{"id":35132,"date":"2017-10-09T12:41:00","date_gmt":"2017-10-09T12:41:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-06-02T14:22:56","modified_gmt":"2020-06-02T14:22:56","slug":"10132-no-simple-fix-for-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/food\/10132-no-simple-fix-for-food\/","title":{"rendered":"No simple fix for food"},"content":{"rendered":"

Intensive animal agriculture is bad for people, animals and the planet. This was the powerful message of a <\/span>conference<\/a> in London last week organised by Compassion in World Farming<\/a> (CIWF). This 50-year-old pressure group promotes a \u201cflourishing food system\u201d based on agroecology<\/a> and an increasingly plant-based human diet, rather than industrial models of agriculture.<\/p>\n

The argument is a strong one: the current food system is wasteful and sees much human-edible grain fed to animals. There is also great inequality, with overconsumption and non-communicable diseases in rich countries and starvation and malnourishment in poor ones.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is driving biodiversity loss, soil degradation, antimicrobial resistance, disturbed biogeochemical flows<\/a>, and is a significant contributor to climate change. And it is cruel, with even basic principles of animal welfare ignored in many instances.<\/p>\n

Which is why it\u2019s strange that many conversations at the conference were about human population growth. Early on the first day, an audience member said panellists should focus on population as a driver of environmental change, and many seemed to agree, despite the fact CIWF <\/span>aims<\/a> to end the inequitable distribution of food \u2013 and is not rooted in the doomsayer perspective known as Malthusianism<\/a> (after the British cleric Thomas Malthus, who argued that population growth inevitably results in poverty or degradation).<\/p>\n

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Most were quick to point out rightly that the most effective way to slow population growth is <\/span>women\u2019s rights and education<\/a>. One panel chair, the British environmentalist and former politician Stanley Johnson<\/a>, cited the need for women\u2019s equality and drew on his recent trip to India to suggest such education on family planning is needed \u2013 and for men, too.<\/p>\n

Yet Johnson has six children, and was speaking on an all-male panel. The discussion had fallen into the same trap as most discussions of population growth: it saw wealthy, western, male elites making judgements about women\u2019s reproductive choices.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, all men should support women\u2019s equality, regardless of the environmental outcomes. But they should surely start at home, and in their own realms of experience \u2013 including the panels they speak on<\/a> \u2013 rather than overseas and in the sphere of reproduction, where their interventions will quickly be perceived as invasive or worse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Moreover, simple fixes for our environmental problems, such as having fewer children or plant-only diets, can\u2019t address the complexity of our food systems, where questions around food security, inequality, pollution, farmers\u2019 livelihoods, and animal welfare are inevitably tangled.<\/span><\/p>\n

By contrast, Raj Patel<\/a>, who also spoke on the first day, had a far more revealing perspective about our cruel, unequal and destructive food system.<\/p>\n

The academic and activist, once also <\/span>mistaken for the Messiah<\/a>, presented his thesis of \u201ccheap nature\u201d: where cheap food exists to provide sustenance for workers in underpaid, \u201ccheap\u201d jobs, whose \u201ccheap lives\u201d \u2013 Patel explained how people of colour work in the worst, most dangerous conditions in the American food system \u2013 are bound up with the dispossession of indigenous land, and the despoliation of natural resources.<\/p>\n

In short, his is a complex analysis for a complex system. Patel\u2019s sense of the food system is not Malthusian, but neither is it rosy. There is no abundance through technology or capitalism. But liberatory impulses \u2013 to end inequality, save the environment, and end cruelty to animals \u2013 can converge to change the ways we grow and eat our food.<\/span><\/p>\n

In short, when it comes to food, it pays to keep it complex<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Addressing inequality, saving the environment, and ending animal cruelty requires a complex understanding of food systems, writes Sam Geall<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":59767,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[763],"tags":[546,561],"hashtags":[],"country":[],"class_list":["post-35132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food","tag-food-security","tag-livestock"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNo simple fix for food | Dialogue Earth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Addressing inequality, saving the environment, and ending animal cruelty requires a complex understanding of food systems, writes Sam Geall\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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