Ep. 06/20–Pandemic and Food

CoronaVirus is revealing breakdowns and lack of resilience in our food supply systems. Which links in the chain are broken? Rather than fixing them, what are new and better choices for us in how we bring food from soil to savory, healthy eating? 

This is the third successive podcast episode in the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic. By the end of May, over 100,000 people have died in the U.S.—a horrific, emotional and spiritual wrenching of lives, hundreds of thousands of people across the nation are hurting, grieving. Surely, this experience of death and suffering—the largest in our lifetimes—is releasing the commitment to new life in enough of us to take leaps in the direction of change—the changes that our planet says we must make in this decade of the 2020s. Not to do so will form calluses on our souls and decay in who we are.

Covid-19 abruptly stopped the fragile food supply system we’ve been depending on. The system that’s broken down is driven by industrial agriculture, global markets, trade breakdowns and corporate control.

At Least 9 Million US Households With Children Are 'Not At All Confident' They'll Be Able to Afford Food Next Month, Census Survey Finds.

Excellent sources that (1) explain the breakdown and (2) help us identify the systems we need going forward.  

Richard Heinberg wrote The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality. The final chapter is loaded with things people are doing to adopt practices of OneEarth living and economics measured by wellbeing, not growth. He is senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute and continues to share the wisdom of that think and action group in his Museletter on his website, https://richardheinberg.com.

I interviewed Richard for this podcast, Ep. 109.

 In 4/20 Museletter #326, “Fraying Food System May Be Our Next Crisis” summarizes flaws in the current system. 

https://richardheinberg.com/museletter-326-pandemic-response-requires-post-growth-economic-thinking

“Experts who study what makes societies sustainable (or unsustainable) have been warning for decades that our modern food system is packed with ticking bombs. The ways we grow, process, package, and distribute food depend overwhelmingly on finite, depleting, and polluting fossil fuels. Industrial agriculture contributes to climate change, and results in soil erosion and salinization. Ammonia-based fertilizers create “dead zones” near river deltas while petrochemical pesticides and herbicides pollute air and water. Modern agriculture also contributes to deforestation and biodiversity loss. Monocrops—huge fields of genetically uniform corn and soybeans—are especially vulnerable to pests and diseases. Long supply chains make localities increasingly dependent on distant suppliers. The system tends to exploit low-wage workers. And food is often unequally distributed and even unhealthful, contributing to poor nutrition as well as diabetes and other diseases.”

Heinberg: five of the links that are breaking down currently in the food supply chain's “wicked complexity.” 

These five give us a big picture of what corporations and globalization have been creating in recent decades. 

1. Vulnerable Food Workers 

2. Fragile Distribution Networks 

3. Broken Global Supply Chains 

4. Bankrupt Farmers 

5. Vanishing Affordability 

Solutions We Suggest

1. Growing more of our own. —  growing more of their own food. //  Baker Creek seed company, 

2. Rationing. — At the national level, food price controls have an uneven history of success. Stan Cox: Any Way You Slice It: The Past, Present, and Future of Rationing //  Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program 

3.  Shorten supply chains. LINKS: capture atmospheric carbon and sequester it in soil, that build healthy and biologically rich topsoil // nutritious and affordable food // fair to farmers and farmworkers.

4. Guides for how Our Choices can reconfigure food supply post-Covid-19 (mid-Covid-19) 

From the Reader Supported News website, an article on young adults turning their grief to action: Anna McClurkan

a. Local supply—growers, retailers, markets. Focus in communities instead of corporations.

b. Reduce Meat by at least 50%

c. Organic—no pesticides, herbicides

5. The Land Institute, Salina, KS, — reconfiguring farming (notes from Panel with Stan Cox, 5/23/20)

Detailed Show Notes at http://simpleliving.startlogic.com/SLW-PODCAST/?p=2371