The Creation Of A New Food Regime - Can We Find Sovereignty and Spirituality In Our Food System Once More? // Plus Photos From My Garden

The Spirituality of Food

There once was a spirituality of food. Certain foods were sacred, certain foods were used for special occasions, certain foods connected people together or people to their environment. At some point we relinquished control over our food and agricultural choices or agribusinesses coerced the control away from us. Either way, the majority of us don’t seem to care. Perhaps this lack of caring lies in the demise of our spiritual connection with food. There is a danger in the commodification and capitalization of food, and this danger can be found in our degrading environment, paradox between obesity and malnutrition, and an increasing awareness that are current food regime is unsustainable.

How Did We Get Here?

Post WWII began the world’s second food regime. It was founded on protective markets and food aid, the later created to get rid of US surplus so that US farmers could continue to demand a reasonable price on the world food market (McMichael, 2009: 285). The US dumped its food on developing countries and destroyed their local food markets. This in turn created dependency on US food imports and successfully created a food regime where US farmers had a reliable market for their surplus goods. We have moved from a food regime of trade restrictions and food dumping to the current food regime of liberalization and agribusinesses (Friedman, 1993: 37). This new order involves increased industrialization and commodification of food. The current world food order consists of overconsumption by the global North and underconsumption by the global South (McMichael, 2009: 288). The global South is exporting high value foods that its own people cannot afford while remaining dependent on imports of low value, staple foods such as corn or wheat that destroy their local farming economy (McMichael, 2009: 288). Agribusinesses have been successful in destroying the communities and livelihoods of many small farm cultures, turning these communities into “the world’s food, manufactured slums” (McMichael, 2009: 284). Additionally, structural adjustment programs, key to neo-liberalism, have taken responsibilities of food security away from the state and have unfairly given the burden to women and the poor (McMichael, 2009: 286).

Roots in Capitalism

The current food regime is reflective of and a direct result of the current world hegemony and value system. It is reflective of capitalist values and reinforces wage labor and a world workforce (McMichael, 2009: 283). It is one that privileges agribusiness, which in turn works to undermine and destroy smallholder farm culture and food sovereignty (McMichael, 2009: 289). Peasant agriculture has been diminishing due to the corporate food regime. This provides a reserve labor force for agribusinesses and extends neo-liberalism. (McMichael, 2009: 281). One argument is that agribusinesses hope to create a monopoly on agriculture so as to move peasants’ production into industrial production to feed the capitalist system (McMichael, 2009: 284). Depeasantization involves a change in the peasant psychology. The change in psychology seeks to destroy the life of peasants and convert peasants into both a consumer base for capital consumption and a reserve labor force for capitalist means of production. From increased industrialization comes increased surplus. The second food regime’s solution to this surplus was food aid. Perhaps this food regime’s solution to surplus is depeasantization. By moving peasants to industry, agribusinesses are increasing their consumer base to soak up the surplus.

Weaknesses

The current food system has taken away choice from farmers and consumers. Smallholders are becoming obsolete, forced to become wage laborers or large-scale monocroppers. They do not have a choice on what they grow or how they grow it. Alternative food networks, such as fair trade, attempt to work against the inequalities in the current global food system (Steinrucken & Jaenichen, 2006: 190). However, these alternative food networks can also be seen as simply placing consumer demands of the global North on farmers in the global South (Smith & Lyons, 2012: 183). The farmers who grow organic, fair, or ethical trade do not have as much power in defining how they grow their food as the consumers and private labeling schemes (Smith & Lyons, 2012: 183). Additionally, the increased commodification and industrialization of food distances consumers from their food, to a point where consumers no longer have a real choice in their consumption patters (Witman et al., 2010: 5). The choices consumers make in the supermarket are false choices because they are not truly connected to or informed of the history, power relations, and social relations of the food that they are “choosing” to buy.

Strengths

Two strengths of the current global food system are its space for resistance and its ability to change. Although agribusinesses and neoliberal ideologies have become hegemonic, resistance movements are feasible and strong. This shows that there is still a type of democracy within the food regime. Returning to alternative food networks, some of the most marginalized farmers have created self-help style groups in order to gain empowerment and create a collective voice (Smith & Lyons, 2012: 192). Additionally, some have implemented group certification in order to lower the costs of certification and make the requirements situationally appropriate. Although these certification schemes have a role in eco-colonialism by imposing developed countries’ desires on farmers in developing countries, they also have potential to provide a space of resistance and negotiation for farmers. Regarding the second strength, the world is currently in its third food regime, showing that regimes are not static. Rather, they dissolve and are created based on the needs and order of the world. Therefore, if the needs and order of the world are currently shifting, then so can the food regime.

Steps Forward – Food Sovereignty

A democratic food policy promotes fair jobs, adequate nutritious food, environmental sustainability, and a democratic base. In essence it gives food control back to all rather than just the privileged elite (Friedman, 1993: 55). There are many democratic food movements. One of them is the food sovereignty movement, which is grounded in returning productive resources back to all farmers as well as emphasizing local production for local consumption (Witman et al., 2010: 3). The food sovereignty movement calls for a shift from a representative democracy to a participatory democracy (Masioli & Nicholson, 2010: 35). There must be a realization that farmers are no longer in control of they grow or how they grow it and consumers are no longer in control of what they eat. Then, there must be a willingness to fight and regain this autonomy. This fight can be found in the worldwide food sovereignty movement. Food sovereignty is radical because it calls for a complete regime change, where as other movements seek change within the current regime (Gimenez & Shattuck, 2011: 132). The future lies in whether or not movements for livelihoods and democracy can shift the power away from agribusiness institutional monopolies, thereby creating a new food regime.

A Re-evaluation of Food

The first step in a re-evaluation of our food regime is re-evaluating our relationship to food. We should no longer treat food as a commodity but rather need to return to our social connections found in food (Witman et al., 2010: 4). Part of the food crisis stems from the use of food as oil. This is a direct result of the detachment of food as a cultural good, and the creation of food as a monetary commodity. Now that corn is worth more if it is converted to ethanol than put on a plate, this has driven corn prices up and created price instability in countries that are dependent on this crop (McMichael, 2009: 290). This would not happen in a world where the inherent, cultural value of food is worth more than the price it can fetch for energy. Additionally, the community-focused local food movement links food to people, and argues that how a community grows food is directly linked to how a community is shaped (Werkheiser & Noll, 2014: 207). Therefore, if a community is growing countless fields of corn to be exported for ethanol and using environmentally unsustainable practices, then the community will not be sustainable either. This mirrors the theory of political ecology that the environment and social system are intertwined.

To The Steemit Community

So, I beg the question from all of you - is it possible to find sovereignty and spirituality in our food system again? Have you found slivers of both in your own relationship to food? If so, how?

Sources

Philip McMichael (2009) ‘A Food Regime Analysis of the World Food Crisis.’ Agriculture and Human Values, 26: 281-295.

Harriet Friedmann (1993) “The Political Economy of Food: A Global Crisis.” New Left Review, 197:29-57.
Steinrücken, Torsten; Jaenichen, Sebastian (2006) “Does the Fair Trade Concept Work? An Economic Analysis of Social Labels,”Aussenwirtschaft, 61(2):189-209.

Kiah Smith and Kristen Lyons (2012) “Negotiating Organic, Fair and Ethical Trade: Lessons from Smallholders in Uganda and Kenya,” in Christopher Rosin, Paul Stock, Hugh Campbel, eds. Food Systems Failure: The Global Food Crisis and the Future of Agriculture, New York: Oxfam, pp. 182-202.

Itelvina Masioli & Paul Nicholson (2010) “Seeing Like a Peasant: Voices from La Via Campesina,” pp. 33-44.

Eric Holt Gimenez and Annie Shattuck (2011) “Food crises, food regimes and food movements: rumblings of reform or tides of transformation?” The Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 38, No. 1, 109–144.

Ian Werkheiser & Samantha Noll (2014) “From Food Justice to a Tool of the Status Quo: Three Sub-movements Within Local Food,” Journal of Agriculture and Environmental Ethics, 27:201–210.