It’s about a month old, but this AVA interview with Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved – an indictment of what he refers to as the “food system” focusing on the paradox of simultaneous malnutrition and obesity. From a high suicide rate of small farmers to gender inequity in hunger, he tries to weave various issues together while distinguishing “food sovereignty” from the more elitist practices of “slow food” and “food localism.”
On the other hand, the interview doesn’t offer many specifics. I will assume that his books do. But I’ve read enough “we-need-to-reclaim-power-and-it’s-all-related” kind of solutions. “Community organizing” is pretty much the lefty default-solution to everything, only as we know from decades of trying, that’s easier said than done. Maybe some specific models? The only specifics in the interview are the Italian Communist Party, the Peoples’ Grocery in Oakland, the Black Panthers (who “fed more people than the State of California”), and most specifically the transferal of public lands into “the commons.” But none of them were involved in food production, only food distribution. What I was hoping to read were some proposals for economic models of food production which could compete with agribusiness under the existing structures while simultaneously pushing for more equitable structures. Maybe there’s a chapter in his book.
No mention of organics in the article.
20 comments
Comments feed for this article
May 11, 2011 at 7:57 am
Bruce Ross
For most of the history of the human race, the vast majority of us survived on “local food.” Life was nasty, brutish and short, and we were one bad harvest away from starvation.
May 11, 2011 at 8:39 am
Joe Blow
The essence of individual sovereignty is the ability to feed oneself. Food and water are the essence of life and ultimately the power to control that life. The same is true with a nation. Lose that ability, to feed yourself, turn that power over to an oligarchy and its agribusiness and you lose control over your life. Or I should say, the source of your life. The same is true when you subordinate your way of thinking and your beliefs to the worthless opinions and unproven teachings of others.
The dollar or value base for the Capitalist system or religion is only worth the amount of its self-sustaining value. In America’s case, the land value or the ability of its citizenry to produce commodity values and service itself. If Barack Obama has do nothing else he has shown everyone who rules or controls the power and what they systematically have done to it. By putting most of the money in the hands or control of a few to pay for their debts, by printing trillions of paper dollars, the life sustaining value of America has gone the way of self-sustaining food. The solution is simple if you want to live. Do what you can do: Learn to grow your own food. Learn to think for yourself.
May 11, 2011 at 9:04 am
WTF
So Eric, if this is true: “Community organizing” is pretty much the lefty default-solution to everything, only as we know from decades of trying, that’s easier said than done. Maybe some specific models?”
Then what would you call what the Park BOD is trying to accomplish in their vision for the SHCP?
The SHCP could become the “economic model of food production” if allowed by the Park BOD, without spending $300K rezoning it out of AE/Ag production. Maybe the Park BOD could appoint a farmer to the Park BOD, now that would be a step in the right direction.
May 11, 2011 at 9:21 am
Eric Kirk
Give it a rest WTF. It’s really getting old.
May 11, 2011 at 10:30 am
WTF
The SHCP is the largest location of prime ag production soils in all of Southern Humboldt. It has location, location, location to markets, wholesale and retail. The Park BOD has never once allowed for the full potential of food production at the SHCP, only about 15 out of 200 acres. So why dodge the question? You don’t think all local markets and restaurants would not buy and sell locally grown CCOF food from the SHCP?
Here is your model, right in your own back yard, and you can’t even see it or want to talk about it.
May 11, 2011 at 12:01 pm
Anonymous
John Jeavons has a water-saving model of farming in Willits that is sustainable without outside inputs. He doesn’t buy fertilizer but creates it from the fiber left from the food and flowers grown there. Apprentices from Africa and Mexico pay to intern there. They do the hard work and learn the model. I believe he calls it the “bio-intensive method”.
Jeavons has tour every summer for interested visitors.
May 11, 2011 at 5:58 pm
podsnap
Actually, hunter-gatherers were not living “brutish” lives, unless you consider americas consumption-exploitation addiction refined. Studies have shown that those living in stone-age cultures worked an average of four hours a day, and spent a lot of time dancing. So too bad that white capitalism is obliterating every vestige of subsistence living, now when we need some guidance.
People had lived on this continent for 20,000 or more years without ruining it, and look what we’ve done in the span of only several hundred years.
The “nasty, brutish” propaganda is only to justify killing off those people and taking their land.
May 11, 2011 at 8:23 pm
Eric Kirk
The park is already being farmed WTF. And the vast majority of the land will remain in agriculture after the rezoning.
And that’s the end of the discussion. You’re not hijacking another thread.
May 11, 2011 at 8:28 pm
Eric Kirk
Studies have shown that those living in stone-age cultures worked an average of four hours a day, and spent a lot of time dancing.
Uh, that doesn’t seem likely. It was certainly not the case in Native American cultures. But then, they were considerably beyond the stone age.
May 11, 2011 at 9:57 pm
Not A Native
Gee Eric, now you’re sounding a lot like Dubya. Waah, waah, community organizing is harrrd. Well, if it were easy, it would already have been done and they’re be no need for whining bloggers to make backhanded insults against those who dedicate them selves to participatory goverance rather than a tops down autocratic cabal by those with economic power.
Sure Eric, its a lot easier and seemingly more efficient to give orders and take the scalps of dissenters than to deliberate and accomodate. The hierarchical social model often produces activity but not fairness, justice, nor the best ideas. One thing’s for sure though, it meets the ego goals of the autocrats.
May 11, 2011 at 10:14 pm
Eric Kirk
So then community organize NAN. What’s stopping you?
May 11, 2011 at 10:19 pm
Bruce Ross
podsnap,
There’s a lot to dislike about industrial agriculture, but if you think hunting and gathering is a lifestyle humanity should aspire to, I’d be very curious as to which 99 percent of the species you advocate killing off to make it viable.
May 12, 2011 at 6:55 am
Anonymous
I don’t think there are any economic models of food production that can compete with the corporate model, as the corporate entities have pretty much succeeded in capturing most of the resources and the market.
However just as we can choose to do our banking with the local credit union instead of with wells-fargo, we can choose to buy and eat food that’s locally produced by small farmers. In Humboldt County we have local meat production, dairy, vegetables and fruit. Locally grown wheat is used in a local bakery. A small consortium of olive growers is talking about acquiring a community olive oil press. The hunter-gatherers among us have acorns, mushrooms and venison to supplement their diets. And someday, if we are very wise, the salmon may return.
I wonder about this elitist label. Whole Foods corporate price gouging probably contributes to this idea. But when we are talking about locavore and slow food we are basically talking about diet of the peasant farmer.
Organic farming is at its heart simply a strategy of eschewing poisonous and environmentally destructive practices, and a return to sustaining the soil with sound biological practices.
There is a remarkable grass roots youth movement toward small farming.
Rather than be a competing strategy with BIG AG, I believe a network of many small farms can build resilience into the system and perhaps lead to a competing strategy.
May 12, 2011 at 12:58 pm
Not A Native
Nothing stopping me here Eric. And thats a rebuke to your very conservative implication that only private interests with economic clout to dictate ‘my way or the highway’ have the capability to turn ideas into reality:
Hmm, lets see… the polluting pulp plant is no more…there’s a real possibility in my lifetime of a eureka/arcata/blue lake bike/hike trail…..Jefferson school in eureka will become a community center….Marina Center has agreed with Baykeeper on cleanup process….’Smart growth’ is being seriously considered in HumCo for the first time…SHCP board faces withering opposition to greenwashing its high impact development plans……arcata rejected creekside sprawl proposal…..arcata adopted homeless transitional housing project…arcata retaining existing bike lanes…arcata preserves greenspace with community forest and land trust additions
May 12, 2011 at 1:12 pm
Eric Kirk
And NAN, have you succeeded in decentralizing the food industry?
May 12, 2011 at 2:45 pm
Not A Native
Eric, greater decentralization of food production isn’t something I feel is very important.
But you ridiculed the efforts of those who want that. Not by directly challenging the merits of their position, but by underhandedly smearing populism in general and their strategies in particular. It was a cheap shot that all blog owners have in their power, but only the disreputable and scurrilous ones choose to.
I’ve read that the character of a person can be assessed by seeing how they treat someone who has no defenses against them, and how they treat someone for whom they have absolutely no need of. You’ve certainly given decisive examples here in both those situations.
May 12, 2011 at 7:32 pm
podsnap
“Uh, that doesn’t seem likely. It was certainly not the case in Native American cultures. But then, they were considerably beyond the stone age.”
Then what does seem likely to you?
May 21, 2011 at 8:50 pm
Anonymous
Stone age refers to the material of tools used.
May 21, 2011 at 8:53 pm
podsnap
Why doesn’t it seem likely Eric? Doesn’t fit your into your white man story line?
Stone age refers to the material of tools used by a culture.
May 21, 2011 at 10:10 pm
Eric Kirk
Stone age refers to the material of tools used.
Actually, it’s much more complicated than that. First of all, it refers to the early stages of civilization in Europe. The misunderstanding comes from the correlation of certain structures and technologies, trade relationships to other cultures, religion, cultural complexity, to the uses of stone, bronze, and iron, but social structures and technologies on other continents don’t necessarily correlate the same way. Native American cultures employed pottery, simple to complex agriculture, and even some metal manipulation. In any case, according to my college cultural anthropology professor, they categorize most Native cultures as neolithic to “bronze age.”
Then what does seem likely to you?
That individuals, particularly women, in the paleolithic, mesolithic, and neolithic periods of history spent much more than four hours a day working for basic survival.
Doesn’t fit your into your white man story line?
Which storyline would that be? And where did your four hour theory come from?