An Occupier’s Dilemma

“But that’s the challenge – to change the system more than it changes you.”

― Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

This past Sunday (Earth Day- April 22nd), I inadvertently found myself in a protest for food sovereignty. Essentially, “food sovereignty” means the right for all people  to have guaranteed control over and access to healthy, natural, fresh foods.

A child at the protest asked his mother, “how do we grow our food?” And as if rehearsed from a script, the mother’s response was simply, “oil”.

While yes, this mother was the stereotypical liberal Berkeley citizen draped in bohemian garb and munching on some locally grown carrots with a light coating of mud still on the vegetable, her response was entirely factual and not as hyperbolic as it may seem.

 

According to research by the University of Michigan, “an average of more than 7 calories of fossil fuel is burned up for every calorie of energy we get from our food. This means that in eating [a] 400-calorie breakfast, [you] will, in effect, have consumed 2,800 calories of fossil fuel energy.”

With an industrialized economy comes an industrialized food system.

At the close of World War Two, the advent of the self-proclaimed “Green Revolution” arrived. Berkeley professor and well-known author and journalist, Michael Pollan, points out the unavoidable parallels “between industrial agriculture and war”.

 

Through a rather sickening thought-process, the “Green Revolutionists” devised a way to maintain the economic boom and cultural shift that occurred during the War by using war-time industrial methods as well as chemical additives (originally designed to kill enemies) in order to grow food.

Our modern food system is the “improvement” or more appropriately, consequence made possible by this morbid Revolution.

The food we eat is grown through a systematic process relying heavily on chemical pesticides and fertilizers, large machinery, processing, packaging, and transportation all fueled by Big Oil. The result is a surplus of cheap, unhealthy food processed into frozen meals, junk food, and rather tasteless chemical filled produce.

The observable externalities of biodiversity loss, chemical runoff, carbon emissions, water depletion, and the rise of obesity and diabetes from the consumption of large quantities of fatty processed foods have all failed to influence a change in our poor farming methods.

The foods found in our local supermarkets and eateries (including the University dining halls) are largely produced through this deleterious food system. If an American citizen does not explicitly purchase a locally grown organic product, it was produced industrially.

For many, there is no choice between locally grown organic food and food produced from large-scale farming operations. The average American, therefore, is forced to consume unwholesome food grown in a destructive manner. Hence, the purpose for Sunday’s “food sovereignty” protest.

 

The industrial farming experiment has failed. It has left us unhealthy and dependent on unnatural methods for growing food. Instead of poisoning our earth with oil and chemicals in an effort to attain vast yields of monoculture crops and subsequent profits, we should care for our land and use natural agricultural methods.

The protestors from Sunday have set up an encampment on UC Berkeley owned farmland with genuine goals. The occupiers want to raise awareness of and create a public conversation about the serious problems externalized by our all-powerful industrial food system. Many Americans, especially those living in urban areas such as the East Bay, have little or no access to affordable locally grown organic foods. This, the protestors agree, is a serious human and environmental health concern.

 

A switch to natural farming methods is not a romanticized liberal ideal. The modern food system has proven to be extremely harmful and should, therefore, move forward towards sustainable agriculture. Local farms that grow fresh produce free of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, processing, preservatives, and artificial additives will promote both human and environmental health. In other words, we need to “change the system more than it changes [us]”.

Read Part II here