Poet Wendell Berry wrote, “A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one’s accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which the food comes.” Is this true for you? For Others?
Answer: I begin with the proposition that eating is an agricultural act. Eating ends the annual drama of the food economy that begins with planting and birth.
Most consumers (including me), however, are no longer aware that this is true. They think of food as an agricultural product, perhaps, but they do not think of themselves as participants in agriculture. They think of themselves as “consumers.” If they think beyond that, they recognize that they are passive consumers. They buy what they want — or what they have been persuaded to want — within the limits of what they can get. They pay, mostly without protest, what they are charged.
And they mostly ignore certain critical questions about the quality and the cost of what they are sold: How fresh is it? How pure or clean is it, how free of dangerous chemicals?
How far was it transported, and what did transportation add to the cost? How much did manufacturing or packaging or advertising add to the cost? When/where and how the food product has been manufactured or “processed” or “precooked,” how has that affected its quality or price or nutritional value? What we eat affect what we produce which in turn affects what we eat.
1. How important are the small community food security interventions given the vastness of food system problems?
Answer: food security provides access to quality and nutritious food which is necessary for human existence. It also produces wide range of positive impact on the economy like economic growth and job creation.
2. Why do we study food system? What is the benefit of a system approach?
Answer: we study food system to be able to organize food issues, to produce special food ingredients, also to start, manage or organize organic farms, greenhouses, orchards or community gardens. So, we could design food chains.
System approach seeks to model the complexity of food using software and it proffers solutions to it by advancing the quality of public health activities.
3. What role should corporations play in voluntarily improving the food they provide?
Answer: to grow the interest of investors, to increase the interest of customers, to demand for better products for advert, to generate a competitive consumption of produce.
4. Should all food system workers receive a living wage? Even if it leads to a higher food prices and the possibility that some stores in low-income communities go out of business?
Answer: All workers deserve to be paid fairly to meet real living costs. On Living Wage week we celebrate the employers who are becoming real Living wage employers. Without proper wages, the workers would not get to work properly, they need it for sustenance and regular upkeep.