Reimagining a Healthy Food System
By Tanya Matthews
I went to a book talk for Amy Franceschini and Daniel Tucker’s new book Farm Together Now a few weeks ago in Seattle and wanted to share some of what I heard and what I’ve been thinking about since. What was unusual and heartening about the event was that Daniel Tucker, one of the co-authors, used the talk not merely as a plug for the new book, but as a platform for a discussion about the myriad ways that people can contribute to fixing our food system. In fact, he only briefly introduced the book and read a short excerpt before he turned over the remainder of the event to a panel of people who were all deeply engaged in rethinking our food system. Among the panelists were an urban planner, an artist, an urban-bicycling-soil-scientist farmer, a city council member, a professor-farmer, and an agricultural activist. Since much of the dialogue around the food system in the U.S. focuses on problems, the moderator turned the tables and asked each of the panelists to talk about how their work approached fixing a broken system. The responses varied greatly. Let me tell you about a few of them.
Devon Peña an anthropology professor at the University of Washington, social justice activist, and farmer (his research-farm cooperative is one of the sites in Farm Together Now) started the panel by urging us to move Native People, Native foods, and Native means of food production to the fore in our discussions and actions. He proposed that we add “deep” to the “slow” food movement in order to acknowledge the sociocultural and historical roots of disparity and think about inclusivity as part of the solution.
Soil scientist Kate Kurtz talked about Alleycat Acres, which is a great example of the small, local, urban farming organizations that are springing up all over cities in the U.S. Their urban plots create spaces to grow food, teach others to garden, make community, and feed themselves and others. One of the best things about Alleycat Acres is their love of bicycles! They use bikes to get to and from the garden and to deliver surplus produce to local food banks.
I learned a lot about Chicago Board of Trade and the Commodities Market from artist and urban planner Sarah Kavage—more than I would have imagined possible in a ten minute presentation. If you think that the derivatives market is a mess, you should read about what happened when she bought a futures contract for 1000 bushels (about 30 tons) of winter wheat to hedge her purchase of 1000 bushels of real wheat for her project Industrial Harvest. Hint: At the end of the project she gave away 20 tons of flour!
As someone who spends a great deal of time thinking about food, I left the talk with a new sense of how enormous this thing we call “the food system” really is. It’s no wonder that finding problems is so easy and that finding long-term, sustainable solutions can seem so difficult. How can we possibly understand the problems and take meaningful action on issues as varied as water rights, the commodities market, public and private housing policies, transportation, social justice, access to food, the environment, defense, international aid, production of nearly everything we use, and education? I’ve asked myself over and over about how I can be part of finding real, workable solutions. What I’ve decided is to take my cue from the panelists and use my own interests as a gateway to the larger discussion. When I came on board at Taking Root I saw my role and my contributions as more-or-less limited to using tourism as a way to support small farmers, artisan food producers, and their communities. What I am starting to understand more clearly is that sustainable tourism has the potential to play a significant role in fixing the broken food system.
