Event Summary:
Feast & Famine: shifting to a sustainable food system
Tuesday, 1 June 2010 at 6:30 pm
Selley Hall (second floor)
Trinity College, University of Toronto
Expert Participants:
Professor Harriet Friedmann, Fellow, Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto
Rosemary McCarney, President & CEO, Plan Canada
Dr Wayne Roberts, Toronto Food Policy Council
Margaret Webb, author of Apples to Oysters - A food lovers tour of Canadian farms
On June 1st, 2010, CIC- Toronto Branch, in conjunction with the Munk School of Global Affairs hosted an event entitled "Feast & Famine: Shifting to a Sustainable Food System".
Before a full audience at Trinity College, CIC Toronto member, Farah Ali, introduced our guest speakers followed by a brief overview on the subject by CIC- Toronto Branch President Jo-Ann Davis.
Our first guest speaker, Rosemary McCarney, President and CEO of PLAN Canada, sought to introduce the issue of food sustainability from a global perspective, with a particular focus on the plight of poorer nations. Ms. McCarney stated that the developed world has largely lost sight of the global food crisis as our collective attention has shifted towards the economic challenges facing the west in recent years. Yet as we have been focused on the collapse of the housing market, bailouts and more recently the sovereign debt worries affecting Europe, we risk ignoring several deplorable facts; that more than one billion people suffer from hunger; that one child dies every 6 seconds due to reasons stemming from malnutrition, and so forth.
Such statistics are all the more troubling when it is expected that the hunger situation will deteriorate further due to the confluence of shifting demographics and the unpredictable consequences of climate change, especially since the nations expected to be most impacted by these two factors are also the ones least equipped to deal with them. In the face of such potential disasters, those affected have 3 grim scenarios; i. Die of hunger related causes, ii. Revolt, iii. Emigrate : all of which are clearly best avoided. Yet besides the immediate human toll, the consequences of not acting risks severe ramifications far beyond the borders of these regions and cause unparalleled levels of social disruption and undermine global stability, something which our leaders and policy makers must begin to address pre-emptively.
Lastly, Ms. McCarney touched upon Canada's efforts to promote food sustainability abroad, namely in sub-Saharan Africa. Citing efforts to avoid disrupting the local economies by flooding these regions with imported food aid, she touted the benefits of micro-finance initiatives to enable farmers to buy more productive seeds and programs designed to teach local populations how to improve their own farming practices to ensure a long run, sustainable food supply.
Our second speaker, Dr. Wayne Roberts addressed food sustainability from a more local perspective, touting what is known as the "modern food" movement. He began by explaining that for most of human history, our consumption of food was defined by scarcity, whether that be the scarcity of the food itself or that of ancillary (objects) such as equipment used to produce it or the availability of gas used to cook it. Yet the past few decades, we have seen a dramatic transformation from a system based on scarcity, to one based on unsustainable abundance, be it due to the increasing costs of inputs or the health ramifications of a diet which no longer reflects our survival needs.
In stark contrast to the problems touched upon by the previous panellist, Dr. Roberts offered some equally shocking statistics by citing the work of Dr. Vaclav Smil (U of Manitoba). An estimated 50% of food produced for North Americans is wasted, with a startling 40% of the food purchased by consumers being disposed of, or the estimated 30% of produce which is thrown out due to cosmetic blemishes as it fails to correspond to our stereotypes of how food should look. Lastly, Dr. Roberts maintained that to address the issue of food sustainability, we must genuinely re-orient the notion of food to reflect our modern lifestyle and our needs.
Margaret Webb, our third panellist and author of "Apples to Oysters - A Food Lover's Tour of Canadian Farms" addressed the issue of food sustainability from the perspective of producers, whom she deemed to be the "missing ingredient" in the debate on food sustainability. She began by pointing out the gradual disappearance of farmers from Canadian society, despite their having the Herculean task of feeding our nation. With an average age of 57, farmers now represent but 2% of Canada's population, from its previous level of 30% (at the turn of the century??). Of that 2%, the vast majority are corporate farmers, who are no longer food suppliers, but contracted commodity producers for industry. This mass industrialization of food production means that not only is specialized knowledge disappearing from the farming sector, but farmers no longer have the incentive to produce healthier, more sustainable crops and foodstuffs, as the high cost of inputs and low margins force them to switch to cheaper, commoditized products such as soybeans and corn for industrial applications.
Ms. Webb also touched upon what she sees as a total ambivalence of the government towards farmers, if not outright disdain for their traditional role as direct producers of food. She believes that Farm Credit Canada should be explicit in their mandate of helping sustainable, independent farmers stay in business and ensuring food sovereignty rather than putting pressure on farms to consolidate and become industrial scale operations.
Our final speaker, Professor Harriet Freidman began by addressing the need to view food as unlike other economic sectors, by virtue of it being so vital to our existence. To highlight this idea, she provided a brief overview of the changes faced by the global food supply in the past few decades.
Beginning with the supermarket revolution of North America and Europe in the post-war era, we saw the emergence of giant food conglomerates and the widespread adoption of heavily processed, domestically produced foodstuffs. Yet as domestic producers oriented themselves to cater to this market, we also witnessed a dramatic expansion of food supply chains to the southern hemisphere to compensate for the lack of diversity in food products at home and to satisfy consumer's desires for affordable, out of season produce.
Yet the high prices commended by the developed north lead farmers to also adopt large scale export based monocultures, which not only made them reliant on cheaper, unhealthier processed goods from abroad, but also saw the degradation of local soil & water supplies and a drastic reduction of livestock bio diversity. The end result is that akin to what happened in the developed north; famers are increasingly incapable of supplying the diversity of food needed to sustain their own local communities. The question now is whether we will continue and deepen the current trend of specialized, industrial scale food production, or retrain our tastes and choices as consumers to be more in line with our needs. As unlikely it may be, it is vital to do so should we wish to ensure the sustainability of our food supply in the long run.
Jo-Ann Davis, President, CIC-Toronto branch, moderated the Question & Answer period, and concluded the event by thanking all of the speakers for their participation, as well as Farah Ali and Nina Boric for their efforst in organizing the event, and inviting all those in attendance to the post-event cocktail reception.
View the event flyer: Flyer.
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