Leverage for Food
by: Deva DeAngelis
Written 2012
Modern food systems are growing and complicated networks, hindered by food changing more and more hands, traveling farther, increasing homogenization, and even being genetically altered. There are many aspects that could be better managed or more appropriately moderated so that we use the smallest ecological footprint, with the healthiest food, organized and distributed by happy people, and community regulated on local scales. Putting this one topic into only three subgroups, we’ll explore several necessary keystones in our food-energy system.
Mono-cropping is limiting the sufficiency of useful food production land, depleting nutrients from the soil, requiring numerous kinds of chemical applications, and as a single species, the crops are highly susceptible to disease and infestation. Another interesting and likewise devastating issue is the amount of food wasted in developed countries, especially within large, industrial-size, food factories and industries, some of whom dispose of mega-dumpsters full of bread-ends everyday, while piles of tomatoes or oranges are left to rot every harvest simply because they lack the perfection that current consumer trends require. Starvation is not the result of lack of food, but instead, of fatally poor (pun now intended) distribution. Third, there is a major moral issue, and possible unforeseen health risks, for the now patented, owned, moderated, regulated, genetically modified foods (GMs), that aren’t subject to standard peer review required in nearly every other sector of science and society by refusing seed and product analyses by anyone outside the father company, and refusing to inform us where and when, and how many GM strains we consume. Genetically modified seeds will spread in the open air, like any other crop, but now, when they pollinate the crops of unaltered food, unsuspecting farmers become subject to patent infringement lawsuits and other legal actions, further hindering small farmers, and reducing the fate of their livelihood to a gust of wind. There are a number of ways to begin addressing these issues that include long-term considerations when finding the cornerstones for our new foundation.
Eating locally and creating community co-ops and food shares would decrease our carbon footprint, while providing fresher and healthier food. In regards to mono cropping, it is highly advantageous to use various permaculture techniques, planting several plant species together, which are symbiotic and have mutually beneficial properties that require little maintenance and effort, while continuously improving soil. Legumes are one great example, as they assist in nitrogen fixation in the soil, which can improve the growth of neighboring, sometimes nitrogen intensive, species. Both of these would be implemented at the 10th leverage point that addresses a system’s structure, making more simple solutions that would provide a small buffer by remaining somewhat isolated from the larger food network. This would also be relevant in relation to the delay rate, which would be minimized due to short time and distances from farm to fridge. Also, if brought to a local level, where consumers know where their food comes from, can even visit the farm, and maybe even know the farmer, there would be a more realistic understanding, and therefore attitude, about how the food should be grown, treated, and used. This type of negative feedback loop adds a fundamentally resilient aspect of a functionally sustainable system. Exploring feedback loops begs the question: are there any positive, self-propelling systems that work in positively imploding or exploding ways? What if an idea that begins to make sense to people, or a sense of confidence that begins to inspire, and spread, and feed itself until it effects the masses and changes a paradigm?
Accurately represented information in the media would be a pivotal and precious piece of this equation, because without being informed with correct information, one does not have the sum of the tools needed for appropriate solutions. Currently, in order to represent differing opinions, the public media covers 99% of current, scientific research regarding human impacts on climate change as only half of a story that is presented as both complicated, and no where near certain. This is a disservice to the public and the world, possibly with major implications for our future. Information doesn’t function as pure and true when it relies on corporations with specific financial interests.
Monsanto, for instance, puts financial interests over the value of people. In order to counteract a model that is both unjust, and needlessly repressive, which is the monopolization of one of our most basic necessities, we need to outlaw patenting of our food. This is the layer of our system where rules regulate our rights to do, say, and be, what we desire. The ability to self-organize is a deeper aspect of our current dilemma, because without this freedom, we have a synergistic network of positive feedback loops system that together are spinning out of control. When we reward manipulation, especially at the higher levels of society, we allow that attitude to trickle down to every class level, when if we instead were allowed, or claimed our own rights for such assertions, we could create various solutions that could solve specific issues according to relative circumstances.
The goal of our efforts is social equity and community organized and implemented solutions, along with systems that have players well connected to both source and sink of their daily requirements, coupled with available information to encourage creativity and incentive for personally initiated, community-minded, solutions. It is this bigger picture, our current, modern, “civilized,” paradigm, which needs adjusting, mostly due to the illusion that we can grow forever. We have a planet of finite size and resources, an exponentially growing population and carbon footprint, and decreasing resources, which give our present status of all the afore mentioned, plus a plethora of additional factors, the sum of which may screech our power driven civilization to a halt. Which is why it all comes down to this: each of us is responsible for staying unattached to the idea of knowing. Even when we do implement strong solutions, and begin to turn around, a system can always get better, which means that likewise, your current answer or perception may also still need to grow.
These different leverage points implemented in today’s food system, would provide a cycle that would encourage itself by seeing others succeed, and a greater number of people finding deeper satisfaction with our relationships again, both with one another, and an environment that needs us, who needs it, which needs us, and so on to the end.
Meadows, D. (1999). Leverage points: Places to intervene in a system. Sustainability
Institute, 1-21.
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