Alternatives
A meaningful global food system could be ___________________ [fill this in yourself].
Local food: Farmers’ markets, community-supported agriculture
The ‘local food’ movement emphasizes farmers’ markets, community-supported agriculture and other means of promoting fresh, seasonal produce while reducing our dependence on far-flung, excessively processed foods that require extraordinary subsidies and expenditures on oil and transportation to travel thousands of miles from field to table.
“Love all of God’s creation, both the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love animals, love plants, love each thing. If you love each thing, you will perceive the mystery of God in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin tirelessly to perceive more and more of it every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an entire, universal love. Love the animals: God gave them the rudiments of thought and an untroubled joy. Do not trouble them, do not torment them, do not take their joy from them, do not go against God’s purpose. Man, do not exalt yourself above the animals: they are sinless.”
Feodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“The ‘Great Economy’ “is not the ‘sum of its parts’ but a Membership of parts inextricably joined to each other, indebted to each other, receiving significance and worth from each other and from the whole….For a human, the good choice in the Great Economy is to see its membership as a neighborhood and oneself as a neighbor within it.”
“We can only find it wonderful, when we put our minds to it, that many people now seem willing to mount an emergency effort to ‘save the family farm’ who have not yet thought to save the family or the community, the neighborhood schools or the small local businesses, the domestic arts of household and homestead, or cultural and moral tradition-all of which are also failing, and on all of which the survival of the family farm depends.”
Wendell Berry, Home Economics
“Have you ever seen a horse or cow indulging in the abuse of the palate as we do? Do you suppose that it is a sign of civilization, a sign of real life, that we should multiply our eatables so far that we do not even know where we are; and seek dishes until at last we have become absolutely mad and run after the newspaper sheets which give us advertisements about these dishes?”
Mohandas Gandhi
“To be concerned with ‘humanitarian’ killing is quite absurd; to abstain from eating meat while destroying your son by comparing him with another is to be cruel; to take part in the respectable killing for your country or for an ideology is to cultivate hate; to be kind to animals and cruel to your fellow man by act, word, or gesture, is to breed enmity and brutality.”
J. Krishnamurti
Food Circles Networking Project
A Food Circle is a new way of conceiving of and organizing our agricultural and food systems. It connects farmers, consumers and communities together in interdependent, holistic ways. When we conceive of our food system as a circle, we acknowledge that we are connected with every other person in that circle through the act of food production.
Practically, a Food Circle is concerned with promoting the consumption of safe, regionally grown food that will encourage sustainable agriculture and help to maintain farmers, who will sustain rural areas. While the concept sounds simple, it means that we must radically change the way we participate in the act of growing and consuming food.
What you can do to help:
Buy your food from a farmer whose face you can see and whose farm you can visit.
Recruit and emotionally support families wanting to produce food locally.
Provide a market for locally produced food by knowing as much as you can about your food.
Get your church, school or community group to provide land for families wanting to grow and market food locally.
Create your own food networks of farmers, eaters, educators, churches and civic organizations.
Get involved in the Food Circles Networking Project by inviting a speaker to your next meeting.
http://foodcircles.missouri.edu
The Fair trade movement
The ‘fair trade’ movement is an important way of maximizing earnings to farmers while educating consumers about where their food comes from and how it is produced. Labeling and certification schemes that vouch for the content and origin of foods are key to building a solid foundation for alternatives to the corporate industrial food system.
The Agribusiness Accountability Initiative
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)
CSAs provides farmers with direct outlets for farm products and ensures fair compensation. There are many kinds of CSA. All include payment in advance at an agreed upon price. In some, members of the community purchase a “share” of the anticipated harvest, while in others they sign up for a predetermined amount of produce over the course of the season. In most cases, this commitment implies a willingness to share with the farmer both the bounty from the land and at least some of the risks involved with production.
http://www.csacenter.org/
Change your diet
What changes in our diet could do the most for the health of our natural systems? The Union of Concerned Scientists says there are two priorities:
Eat less meat: The average household consumes nearly 10 pounds of meat a week. Cut this in half and replace it with the nutritional equivalent of grains and you reduce food-related land use and water pollution by 30 percent and 24 percent respectively. Switching to dairy also helps, because a dairy cow can produce many times it’s own weight in milk in a single year. Just 10 percent of cattle in the U.S. are dairy cows, but their production of milk, by weight, is 3.5 times greater than the production of beef and beef products.
Buy certified organic produce: Organic farming reduces pesticides and fertilizer runoff into rivers, lakes, and ground water. Low-till practices and the use of cover crops reduce soil erosion, and organic soil-building techniques improve water retention, reducing the need for irrigation.
Yes Magazine, Summer, 2000
Challenge: Give Your Life For Food
“The wonder has always been great to me, that heroism has never been supposed to be in anywise consistent with the practice of supplying people with food, or clothes; but rather with that of quartering one’s self upon them for food, and stripping them of clothes. Spoiling of armour is an heroic deed in all ages; but the selling of clothes, old, or new, has never taken any colour of magnanimity. Yet one does not see why feeding the hungry and clothing the naked should ever become base businesses, even when engaged in on a large scale.”
John Ruskin
Resources
The Market Share Matrix
The Market Share Matrix is an ambitious project to map the global food system. It is a free, instantly-accessible website listing the names of the companies that dominate several aspects of the food system from seeds to retail. It provides an at-a-glance view of the countries and sectors where each company has a large stake. It also features regularly-updated data on market shares, sales, and concentration levels.
www.marketsharematrix.org.
Food Alliance
Food Alliance is a non-profit organization that promotes sustainable agriculture by recognizing and rewarding farmers who produce food in environmentally friendly and socially responsible ways, and educating consumers and others in the food system about the benefits of sustainable agriculture.
www.foodalliance.org.
Food Routes
Where does your food come from?
The FoodRoutes Find Good Food map can help you connect with local farmers and start eating the freshest, tastiest food around. Click here to find your local food on our interactive map, listing farmers, CSAs, and local markets near you.
There are many reasons to buy locally grown food. You’ll get exceptional taste and freshness, strengthen your local economy, support endangered family farms, safeguard your family’s health, and protect the environment. www.foodroutes.org.
Local Harvest
Farms, CSA, restaurants, grocery/co-ops, farmers’ markets.
The freshest, healthiest, most flavorful organic food is what’s grown closest to you. Use our website to find farmers’ markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area, where you can buy produce, grass-fed meats, and many other goodies.
www.localharvest.org