Food and Our World

05 Oct 2010 2 Comments

by leah in Environment/Change, Super Info Tags: food, sun shiner leah, sustainability

Hello hello, everyone!

I wanted to share with you guys something that I have recently become enlightened to, and I think it’s really important to share with you all.

My college orientation had a theme this year of “Feast or Famine”, which focused on food-related issues in the world today. We had a few required articles to read, and let me tell you something–I was BLOWN AWAY by the things I learned. The most shocking fact I learned, though, was how little about the issues I actually knew. I go through my daily life never thinking about what’s on my plate, how it got there, how much fossil fuel it took to get to me, how much labor the farmers actually did (or how much processing the factory did)–nor do I really think about other cultures and their relationship to food. Do they have enough? How are  they producing it? iDo they have small farms, or giant slaughterhouses and food factories? What percentage of the world suffers from eating disorders, and what percentage is suffering from food shortages? It is incredible to think that we live in a world where some people starve themselves, and some people are starving. But that is only one small idea. The articles I read dealt with many facets of the food issue–poverty, distribution, food culture, growth and production, etc. Here is just one example of something incredible that I learned that has to do with distribution:

There is enough food in the world right now to not only feed every human on this planet, but enough to make every single person fat. However, when I read this tiny passage, 6 people died of hunger related-issues.

If that doesn’t blow your mind, I don’t know what will. And that was just one tiny thing specifically in the area of hunger! There are so many more things to learn about food. It’s one of those issues that is a ticking time bomb, and if we don’t educate ourselves about it now, we are going to have enormous problems in the future. All it takes at first is just to read a little, and then hopefully we can be inspired enough to read more, learn more, and discover ways to take action and begin paving the way to a more sustainable and healthy future in food.

We had a lot of discussion groups during orientation, and the easiest thing we came up with was to tell a few people from outside of school about the things we had learned. I thought Sun Shines On was a perfect way to communicate with a large number of people. And if every person who reads this talks about it to just two or three people, imagine how quickly the knowledge will spread!

Right now I am taking a class called “Ecology of Eating: Reporting from the Fields of Science and Art”. It is a dance and environmental science class that looks at these issues of food, and exploring performance as a medium of communicating our findings. It is fascinating, and I will continue to update you all on my research in that class in future posts. What I’m about to start reading for that class right now is a book called “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” by Barbara Kingsolver. The first chapter is where I learned that fact about distribution. The book explores the Kingsolver family’s journey off our food map to eat only foods produced by themselves and their neighbors on their farms. Maybe some of you will read it with me!

Here is a list of books to look at, read, browse, or whatever (taken from my current course); I couldn’t find the actual summer reading articles, but if I come across them I will post them.

Berry, Wendell. THE UNSETTLING OF AMERICA: CULTURE AND AGRICULTURE, San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1996; “THE PLEASURES OF EATING” WHAT ARE PEOPLE FOR? New York: North Point Press, 1990; THE ART OF THE COMMONPLACE: THE AGRARIAN ESSAYS OF WENDELL BERRY, Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2003.
Carson, Rachel. SILENT SPRING, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1968.
Critser, Greg. FAT LAND: HOW AMERICANS BECAME THE FATTEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
Cronon, William. CHANGES IN THE LAND: INDIANS, COLONISTS, AND THE ECOLOGY OF NEW ENGLAND, New York: Hill and Wang, 1983.
Leopold, Aldo. A SAND COUNTY ALMANAC, New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.
Manning, Richard, AGAINST THE GRAIN: HOW AGRICULTURE HAS HIJACKED CIVILIZATION, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.
Patel, Raj. STUFFED & STARVED: THE HIDDEN BATTLE FOR THE WORLD FOOD SYSTEM, Brooklyn: Melville House, 2008.
Pollan, Michael. SECOND NATURE: A GARDNER’S EDUCATION, New York: Grove Press, 1991; THE BOTANY OF DESIRE: A PLANT’S-EYE VIEW OF THE WORLD, New York: Random House, 2002; THE OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA, New York: Penguin Group, 2006.
Pringle, Peter. FOOD, INC.: MENDEL TO MONSANTO–THE PROMISE AND PERILS OF THE BIOTECH HARVEST, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003.
Schlosser, Eric. FAST FOOD NATION: THE DARK SIDE OF THE AMERICAN MEAL, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
Worster, Donald. NATURE’S ECONOMY: A HISTORY OF ECOLOGICAL IDEAS, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Happy reading! And remember, even the smallest of efforts on your part can begin to make a world of difference,

Leah