Food is Our Common Ground

Everything needs to eat.

What we eat varies due to personal preferences, ethics, financial ability, for in our world, food is a commodity and no pay, no eat, is the rule; culture and political and religious beliefs also play a role when we choose our fare.

Regardless of our food choices, the one choice that we cannot and usually do not want to make is to not eat. We eat or we die

If we eat but do not get the nutrition that our body requires from the food we choose then we become ill. If we do not eat enough, even of good food, then we weaken and become ill.

In North America, we often complain of our fast paced lives and how busy we are; this reality is well reflected in our food lifestyle, fast food dominates the food scene. Drive-thrus and delivery, microwaves and frozen entrées have replaced cooking; which, along with growing our own food, is a basic survival skill.

How many people would suffer greatly, if they could no longer pick up or order in their supper or no longer pop something into the microwave and wait a few minutes for dinner?

How many days food do you have in your pantry or storage cupboards? When was the last time that you preserved any food?

How long would your food last if the transportation system broke down and the food you buy was no longer on the grocery store shelves and the pizza place was out of dough?

North Americans have let the food supply system slip out of their grasp and the very item, the second most important need that we have, after air; water being the first, is in the hands of companies that are in many cases far away.

We can live for up to three weeks without food, but only 3 days without water.

Food is trucked, flown and put in box cars so that it can be shipped to its destination. How fresh can it be if it has been sitting in a container for 2 weeks before it reaches your plate?

Do you know how far your last meal traveled before it became a meal?

Tomatoes, for example are being bred for their ability to travel rather than their flavour. So we get tomatoes that can travel but are tasteless.

Even the fast food that we so dearly love relies on transport to deliver the bulk of what it serves.

Transportation requires the use of fossil fuels to power the truck that carry much of our food and the airplanes that fly in the foods from distant ports. The price of gasoline is rising in many places as is the price of food, they are connected.

The agriculture industry is one of the biggest users of fossil fuels, not just for transportation, but for the production of pesticides and fertilizers as well.

There is an episode of West Wing where President Bartlett is speaking to his chief of staff. The topic is the news that mad cow disease has raised its head in the United States. The President says and I am slightly paraphrasing this: “Often what we take for granted is the very thing that turns around and bites us in the ass”.

The conditions that the animals that we consume are kept in are all too often appalling to say the least; this means that before they are killed they suffer. This reality is the reason that many people become vegetarians.

There are a number of food based movements that are working to address food quality, local economies and the sheer pleasure of preparing and sharing a meal with friends and family. The organic movement has become big business, the push to local food ahs drawn nation attention and the slow food movement has spread across nations.

If we have any real interest in improving our quality of life, our environment and address issues such as poverty and hunger then we only need to look inside our cupboards and refrigerators and begin to change with what we put in them on shopping day.

Food is our common ground; we all eat so let’s give our next meal some thought.

Local Food

Are You Food Secure?

Food prices are rising, and more and more people are turning to grow their own food to help keep the costs down. Unfortunately, far too many people do not have the room to grow much, and while growing something is better than growing nothing, very few of us can feed ourselves without going to a store and buying food.

So what happens when you have little or no land and your income is insufficient to feed your family? Food security is often discussed in terms of what we called the Developing countries. However, there are far too many people across North America who are a paycheque away from hunger.

Sure there are food banks and lunch and breakfast programs that can help but there is no guarantee they will always be there to help. The food banks depend upon people being able to give surplus food and what happens when the surplus dries up?

When would your food supply run out if you were unable to buy food anywhere? Do you ever think about how secure or perhaps, better put, insecure your food supply is? What is food security?

In 1996, the World Food Summit defined food security as existing “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life”.

Generally speaking, food security is defined as including both physical and economic access to food that meets people's dietary needs as well as their food preferences.

Food preferences include vegan and vegetarian choices as well as ethnic cuisine.

Food is a commodity. This means it is bought and sold in a marketplace. This is a good way to do business, as long as all the participants have the means to shop, and buy the food their bodies and minds demand. Unfortunately, many families cannot feed themselves on the income they receive each month, and the money often runs out before the month does.

What can we do? We can encourage the growth of local food growing and producing business by shopping local as often as we are able. We can encourage the development of community gardens, yard sharing and community shared agriculture projects.

Community gardens, such as the one in the accompanying picture in Campbellton New Brunswick, enable people without any other access to land, to grow some of their own food. This increases their ability to take care of themselves and fosters a sense of community among the gardeners.

Community Garden BBQ. Bob Ewing photo

Community gardens also provide a gardening education to those who need it, and new gardeners can learn about techniques such as starting seeds indoors in order to extend the gardening season.

These actions localize food production and can create jobs and incomes which means people have money to spend. This localization of food production is happening across the continent, but it needs support both consumer support and political support at the municipal, provincial or state and federal levels.

Food security is a political issue, besides finding ways to grow your own food and shopping local, talk with your political representatives and tell them to make food security a priority. Remind them food is a right, one they need to honour

Climate Change Threatens Food Security

Food security is defined as the availability of food and one's access to it. A household is considered food-secure when its occupants do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. Stages of food insecurity range from food secure situations to full-scale famine. The World Food Summit of 1996 defined food security as existing "when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life".

The human-caused climate crisis is having a direct impact on global foodsecurity. The unpredictable weather affects crops and livelihoods.

In the United States, this past season: PERCIVAL, Iowa – The Midwest is still struggling to recover from two devastating floods which brought historic destruction to the region.

Just a few months after the epic floods flowed through parts of Iowa, Nebraska, and Missouri, you can still smell the rotting corn and see the costly effects of historically high-water levels at David Lueth's family farm in Percival, Iowa.

Lueth grows corn and soybeans, and the flooding wiped out any chance of planting crops in the 2019 growing season. Source

The concern about the weather's unpredictability is reflected here: 

Canadian weather has become a bit of a guessing game. Does this winter have another polar vortex in store for us, or are we out of the woods? Should we expect floods in the weeks ahead? Will the upcoming summer be the hottest on record? Weather models don’t always get it right, but they do reveal some trends when it comes to temperature and extreme weather in Canada. One key takeaway is that the seasonal cycle may not be as reliable as it once was, which begs the question: how does climate change affect agriculture in Canada?  Source

How do we deal with this? Well, if the problem is the solution and in the case of climate change humans are the cause of the problem, then humans are the solution. Our behaviour as both individuals and society must change. People must recognize they are nature not a being that lives apart from nature.

From: The Inquisitive Gardener