Last night I was out to dinner with a good friend. We went to a nice, casual restaurant that offers fresh foods, not processed. You get to select all the stuff you want in your bowl and they cook it up for you. Yeah, you may know the place. It's a great place to eat, and it is a better choice when eating out. I, however, am just back from an organic farming/gardening conference, actually two in a row. While standing in line viewing the food choices, I had to convince myself that I really could eat what was in front of me. All of the things that I know about our current food system came to mind as I looked over the selection.
I couldn't help myself. I said, "Sometimes I really hate coming back from these conferences."
"Why?" my friend asked.
"Because I know all the things that are wrong with our food system."
"I thought this was one of the things that is right with the food system."
"Not really. I can tell you something that's wrong with nearly everything here."
We went on with preparing our dinner. Once back at the table and after a few stories of the day, my friend brought up the previous subject.
"So what is wrong with our food system?" he innocently asks. This is not someone who is uneducated about food. He even grows some of his own in his backyard. So I began, hoping not to make him want to quit eating, but I had to be honest.
"Well, the meat was all raised with antibiotics, hormones, and genetically modified grain, if they're even supposed to eat grain at all. The vegetables were sprayed with pesticides, probably grown with fertilizers, and picked by people who were probably not paid well. And it all traveled a long distance to get here."
"Oh, yeah." What else does one say to all of that? Each one of the things I mentioned has a myriad of issues attached to it. My friend when on to comment that he expected food prices to rise. I assumed he meant because of the fact that fuel prices are currently higher. I replied that we still pay a lower percentage of our income on food than any other nation in the world.
We have a broken and unjust food system. Some people know it and do what they can to eat in more just and healthy ways. Others don't know. Still others see the issues but feel helpless to do anything. I have spent my time in the helpless category. But I've learned that there are things we can all do. I still get really frustrated. Change comes slowly.
Two thoughts to leave you with for now...
"Policy is nothing more than an expression of our values." - Mark Winne, food policy guru
So what do we value?
"Conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be widely accepted as a spiritual error, or even bad manners. Our culture is not unacquainted with the idea of food as a spiritually loaded commodity. We're just particular about which spiritual arguments we'll accept as valid for declining certain foods."
--Barbara Kingslover in Animal, Vegetable, Mineral
