The Spirituality of Food
There once was a spirituality of food. Certain foods were sacred, certain foods were used for special occasions, certain foods connected people together or people to their environment. At some point we relinquished control over our food and agricultural choices or agribusinesses coerced the control away from us. Either way, the majority of us don’t seem to care. Perhaps this lack of caring lies in the demise of our spiritual connection with food. There is a danger in the commodification and capitalization of food, and this danger can be found in our degrading environment, paradox between obesity and malnutrition, and an increasing awareness that are current food regime is unsustainable.
How Did We Get Here?
Post WWII began the world’s second food regime. It was founded on protective markets and food aid, the later created to get rid of US surplus so that US farmers could continue to demand a reasonable price on the world food market (McMichael, 2009: 285). The US dumped its food on developing countries and destroyed their local food markets. This in turn created dependency on US food imports and successfully created a food regime where US farmers had a reliable market for their surplus goods. We have moved from a food regime of trade restrictions and food dumping to the current food regime of liberalization and agribusinesses (Friedman, 1993: 37). This new order involves increased industrialization and commodification of food. The current world food order consists of overconsumption by the global North and underconsumption by the global South (McMichael, 2009: 288). The global South is exporting high value foods that its own people cannot afford while remaining dependent on imports of low value, staple foods such as corn or wheat that destroy their local farming economy (McMichael, 2009: 288). Agribusinesses have been successful in destroying the communities and livelihoods of many small farm cultures, turning these communities into “the world’s food, manufactured slums” (McMichael, 2009: 284). Additionally, structural adjustment programs, key to neo-liberalism, have taken responsibilities of food security away from the state and have unfairly given the burden to women and the poor (McMichael, 2009: 286).
Roots in Capitalism
The current food regime is reflective of and a direct result of the current world hegemony and value system. It is reflective of capitalist values and reinforces wage labor and a world workforce (McMichael, 2009: 283). It is one that privileges agribusiness, which in turn works to undermine and destroy smallholder farm culture and food sovereignty (McMichael, 2009: 289). Peasant agriculture has been diminishing due to the corporate food regime. This provides a reserve labor force for agribusinesses and extends neo-liberalism. (McMichael, 2009: 281). One argument is that agribusinesses hope to create a monopoly on agriculture so as to move peasants’ production into industrial production to feed the capitalist system (McMichael, 2009: 284). Depeasantization involves a change in the peasant psychology. The change in psychology seeks to destroy the life of peasants and convert peasants into both a consumer base for capital consumption and a reserve labor force for capitalist means of production. From increased industrialization comes increased surplus. The second food regime’s solution to this surplus was food aid. Perhaps this food regime’s solution to surplus is depeasantization. By moving peasants to industry, agribusinesses are increasing their consumer base to soak up the surplus.
Weaknesses
The current food system has taken away choice from farmers and consumers. Smallholders are becoming obsolete, forced to become wage laborers or large-scale monocroppers. They do not have a choice on what they grow or how they grow it. Alternative food networks, such as fair trade, attempt to work against the inequalities in the current global food system (Steinrucken & Jaenichen, 2006: 190). However, these alternative food networks can also be seen as simply placing consumer demands of the global North on farmers in the global South (Smith & Lyons, 2012: 183). The farmers who grow organic, fair, or ethical trade do not have as much power in defining how they grow their food as the consumers and private labeling schemes (Smith & Lyons, 2012: 183). Additionally, the increased commodification and industrialization of food distances consumers from their food, to a point where consumers no longer have a real choice in their consumption patters (Witman et al., 2010: 5). The choices consumers make in the supermarket are false choices because they are not truly connected to or informed of the history, power relations, and social relations of the food that they are “choosing” to buy.
Strengths
Two strengths of the current global food system are its space for resistance and its ability to change. Although agribusinesses and neoliberal ideologies have become hegemonic, resistance movements are feasible and strong. This shows that there is still a type of democracy within the food regime. Returning to alternative food networks, some of the most marginalized farmers have created self-help style groups in order to gain empowerment and create a collective voice (Smith & Lyons, 2012: 192). Additionally, some have implemented group certification in order to lower the costs of certification and make the requirements situationally appropriate. Although these certification schemes have a role in eco-colonialism by imposing developed countries’ desires on farmers in developing countries, they also have potential to provide a space of resistance and negotiation for farmers. Regarding the second strength, the world is currently in its third food regime, showing that regimes are not static. Rather, they dissolve and are created based on the needs and order of the world. Therefore, if the needs and order of the world are currently shifting, then so can the food regime.
Steps Forward – Food Sovereignty
A democratic food policy promotes fair jobs, adequate nutritious food, environmental sustainability, and a democratic base. In essence it gives food control back to all rather than just the privileged elite (Friedman, 1993: 55). There are many democratic food movements. One of them is the food sovereignty movement, which is grounded in returning productive resources back to all farmers as well as emphasizing local production for local consumption (Witman et al., 2010: 3). The food sovereignty movement calls for a shift from a representative democracy to a participatory democracy (Masioli & Nicholson, 2010: 35). There must be a realization that farmers are no longer in control of they grow or how they grow it and consumers are no longer in control of what they eat. Then, there must be a willingness to fight and regain this autonomy. This fight can be found in the worldwide food sovereignty movement. Food sovereignty is radical because it calls for a complete regime change, where as other movements seek change within the current regime (Gimenez & Shattuck, 2011: 132). The future lies in whether or not movements for livelihoods and democracy can shift the power away from agribusiness institutional monopolies, thereby creating a new food regime.
A Re-evaluation of Food
The first step in a re-evaluation of our food regime is re-evaluating our relationship to food. We should no longer treat food as a commodity but rather need to return to our social connections found in food (Witman et al., 2010: 4). Part of the food crisis stems from the use of food as oil. This is a direct result of the detachment of food as a cultural good, and the creation of food as a monetary commodity. Now that corn is worth more if it is converted to ethanol than put on a plate, this has driven corn prices up and created price instability in countries that are dependent on this crop (McMichael, 2009: 290). This would not happen in a world where the inherent, cultural value of food is worth more than the price it can fetch for energy. Additionally, the community-focused local food movement links food to people, and argues that how a community grows food is directly linked to how a community is shaped (Werkheiser & Noll, 2014: 207). Therefore, if a community is growing countless fields of corn to be exported for ethanol and using environmentally unsustainable practices, then the community will not be sustainable either. This mirrors the theory of political ecology that the environment and social system are intertwined.
To The Steemit Community
So, I beg the question from all of you - is it possible to find sovereignty and spirituality in our food system again? Have you found slivers of both in your own relationship to food? If so, how?
Sources
Philip McMichael (2009) ‘A Food Regime Analysis of the World Food Crisis.’ Agriculture and Human Values, 26: 281-295.
Harriet Friedmann (1993) “The Political Economy of Food: A Global Crisis.” New Left Review, 197:29-57.
Steinrücken, Torsten; Jaenichen, Sebastian (2006) “Does the Fair Trade Concept Work? An Economic Analysis of Social Labels,”Aussenwirtschaft, 61(2):189-209.
Kiah Smith and Kristen Lyons (2012) “Negotiating Organic, Fair and Ethical Trade: Lessons from Smallholders in Uganda and Kenya,” in Christopher Rosin, Paul Stock, Hugh Campbel, eds. Food Systems Failure: The Global Food Crisis and the Future of Agriculture, New York: Oxfam, pp. 182-202.
Itelvina Masioli & Paul Nicholson (2010) “Seeing Like a Peasant: Voices from La Via Campesina,” pp. 33-44.
Eric Holt Gimenez and Annie Shattuck (2011) “Food crises, food regimes and food movements: rumblings of reform or tides of transformation?” The Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 38, No. 1, 109–144.
Ian Werkheiser & Samantha Noll (2014) “From Food Justice to a Tool of the Status Quo: Three Sub-movements Within Local Food,” Journal of Agriculture and Environmental Ethics, 27:201–210.
There's a need for maximum diversity of food options.. which equates to maximum freedom (of choice). I wonder how decentralization of food production is gonna shake things up..
@kevinwong, Gary Vaynerchuk once went on a 5 minutes rent on why our food will be de-centralized and why it will be inevitable. I should find the video, I even wrote the entire rant down so I won't forget.
That basically big agra won't be able to compete against homemade brands that are more focused on health, taste.. It's a long list of reasons he described. :) I'll look for it and post it here. :)
NIce.. would be interesting to get some insight :D
This is part of the talk that I've typed down:
“A direct to consumer is inevitable, the problem is the following, big brands like Dove or Pepsi can’t go to direct to consumer because Costco and Wal-Mart and Tesco will say: What are you doing? You are not cutting us out.
And so, the second these companies show a move to wanting to do direct to consumer, the big retailers are gonna drop their product from N-caps to the bottom shelf or kick them out of the store, which then would affect them in a 90 day period because their sales will collapse, which then would make their stock price collapse because they are basically caught in what is called channel conflict, they can’t do it.
So, what’s gonna happen? Here’s what’s gonna happen:
India, or her mom are gonna invent the best peanut butter that you’ve ever tasted and they gonna start going direct to consumer, and they are gonna sell on Instagram and Snapchat and Facebook and quietly but surely because that’s where the attention is, all of the sudden their businesses are gonna start doing forty millions not four, or 1,4 or not four hundred thousands, and then what’s the best peanut butter these days?
Let’s use the soda analogy, then Coke and Pepsi are gonna say what’s this new craft soda? That’s driving real volume and then we’re gonna be stuck, because they are gonna be squeezed from both sides, they are going to be squeezed from up-and-coming entrepreneurs that now know how to scale using things like Uber, Postmates or whatever channels of distribution, and use social media for awareness, and they are going to be pressed from the retailers for them not to do the same”.
Echoing @rinmann's comment, I want to see the video too, I hope you can find it! Super interesting analysis, I've never heard that perspective before, but it makes sense and we are already seeing such a shift towards decentralization from big agra to homemade brands!
find that video! I want to see it
Current food production is in part influenced by military concerns. The modern supermarket production methods were created by the army during World War II and this continues to be a source of new production methods for a lot of processed foods.
The way that supermarkets treat farmers and hence the whole chain suffers from this to a certain degree. The US government likes there to be a surplus of food in case of war when greater rations might be required to be produced and deployed at short notice.
The military itself would not be capable of meeting extra demand alone so would need major food companies and farmers to assist. This is detailed in the book "Combat Ready Kitchen".
The use of corn and other crops to produce ethanol is definitely a concern and some have suggested that it may lead to higher prices and food shortages for the least advantaged people in countries (e.g. Brazil) where this is significant.
With growing environmental pressures this is likely to get worse.
I think you are right that people's attitude to food has changed. For most people in the West food is cheap (compared to the developing world). People no longer have to subsist and there is an abundance of high calorie, nutrient dense food at affordable prices.
Contrast that with the majority of human history when every morsel required a huge amount of physical and mental energy. Every day was a struggle to fill your stomach - a struggle for survival.
You would be taught the true value of the food you were eating and you could directly see where it came from.
If you ate meat it was from an animal that you hunted and killed. If you ate vegetables you would have to find them, pick them toil away for them.
In a sense this all began to change with agriculture when people started to give up on the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
That is where the spiritual significance began to slowly be lost.
As agriculture has advanced the detachment has increased further and the actual "cost" of food and its spiritual significance has been completely disconnected from the population's consciousness.
It is just so easy to get that it no longer has the same value to most people. People barely even think about it.
Whoa awesome reply, I'd love to see you expand on all of these points and maybe make your own post!
I totally agree with you that many can't grasp the true value of food because we are not hunting, gathering, or gardening our own food. Many kids grow up thinking that food comes from the grocery store, with zero connection to the land that it grew on. I think that my (one) experience hunting and my experiences fishing and gardening have given me a greater gratitude to my food, because it takes a lot of energy to catch or grow whats on your dinner plate! I'm excited about the rise of urban gardening, as urban gardens may not be able to fully sustain people, but they offer the teachings of how much energy it takes to create food.
Great insights and history! I do have a different perspective on the geopolitical factors that may have lead to the current food regime. Governments are the ones enforcing trade agreements that big agribusiness rely on. If anything it's governments that aid corporations in monopolizing markets. It's better to label the system State Capitalism/Corporatism and even modern day Mercantilism. “Neoliberalism & Free Trade” is always government managed & subsidized trade in favor of large corporations rather than true free market capitalism. Most likely these developing nations with more authoritarian governments got large World Bank/IMF loans that would help these corrupt government officials get rich, create a short term boom in the economy and make people feel prosperous and grateful to these authoritarian regimes, but dependent on them. These loans would subsidize big agribusiness and food dumping, indebt these countries until the artificial debt-fueled boom would inevitably end and these countries would have to sell their natural assets to corporations to further “privatization & liberalization” to get out of bad debt and the people would be overwhelmed with taxes and austerity measures. This cycle probably repeats everywhere around the world. Neocolonialism is much more apt than 'neoliberalism' or 'capitalism'. Also food aid is also government subsidization and not free markets. Our welfare program subsidizes the cheapest of food commodities. Ethanol is also subsidized. Governments also subsidize unnecessary major road systems that lead to big box stores and malls and big agribusiness and mass industrial transportation. In a free market, businesses would have to pay for roads and local farms would be much more competitive.
Anyways I do agree 100% with food sovereignty as a long term solution. The biggest challenge is government policy, not capitalism. Can you sell local produce to others? Can you use grey water for plants? Can you capture rainwater? Most laws prohibit food sovereignty and why should they not it they want to maintain power and have people be dependent? There's a book called: Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal by Joel Salatin. I don't remember, but I probably read parts of it online or at least read some articles from Salatin and agreed with everything he spoke about.
I think decentralization and technology can disrupt big agribusiness and enable food sovereignty, but government polices and regulation will be the biggest obstacle. You really need an AirBnB or Uber for food and companies that will disregard all the laws... in fact not too long ago AirBnB was promoting 'illegal' local dinners/meals at private homes. Not sure they're still doing that, but companies that push the boundaries are the ones that will make the biggest difference.
Amazing reply! I actually totally agree with your analysis. In my section "How Did We Get Here?" I reference the protective US markets and the food dumping in form of food aid by the US government. And yes...neoliberalism and the "free market" are complete BS in terms of it actually being "free". So many government regulations lie behind such a system. The essay I offered above is just a snapshot of what is going on, and I do believe that the governments are one of the largest players and obstacles in the food system. However, I wonder how much control the government truly has today or if they are more at the mercy of what agribusinesses want due to agribusiness campaign donations, lobbyist, ect.
Lol Joel Salatin speaks to me...I'm currently trying to create my own permaculture business and am coming across all sorts of red tape, and many regulations that are completely ridiculous (unless the purpose of the regulations is to keep you in the system that is benefitting the top and exploiting the bottom, in which case they make perfect sense ;-) )
I'm going to look more into the AirBnB promotion, that's the kind of resistance that I've seen to be most effective, thanks for sharing!
Sounds good. Yeah I agree with you and I'm not a fan of big corporations either and they do have control over government in most industries, but unfortunately that won't change unless governments have less power. I remember hearing someone joke the first commodity sold in a regulated market are the regulators. The biggest source of corporate power comes from governments. It's half/half with government regulations. Most good intentions turn out to have bad results and most bad intentions work out exactly as planned. Hope you the best with your perm biz! What I mentioned was a pilot program in 2014 from AirBnB... EatWith is another company. I'm rooting for them. Yeah that's the best way to go, but you have to be prepared.. follow @quinneaker's blog and how his farm was raided. But I'm confident there is a way to make things work despite all these obstacles. ttyl!
The answer is - to get peopel to respect the food growth proccess!
Totally! The question is how does that happen when many people are apathetic to their own food choices due to the governments and agribusinesses in the current food regime taking complete control and almost hiding the food growth process?
Well for me its not a difficult answer - give it back to the people - the food growth process.
Make it uncentralised, with food growther are among those who will get paid just to do it, but to do it correctly.
Its actually a hell of a big debate, I think that there are many things even a goverment can do to help this develop, like simple things, where local products in shops would be sold cheaper and with a higher marketing campgain.
Unofrtunatly no one cares today )
Nice garden :) Good with some inspiration, when i am a Cheff :)
Awesome, I'm glad you liked it!
As a Christian, I am blessed in that I can find spirituality in wine. Cheers to you and to your beautiful post.
That's awesome, I'm glad you are able to find such spirituality in wine, thanks for sharing :-)
supporting!
Thank you!
What a great perspective! You're absolutely right. The detachment between food, sustainability, culture, and spirituality is huge. It's sad that the world is primarily driven by money with no regard for the other puzzle pieces, but it's not too late to change things.
You're right, it isn't too late to change! I've seen an increase in resistance models and alternative food systems, and hope to be part of the change :-)
Another excellent post, and I really appreciate that you cited your sources. I also have to say: your garden looks fantastic!
Food is something I think about a lot since I've spent the last few years working in the agricultural sector on urban organic micro-farms. Subsidies propping up agribusinesses in the United States are clearly a huge issue (if not primary issue), not only domestically in limiting our food choices, but also internationally as you pointed out in that developing countries' markets are flooded by cheap commodified foods such as corn. Fortunately, local foods movements and permaculture are starting to take off, and were these subsidies to be repealed, I think the markets would shift toward a healthier, sustainable and more democratic process.
Great food for thought—pun intended—here. Thank you!
Awesome! Are these urban organic micro-farms in the Bay Area? If so I'd love to know which ones!
Great points...I agree, the subsidies are working against food sovereignty and the government and big agriculture is in control through such policies. But like you pointed out, there is a shift and a rising resistance against such a food regime!
They are, but they're with private clients so not open to the public. Still a super fun gig though, and my own way of fighting the food regime. :)
It should be you will like https://steemit.com/vegetarianism/@gdsprgdd/i-will-tell-about-the-house-and-a-kitchen-garden-or-paradise-for-vegans
A very cool post, thanks for sharing!
@anwenbaumeister
I'm extremely excited about land-races right now, I believe they will be extremely important in creating diversity and decentralization in our foods. We should all be sharing seeds with others in our local communities so that we are able to develop our own heirlooms that thrive in our bioregions
Interesting points, I agree and am excited for the future of landraces. We have a ton of seed exchanges in my area...I hope the same is happening in other locations :-)
Great solution and share, thanks !!
Thanks for reading!