Global ChangeIntersection of Nature and Culture

Sustainable food: Who’s it for? Uniting ecological sustainability and social justice

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Think of all the reasons why people advocate sustainable food, and the following things probably come to mind:

• Eat organic—to reduce pesticides and nutrient pollution.
• Eat locally—to reducing carbon emissions.
• Eat free-range animal products—to reduce nutrient pollution, energy use, and animal cruelty.
• Eat vegetarian or vegan— to reduce carbon footprints further and eliminate animal cruelty altogether.
• Eat hormone and antibiotic-free animal products— to improve human health.

How about this one?

• Make sure farm workers who grow all of this food and other poor people have access to cheap, healthy, sustainable food.

Not so much.

And that’s probably why Caitlin Donohue wrote the story, “Out of reach: How the sustainable local food movement neglects poor workers and eaters” in today’s San Francisco Bay Guardian Online.

There’s a lot more that can be written on this topic, and there are a growing number of success stories, including

• the urban gardening movement (here, here, here);
• the increasing acceptance of food stamps (now called SNAP—Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) at farmers’ markets;
• the movement to feed kids healthy school lunches.

The introduction to Donohue’s article frames the cultural disconnect:

On a sunny afternoon in Civic Center Plaza, a remarkable bounty covered a buffet table: coconut quinoa, organic mushroom tabouli, homemade vegan desserts, and an assortment of other yummy treats. The food and event were meant to raise awareness about public school lunches, although it was hard to imagine these dishes, brought by well-heeled food advocates, sitting under the fluorescent lights of a San Francisco public school cafeteria.

The spread was for the Slow Food USA Labor Day “eat-in,” a public potluck meant to publicize the proposed reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, national legislation that regulates the food in public schools. The crowd was in a festive, light-hearted mood. There was a full program of speeches by sustainability experts and a plant-your-own-vegetable-seeds table set up in one corner of the plaza.

A bedraggled couple who appeared homeless made their way through the jovial crowd and started scooping up the food in a way that suggested it had been a long time since their last roasted local lamb shish kebob.

Their presence shouldn’t have been a surprise; most events involving free trips down a food table are geared toward a different demographic in this park, which borders the Tenderloin.

In a flash, an event volunteer was on the case, nervous in an endearingly liberal manner. “Sir,” she began. “This food is for the Child Nutrition Act.” And then she paused, searching for what to say next. I imagined her thinking: “Sir, this food is to raise awareness about the availability of sustainable food to the lower classes, not to be eaten by them,” or, “Sir, this good, healthy, local food is not for you.”

Continue reading here…

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Photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/77043400@N00/ / CC BY-ND 2.0