Nerve 14 - Food and the Environment

We all need sustenance and nourishment in some form or other in order to live. Yet ironically the manner in which the majority of our food is produced counteracts the life-sustaining systems of our planet. Clare Gillott from the Transition Towns movement explains.

Food and the Environment

Too many people remain ignorant of the extent to which supermarkets dominate our food, waste food and consume vast quantities of fossil fuels in a greedy quest for profit at the expense of the environment. Huge stores requiring ‘just in time’ deliveries; cosmetically perfect yet largely tasteless fresh produce; highly processed products which are wrapped in layers of packaging and offer poor nutritional value - these are just a few of the appallingly inefficient and damaging aspects that go into producing food.(1)
The eco-feminist Vandana Shiva has said: “Food security needs freedom from giant corporations and their toxic products – chemicals and GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms). This has become even more necessary in the context of climate chaos and the end of cheap oil.”
This statement from an outstanding global citizen encapsulates many of the key issues affecting food today.
Food is one of the major focuses of Transition Towns in Liverpool. We seek to raise awareness of the twin challenges of climate change and peak oil and provide practical solutions. Transition aims to harness the collective genius and resources of local communities. The beauty of the Transition movement is that it provides an opportunity to respond to these dire environmental concerns in a manner that is truly positive. Practical action that may be embarked upon can include: growing local food (planting nut and fruit trees, using alleyways and ‘waste’ ground for raising food), setting up a local currency (in order to counteract the flow of capital to big business) and establishing renewable energy generation within local communities.
Issues around food that transitioning has been exploring include an appreciation of the links between food production and the environmental imbalances being perpetrated:

Food security/sovereignty

This basically has to do with a community of people – a village, for example, or a whole nation – being able to feed itself by accessing local, natural resources. Regrettably, both richer and poorer nations are in thrall to the giant corporations that dominate food production. Pressed onto markets across the globe, the products of these corporations detract from localised provision and can contribute to the destruction of valuable natural resources. In India, for instance, there has been land contamination by toxic sludge and the depletion of local aquifers due to the manufacture of Coca Cola.(2)
Large areas of poorer nations may be commandeered to grow food for rich countries. Out of season produce can be made available to British consumers all year round because Kenyan resources are raising the crop and exporting it to wealthier nations such as ours. As well as robbing land, time and energy from the local people who may otherwise grow food for themselves on this ground, soil depletion and water stress can result. If the food is freighted by air this massively increases its carbon footprint and adds to climate change.

Giant corporations

Trade rules work in favour of huge corporations because the corporations demand such favours from governments. Domination by these businesses squeezes out competition and reduces the likelihood of diversity, seasonality and quality in food.(3) Inferior, mass-produced foodstuffs become the norm and the cheap cost (at the till) belies the fact that such foods are very expensive in terms of the environment and global justice.

Toxic products

Dependent upon monoculture and fossil fuel based artificial fertilizers, giant food corporations are responsible for turning basic commodities such as maize into cheap, mass-produced foodstuffs.(4) Industrial food products are also more likely to contain artificially created additives, which are designed to give the appearance of real, unadulterated foods. Such additives represent highly contrived components of many mass-produced foods and may be argued as amounting to duping our brains into thinking we are consuming nourishment of a purer quality and better provenance than is actually the case.(5)
Moreover, genetically modified organisms are a huge area of contention. Those who support GMO technology claim it will mean an end to world hunger. The sinister element of GMOs becomes apparent if one accepts that hunger has more to do with global injustices such as crops being grown in poorer nations for export to the wealthy.

Climate chaos

As the previous points have indicated, climate chaos is perpetuated within this state of affairs by the fossil fuel based fertilizers applied to monoculture systems of agriculture as well as imported, unseasonal food - especially if freighted by air. Foodstuffs produced within an industrial, energy-intensive system further add to the greenhouse gas emissions of sustenance that could be produced in a healthier and more sustainable manner.

Cheap oil

Linking all these abhorrences together is the availability of cheap oil. Oil fuels so much of our lifestyles that it is impossible to avoid and this is no less true for food production. But our insatiable appetite for oil cannot continue. This type of energy is finite and will become more difficult to extract and thus more expensive – referred to as ‘peak oil’. Even leaving aside the problem of greenhouse gas emissions from oil our dependence on this energy source demands a serious re-evaluation.
Specifically in terms of food and our environment more localised food production would mitigate the effects of climate change by reducing dependency on transportation. It would also alleviate stress on land and water in other parts of the world, encourage organic food production with its minimal carbon footprint and make a stand for global justice to which the environmental crisis is so inextricably connected.

For more on how to get involved in Transition Towns see: www.transitiontowns.org/Liverpool-South

Notes:

www.tescopoly.org; www.walmartwatch.com; www.waronwant.org and Felicity Lawrence ‘Not on the Label – What Really Goes Into the Food on Your Plate’ (2004).
War on Want ‘Coca Cola – The Alternative Report’ (March 2006).
Meat production and packing for the fast food industry is a case in point. See, for example, chapter 7 ‘Cogs in the Great Machine’ in Eric Schlosser’s ‘Fast Food Nation – What the All-American Meal is Doing to the World’ (2002).
For more on this see Michael Pollan ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma – The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast Food World’ (2006).
Schlosser, op.cit, chapter 5 ‘Why the Fries Taste Good’.

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