(photo: Harsha KR. / Flickr)
Imagine that you are in room. It’s about 30 by 30 feet. The floor is
stone, and the walls and ceiling are a mix of stone and cement. They
are a little damp, which you can smell but you can’t quite see. It’s
pitch black except for the light that comes in from a low, arched
doorway in whose frame is silhouetted an iron gate. When your eyes
adjust to the darkness, you can see a narrow stretch of beach and the
blue and gray of the ocean beyond.
This, a doorway in West Africa's Elmina Fort, is a Door of No Return.
It is the last part of Africa you would touch if you were a slave being
led from the dungeon to a waiting ship.
I stood in front of this door a few years ago while visiting my
family in Ghana. It is a place of sorrow and suffering. Countless human
beings passed by this spot on their way to either a wretched death at
sea or a life of bondage in the New World. They had been snatched up
near their villages in slave raids; ripped from their families and
everything they knew; shackled to others by the neck for a long march to
coast; and thrown in a crowded, reeking dungeon for what might have
been months until the next ship arrived. That was just the start of the
journey.
This door represents many things. As human beings, it represents our
capacity for cruelty—as well as resilience. Many of the descendants of
those who went through it not only survived, but went on to build the
"New World" itself. They paved the way for every opportunity I have had
in the United States, and I believe their story makes us all stronger.
But this door also represents a beginning—the beginning of our modern food system.
If, back in the 18th century, you could see all the way across the
Atlantic, you would find an unbroken line of plantations that stretched
from Buenos Aires to Baltimore. Down this entire line, slaves harvested
sugar for British tea, rice for the West Indian consumption, and cotton
for the textile mills of New England. These were vast monocrops that
broke the body and ruined the soil—but made money for planters and big
companies that traded the goods.
Here, you see the logic of the modern industrial food system in its
rawest form—a logic of prioritizing profit over human and environmental
welfare. A lot has changed in the 400 years since the Elmina Fort was
built, but this principle has not gone away. The logic of the plantation
is the logic of today’s industrial food system.
In this system, it is in the interest of the middleman—large
companies that dominate the processing and distribution of food—to
squeeze farmers and externalize costs. The industrial model may work for
some things, but it's time to admit that it doesn’t work for food. It
doesn’t work for Lucas, a tomato-picker in Florida, who toils from dawn
to dusk without protection or health care and still cannot escape
poverty. It’s not good for the farmers in Illinois who have nearly been
bullied out of existence by Monsanto. It's not good for teenagers in
Brooklyn who, when asked how many of them have diabetes or know someone
with diabetes, raise every hand in the room. And it’s certainly not good
for the 99 percent of us who are left holding the bag of rising health
care costs.
It doesn’t work for anyone who wants—and needs—real food: food that
nourishes the earth, communities, and individuals, both eaters and
producers.
If the logic of the industrial system is based on profit, the logic
of real food is founded on respect and balance. Real food isn't opposed
to profit, but it is opposed to profits that aren't shared fairly with
those who work the hardest to feed us. The Door of No Return
represents what’s we’re up against: a global industrial food economy 500
years in the making that exploits both people and land.
But there is also a second door: a wooden door on a busy London
street below a hand-painted sign that reads “print shop.” You’d probably
miss it if you were just passing by. If you were standing outside of it
in one morning in 1787, you might have seen 12 men, mostly Quakers, go
inside for a meeting.
That meeting sparked the beginning of the British Anti-Slavery
Society, and the very first citizens' campaign of its kind. Its members
ran petitions, lobbied parliament, and staged book tours, pioneering
many of the social movement tactics we still use today. When those men
walked through that door, the whole world economy was built on slave
labor.
In 10 years, this group of 12 swelled to hundreds of thousands. And
in just a few decades, it did the unthinkable: It ended the slave trade
throughout the British Empire.
To imagine a world without slavery then would be like imagining a
world without oil today—and who would be crazy enough to propose that?
And yet in one generation, it came to pass. Those activists had no
knowledge of the future, but they did have their conviction of what was
right and what was wrong.
This second door represents something that could be cliché if it
weren’t demonstrably, factually true: that a small group of committed
people can, in fact, change the world.
This is the spirit that sparked the Real Food Challenge: a project
that re-imagines a cafeteria tray as a tool for social change. It's just
one face of a larger movement that is pressing for a just and
sustainable food economy.
In 2006, I started to meet college students who were active on their
campuses. They were pushing for local food and asking for fair trade
coffee and organic produce. A group of us from all around the country,
from Brown University to UC Santa Cruz, started talking and realized
that we might accomplish more if we joined forces.
We realized that colleges and universities in this country spend over
$5 billion each year to feed their students. What if we could shift
how that money was being spent? Instead of lining the pockets of the
biggest and worst food companies, why not support smaller farms and
socially responsible business? Why not invest in a real food economy?
We thought that shift might actually be possible because students are
paying customers of their schools. But it would depend on strong
leadership from students themselves.
A Real Food Commitment
Alex Sligar grew up in rural Washington State. When he was a kid,
his father lost his farm and ended up working in a nearby feedlot.
Alex’s brothers both went into the military and served bravely in Iraq
and Afghanistan. Alex was on the same track until he got inspired to
serve his country in a different way—by joining the food movement. As a
junior at Eastern Washington University, he started a campaign to buy
more regional food for his campus so that hard-working people, like his
dad, could continue to work the land with dignity.
Alex was joined by another student named Mohamud Omar. Mohamud came
from Somalia and had never considered himself an activist. But now,
while famine ravaged his home country and his family faced obstacles to
health and food access in the United States, Mohamud came to recognize
food access as "the most important issue in my life right now.”
Together, Alex and Mohamud and their teammates have called for
transparency in purchasing at their university, and have gained access
to the cafeteria’s records. Now they are urging the president to sign a
"Real Food Commitment" that would dedicate at least 20 percent of the
school's food budget to local, organic, and fair trade purchases.
In three years, the Real Food Challenge has built a network of 5,000
students like Alex and Mohamud at more than 350 schools. Students
supported by the Real Food Challenge have won $45 million of real food
purchasing commitments—including a commitment by the entire University
of California system. We’re estimating that in 10 years, $45 million
could become $1 billion of real food commitments—and that we could set a
precedent for other kinds of institutions.
It’s about more than dollars. It’s about the change that is
happening on the ground. It’s about Alan, an apple farmer in Rhode
Island who got a contract from Brown University. He was able to stay in
business and is now selling apples to elementary schools as well. It’s
about Eliza, a hog farmer in North Carolina, which is ground zero for
factory-farmed pigs. Unlike the factory farms around her, where the
animals are confined in tight cages over lagoons of their own excrement,
Eliza's pigs run free on their pasture. Students at UNC got the school
to start buying her pork. She’s now selling to five other institutions
in the area. Eliza and Alan and farmers like them are the backbone of
the real food economy to come.
This may be one of the fastest ways to catalyze change in the food
system. Using existing budgets, we can strike at multiple roots of the
problem. Where demand is fragmented, we can organize it. Where there
is too little clarity, we can create transparency and accountability.
Where policy is stalled, we can foster new leadership.
It’s a different kind of activism. Instead of voting with one
dollar, we’re voting with a billion. Instead of a boycott, we’re
mounting a “pro-cott,” strategically investing in the kind of food
system that will advance social, economic, and environmental justice.
If we succeed, we will see a profound transformation in the way our food is produced and consumed.
Vacant lots will become vibrant gardens.
Family farms and food traditions will thrive. Hard work will be fairly
rewarded. Our climate and planet will sustain us. All people will
have access to food that is nourishing.
I think food is an incredible thing. I can’t think of anything else
that connects us more intimately to each other and the earth, not to
mention our health and our heritage.
Archimedes said : Give me a lever long enough, and a place to stand,
and I can move the world. Real food is that lever. Let’s take a stand.
This article was adapted from a speech delivered to the 2011 Bioneers conference.
Anim Steel is director of national programs and co-founder of The Food Project (TFP).
Prior to his work with TFP, Anim was a consultant with Economic
Development Assistance Consortium. He was a 1997 Coro Fellow in Public
Affairs, is 2010 Hunt Prime Movers Fellow, and was recently selected for
an Echoing Green Social Entrepreneurship.
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