Exporting our Flawed Food System

NPR shared two significant stories about our food system today. One story told of an industrial farm community's lack of good food, and the other told of a plan to boost industrial farm aid to poor nations.

From the ongoing series Hidden Kitchens by the Kitchen Sisters came Central Valley Disconnect: Rich Land, Poor Nutrition. The story details how California's Central Valley, one of the largest producers of fruits and vegetables, has very little healthy food to eat. "... the children of this valley rarely taste those fruits and vegetables." The poverty of these farming communities creates major health disparities. Residents and public health workers are trying to overcome the obesogenic environment through walking clubs and farm stands at schools and farmer's markets.

And from the news: the G8 meeting pledged 20 billion dollars in food aid for Africa. President Obama said, "There's no reason why Africa shouldn't be able to feed itself." NPR's Planet Money blog seemed to laud the decision in the post G8's New Approach to Hunger.

"Today's G8 announcement of $20 billion for food aid actually takes a fairly revolutionary step. Instead of just delivering food, G8 countries are going to help poor countries develop their agriculture industries. It's almost like a farming stimulus, only provided by outside countries rather than local governments. The American share of that pledge is about $3.5 billion, which would be a doubling of previous hunger spending."

It sound great- right? "Teach a man how to fish..." But here's the problem- the biotech industry in behind this aid push and the biotech industry doesn't have a good track record in helping to feed the world's poor. Environmental, economic, and human woes have been the primary outcomes of the biotech agenda. Basically, with biotech, instead of growing food to feed themselves, the small farmers grow food for the world market The industrial farming techniques bankrupt the soil and the farmers. Instead of saving seed, like farmer's have done since the dawn of agriculture, farmer's must buy patented GMO seed and fertilizer and pesticides, year after year, form giant corporations like Monsanto, then they are subject to world market forces larger than themselves, ultimately reaping prices for their crops that can't sustain them. They go hungry while biotech gets rich. In India- the disastrous result has been horrific epidemics of farmer suicides and food riots.

Civil Eats explored this topic back in June in the article, All That Glitters is Not Gold: Biotechnology Has Failed Us, So Why Promote It Abroad? In the post, Paula Crossfield connects some of the dots between big ag and food insecurity. "Meanwhile, here in the US, 36 million people are food insecure, and yet we are one of the biggest agricultural producers in the world." In her interview with global food policy expert and Stuffed and Starved author Raj Patel, he says, "Everyone agrees that African farmers need support. But this story is like the vacuum cleaner salesman who dumps dirt on your floor to show you how his product can pick some of it up."

While food policy folks have been arguing for years to solve the problem of hunger by increasing aid for agriculture, this move by the G8 seems more like aid to biotech. Industrial ag can not feed people without lots of oil and water and profits for big ag companies. Real agro-ecological alternatives that respect a culture's food traditions are the only long term solution.

Sustainable Nutrition Bottomline:

Industrial ag does not solve world hunger, in many cases it perpetuates it as it keeps control of resources in the hands of the few. If millions of people across the United States are going hungry each day and millions of people are overweight while undernourished-why would we export our flawed food system? Feeding people nourishing food requires a transformation in the way we grow and think about food.