This edition of the Monitor is focused on one of my favourite topics, FOOD!
We look at the factors that go into getting food on the table. And how those factors will change how we eat in the future.
Food is so central to our lives, it impacts our identity: we’re foodies, we’re dieting, we’re vegans, vegetarians, pescetarians, omnivores, gluten-free, keto … We are what we eat (or don’t eat).
Food is indeed personal, but, like everything, it’s also political. There are broader, structural factors that influence what we eat—and our access, or lack of, to healthy foods.
External shocks, for instance. In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic shocked us out of restaurants as we retreated to our homes, with many embracing cooking and sourdough bread baking while the economy shut down.
Food systems can, and will, change—sometimes they’re forced to. Remember when we were shocked by the idea of a $25 hamburger? Now it’s the norm in many restaurants, and not just the high-end ones.
The future of food will not be cheap.
Wars, geopolitical instability, and the climate crisis will impact our supply chains—affecting how and where we’ll source our food, and what kind of food we’ll be eating.
“Climate change could devastate Canadian agriculture and food production in coming decades; a multi-decade drought could unfold and sear our food-producing areas, wither our crops, and parch and damage our soils,” Darrin Qualman writes in his searing essay in this issue, “Breadbasket no more?”
Change is inevitable. Change will either happen to us or be created by us. In a food system dominated by corporate giants, Wade Thorhaug writes that there’s a role for public markets: “Having a means to directly support small-scale farmers is also a way to support sustainable agroecological approaches that work within environments rather than against them.”
But mega corporations will also continue to try to maintain their dominant grip on food markets. They will try to use changes in food technology to their advantage, for profit, of course.
We’re already seeing it in emerging alternative “fake meat” markets. In this issue, Elisabeth Abergel says: “I don’t think growing meat in bioreactors will rectify the structural inequalities that exist in the global food system. If anything, it might reinforce them.
“It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that lab-grown meat is just another technologically intensive, market-driven solution that aims to maintain the status quo.”
If you’re curious about what lab-grown meat is, check out the Monitor’s interview with Abergel.
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As with most things, our history can inform our future—including learning from and respecting Indigenous relationships with food and the land.
As Mair Greenfield writes in this issue, Indigenous foodways is an approach that “creates food systems rooted in sustainability, reciprocity, and respect for the land, water, and its stewards.”
A better system is possible.
“To resist the forces of neoliberalism, we must envision a more expansive, inclusive approach to farming and food,” writes James Hannay. “This alternative approach begins with food sovereignty, empowering people—farmers and eaters—to make important decisions about food and agriculture.”
Hannay references the CCPA’s Alternative Federal Budget, which lays out a plan for a national foodsheds program.
“A foodshed is an area that produces food that flows towards a centre—urban areas, in this case—analogous to how watersheds feed rivers and lakes,” Hannay writes. “These lands would be administered through a Foodshed Lands Trust.
“It would aim to provide land access to people with high barriers to land acquisition, including new, young, and BIPOC Canadian farmers. It would acquire lands in urban areas to provide long-term, affordable leases to farmers and farming communities.”
Dianne Oickle and Bernice Yanful offer even more hope, and a progressive vision:
“We can build a food system that is different. One where equity and human rights are considered at all levels; where production processes don’t hurt the earth; where workers are treated fairly; where traditional knowledge and customs are respected; and where nourishing foods are available to all.”
