Thinking about food

As the day rolls to a close I am starting to think about food and what’s for supper. I fancy a trawl at the supermarket and loading up on indulgences. But I have already overspent this month and there are some eggs and mushrooms in the fridge, some home grown potatoes (red and white) that a friend gifted me last time I was in Wageningen and a couple of chicken breasts and some fish steaks in the deep freeze, together with some ice cream. I won’t go hungry.

Other people’s realities are different. Much of my work focuses upon farming, agriculture and food security and contrasts the ‘haves’ with the ‘have-nots.’  I‘d like to quote three articles that have crossed my desk in recent months.

1.     The “global food crisis” is often presented as a shortage of food in relation to a growing population, yet such a simplistic definition pays little attention to the origins, perpetuation and deepening of the crisis. A more detailed observation shows that this “crisis” is in fact a paradox: millions of people experience hunger and are malnourished, while the world’s agriculture systems have the capacity of producing enough food for more than 12 billion people (Tristan Partridge – article in the forthcoming edition [2011/3] of Farming Matters -ILEIA).

2.        Industrial livestock production demands more concentrated feed and this requires intensive fertilisation which damages the climate. This further exacerbates the global food situation, since arable land is being used to cultivate animal feed rather than food for people: 40 percent of the world's grain harvest is fed to livestock, while one sixth of the world’s population goes hungry. (Anita Idel – forthcoming in article in Ecology and Farming - 2011 no.4)

3.       The food system has created a society where we have 1.5 billion hungry and malnourished people and an equal number of obese and overweight people.  People have been recently complaining about increases in food prices – but the reality is that in the west only 8% of average family incomes go on food.  One report recently suggested that it might be as low as 3% in Switzerland (Interview with Hans Herring - Ecology and Farming - 2011 no.3). 

 Three clear messages – all of which can be backed up by exhaustive scientific evidence:

1. the world produces enough food to feed everybody
2. much of that food goes to feed livestock for protein rich diets
3. obesity (largely as result of b)  is as much of a problem as hunger.

I think I’ll gladly eat those eggs, mushrooms and potatoes tonight and tomorrow maybe hit the onions, miso and lentils.  Individual responsibility is one step but we also need collective action to realign our global food system - and that is much harder to mobilise. How do we get there????

This seems a particularly appropriate post as the photo at the top of the page was taken from the roof of the FAO (United Nations' Organisation for Food and Agriculture) HQ in Rome.