Postcards From The Global Food System

A useful first in a series of articles on the global food chain. This gets my attention because as a long-time fair-trader and former wholefoods shop worker I think that being part of answering the prayer for daily bread is a noble calling but at the same time that is not to endorse all that goes on in the name of food produciton and distibution. THis looks to be a promising series of articles which judging by the first in the series will be insightful and helpful in educating us.

Part of my reason for hoping for good things from this series is the author's starting point and learning curve: "In trying to grasp the food system, my initial, rather simple-minded, mistake was to assume that just because a single system existed there must also be a single, universal logic to go with it, and all I had to do in order to understand food was to grasp that logic. Through a grindingly painful process I came realized that there actually isn’t a single over-riding logic but rather there are multiple, conflicting and sometimes faulty logics which together produce the incredibly complex global food system. (Like most a-ha’s I wondered why someone hadn’t simply told me this at the start.) What’s more, many of these logics are profoundly disconnected from each other. So for example, the logic that gives rise to the decisions of an urban consumer is a universe away from the logic of a small farmer living twenty miles away."

WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Postcards From The Global Food System