RE: The Creation Of A New Food Regime - Can We Find Sovereignty and Spirituality In Our Food System Once More? // Plus Photos From My Garden
Current food production is in part influenced by military concerns. The modern supermarket production methods were created by the army during World War II and this continues to be a source of new production methods for a lot of processed foods.
The way that supermarkets treat farmers and hence the whole chain suffers from this to a certain degree. The US government likes there to be a surplus of food in case of war when greater rations might be required to be produced and deployed at short notice.
The military itself would not be capable of meeting extra demand alone so would need major food companies and farmers to assist. This is detailed in the book "Combat Ready Kitchen".
The use of corn and other crops to produce ethanol is definitely a concern and some have suggested that it may lead to higher prices and food shortages for the least advantaged people in countries (e.g. Brazil) where this is significant.
With growing environmental pressures this is likely to get worse.
I think you are right that people's attitude to food has changed. For most people in the West food is cheap (compared to the developing world). People no longer have to subsist and there is an abundance of high calorie, nutrient dense food at affordable prices.
Contrast that with the majority of human history when every morsel required a huge amount of physical and mental energy. Every day was a struggle to fill your stomach - a struggle for survival.
You would be taught the true value of the food you were eating and you could directly see where it came from.
If you ate meat it was from an animal that you hunted and killed. If you ate vegetables you would have to find them, pick them toil away for them.
In a sense this all began to change with agriculture when people started to give up on the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
That is where the spiritual significance began to slowly be lost.
As agriculture has advanced the detachment has increased further and the actual "cost" of food and its spiritual significance has been completely disconnected from the population's consciousness.
It is just so easy to get that it no longer has the same value to most people. People barely even think about it.
Whoa awesome reply, I'd love to see you expand on all of these points and maybe make your own post!
I totally agree with you that many can't grasp the true value of food because we are not hunting, gathering, or gardening our own food. Many kids grow up thinking that food comes from the grocery store, with zero connection to the land that it grew on. I think that my (one) experience hunting and my experiences fishing and gardening have given me a greater gratitude to my food, because it takes a lot of energy to catch or grow whats on your dinner plate! I'm excited about the rise of urban gardening, as urban gardens may not be able to fully sustain people, but they offer the teachings of how much energy it takes to create food.