Picture by CHUTTERSNAP, Unsplash
I love my tomatoes! And I’m not alone: out of all the vegetables consumed in Germany, tomatoes make up 25%. Yet, only 3,5% of those tomatoes are grown locally. This raises two important questions: Where does our food come from? And how is it distributed to our homes?
In part one of this series, we learned about how food is grown and that generally speaking, large scale industrial agriculture is bad. It pollutes our air, poisons our water, and decimates our biodiversity. It also creates vast inequalities both within and between countries. The opposite of industrial farming is permaculture.
In case you haven’t read part one, make sure to check it out first!
Global Food Supply Chains
Global food production and land use make up 24% of global greenhouse gas emissions – a shocking number! But this statistic forgets about something important: food doesn't always stay where it’s produced. In Germany, one in seven meals is imported. In the UK,it’s one in two. While India is self-sufficient in food production, it still imports vegetable oil, pulses, and fruits. Studies suggest that if politics and industry continue business as usual, only 14% of countries will be self-sufficient by 2100. Those 14% won’t be able to compensate for others, meaning 9.8 billion people will go hungry! Today, an alarming 281 Million people are already facing hunger.
So, what’s the part of the statistic that’s missing? 24% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food production, but another 6% are caused by food transportation and supply chains.
The United Nations urge, "We have to learn how we can adapt the food supply system at a global and regional level in a relatively short amount of time, whilst at the same time, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and our impact upon the environment.“
Graphic taken from ResearchGate
From Store to Home
Throughout the entire delivery chain, corporations seek to create profit, except for the actual workers who struggle to make a living. The industry saturates their appetite for profit, but doesn’t care about saturating our appetite for food. One third of all food produced is wasted.
Suppliers discard food that doesn’t meet their aesthetic standards, and supermarkets would rather throw out food than sell it for less than its market value. "Destroying ‘excess’ produce avoids the capitalists selling below cost, and helps drive up prices through artificial scarcity. Yet the phenomenon of mass hunger, side by side with enormous piles of unsold food, is the inevitable outcome of a system that drives wages down to their bare minimum, and condemns hundreds of millions to unemployment."
Even the food waste in bins outside the supermarkets is protected. Dumpster diving is illegal in Germany and many other countries, as the availability of free food would infringe on companies profits. There’s no talk about the 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by food waste, or the hungry person who can’t afford to buy their food at the supermarket.
There clearly is a mismatch between food availability and hunger, driven by wrong priorities. Can rethinking our values and prioritizing needs fix this crisis?
Picture by Tania Malréchauffé, Unsplash
Solidary Agriculture – Putting People over Profit
Solidary Agriculture is the approximate translation of Solidarische Landwirtschaft (SoLaWi). A solidary agriculture is usually a farm that’s aligned with permaculture principles and tries to grow all the food its members need. ‚Members‘ can be understood in many ways. The most common idea is that members share the cost of running the agriculture and the risks associated, help with the harvest, and mitigate the pressure of large trade groups. Sometimes there’s a fixed price to become a member, sometimes people give as much as they can and want.
Most of the time there’s also a group of farmers that are paid by the SoLaWi and take care of most of the work and planning. They benefit from healthy wages and working conditions, as well as security far into the future and independent from their yields. They can experiment with organic methods and diverse ecosystems.
Once the harvest starts coming in, it’s split amongst the members based on their needs and any excess is distributed to non-members, soup kitchens, and the like.
The farm becomes a regional second home, a place to relax, connect and learn. Short ways of transportation and efficient distribution benefit the climate, while the permaculture methods benefit the environment, biodiversity and resilience. Solidary agriculture farms can become small utopias. When will you start yours?
A Challenge For You
Not everyone can start a solidary agriculture project today, and that’s okay. Inspiring projects are everywhere if you know where to look - perhaps there’s a family farm next door, a solidary agriculture initiative, a neighborhood garden, or something else entirely.
Finding inspiration is the real challenge, so here’s one for you:
Cook a meal for your friends and/or family. You can only use ingredients sourced within a 100-mile radius of your home.
We wish you the best of luck, and are thrilled to hear about your experiences at thecaginitiative@gmail.com!
댓글