other prayer and teaching lessons for Christian churches and schools produced by public agencies using public funds. Another key contributor and cooperator in the process of creating and disseminating a foundation and practices for stewardship in the American experience in the 1930s was the newly created Soil Conservation Service (the SCS; today called the NRCS, the Natural Resources Conservation Service) and newly empowered Soil and Water Conservation Districts. Along with the Land Grant Universities, they had the responsibility to research, demonstrate, and otherwise disseminate research on soil and water conservation. Of particular interest are two key scholars that are prominent in the literature as providing the bridge between science and faith in the protection of the land: W. C. Lowdermilk and Aldo Leopold, who both had their “roots” in the SCS. Their seminal works with regard to this issue, which some point to as books in the secular “bible” or “earthkeeping” manual, are Lowdermilk’s Conquest of the Land through 7,000 Years6 and Leopold’s Sand County Almanac.7 Lowdermilk was the assistant chief of the SCS, and he traveled throughout Europe, the Near East, and North Africa. He previously had spent considerable time in China. He observed and studied soil conditions throughout these lands and paid special attention to the social, cultural, historical, and religious milieu as well as lands and agricultural practices. He could have written a report that was a straightforward analysis with the central observation that civilizations that misused their soil resources generally collapsed over time. Conquest of the Land through 7,000 Years went beyond that and dealt with what lessons could be learned and what could be invoked to get farmers and others to better care for their lands. Conquest was first published in 1939 as USDA Bulletin No. 99, and even though


249

it was a government publication of the then SCS, Lowdermilk spoke of the spiritual dimensions of maintenance of the land as an “11th Commandment”: Thou shalt inherit the Holy Earth as a faithful steward, conserving its resources and productivity from generation to generation. Thou shalt safeguard thy fields from soil erosion, thy living waters from drying up, thy forests from desolation, and protect thy hills from overgrazing by thy herds, that thy descendants may have abundance forever. If any shall fail in this stewardship of the land thy fruitful fields shall become sterile stony ground and wasting gullies, and thy descendants shall decrease and live in poverty or perish from off the face of the earth.8

Lowdermilk himself was a practicing Christian and believed he was writing for a public audience filled with others who mostly shared his viewpoint. This “commandment” is reflective of concepts of stewardship he found in religious and secular traditions throughout the world and for him, held no contradiction with what he had discovered as a scientist. Despite being written more than 70 years ago, this document remains one of the most, if not the most, requested document ever published by the USDA. Despite some socially and culturally antiquated and even inappropriate terminology and phrasing, Lowdermilk’s writing is still used today primarily because of this stunningly simple yet eloquent synthesis of theological foundations for modern scientifically based stewardship practices. Aldo Leopold was a friend and, for a time, co-worker in the SCS with Lowdermilk. Leopold moved on from the SCS to the halls of academe. Well-published and respected in the fields of ecology, wildlife management, conservation, and related areas, his “magnum opus” is A Sand County Almanac.9 Some of his key reflections in the “Land Ethic” chapter can be traced to a desire to build on his friend’s idea of the “11th Commandment.” Although less religious and more philosophical than Lowdermilk’s work, these two pieces nonetheless represent a foundation on which an “earthkeeping” manual or “bible” has been written and acted on in the American experience and elsewhere. Leopold clearly and succinctly laid out the necessary ethical relationships and boundaries between humans and the natural environment. With or without religious underpinnings, it presents concepts of a stewardship ethic that go beyond mere self-interest and into the realms of intergenerational equity and natural justice. Leopold wrote: “A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of land.”10 Boldly but without hyperbole, Leopold explained the ethical obligations of humans to the lands and nature they rely on, even though a vast portion of our modern societies live in ignorance of their essential dependence on nature’s bounty. Humans are quite used to having ethical relations and boundaries within their communities. Leopold recommended pushing back the “fences” that had been built up by people who felt divorced from the land where their food, clothing, shelter, and ultimately all their material resources come from and embracing our collective ethical obligations. He attempted to redefine the concept of community back to earlier boundaries that included nature. Leopold’s work inspired many within the conservation and preservation social and political movements, as well as in the subsequent environmental movement. Today, many scholars in a vast sweep of disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields

250


from biology to theology, philosophy to agronomy, and political science to the performance arts are actively attempting to flesh out the nature of these relationships. Most of the major Christian Churches, both institutionally and congregationally, promote stewardship of the land. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops as well as the worldwide Roman Catholic Church promote land conservation and soil stewardship as a matter of moral obligation to the land and as a matter of social and intergenerational justice. Several branches of the Anglican and Episcopalian denominations likewise promulgate Earth ethics. From the Unitarian Universalists, through American Baptists, the Orthodox Churches, and many more large and small denominations, consensus is growing regarding the ethical obligations of humans toward the environment, and especially toward the lands and waters that support human life.11 The amount of lay and secular teaching about the need to be good stewards of the land is considerable. The fields of crop and soil sciences are well represented in academe, especially at land-grant universities where the knowledge of best practices is not just a matter of field research and classroom teaching. Soil and water stewardship remain key missions of cooperative extension services and extension agents, the itinerant educators whose job it is to spread knowledge throughout the counties and parishes (e.g., in Louisiana) about how to best manage the land.12 Concepts of stewardship are being discussed in schools, churches, and community meetings, mostly in rural areas but also in some urban and suburban settings. As human population continues to grow across the planet and rates of human consumption of goods, pollution impacts, and in some cases the literal destruction of landscapes continue at a breathtaking pace, adoption of principles and practices of stewardship of the land has never been more important. Theologians and philosophers continue to discuss, debate, research, write, and teach on land stewardship and environmental ethics as a standalone subject and in the larger contexts of environmental ethics and sustainability. Thomas Berry, Matthew Fox, H. Paul Santmire, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and an ever-increasing field of scholars continue to build on human moral and ethical relationships with the land and the Earth as a whole.13 There are also lay ministers and teachers like the farmer-poet-philosopher Wendell Berry;14 Wes Jackson,15 an acknowledged leader of the sustainable agriculture movement; and renowned geomorphologist and author David Montgomery.16 Although there remains a chasm between those who work that land and their communities, and those who live in places divorced from day-to-day exposure to farming, the concepts of stewardship have taken root throughout much of present society. The one key question posed in this chapter has been answered: yes, a land stewardship ethic exists. In fact, when one broadens the scope, one would find that land stewardship, ethical, and moral principles for protecting the land, the water, and the life they nurture is found in almost all human cultures and societies. These lessons lie not only within the teaching and research of crop, soil, and other agricultural and related sciences, but also within the religions, philosophies, and folk wisdom of many cultures. The bigger and yet-unanswered questions are (1) can these lessons be taught and brought into practice before overuse and exploitation destroy the foundation of the human food supply? and (2) can these concepts be incorporated and adopted into an even larger endeavor, the quest to create human cultures and societies that live sustainably upon the planet?


251

NOTES 1. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949). 2. Brian Fagan, The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2004). 3. Walter C. Lowdermilk, Conquest of the Land through 7,000 Years: AIB No. 99. (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service, 1953). 4. Garrett Hardin, “Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (December 13, 1968): 1243–248. 5. Lynn White, “The Historic Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” Science 155 (March 10, 1967): 1203–1207. 6. Lowdermilk, Conquest. 7. Leopold, A Sand County. 8. Lowdermilk, Conquest, 24. 9. Leopold, A Sand County. 10. Ibid., 204. 11. A few examples of these denominational statements can be found in The American Baptist “Policy Statement on Ecology,” June 1989; “Creation: Called to Care,” Statement of the Church of the Brethren 1991 Annual Conference; 70th General Convention of the Episcopal Church Resolution: “Affirm Environmental Responsibility and Establish an Environmental Stewardship Team,” 1991; the Evangelical Environmental Network’s “An Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation,” 1994; Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s “A Social Statement on Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope, and Justice,” 1993; the Mennonite Environmental Taskforce’s Stewardship of the Earth, “Resolution on the Environment and Faith Issues,” 1989; Message of His All-Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios on the Day of the Protection of the Environment, 1989; Statement of the Friends Committee on Unity with Nature, 1987; the Reformed Church in America’s “Care for the Earth: Theology and Practice,” 1982; Pope John Paul II’s “The Ecological Crisis: A Common Responsibility”; the United Methodist Church’s “Social Principle, The Natural World”; and the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association 1997 “General Resolution Earth, Air, Fire and Water.” 12. A good review of the mission of land-grant colleges and universities is Ralph D. Christy and Lionel Williamson, eds., A Century of Service: Land-Grant Colleges and Universities 1890–1990 (Edison, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1991). A nice example of some of the underlying research on stewardship education can be found in Gene Wunderlich, “Evolution of the Stewardship Idea in American Country Life,” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 17 (2004): 77–93. An excellent overview of how the missions of the Cooperative Extension Service and the Natural Resources Conservation Service shaped an American land ethic can be found in Barbara Wallace and Frank Clearfield, Stewardship, Spirituality, and Natural Resource Conservation: A Short History (Madison, WI: Social Sciences Research Institute, Natural Resources Conservation Service, 1997). 13. Thomas Berry, The Great Work: Our Way Into the Future (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2000); Matthew Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality Presented in Four Paths, Twenty-Six Themes, and Two Questions (New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2000); Paul Santmie, The Travail of Nature: The Ambiguous Ecological Promise of Christian Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1985); Rosemary Radford Reuther, Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing (New York: HarperOne, 1994). In addition, some good sources for studying the wide spectrum of theological and

252


philosophical discourse on land and environmental ethics and morality are Mary Evelyn Tucker and John A. Grim, eds., Worldviews and Ecology: Religion, Philosophy, and the Environment (Marynoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994); Roderick Frazier Nash, The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989); Richard C. Foltz, ed., Worldviews, Religion and Environment (Belmont, CA: Thomson-Wadsworth, 2003); David Kinsley, ed., Ecology and Religion: Ecological Spirituality in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995); Roger S. Gottlieb, This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2004). 14. An excellent collection of some of Wendell Berry’s essays on agriculture and care for the land is The Art of the Common-place: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry, ed. Norman Wirzbza (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 2002). 15. An excellent introduction to Wes Jackson’s thinking on agricultural sustainability and land stewardship is his New Roots for Agriculture (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1985). 16. David R. Montgomery’s Dirt: Erosion of Civilizations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007) presents a wonderful synthesis of current soil science as well as a synthesis of the practical ethical and moral reasoning that supports the practice of good soil stewardship.

RESOURCE GUIDE Web Sites Land Stewardship Project, http://www.landstewardshipproject.org/. The Land Institute, http://www.landinstitute.org/. The National Association of Conservation’s Stewardship, http://nacdnet.org/stewardship/. U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops Webpage on Environment, http://www.usccb.org/ sdwp/ejp/.


Lynn Walter is co-director of the Center for Food in Community and Culture and Rosenberg Professor of Social Change and Development at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, where she also teaches in Anthropology and Gender and Women’s Studies. Her field research in Ecuador and Denmark focused on indigenous ethnicity and gender issues, respectively. She is editor of Women’s Rights: A Global View and editor-in-chief of Women’s Issues Worldwide (6 vols.) and author of Ethnicity, Economy and the State in Ecuador. Patricia Allen is director of the University of California–Santa Cruz’s Center for Agroecology. Her work addresses issues such as labor, gender, and access to food. She is the author of Together at the Table: Sustainability and Sustenance in the American Agrifood System (2004) and editor of Food for the Future: Conditions and Contradictions of Sustainability (1993). E. Melanie DuPuis is professor of sociology at University of California–Santa Cruz. Her work focuses on the politics of food, agriculture, and environment. She is author of the book Nature’s Perfect Food and more recently co-edited a special issue of Gastronomica on the politics of food. Gail Feenstra is the food systems analyst at the University of California Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (SAREP). SAREP’s Food Systems Program encourages the development of local food systems that link farmers, consumers, and communities. Feenstra’s research and outreach includes direct marketing, farm-to-school evaluation, regional food system distribution, food systems indicators, food security, food system assessments, and, most recently, food carbon footprint analysis. Feenstra has a doctorate in

254


nutrition education from Teachers College, Columbia University with an emphasis in public health. Andrew Fiala is professor of philosophy and director of the Ethics Center at California State University–Fresno. He is the author of numerous articles and several books: The Philosopher’s Voice, Practical Pacifism, Tolerance and the Ethical Life, and What Would Jesus Really Do? His newest book is The Just War Myth. Fiala is also co-editor of the journal Philosophy in the Contemporary World. Eric J. Fitch is associate professor of environmental science and leadership and currently director of the Environmental Science Program at Marietta College. He received his doctorate at Michigan State in Resource Development (Environmental Policy). His areas of research include water policy, coastal zone management, and religion and the environment. He is an associate editor of Water Resources IMPACT, and author of the “What’s Up with Water?” column. He is the president of the Interdisciplinary Environmental Association, a member of the Board of Ohio River Basin Consortium for Research and Education (ORBCRE), and is a fellow of the East-West Center. Regan A. R. Gurung is professor of human development and psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay. Born and raised in Bombay, India, Dr. Gurung received a bachelor’s degree in psychology at Carleton College (Minnesota), and a master’s degree and doctorate in social and personality psychology at the University of Washington. He then spent three years at the University of California–Los Angeles as a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) research fellow. He has received numerous local, state, and national grants and awards for his health psychological and social psychological research on cultural differences in health, body image and impression formation, and pedagogy. Aeron Haynie is associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin– Green Bay, where she teaches British literature and interdisciplinary humanities. She has published articles on Victorian literature, pedagogy, as well as personal essays on the profession. She is co-editor of Beyond Sensation: Mary Elizabeth Braddon in Context and Exploring Signature Pedagogies: Approaches to Teaching Disciplinary Habits of Mind. Lisa Heldke is professor of philosophy and Sponberg Chair of Ethics at Gustavus Adolphus College, where she also teaches in the Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies Program. She is author of Exotic Appetities: Ruminations of a Food Adventurer (Routledge) and editor of several books, including Cooking, Eating, Thinking: Transformative Philosophies of Food (with Deane Curtin). She co-edits the journal Food, Culture and Society. JoAnn Jaffe is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Studies at the University of Regina in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. Her recent research projects include studying the effects of neoliberalization


255

and globalization on agricultural communities in Canada and the global south and the construction of food knowledge across generations of female food provisioners. Recently, JoAnn was a review editor for the global volume of the International Agricultural Assessment of Science and Technology for Development. She is a former president of the Saskatchewan Council for International Cooperation and is on the board of the Saskatchewan Population Health Evaluation and Research Unit. Esther Katz is a French anthropologist, senior scientist at the French Institute of Research for Development (IRD). She is associated with the Center for Sustainable Development of the University of Brasilia (CDS-UnB), where she is presently based. Her main research topics are ethnobiology and anthropology of food. She has done fieldwork in Mexico, the Congo, Indonesia, Laos People’s Democratic Republic, and France, and is now studying agrobiodiversity and food changes in the Brazilian Amazon. Dan La Botz is an independent scholar based in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is the author of Cesar Chavez and la Causa as well as several other books on labor unions and politics in the United States, Mexico, and Indonesia. He writes frequently for Against the Current, Labor Notes, Monthly Review, and Counterpunch and is a member of the editorial board of New Politics. He is currently writing a history of the African American community of Cincinnati, provisionally titled Struggle for Justice. Michele Micheletti holds the Lars Hiera Professorship of Political Science at Stockholm University. She has written books on corporatism, interest groups, civil society, democratic auditing, and political consumerism. Her general research focus is citizen engagement in politics. She is the author of Political Virtue and Shopping: Individuals, Consumerism, and Collective Action (Palgrave, 2003), was head guest editor of “Shopping for Human Rights” for the Journal of Consumer Policy (vol. 30, no. 3, 2007), and co-editor (with Andreas Follesdal and Dietlind Stolle) of Politics, Products, and Markets: Exploring Political Consumerism Past and Present (2003 and 2006). Currently, she heads a research project entitled “Sustainable Citizenship” funded by the Swedish Council of Research. Daniel Niles is a human geographer interested in different practical and conceptual approaches to sustainable agriculture, sustainable eating, and more convivial human-environmental relationship. He received a doctorate in 2007 from the Graduate School of Geography, Clark University, in Worcester, Massachusetts, and now works at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature in Kyoto, Japan. Larry Smith is professor of social change and development at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay. His professional activity focuses on issues of sustainability, and he has been active in small-scale agriculture for more than

256


60 years. Though trained in narrow market-admiring economics, his interdisciplinary academic career has emphasized melding anthropology, biology, sociology, and history as context for making sense of economics. Dietlind Stolle is associate professor in Political Science at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. She conducts research and has published on voluntary associations, trust, institutional foundations of social capital, and new forms of political participation, particularly political consumerism. She is also the co-principal investigator of the unique longitudinal Comparative Youth Survey (CYS) as well as associate director of the US Citizenship, Involvement and Democracy (CID) survey. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming, for example, in the journals British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, International Review of Political Science, Political Behaviour, and Political Psychology as well as in various edited volumes. She has also co-edited a book on social capital and one on political consumerism. William Van Lopik is a geography and sustainable development instructor at the College of Menominee Nation in northern Wisconsin. He previously worked for an international development nongovernmental organization in El Salvador. His research interests are in the areas of political ecology, land tenure in Mesoamerica, indigenous knowledge systems, and the various perspectives of sustainability. Jennifer Wilkins is a senior extension associate in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University. Her work focuses on how the food and agriculture system affects public health, environmental sustainability, and community well-being. She directs the Cornell Farm-to-School Program and the Farmers Market Nutrition Program. She recently joined the Chefs Collaborative Board of Overseers and is a guest lecturer at the Universita di Scienze Gastronomiche (University of Gastronomic Sciences) established by Slow Food in Pollenzo, Italy.

Index

Abalimi Bezekhaya (Xhosa), 161 Acres U.S.A., 77–78 ADM (Archer Daniels Midland), 123 African Americans, 80n24, 176, 200; food security, 4, 213; meat and poultry workers, xiii, 33–34; poverty, 33; racial discrimination, 33 agrarian populism, 9 Agricultural Justice Project, 10 Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA) (California), 42 agricultural subsidies, 6, 10, 36 agriculture, alternative agriculture, 8, 19, 41, 53; artisanal agriculture, 76–78; civic agriculture, 19, 126; communitysupported agriculture, 11, 12, 17, 20–22, 73, 74, 126–27, 157; corporate agriculture, 33, 41, 54, 96; export agriculture, 107, 110; industrial agriculture, 9, 13, 40, 69, 74, 76, 77, 86, 96, 110, 122, 141, 143, 150, 227–29, 229–31, 233, 235, 237, 238, 244, 247; local and regional agriculture, xv, 78, 88, 107, 127–28, 133; multifunctionality of, xiv, 11, 108, 143; organic agriculture, xiv, 8, 12, 13, 19, 23–24; peasant agriculture, 53; productionist paradigm, 68; traditional agriculture, 166, 204–6, 230, 237, 244–45; sustainable agriculture, 8, 9, 11, 40, 53, 54, 86, 184–85, 206, 250; urban agriculture, 11, 13, 73, 74–75, 130–31, 161–62

agrobiodiversity, 141, 201, 207 agroecology, vii, 54 Ahwahnee community design guidelines, 130 Allen, Patricia, 133, 219 Allen, Will, 74 alternative agrifood, 3–16, 18, 73–78; alternative agrifood movement, xii–xiv, xv, 17; alternative agrifood networks (AFN), 73–78; alternative agrifood systems, 3–16 American Farmland Trust, loss of farmland, 124 American Indians. See Native Americans American Public Health Association, 123 Americans with Disabilities Act, 218 Animal Liberation Front, 228, 237 animal welfare, xxi, 90–95, 101, 113, 227–38; animal husbandry, xxi, 227–28, 230, 236, 238; animal-centered approach, xxi, 233–38; anthropocentric approach, xxi, 231–33; ethical vegetarianism, 229–31; factory farmed animals, xxi, 227–29, 238; European Union, xxi, 91, 227; “five freedoms,” xxi, 91, 227; industrial agriculture, xxi, 227–28 animal welfare, animal-centered perspectives, 233–38, animal rights, xxi, 87, 91, 228–29, 237–38; Aristotelian approach, xxi, 235–37; Bentham, Jeremy, 234, 235; Darwin, Charles, 233;

258 animal welfare, animal-centered perspectives (continued) Darwinian approach, 233–34; Nussbaum, Martha, 230, 236–37; Regan, Tom, 229–30, 237; Rollin, Bernard, 236–37; utilitarian approaches, 234–35 animal welfare, anthropocentric perspectives, 231–33, Cartesian view, 231–32; Darwinian approach, 232; Kant, Immanuel, 232, 237; Mill, John Stuart, 233–34; utilitarian approaches, 333 anti-slavery campaigns, xiii, 9, 89 Armour, 37 artisanal agrifood, 23, 29n22; artisanal bakeries, 109–12; lardo, 147–49; raw milk cheeses, 23; Salatin, Joel, xix, 76–77 Australian aboriginal religion, stewardship, 247 Austria, fair trade towns, 90; market share of organic food, 93 Awajun (Peru), changes in agrifood practices, 203; quality of traditional diet, 203 Ayurvedic medicine, 181–83, Charaka Samhita, 181; curative plants, 181; importance of fresh, seasonal produce, 176, 182, 184; Sushruta Samhita, 181 Baier, Annette, 217 Bangladesh, Grameen Bank, 61; Learning Circle, 61; PARI Development Trust, 52, 61 Barham, Elizabeth, 127, 128 Batalla, Bonfil, Mexico Profundo, 140 Belgium, 53; fair trade towns, 90 Belize, 206; Ketchi Maya and Garifuna communities, 58–59; rural development, 58–59; SATIIM, 52, 58–59; Traditional Native American Farmers Association, 206 Bell, Michael, 19 Bellah, Robert, 19 Bentham, Jeremy, 234–35 Berry, Thomas, 250 Berry, Wendell, viii, 250 Bettelheim, Bruno, 195 biodiversity, viii, xvi; endangered species, 5, 90, 94, 124, 231; heritage varieties, xvi, 110, 200–201; Heritage Wheat Project, 110; landraces, 111, 117n73; L’Association des Croqueurs de Pommes (Apple Munchers Association), 200;

Index loss of, xi, 73, 85, 203, 231; Marine Stewardship Council, 90, 94; Native Seeds/Search, 206; Navdanya, xviii, 209n33; preservation, xviii, 53, 57, 59, 88, 90, 94, 144, 150, 164, 166, 191, 200–202, 206, 207, 209n33; Reseau Semences Paysannes (Farm Seed Network), 200–201; Rio de Janeiro Convention on Biodiversity, 200, 202; seed banks, 150, 206; Shiva, Vandana, xvii–xviii, 73; Slow Food’s Ark of Taste and presidia, 111, 116n63, 148–49, 164, 201 biofuels, 10, 54, 109 biopiracy, xvii, 206 Block, Daniel, 26 body mass index (BMI), 177 Born, Brandon and Purcell, Mark, “Avoiding the Local Trap,” 133 bovine spongiform encephalopathy (“mad cow” disease), 85, 199, 200 boycotts and buycotts, xiii, 10, 86, 87, 89, 90, 93; percentage of consumers, 10, 92 Brazil, changes in indigenous Amazonian agrifood practices, 204; Guarani, 204; heritage labeling of agrifood, 204; National Institute of the Historical and Artistic Heritage, 204; obesity rate, 200; place of origin labeling and certification, 202; Slow Food, 201; Via Campesina, 144; Xavante, 204 British Oxfam, fair trade campaigns, 89 British Soil Association, organic label, 88 Brown, Jerry, 41–42 Buddhism, 247; Ayurvedic medicine, 181; ethical vegetarianism, 230 Burger King, consumer campaigns, 87; worker campaigns, xiii, 37, 47n17; Byrne, David, 227 California, Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA), 42; Brown, Jerry, 41–42; Chez Panisse, 5; Chavez, Cesar, 41; community gardens, 130; CSAs, 24, 25; Deukmejian, George, 42; Fairview Gardens, 130; farm size and market share, 37–38; farmers markets, 24, 126; farmworkers, 39, 41, 48n29, 124; farmto-institution, 129; foie gras, 227; food policy councils, 18, 24, 25, 133, 139; grape boycott, 86; Huerta, Dolores, 9; labor laws, 42, 44; local product labeling programs, 127–28; local food,

Index 23–24, 26; loss of farmland, 124; New Urbanism, 130–31; organic agriculture, xiv, 8, 24, 48n37; pesticide residue, 5; school nutrition, 11; United Farm Workers, xiii, 9–10, 36–37, 40–42; University of California Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, 125–26; University of California–Santa Cruz Food Policy Working Group, 25; urban agriculture, 130; water shortages, 124 California Certified Organic Farmers, 8 California Institute for Rural Studies, improvement of workers’ conditions, 40–41 Canada, adequacy of local food supply, 131; cohousing, 162; community kitchens, 157–60; farm animal welfare certification, 88, 91; Food Democracy Network Society (British Columbia), 96; fair trade towns, 90; Heritage Wheat Project, 110; IFOAM affiliates, 88; Micah Challenge, 55; NAFTA, 36, 203; Native Americans, 103, 202, 247; place-based food labeling, 128; Red Fife wheat, 109–13, 116n72; Slow Food, 111; Toronto Food Policy Council, 11, 70–71, 133 Canadian Wheat Board, 111 cannibalism, Hansel and Gretel, 195–96; The Road, 191–93 capital, xii, xiii, xiv, 35, 51, 52, 63, 108, 160, 228, access to credit, 53, 61–63, 150, 160; distinction and cultural capital, 102, 104, 107, 111, 112, 165, 233, 238; equity, 51–63; human capital, xii; natural capital, xv, 52; social capital, xii, 21, 25, 29n16, 63, 164 Carey, Henry, 8 Cargill, 8, 123 Carruthers, Peter, 231 Carson, Rachel, 8; Silent Spring, 8, 88 certification of agrifood products. See labeling and certification of agrifood products charity paradigm of food security, 215–17; conception of personhood, 217–18 Chavez, Cesar, 9 Chez Panisse, 75 Chicago Food Policy Advisory Council (CFPAC), 71 Chikramane, Poornima, 60

259 children, xv, xx, xxi, 14, 57, 133, 156, 160, 220–22; alternative agrifood movement and child welfare, 57, 61, 86, 89, 90, 94–95, 126, 128, 159, 160, 161–62, 206–7; child labor, 39, 60, 86, 89, 90, 94–95, 197n32; children’s health, 4, 5, 12, 14, 39, 123, 177, 213, 222; cohousing, 162–64; feeding children, xx, 155–56, 158, 159, 160, 161–62, 165n3, 177, 189, 195, 196; food insecure and hungry children, 3, 4, 80n35, 213; family meals, 165, 177; farm-to-school programs, xv, 11, 12, 25, 126, 128–29, 223n6; generations, 155–68, 196, 217, 249, 250; Green Belt Movement, xviii, 51, 52, 57–58; reproduction, 156, 165; social support for children and childcare, xx, 11, 38, 61, 126, 156, 158, 160, 162–63, 219 China, IFOAM affiliates, 88; Traditional Chinese Medicine, 178, 180–81; traditional Chinese nutritional philosophy, xix, 67, 176, 178, 182–84 Christianity, 52, 55–56; dominion over nature, 232, 247; stewardship of nature, 230–31, 236, 245–47, 249–50 Churchill, Winston, 69 Cittaslow International, 92 class, xii, 4, 7, 10, 102, 157, 161, 162, 165, 200, 203, 216; distinction and cultural capital, 104, 107, 111, 112, 165, 233, 238; farmer income, xiii, 9, 12, 19, 21, 22, 73, 95, 128, 132, 143, 207; farmworker income, xiii, 6, 33, 38, 43, 85, 89; food supports for low-income households, 4, 11–13, 21, 55, 71, 74, 126, 130, 131, 160, 214, 217, 219, 224n17; land and capital equity, xiii, xvi, 6, 9, 21, 51–63, 122, 142–43, 145–46, 150, 160–61, 175, 202, 204, 206–7, 246; low-income households, 4, 6, 7, 11, 52, 69, 104, 124, 156, 157–60, 163–64, 200, 202; low-income women, 156, 157–60; political consumers, 94; anti-poverty and social welfare programs, 4, 10, 11, 128, 214, 217, 219, 224n15 climate, 3, 54, 243; carbon emissions, 57, 125; carbon farming, 78; carbon footprint, 77, 231; carbon sequestration, 57, 78; carbon sinks, 122;

260 climate (continued) change, 3, 5–6, 54, 69, 72, 78, 94, 230; food security, 3; meat production impacts on, 5–6, 94, 96, 230; reforestation, 57–58 Coalition of Immokalee Workers, xiii, 10, 15n17, 37 Coca-Cola, 3, 192; consumer campaigns, 86–87 cohousing, 162–64; childcare, 163; ecovillages, 163; gender, 162–64; generation, 163–64; Munksga˚rd, 163 collective kitchens. See community kitchens Colombia, 86 comedores populares. See community kitchens commensality, 150, 155–56, 164–67, 177; cohousing, 162–64; commensal circles, 168, 188; community kitchens, 158–60; convivia, 149, 153n33, 164–65; conviviality, 104, 106–7, 164–65, 194; family meals, 104, 150, 166, 177; Italy, 165–66; Slow Food, 150, 164–66 Common Agricultural Policy (EU), 10–11 The commons, enclosures, 74, 145–46, 160; global commons, 163, 164, 167–68; knowledge, xvi–xix, 113, 146; patented seeds, 112; proprietary knowledge, xvii, 213; seeds, 109–12, 113; stewardship of the commons, 156, 158, 160, 162; “The Tragedy of the Commons,” 245, 249; water, 5, 145, 247–60 Community Food Projects (CFP), 11 community-coalition organization, xiv–xvi community food security (CFS), 7, 11, 122, 125–26, 157, 214, 222 Community Food Security Coalition, xv, 71, 222, 223n3 community gardens, xv, 12, 13, 73, 74–75, 126, 130–31, 160–62, 166; Asian American gardeners, 175; Asian British gardeners, 160; enclosures, 73, 145–46, 160; gender, xx, 160–62; generation, 160, 162; New York, 74; Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, 166; pesticide use, 160; school gardens, 11, 128; South Africa, 161–62; Tohono O’odham, 205–6; United Kingdom, 160–61; women as social actors, 160–62; Xhosa food gardens, 161

Index community kitchens, xx, 157–60; Canada, 157–58, 160; gender, xx, 157–60; generation, 157–60; Peru, 158–60; political critiques, 159–60; Sahwanya Community Kitchen, 158; women as social actors, 157–60 community supported agriculture (CSA), 11, 12, 17, 20–22, 73, 74, 126–27, 157; access to land, 21; Core Groups, 21; farmer income and benefits, 21; governance, 21–22, 26; number in U.S., 127 ConAgra, 37, 123 Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), 123–24 consumer campaigns, Burger King, 87; Coca-Cola, 86–87; Dole, 89; Hershey, 89; Kentucky Fried Chicken, 87; M&M–Mars, 89; McDonald’s, 87, 92; Nestle, 86, 89, 90; Wal-Mart, 89; Wendy’s, 87 consumers, boycotts, xiii, 10, 86–96; buycotts, xiii, 86–90, 92–93, 95; coproducers, 92, 149–50, 164–65; demographics of political consumers, 94; political consumers, xiii, xvii, 86–96; relationship with farmers and producers, xiv–xv, 12, 20–27, 71, 74, 77–78, 88, 89–90, 107, 110, 126–27, 162; taste education, 87, 92, 147, 149, 153n33, 164, 201 conventional agrifood trends, xi, delocalization, 199–200, 206; economic concentration, xi, xiv, 6, 9, 18, 35, 36, 37, 47n22, 108, 110, 121–23, 160, 161; energy use, xi, 78, 121, 125; globalization, xiii, xiv, xv, xvi, 5, 35, 53–54, 73, 85–86, 87, 91, 94–96, 121–22, 126, 145, 150, 152, 199, 206, 209n33; industrialization of agrifood, xi, 34, 37, 74, 87, 91, 94, 96, 101, 103, 105, 121–22, 148, 150, 199; productionist paradigm, 68; standardization and homogenization of food, 74, 102, 105, 149–50; rural outmigration, xi, xiii, 69, 110, 164, 199, 200, 203 cooking, 142, 150, 156, 183, 201, 233, collective cooking, 157–60, 162–63; culinary knowledge, 92, 105, 201; gender, xx, 57, 156–68, 168n3; generation, xx, 164–68; processed foods, 105, 141; time pressures, 57, 156, 164

Index Cooperative Extension, 127, 248, 250 cooperatives, 12, 13, 17, 24, 28n2, 61, 73, 95, 110, 151, 160, 163; Good Natured Family Farmers Cooperative, 13; Organic Valley Family of Farms, 130; social impact of fair trade on coffee coops, 95; Prairie Red Fife Wheat Organic Growers Co-operative, 111 coresponsibility paradigm of food security, 213, 220–22; relational conception of personhood, 220–21 corporations, 106, 122–23; agrifood labeling and certification schemes, 88–90; as persons, 68 Counihan, Carole, 165 “CSA across the Nation,” 21 C. S. Mott Group at Michigan State University, 132 Cuba, urban agriculture, 13, 75 Cudahy, 37 culture, agrifood knowledge, 103–4, 106, 107, 108, 148, 156, 175; Ayurvedic, xix, 181–83; definitions, 176–77; economic concentration, xi, xiv, 6, 9, 18, 35, 36, 37, 47n22, 108, 110, 121–23, 160, 161; food community and culture, xvii, xix, 74, 92, 107, 150, 164, 165, 166, 177; heritage agrifood, 164–66, 184, 202; homogenization of agrifood, 74, 102, 147–50; Hmong, xix, 175, 186; Mexico, 140; relationship to agrifood practices, xiii, 8; preservationist and prefigurative strategies, xviii–xix, 142, 150–51; traditional Chinese, xix, 180–84; Western, 179–80 culture jamming, xix, 87, 97n5 Dahl, Robert, xvii, 78; On Democracy, 69–70 Danish Association of Sustainable Communities, 163 Darwin, Charles, 233; Descent of Man, 233 debt relief, 56 Declaration of Atitlan, xvi, 167 de Gaulle, Charles, 67, 69, 76 DeGrazia, David, 234 Del Monte, certifying products as organic, fair trade, and sustainable, 94 democracy, 107, 157; consequences, 69–70; Dahl, Robert, xvii, 69–70, 78; democratic deficit, xi; discursive

261 democracy, 19; earth democracy, xviii, 72–73; economic democracy, 45, 69; food democracy, xvii, 67–78, 95–96, 133; Food Democracy Network, 96; food security, 222; knowledge, vxii; market governance, xv, 19, 23; prerequisites, xvii, 69–70; Shiva, Vandana, xvii–xviii, 73; workplace democracy, 45 democratic socialism, 35, 45–46 Denmark, cohousing, 162–64; Danish Association of Sustainable Communities, 163 Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) Council of Food Policy Advisors (CFPA) (U.K.), 72 de Soto, Hernando, 52 Deukmejian, George, 42 diet, 4, 57, 64; change in indigenous diets, 166–67, 177, 199–207; class differences, 102, 104, 124, 156, 200; diseases related to diet, 4, 69, 80n24, 123–24, 177, 200; family and culture, 103, 175–76, 177–79, 179–85; homogenization, 102, 147 Diler, Shabana, 60 Diouf, Jacques, 146 Dole, certifying products as organic, fair trade, and sustainable, 94; consumer campaign, 89 DuPont, 123 DuPuis, E. Melanie, 25, 26, 167 Earth Summit (1992), 8 economic concentration of agrifood, xi, xiv, 6, 9, 18, 35, 36, 37, 47n22, 108, 110, 121–23, 160, 161 ecovillages, 157, 163–64, 166, 168; gender, 162–64; generation, 162–64; market share of organic food, 94; Munksga˚rd, 163 Eggers, Dave, What is the What, xix, 188, 193–95 elders, 4, 158, 160, 165, 166, 182, 188, 191, 206, 249, 250; agrifood knowledge of past generations and loss of it, 103, 156, 158, 160, 161–62, 166–67, 177, 184, 195, 206 enclosures, xvii, 74, 145–46, 160 energy efficiency of agrifood production, ratio of food calories to energy input, 125

262 environment, 5–6, 7–9, 10, 57–59, 59–61, 72–73, 188–90, 243–50; biodiversity, xviii, 73, 111, 117n73, 150, 200, 206, 209n33; climate change, 3, 5–6, 54, 69, 72, 78, 94, 230; carbon emissions, 57, 125; deforestation and reforestation, xviii, 5–6, 51, 52, 57–58, 85; earth democracy, xviii, 72–73; ecovillages, 163–64; Green Belt Movement, xviii, 51, 52, 57–58; indigenous management of environment, 57–59; meat production effects, 5–6, 94, 96, 230; natural resources depletion, 5, 85, 124–25, 243–44; pesticides, xi, 5, 6, 8, 10, 38, 73, 86, 88, 102, 105, 124, 160, 191, 201; stewardship, xxi, 243–50; sustainable fisheries, 90, 94 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 39 Europe, 17; CSAs, 74, 127; agrifood workers, 42; farm animal welfare, 91, 227–28; local food, 200–202; participation rate in boycotts and buycotts, 89–90, 92–93; percent vegetarians, 93; stewardship, 245, 247 European Union (EU), artisanal agrifood, 23, 29n22, 147–48; Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), 10, 11; pasteurization, 148; farm animal welfare, 91; “five freedoms” for farm animals, xxi, 91, 227; local food networks, 107; market governance, 23; multifunctionality of agriculture, xiv, 11; organic agrifood, 13; protection of markets, 23; rural development, xiv, 11, 17, 18; support for organic and fair trade agri-food, 13, 89, 92–94; support for small farms, xiv, 23; place of origin labeling, 23, 107; Treaty of Amsterdam on animal welfare, 227 factory farming, xxi, 87–88, 91, 228–30, 232, 234–36, 238 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), 39 fair trade, xiii, 9, 89–90, 94, British Oxfam campaign, 89; certification and labeling schemes, 9, 89, 92; governance, 19, 22–23; fair trade towns, 90; Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO-I), 89, 95; Global Exchange campaign, 48n37, 89; Max Havellar label, 89; sales rates, 9, 13, 94;

Index socioeconomic impact of fair trade, 22–23, 89–90, 95; USA Domestic Fair Trade Working Group, 9 Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO-I), 95; standards for fair trade label, 89 Fairview Gardens, 130 famine, 213; democracy, 68; Hansel and Gretel, 195; Sudan, 194, 196; What is the What, 194, 196 farmers, alternative agrifood, 20–27; CSAs, 12, 17, 20–22, 25, 74, 126–27, 157; incomes, xiii, 6, 9, 12, 19, 20, 21, 22, 73, 95, 128, 132, 143, 207; landholding, 6, 53–54; peasant farmers in Mexico, 139–40, 144; relationship to consumers, iv–xv, 12, 20–27, 71, 74, 77–78, 88, 89–90, 107, 110, 126–27, 162; Via Campesina, 52–55, 142–47 farmers markets, xix, 11, 12, 73, 107, 110, 126, 201; food stamps, 126; governance, 20, 22, 24, 26; “guerilla farmers markets,” 24; support for low-income households, 12, 126; number in U.S., 12, 126; WIC support for, 11 Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), 37 farm-to-institution programs, 25, 126, 129; farm-to-college, 12, 129; farm-to-school, xv, 11, 12, 25, 126, 128–29, 223n6; number of U.S. farm-to-school programs, 128 Farmworker Association of Florida (FWAF), xiii farmworkers, 33–35, 37–42, demographics, 33–34; exclusion from the protection of the law, 34, 36, 39; farmworkers income, xiii, 6, 33, 38, 85, 89; health, 34–35; living conditions, 6; pesticide exposure, 6; strategies for improving conditions, 39–46; working conditions, 6, 33–35 fast food, 15n17, 46, 86–87, 93, 105, 147, 165, 176–77, 187, 201, 203 Featherstone, Pat, Soil for Life, 161 Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), 39 Federici, Sylvia, 161 Fife, David and Fife, Jane, Red Fife wheat, 110 Finland, fair trade towns, 90 Fischler, Claude, “gastro-anomy,” 199

Index Fonte, Maria, 107 food, 105–9, 177–79; bases of food preferences, 69, 177–79; cocina novoandina, 202; cuisines, 104, 147, 148, 156, 164, 165, 166, 177, 202; food in literature, xix, 187–96; “hot” and “cold” foods, 180; indigenous foods and crops, 58, 164, 166–67, 200–207; metaphors, 74, 187; price, 4, 13, 104, 124; quality of, xv, xvii, 4, 12, 19, 23, 29n22, 41, 43, 54, 76, 96, 101–2, 104, 105; qualities, xiv, xvii, 76, 101–2, 104, 105–13 food aid and assistance, 4, 159, 204; federal commodity programs, 129, 160, 205; foreign aid, xvi, 52, 56; food supports for low-income people, 4, 11, 12, 13, 21, 55, 71, 74, 126, 130, 131, 160, 214, 217, 219, 224n17 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 4, 85, 142, 145, 146 food community, xvi, xix, 92, 164, 165, 166 food democracy, 67–78; food policy, xvi, 7, 9–11; food policy councils, xv, 11, 18, 23–27, 71–72, 80n35, 132, 133; agrifood politics, 24, 26, 27, 45–46, 68, 86–96, 97n5, 108–9, 127, 139–51, 165, 187–88; prerequisites, xvii, 69–70 Food Democracy Network (British Colombia, Canada), 96 food deserts, 124 Food First. See Institute for Food and Development Policy Food Guide Pyramid, 131, 178–80; history of, 179 Food Guide to Healthy Eating (Canada), 131 foodies, vii, xv food miles, 122 food policy councils, xv, 11, 18, 23–27, 132; California, 18, 23–25, 133; London, 71–72, 80n35; New York, 18, 25; state food policy councils, 133; Toronto, 11, 70–71, 133 food policy groups. See food policy councils Food Project (Boston), 130, 222; community food security, 222 food safety, xii, xiv, 5, 7, 10, 73, 101, 109, 124; food-borne illness, 5, 121, 124; impact of food safety laws on local food, 24, 148; pasteurization, 148; raw milk cheeses, 23, 148–49; sanitation legislation, 23, 24, 147, 148

263 food security and insecurity, xi, xvi, xviii, xix, xx, xxi, 4, 7, 10, 11, 13, 51, 53, 57–58, 63, 68, 70–75, 86, 124, 125, 130, 133, 144, 151, 156, 158, 160, 166–68, 213–22; African Americans, 4, 213; community food security (CFS), xv, 7, 11, 71, 121, 122, 125–26, 157, 214, 222; Community Food Security Coalition, xv, 71, 222, 223n3; definition, 4, 7, 11, 154n41, 214; elders, 4; female-headed households, 4, 213; global south, xi, xvi, 4, 51, 63, 95; Latinos, 4; Native Americans, 166–67; people with disabilities xx–xxi, 4, 214–15; United States, v, 4; women and children, xviii, 4, 51, 57–58, 156, 158, 160, 213 foodshed, xiv, xxii (note 10) food sovereignty, xvi, 53–54, 72, 142–46, 167; food sovereignty movement, 9, 53–54, 144, 146, 152; indigenous sovereignty, xvi, 167; Indigenous Seed Sovereignty Network, 206; Via Campesina, 53–54, 142–46. See also hunger food studies, viii, ix, xii, 11, 185 Forum on Food Sovereignty, 144, 146, 152 Fox, Matthew, 250 France, appellations d’orgine, 201–2; Champagne, 201; fair trade towns, 90; food and democracy, 67; IFOAM affiliates, 88; L’Association des Croqueurs de Pommes, 200; percent vegetarian, 93; Reseau Semences Paysannes, 200 Francione, Gary L., 237 frankenfoods, 86 Free Range Studio, The Meatrix, 87 Freire, Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 78 garbage and waste, 59–61, 133, 141; recycling and composting, 61, 76, 85, 128, 161; wastepickers, 52, 59–61 Garden City Harvest (Montana), community food security, 222 gastro-anomy, 199 gender, xii, xx, 4, 55, 61, 104, 155–68, 177, 187, 197n5; African American women, xiii, 33–34; birthrate, 165; childcare, 155–56, 160, 162–63, 189, 195, 220; cohousing, 162–64; community gardens, 160–62;

264 gender (continued) community kitchens, 157–60; fathers, 156, 163, 190, 191–95, 197n30; food provisioning and cooking, xx, 57, 155, 156, 157–62, 163, 165, 166, 189, 193, 195; food security in female-headed households, 4, 213; gender equality, 53, 162, 163, 166; gender inequality, 4, 51, 52, 165, 168n3, 192, 197n32; Green Belt Movement, xviii, 52, 57–58; male breadwinner family, xx; mothers, xx, 4, 108–9, 155, 156, 157, 159, 163, 165, 176, 178, 188, 189, 191, 193, 195, 196, 220; Navdanya, xviii, 209n33; practical and strategic gender interests, 156, 159–61; reproduction, 156, 157, 165, 178; Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey Women’s University (SNDTWU), 59–60; Slow Food, 164–66; support programs for women and children, 11, 38, 126; Wastepickers’ Association, 51, 52, 59–61; women’s access to land and capital, 52, 61, 161; women’s activism, xx, 51, 57–58, 59–61, 76, 157–62, 231; women agrifood workers, xiii, xx, 33–34, 59–61; women as political consumers, 94, 231; women’s empowerment, xviii, 52, 53, 55, 57–58, 59–61, 161 General Enclosure Act of 1845 (United Kingdom), 165 genetically modified organisms (GMOs), xvii, 7, 20, 86, 88, 191, 201, 206–7, 209n33 geographic indications. See labeling and certification of agrifood products Germany, IFOAM affiliates, 88; labor union organization, 42, 45; market share of organic food, 94; migrant workers, 42 Gerrefi, Gerry, 26 Global Exchange, 48n37, 89 globalization, xiii, xiv, xv, xvi, 5, 35, 53–54, 73, 85–86, 87, 91, 94–96, 121–22, 126, 145, 150, 152, 199, 206, 209n33 Global North, xviii, xix, 8, 10, 54, 55, 56, 95, 96; hunger, xi, 13; overconsumption, 5, 54, 95 Global South, xiii, xiv, xvi, xviii, xix, 8, 10, 23, 36, 56, 139–51; access to markets, xiv, 23, 95; alternative

Index agrifood movement, 9, 13, 19, 51–63, 75, 89, 95, 139–51; climate change, 3; food sovereignty, xvi; hunger, xi, 4, 7, 13, 96; migration, xiii; poverty, xi; underconsumption, 95; urbanization, xiii Gold Kist, 37 Go London, 72 Goodman, David, 25 Good Natured Family Farmers Cooperative, 13 Grameen Bank, 61, 62 Great Depression, 9, 74, 179, 248 Green Belt Movement, International, xviii; Kenya, xviii, 51, 52, 57–58; Maathai, Wangari, xviii, 57 Green Consumer’s Supermarket Shopping Guide, 87 Growing Power, 74 Guarani Indians (Brazil), changes in agrifood practices, 204 Guatemala, Declaration of Atitlan, xvi Hardin, Garrett, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” 245 Hartman Group, 125 Hassenein, Neva, 19 Hays-Mitchell, Maureen, 158 health, viii, xv, xvii, xix, 3, 4, 7, 8, 11, 14, 52, 54, 57, 68, 70, 72, 93–94, 96, 121, 125, 177–78, 200; alternative agrifood programs, 13, 76, 126, 158, 159, 203; antibiotic resistant disease, organisms, 123; CAFOS risks, 123; changes in indigenous diets, 166–67, 177, 200, 202, 205–7; cultural prescriptions, 179–85, 205; diet-related illnesses, 4, 69, 80n24, 123–24, 177, 200; farm-to-school programs, 11, 12, 25, 128; farmers and agrifood workers, 6, 21, 22, 33, 34, 39, 40, 43, 44, 52, 60, 124; food insecurity and malnutrition, 4, 213; food-borne illness, 5, 121, 124, 238; health care, 21, 22, 33, 35, 38, 39, 40, 42, 54, 57, 61, 62, 124, 163; impact of diet, 4, 88, 91, 123, 166–67, 177–78, 200, 202, 203; organic agrifood, 88 Heffernan, William, 122–23 Heinberg, Richard, 125 Hendrickson, Mary, 122–23 Heritage Wheat Project (Canada), 110 Hershey, consumer campaigns, 89

Index Hinduism, dietary restrictions, 176; ethical vegetarianism, 183, 230; Laws of Manu, 183; stewardship, 247 Hmong Americans, xix, 175, 184; farmers markets, xix, 175 home, xx, 24, 59, 129, 130–31, 155–68; commensality, 150, 155–56, 164–67, 177; gender interests and responsibilities, xx, 59, 155–68; generational interests and responsibilities, xx, 155–68, 249, 250; relational concept, xx, 155–56, 168 Howard, Sir Albert, An Agricultural Testament, 8 Huerta, Delores, 9 Humane Society, 91, 227, 228, 239n6 human rights, 9, 34, 51–54, 73, 213, 218–20; immigrants, 34; Universal Declaration of Human Rights, xi, xix–xx, 54, 218; U.S. Bill of Rights, 218 hunger, 4, 13; low food security, 213–14; number of hungry people, xi, 4. See also food security and insecurity IBP, 37 immigrants, xiii, 33–46, 48n37, 53, 140, 158, 160, 203; agrifood traditions, xix, 175–85, 203; farmworkers, xiii, 6, 33–36, 37–39; low wages, 33, 34; meat packers and poultry processors, 33–34, 42–44; social exclusion and racial discrimination against, 33–34, 43; poverty, 33–34; repression and lack of rights, 34 India, 86, 206; Ayurvedic nutritional philosophy, xix, 176, 178, 181–82, 184; food and democracy, 67; IFOAM affiliates, 88; Navdanya, xviii, 209n33; Shiva, Vandana, xvii–xviii, 73, 204n33; Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey Women’s University, 59–60; stewardship, 247; Via Campesina, 144; Wastepickers Association, 51, 52, 60–61 indigenous management of resources, 58–59; SATIIM, 52, 58–59; Indigenous Seed Sovereignty Network, 206 Indonesia, Via Campesina, 144–45 Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First), 54, 143 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 230

265 International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), 8; organic labeling standards, 88 International Labor Organization (ILO), 85, 89 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 10, 36, 146; structural adjustment programs, 10, 36 International Union of Forest Research Organizations, 57 Iowa, 47n22, 132–33; impact of local agrifood systems on economic development, 132; State level food policy council, 133; Iowa Place-Based Food Project, 150 Ireland, fair trade towns, 90 Islam, 183; dietary restrictions, 183; Halal, 183; stewardship, 246 Italy, birthrate, 165; commensality, 165; convenience foods, 92, 147, 165, 201; fair trade towns, 90; family meals, 165; gender, 165; generation, 165; lardo, 147–49; local wines, 147; Slow Food, 92, 116n63, 147–48, 164, 165, 201; University of Gastronomic Sciences, 201 Jackson, Wes, 250 Jainism, ethical vegetarianism, 230 Japan, CSAs, 74, 127; IFOAM affiliates, 88; organic agrifood, 13; Teikei, 74; urban agriculture, 75 Jefferson, Thomas, 68, 76 Judaism, dietary restrictions, 183; Kashrut, 183; kosher, 183; stewardship, 246 justice, viii, 25–26, 56, 61–62, 72–73, 107, 124, 157, 167, 168, 213, 215–22, 249, 250; Agricultural Justice Project, 10; agrifood justice, 10, 25–26, 89–90, 162, 213; capacities perspective, 219; social justice, 9, 19, 25, 53, 76, 86, 89–90, 97n5, 107, 121, 124, 133, 157, 214, 246 Kaba, Christina, Powerlines Project, 161 Kansas, Good Natured Family Farmers Cooperative, 13 Kant, Immanuel, xxi, 232, 237 Karve, Bharat Ratna Maharshi, 59 Kentucky Fried Chicken, 15n17, 87 Kenya, Greenbelt Movement, xviii Ketchi Maya and Garifuna communities (Belize), indigenous management of environment and resources, 58–59

266 Ki-Moon, Ban, Secretary General of the United Nations, 56 Kingsolver, Barbara, 194; Prodigal Summer, xix, 188–90 Kirschenmann, Fred, 122 Kittay, Eva Feder, xx, 165–66, 217, 220 Klindienst, Patricia, cultural heritage gardening, 184 Kloppenburg Jr., Jack, Hendrickson, John, and Stevenson, G. W., “Coming in to the Foodshed,” xxiin10 knowledge, xvi–xix, 101–13, 199–207, 250; centralization of, 105; discursive, 103, 105, 108; embodied, 103, 105, 165n3; expanding of producers and consumers, 107–9, 162; indigenous, xvii–xviii, 51, 199–207; of the commons, xviii, 113; local, xviii, 11, 55, 103, 105, 202, 204; loss of, 107, 148, 155, 164; practical, xviii, 103, 105, 107, 108, 112; proprietary, xvii, 102, 113; rejuvenation of cultural, xvi–xix, 107, 164–65, 200–207; sharing, xvii, xviii, 51, 113; traditional cultural, xix, 54, 103–4, 107–8, 164, 201, 202, 209n33, 244, 246; transparency, xiv, xvii, 19, 20, 22, 77, 80n35, 88, 130 knowledge-intensification shift, xvii, 54, 102, 104–5, 107, 108, 112–13; artisanal agrifood and traditional culinary knowledge, xvii, 54, 102, 104–5, 107, 108, 112–13, 200–207; technical knowledge of conventional agrifood system, 102, 104–5, 108, 207 Korea, Via Campesina, 144 Kroger, 123 labeling and certification of agrifood products, appellations d’origine, 201, 202, 207n9; business schemes, 88; certification process (cahier des charges), 202; Demeter biodynamic label, 88; fair trade, xvii, 19, 88, 89–90, 92, 94; Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO-I), 89; farm animal welfare, 91–92; governance, 23; heritage labeling, xvii; organic, 22, 88–89, 92, 108; place or country of origin labeling (geographic indications), xvii, 201, 202, 207n7; political consumerist schemes, 88; standardization as a result

Index of certification, 108; sustainable seafood, xvii, 88, 90, 94 labor, xiii, 33–46; African-Americans, xiii, 33–34; child labor, 39, 60, 86, 89, 90, 94–95, 197n32; farmworkers, xiii, xiv, 6, 10, 15n17, 33–35, 37–42, 53, 85, 86, 88, 89, 124; immigrants, xiii, 6, 9, 33–37, 39, 40, 42, 43, 48n37, 53, 139; Latinos, xiii, xiv, 33–38, 40, 42, 43, 139; living conditions, 6, 33–35, 39, 60, 86, 124, 125; meat packers, 33–37, 42–46; poultry processors, 33–37, 42–46; slave labor, xiii, 10, 89, 197n32; working conditions, xiii, xiv, 6, 33–35, 38–39, 43–45, 46n2, 48n30, 60, 86, 93, 94–95, 124, 125 labor politics, 45–46, Democratic Party in U.S., 40, 41–42, 45; labor parties in Europe, 45; immigrant labor politics in Germany, 42 labor union organization, 35, 44–45; employer actions, 35; percent of represented employees in U.S., 42; representation in Western Europe, 42; representation in Germany, 42; Wastepickers Association in India, 51, 52, 60–61 LaBrea Bakery, 110 land, xv, xvi, 9, 37, 78, 150, 162, 244, 248; agrarian and land reform, 10, 54, 58, 145, 146; conservation, xxi, 53, 148, 150, 206, 243, 244, 248, 250; CSAs’ land, 21; distribution and equity, xiii, xvi, 6, 9, 21, 51–54, 63, 122, 142–43, 145–46, 150, 160–61, 175, 202, 204, 206–7, 246; land rights, 52, 58, 59, 151, 167, 202; land stewardship, xxi, 8, 189–91, 194, 242–50; land tenure, 53, 59; land use, 28, 69, 85, 122, 132, 145, 148, 175, 204, 206, 243, 244, 247–48; loss of farmland and soil depletion, 5, 7, 124, 244, 247–48; urban agriculture and community garden land, 13, 74, 160–61, 175; women’s access to, 160–61 Land Grant Universities, 78, 250; Agricultural and Natural Colleges, 248; Cooperative Extension, 78, 127, 248, 250 Lang, Tim, 69, 80n15 Lang, Tim and Heasman Michael, Food Wars, 68, 72

Index L’Association des Croqueurs de Pommes (Apple Munchers Association), vergers conservatoires (conservatory orchards), 200; heritage apple and pear preservation, 200 Latinos, farmworkers, xiii, xiv, 33–38, 40, 42, 43, 139; hunger and malnutrition, 4, 213 Lawson, Laura, City Bountiful, 74 Learning Circle, 61 Leopold, Aldo, land ethic, xxi, 249–50; Sand County Almanac, xxi, 243, 248 Lesotho, keyhole gardens, 13 Lincoln, Abraham, 69 local agrifood systems, xiv–xviii, xix, 10–14, 52–55, 73–78, 88, 92, 107–8, 125–33, 199–207, 222; adequacy of local food supply, 131; Buy Fresh, Buy Local, 12, 26; consumer interest in, 88, 125; economic impact of, 12, 62–63, 132; food policy councils, xii, xv, 11, 18, 23–27, 70–72, 80n35, 132–33; local knowledge, xviii, 11, 55, 103, 105, 202–7; locavore, 125; localization strategy, xv, 22–27, 52–54, 199–207; reconnection of producers and consumers, xiv–xv, 12, 20–27, 71, 74, 77–78, 88, 89–90, 107, 110, 126–27, 162; place-based agrifood, xvii, 11, 23, 107–8, 200–207 London Development Authority, 71–72 London Food Board, 71 Lowdermilk, W. C., 248–49; Conquest of the Land through 7,000 Years, 245, 248–49 low-income households, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 52, 69, 104, 124, 156–60, 163–64, 200, 202; agrifood workers, xiii, 6, 33, 38, 43, 85, 89, 124; community gardens and urban agriculture, 13, 74–75, 130, 160–62, 205–6; community kitchens, 157–60; farmers markets, 12, 126; food insecurity and hunger, xi, xvi, xviii, xix, xx, xxi, 4, 7, 10, 11, 13, 51, 52, 53, 57–58, 63, 68, 70–75, 86, 124, 125, 130, 133, 144, 151, 156, 158, 160, 166–68, 213–22; food prices, 4, 13, 104, 124; food supports for low-income households, 4, 11, 12, 13, 21, 38, 55, 71, 74–75, 124, 126, 130, 131, 160, 214, 217, 219, 224n17; health, 124, 200; minorities, 4, 124, 200, 213;

267 quality of food, 69, 104, 124, 126, 130, 156, 200; women and children, 4, 52, 157–60 Lyson, Thomas, civic agriculture, 19 M&M–Mars, 89 Maathai, Wangari, Green Belt Movement, xviii, 51, 52, 57–58; Nobel Peace Prize, 57 Malawi, 56 Mali, food sovereignty, 144 Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), dolphin safety seal, 90; purchases of MSC certified seafood by retail chains, 94; sustainable seafood, 90 markets, 54, 77, 151; alternative, xiv, 17–27, 86–96, 131, 141–43; civic, xiv, xv, 18–27; community supported agriculture (CSA), xiv, 12, 17, 20–22, 126–27; conventional, xiv, 18, 20, 23, 33, 71, 101–2, 105–6, 112, 155; delocalization, 199–200; fair trade, 9, 17, 22–23, 89–90, 95; fairness as a principle, 19, 20, 23, 26, 27; farm stands, 24; farm-to-institution, 128–29; farmers markets, xiv, 12, 20, 22, 24, 104, 126, 175; localization, 12, 23–26, 107–8, 110, 125–28, 132–33, 200–207; market concentration, xiv, 3, 6, 9, 18, 37, 122–23; market governance, xiv, 18–27; niche, 18, 19, 41, 102; organic agrifood, 18, 86; value-based, 86–96, 129–30 Marks & Spencer, purchasing MSC certified sustainable seafood, 94 Marsden, Terry, 23 Marsh, George Perkins, 8 Martin, Philip L., farm labor reform through immigration policy, 40 Massachusetts, Food Project, 130; New Entry Sustainable Farming Project, 175; Oldways Preservation and Exchange Trust, 179 McCarthy, Cormac, The Road, xix, 187, 188, 191–93 McDonaldization, 87 McDonald’s, 15, 87, 92 meat and poultry workers, 33–35, 42–45; demographics, 33–34; improvement of workers’ conditions, 44–46; OSHA standards and enforcement, 43–44; racial prejudice against, 33–34; working conditions, 33–35

268 Meltzer, Graham, 163 Menominee Nation, xviii, 51–52; Sharing Indigenous Wisdom Conference, 51; Sustainable Development Institute of the College of Menominee Nation, xviii, 51 Mexico, 139–40, end to farm subsidies, 36; IFOAM affiliates, 88; immigrants, xiv, 32, 37, 38, 40; indigenous crops, 202–3; land rights, 12; NAFTA, xiii, 36, 203; national cuisine, 202–3; nutritional status, 200; peasant farmers, xiii, 36; place of origin labeling and certification, 202; Via Campesina, 139–140, 144 Micah Challenge Campaign, 55–56; World Evangelical Alliance, 55 Micah Network, 52, 55–56 Michigan, 133; impact of local agrifood systems on economic development, 132 Michigan Land Use Institute, 132 micro-credit programs, 53, 61–63, 150, 160; Grameen Bank, 61; Learning Circle, 61; PARI Development Trust, 52, 61 Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Workers Protection Act (MSAWPA), 39 Mill, John Stuart, 233–34 Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations (MDG), 55 Molyneux, Maxine, practical gender interests and strategic gender interests, 157 Monsanto, 86, 123 Montgomery, David, 250 Morris, 37 Mozambique, Via Campesina, 54–55 Munksga˚rd, ecovillage, 163 Murphy, Louise, The True Story of Hansel and Gretel, xix, 188, 195–96 MyPyramid, 179 Myrdal, Alva, 162 Nabhan, Gary Paul, The Desert Smells like Rain, 205 Narayan, Laxmi, 60 National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS), 38 National Farmer’s Union of Mozambique, 54 National Farm to School Network, 128 National Institute of the Historical and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN) (Brazil),

Index heritage labeling of agrifood products, 204 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 39 Native Americans, 167, 200, 202, 204, 205, 206; agrifood traditions, 167; changes in agrifood practices, 204; Awajun (Peru), 203–4; conceptions of stewardship; diabetes, 167, 200, 202, 204, 205, 206; Guarani (Brazil), 204; Ketchi Maya and Garifuna communities (Belize), 58; Native Hawaiians, 206; Navajo, 155, 177; obesity, 178; Oneida, xvi, 166–67, 206; Pima, 178; Tohono O’odham, 205–6; White Earth Band of Chippewa, xvi; Xavante (Brazil), 204 Native Hawaiian Farmers, 206 Native Seeds/Search (NSS), 206 Natural Resources Conservation Service, 248 Navajo, diet, 177; kinship, 155 Navdanya (India), xviii, 209n33 Ndamane, Phillipina, 161 neoliberalism, xvi, 35, 54, 142, 145, 146, 152n10, 223n6, 224n15 Nestle, 86, 89, 90, 94; certifying products as organic, fair trade, and sustainable; consumer campaigns, 94 Netherlands, cohousing, 162; fair trade towns, 90; IFOAM affiliates, 88; Max Havellar fair trade label, 89 New Entry Sustainable Farming Project, 175 New Mexico Acequia Association, 206 New Seasons Market, 130 New Urbanism, 131 New York, adequacy of local food selfreliance, 132; community gardens, 74; CSAs, 21; food policy councils, 18, 25, 133; Red Hook Community Farm, 130; Slow Food convivia, 149 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 232 Norman, Diane, 157 North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA), xiii, 36, 203 Norway, fair trade towns, 90 Novartis (Syngenta), 123 Nussbaum, Martha, capacities approaches to human rights, 219, 224n12; stewardship of animal, 230, 231, 236–37

Index nutrition, 4, 11, 25, 38, 57, 70, 74, 93, 110, 127, 175, 178–79, 184–85, 202, 203, 213, 219, 222; education and information, xvii, 11, 25, 58, 70, 128, 159; Indian/Ayurvedic approaches, 181–83; malnutrition, 7, 12, 57, 68–69, 158, 160, 200, 202, 203; “normal” nutrition, 218; poverty, 4, 11, 200; quality of food, 69, 106, 107, 126, 132, 203, 204, 205, 207, 217; Taoist approaches, 176, 180; traditional Chinese approaches, 180–81; Western approaches, 179–80 obesity, 4, 73, 121, 123, 177–78, children, 4, 12, 123; factors influencing, 69, 123, 177–78, 200; farmworkers, 124; minorities, 124, 200; Native Americans, 177, 200, 202, 204; poverty, 124, 200; public health costs, 123; related diseases, 4, 69, 123, 124, 177, 200, 202, 204 Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), 39, 40, 43, 44 Oldways Preservation and Exchange Trust, 179–80 Oneida Community Integrated Food Systems, xvi, 166 Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, Three Sisters agriculture, 166; Tsynhehkwa, xvi, 166–67 organic agrifood, xii, xiv, xvii, xix, 8–9, 11–14, 23, 58, 76, 78, 91–94, 107, 110–11, 157, 160–61, 200, 201; California, 8; California Certified Organic Farmers organization, 8; certification and labeling, 88–89, 91–94, 108, 110–11; consumption, 92, 94, 125; farmworkers, 41, 48n37; International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), 8, 88; markets, 17–20, 22–24, 26–27, 76, 78, 94, 107, 110, 125; organic acreage, 13; Robert Rodale’s “Breaking New Ground: The Search for a Sustainable Agriculture,” 8; Slow Food, 201; Traditional Native American Farmers Association (TNAFA), 206; USDA Report and Recommendations on Organic Farming, 8 Organic Consumers Association (OCA), 89 Organic Trade Association, Grocery Store Wars, 87

269 Organic Valley Family of Farms, 130 Ossemane, Ismael, 54 Ostrum, Marcia Ruth, 127 Ouellette, Jacynthe, 157 Ozark Mountain Pork, 130 Ozeki, Ruth, All Over Creation, xix, 188, 190–91 PARI Development Trust, 53, 60, 62–63 Pelto, Gretel and Pertti, food “delocalization,” 199 Peru, 56; Amazon diet, 203; Andean diet, 202; Awajun, 203–4; Cocina novoandina, 202; community kitchens, 158–60 pesticides, 5, 102, 105, 160, 191; farmworker exposure, 6, 86, 124; opposition to, 8, 10, 38, 73, 88, 89, 201; Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 8, 88 PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), 87, 91–92, 228–29 Petrini, Carlo, Slow Food, 147, 164 Philippines, The, Via Campesina, 144 Physiocrats, laissez faire, 67 Pilgrim’s Pride, 37 Pima, 177 Pizza Hut, 15 Pollan, Michael, Omnivore’s Dilemma, xix, 76, 77, 123, 187 population, increases, xi, 68, 124, 233, 238, 250; urbanization, 74, 110, 122, 200, 204, 247 poverty, xi, xviii, 3, 8, 33, 46n7, 51–63, 73, 85; antipoverty programs, 4, 9, 10, 11, 128, 214, 217, 219, 224n15; land and capital equity, xiii, xvi, 6, 9, 21, 51–63, 122, 142–43, 145–46, 150, 160–61, 175, 202, 204, 206–7, 246 Powerlines Project (South Africa), 161 Prairie Red Fife Wheat Organic Growers Co-operative, 111 productionist paradigm, 68 preservationist and prefigurative cultural strategies, xviii–xix, 142, 150–51 Putnam, Robert, 19 quality of food, xv, xvii, 4, 12, 19, 23, 29n22, 41, 43, 54, 76, 96, 101–13; alternative value chains, 107–9; conventional approaches, 105–9, 112; dimensions of quality, xvii, xiv, 76, 101–2, 104, 105–13; processes of qualification, 108

270 Rachels, James, 234 Raynolds, Laura, 19 Reader, Tristan, 205, 206 Reagan, Ronald, 35 Red Hook Community Farm, 130 Reforestation, carbon sequestration, 57, 58; Green Belt Movement, xviii, 51, 52, 57–58 Regan, Tom, 229–30, 237; The Case for Animal Rights, 237 regional agrifood systems. See local agrifood systems Regroupement des Cuisines Collectives du Quebec (RCCQ), 157 relational concept of self, 215, 220–21; gender, xx, 156, 168n3; generation, xx, 155–56; Kittay, Eva Feder, xx, 165, 217, 220; relational concept of home, xx, 155, 160, 161 Reseau Semences Paysannes (Farm Seed Network), 200–201; heritage wheat, 200 restaurants, Chez Panisse, 75; sister restaurant project, 76; White Dog Cafe, 75–76 Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Workers Union (RWDWU), 37 rights paradigm of food security, 217–20; conception of personhood, 217–18 Rio de Janeiro Convention on Biodiversity (1992), 200 Rodale, J. I., Organic Farming and Gardening magazine, 8 Rodale, Robert, “Breaking New Ground: The Search for Sustainable Agriculture,” 8 Rodale Press, 78 Rollin, Bernard, 236–37 Rosset, Peter, Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First), 54, 143 Ruether, Rosemary, 250 rural communities and development, xiii, xiv, 7, 8–9, 17, 51–63, 142, 144–45, 150–51, 161, 167; contemporary rurality, xviii, 142, 150–51; European Union, xiv, 11, 17, 108; family farms, 9, 122, 126, 127, 128, 143, 228; multifunctionality of agriculture, xiv, 11, 108, 143; preservationist and prefigurative rural development goals,

Index xviii–xix, 142, 150–51; rural poverty, 4, 33, 37, 52–53, 57, 124 rural livelihoods, xv, xviii, 9–10, 33, 121–33, 148, 160; decline of farm population, 110, 122; decline of rural communities, 101–2, 141, 142, 148; delocalization, 199–200, 206; infrastructure, 95, 122, 124, 127, 148, 150, 151, 158; landscapes, 143, 144, 146, 147, 150, 202; localization, xv, 12, 23–26, 107–8, 110, 125–28, 132–33, 200–207; Slow Food, 147–50, 164–65; Via Campesina, xiii, 53–55, 138–40, 142–47 Sachs, Jeffrey, 55 Safeway, MSC certified sustainable seafood, 94; organic and fair trade food, 94 Sahwanya Community Kitchen (Vancouver), 158 Sainsbury, MSC certified sustainable seafood, 94 Salatin, Joel, xix, 76–77; guiding principles of sustainable agriculture, 77; Salad Bar Beef, 77; Pastured Poultry Profit$, 77 Santmire, H. Paul, 250 SATIIM (Sarstoon-Temash Institute for Indigenous Management) (Belize), 52, 58–59 Schaffer, Ed, 227 Schlosser, Eric, Fast Food Nation, xix, 187 Schofield, Mary Ann, 187 Scott, James, The Moral Economy of the Peasant, 140–41 seeds, biopiracy, xvii, 206; geneticallymodified organisms, xviii, 86, 191; Indigenous Seed Sovereignty Network, 206; Native Seeds/Search, 206; Navdanya, xviii, 209n33; patenting seeds, xviii, 144; seed saving, 73, 111, 144, 206, 207 Sen, Amartya, food security and democracy, 68 Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program (SFMNP), 126 Sharing Indigenous Wisdom Conference, 51 Shintoism, land stewardship, 247 Shiva, Vandana, xvii–xviii, 73 Sinclair, Upton, The Jungle, 7, 197n4 Singer, Peter, 229, 230, 235, 237

Index Slow Food, xv, xvi, xviii, xix; Arcigola, 201; Ark of Taste, 111, 116, 148, 149, 164, 201; Cittaslow, 92; consumers as co-producers, 149, 153n33, 164, 165; convivia, 149, 153n33, 164, 165; ecogastronomy, 92, 164, 165, 201; food communities, xvi, xix, 92, 164–66; “good, clean, and fair” food, xvii, xxiin13, 92, 95, 164; lardo, 147–49; presidia, 111, 116n63, 148–49, 164, 201; protection of artisan agrifood products, xvi, xviii, 12, 111, 116n63, 149, 164–65, 201; regional foods, 147, 167, 201; taste education, 147, 149, 153n33, 164, 201; Terra Madre, 73, 165, 201; University of Gastronomic Sciences, 201; wines, 147, 201 Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 67–68 social democracy, social safety net, 35 social movements, xii–xiv, xviii, 7–13, 17, 110, 139–51; Slow Food, 147–50; Via Campesina, 139–47 Soil and Water Conservation Districts, 248 Soil for Life, 161 Sonnino, Roberta, 23 South Africa, community gardens, 161–62; IFOAM affiliates, 88; Xhosa food gardens, 161 sovereignty, 52–54, 59; Declaration of Atitlan, 167; food sovereignty, xvi, 9, 54, 72, 142–44, 167, 206; Forum on Food Sovereignty, 146; Indigenous Seed Sovereignty Network, 206; resources, 52, 59 Spain, fair trade towns, 90 stewardship, xxi, 56, 126, 230–31, 236, 243–50; environmental stewardship, xxi, 250, 251n11; land stewardship, xxi, 243–50; Marine Stewardship Council, 90, 94; model of animal welfare, 230–31, 236; religious conceptions, 231, 245–47, 249–50; stewardship of the commons, 162 structural adjustment programs, 10, 36 Stull, Donald D. and Broadway, Michael J., Slaughterhouse Blues, 43 Sudan, 197n32; Dinka creation myth, 194; famine, 193; What is the What, 193–94 Sundaresh, Gita, 59

271 Supersize Me, 187 Surgeon General’s Report of Nutrition and Health, 179 Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE), 11, 125–26 sustainable development, xviii, 8, 51 Sustainable Development Institute of the College of Menominee Nation, xviii, 51 sustainable agrifood system, sustainable agriculture, 8, 9, 11, 40, 53, 54, 86, 184–85, 206, 250; food policy councils, xii, xv, 11, 18, 23–27, 70–72, 80n35, 132–33 Sweden, cohousing, 162; fair trade towns, 90; IFOAM affiliates, 88; participation rate in boycotts and buycotts, 92; political consumers, 92–93 Swift, 37 Switzerland, market share of organic food, 94 Taco Bell, xiii, 15n17, 37 Taoism, Tao Te Ching, 180 taste, changes, 149, 238; distinction and cultural capital, 102, 104, 107, 111, 112, 165, 233, 238; homogenization, 148; industrial food, 199; local food, 125, 199; place-based foods, 107, 201–2; qualities, 93, 105, 107, 110, 111, 165, 178, 233, 238; Slow Food protection of tastes, 92, 111, 116n63, 148, 149, 164; taste education, 87, 92, 147, 149, 153n33, 164, 201 Tesco, purchasing MSC certified sustainable seafood, 94; selling organic and fair trade food, 94 Tesuque Pueblo, 206 Thackersey, Sir Vithaldas, 59 Thatcher, Margaret, 35 Tohono O’odham (Papago), 205–6; changes in agrifood practices, 205; rejuvenation of traditional agrifood practices, 205–6 Toronto Food Policy Council (TFPC), 11, 70–71, 133 Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), 180–82, seasonal foods, 184; Taoism, 180; Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, 180; yin and yang, 180 Traditional Native American Farmers Association, 206

272 transgenic organisms. See genetically modified organisms Tsyunhehkwa, xvi, 157, 166–68, 206; rejuvenation of cultural agrifood knowledge, 166–67; white corn, 166, 209n31 Tyson Foods, 37 U.K. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ (Defra) Council of Food Policy Advisors (CFPA), 72 Unani, 192 UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) 1997 conference on culture and sustainable development, 184 UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund), 158 Unilever PLC, sustainable seafood, 90 United Farm Workers UFW (formerly, National Farmworkers Association) xiii, 9–10, 36–37, 40–42 United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), 37, 43 United Kingdom, community gardens, 160–61; Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ (Defra) Council of Food Policy Advisors (CFPA), 72; fair trade towns, 90; farm animal welfare certification, 91; IFOAM affiliates, 88; London Food Board, 71–72, 80n35; percent vegetarians, 93 United Nations, Agenda 21, 8; Convention on Biological Diversity, 85; Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 85, 142; International Labor Organization (ILO), 85; Millennium Development Goals, 55–56; report on livestock sector, 230 United Nations Committee on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), 142 United States, xv, 17, 176; agriculture, 9–10; amount spent on meals away from home, 129; “Buy Fresh, Buy Local,” 12; convivia, 149; CSAs, 12, 126–27; cultural heritage gardening, 184; education, 11; energy use, 125; ethnic diversity, 176–77, 180, 184–85; farmers markets 12, 126; food insecurity, 4, 7, 11, 213–14, 216; economic concentration of agrifood, 18; fair trade, 9, 90; farm animal welfare, 91, 228;

Index farm population, 122; IFOAM affiliates, 88; indigenous nations, xvi, 177, 202, 205–6; labor in agrifood production, xiii–xiv, 6, 33–46; localization of agrifood, xv, 12; loss of farmland, 124; NAFTA, 36, 203; nutrition guidelines, 179; obesity, 200; organic agriculture, 13, 88; participation rate in boycotts and buycotts, xiii, 10, 86, 92–93; percent vegetarian, 93; public health, 4, 124, 177, 200; rural poverty, 33; Slow Food USA, 149, 201; urban agriculture, 13, 73–75, 130–31; values chains, xiv, 18, 129–30 United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Community Food Projects (CFP), 11; Report and Recommendations on Organic Farming (1980), 8; Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE), 11, 125–26 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, xi, xix–xx, 218; Article 25, xi, xix–xx, 218 University of California–Santa Cruz Food Policy Working Group, 25, 28 University of California Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, 125–26 University of Gastronomic Sciences, 201 urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA), 11, 13, 73, 74–75; 130–31, 161–62; Abalimi Bezekhaya, 161; Cuba, 13; Growing Power, 74; Japan, 75; Powerlines Project, 161; South Africa, 161–62; United States, 73–75, 130–31 USA Domestic Fair Trade Working Group, 9 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), 179 U.S. Department of Labor Wages and Hours Division, 39 U.S. Soil Conservation Service (SCS), 248–49 value chains, alternative and conventional, 18, 23, 107, 108, 110, 114n32, 129–30; Country Natural Beef, 130; governance, xiv, 18–27; New Seasons Market, 130; Organic Valley Family of Farms, 130; Ozark Mountain Pork, 130 van der Linde, Marıa, 159 Van Esterik, Penny, 155

273

Index vegetarianism, 7; as political consumerism, 91–93; climate impact, 230; ethical vegetarianism, 229–31; percentage of population, 93 Vegetarian Resource Group, 93 Vestbro, Dick Urban, 163 Via Campesina, 52–55, 142–47; farmers and rural people, 141; farmworkers, xiii; food sovereignty, 54, 142–43; land tenure and reform, 53–54; Mexico, 139–40, 144; seeds campaign, 144; rural development, 150–51; risks and advantages of working with the FAO, 146; social movement, xvi, xviii, xix, 9, 52–55, 142–47 Vissers, Margaret, 192 von Liebig, Justus, Lectures on Modern Agriculture, 8 Wal-Mart, consumer campaigns, 89; MSC certified sustainable seafood, 94; organic and fair trade food, 94 Wansink, Brian, 178 Wastepickers Association (Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat) (KKPKP) (Pune, India), 60; credit cooperatives, 61; income, 61; working conditions for women, 52, 59–61 water, 162, 223n6; California, 125; one of the five elements, 182; privatization of water, 145; stewardship, 247–50; water shortages, 85 Waters, Alice, xix, 75 welfare, childcare, 160, 162; cutbacks in, xvi, 7, 17, 158; Denmark, 162–63; social welfare, 35, 163–64, 219; support programs for families, 10, 162–63 Wendell, Susan, definition of disability, 214, 216, 219 Wendy’s, 87; consumer campaigns, 87 White Earth Band of Chippewa, xvi, 166, 206 White Earth Land Recovery Project, 166, 206; wild rice, 166 White Jr., Lynn, “The Historic Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” 247

WIC (Women, Infant, and Children Program), 11, 38; farmers market support, 11, 126; WI Connect, 11 Wicks, Judy, White Dog Cafe, 75–76 Wiesel, Eli, Night, 193 Wilk, Richard, 168 Wilson, 37 Winne, Mark, Closing the Food Gap, 124; Community Food Security Coalition, 71 Wisconsin, xvi, xviii, xix; Growing Power, 74; Hmong American farmers, xix, 175; Menominee Nation, 52; Oneida Nation, 166–67; Organic Valley Family of Farms, 130 Wise, Steven, 238 Women, Infant and Children Farmers Market Nutrition Program (FMNP), 126 World Bank, 10, 36, 56, 94, 146; rural development, 56; structural adjustment programs, 36; support for organic and fair trade agrifood, 94 World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (1987), 8 World Evangelical Alliance, Micah Challenge Campaign, 55 World Food Conference (1974), 7 World Food Summit, 146 World Hunger Year, 70 World Resource Institute, 85 World Social Forum, 9 World Summit on Sustainable Development (2002), 8, 85 World Trade Organization (WTO), 10, 36, 142, 145–46 World Wildlife Fund for Nature, sustainable seafood, 90 Xavante Indians (Brazil), changes in agrifood practices, 204 Xhosa (South Africa), “food gardens,” 161 Yum! Brands, 15 Zipes, Jack, 195

Critical Food Issues [2 volumes]: Problems and State-of-the-Art Solutions Worldwide

Critical Financial Accounting Problems: Issues and Solutions

The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Children's Issues Worldwide 6 volumes

The Greenwood Encyclopedia of LGBT Issues Worldwide 3 volumes

Statistics: problems and solutions

Vitiligo: Problems and Solutions

Finding, Preparing, and Supporting School Leaders: Critical Issues, Useful Solutions

Contaminated Land: Problems and Solutions

Problems and solutions on optics

Concrete Materials: Problems and Solutions

Problems and solutions on mechanics

Problems and solutions for students

Fluid Mechanics: Problems and Solutions

Faculty Diversity: Problems and Solutions

Problems and solutions on mechanics

Problems and Solutions in Mathematics

Multidimensional Databases: Problems and Solutions

Problems and solutions on optics

Problems and Solutions in Mathematics

Dynamical Systems: Problems and Solutions

Organic Chemistry Problems and Solutions

Problems and solutions on optics

Problems and Solutions in Electronics

Problems and Solutions on Electromagnetism

Problems and Solutions in Mathematics

Food safety issues in the developing world, Volumes 23-469

Finite volumes for complex applications: problems and perspectives. Vol. 2

Sport: Social Problems and Issues

Skeptical Problems, Semantical Solutions

Problems Polymers. solutions

Only problems not solutions

Critical Food Issues [2 volumes]: Problems and State-of-the-Art Solutions Worldwide

Critical Financial Accounting Problems: Issues and Solutions

The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Children's Issues Worldwide 6 volumes

The Greenwood Encyclopedia of LGBT Issues Worldwide 3 volumes

Statistics: problems and solutions

Vitiligo: Problems and Solutions

Finding, Preparing, and Supporting School Leaders: Critical Issues, Useful Solutions

Contaminated Land: Problems and Solutions

Problems and solutions on optics

Concrete Materials: Problems and Solutions

Problems and solutions on mechanics

Problems and solutions for students

Fluid Mechanics: Problems and Solutions

Faculty Diversity: Problems and Solutions

Problems and solutions on mechanics

Problems and Solutions in Mathematics

Multidimensional Databases: Problems and Solutions

Problems and solutions on optics

Problems and Solutions in Mathematics

Dynamical Systems: Problems and Solutions

Organic Chemistry Problems and Solutions

Problems and solutions on optics

Problems and Solutions in Electronics

Problems and Solutions on Electromagnetism

Problems and Solutions in Mathematics

Food safety issues in the developing world, Volumes 23-469

Finite volumes for complex applications: problems and perspectives. Vol. 2

Sport: Social Problems and Issues

Skeptical Problems, Semantical Solutions

Problems Polymers. solutions

Only problems not solutions

Recommend Documents