There is no silver bullet. No magic spell, wonder drug, golden rice, or secret ingredient missing from the pot. The lesson that keeps repeating itself this week is balance.
It all started when I attended a meditation workshop hosted by the yoga studio next to where I’m interning. I had never done anything like this before, but was curious and thought it might be a nice break from the fast paced caffeinated DC work world. Also fellow Foodworks fellow, Jeanne, invited me to try it out with her. In a soothing voice, the leader of the class prompted us to balance the present with the future. Root our selves firmly in reality (noting the beauty in moments as menial as dorm room laundry but that exist in the present) while not losing sight of our aspirations.
I found this message of balance again on our fifth day activities. We first met with the President of the World Food Program USA. The organization distributes food aid internationally in times of crisis, whether from natural disasters or political conflict. In response to questions regarding the controversy surrounding food aid, he emphasized the need for a multipronged approach. Yes, purchasing food from local markets in the countries affected is more sustainable than flooding markets with US agribusiness products, and the organization undergoes such an operation. However, when time is of the essence, and local markets cannot support a hungry population, then perhaps food from agribusinesses is not such a bad thing.
Ageyman and McEntee reinforced the need for balance when considering food justice. The alternative food movement (local/slow food) is not the one stop solution to problems in the American food system. This oversimplifies a highly complex issue. The topic needs to be addressed from an environmental, socioeconomic, and political viewpoint while confronting both the outcomes and also the causes of the broken system. They write food justice needs to simultaneously work against the neoliberalism structure for long term change while simultaneously alleviating immediate pains working within the system.
It’s all about balance and moderation. And yet there’s that old phrase that I particularly agree with: everything in moderation even moderation. I fear progress could be hindered by sticking too devoutly to a multipronged solution. A balanced approach at some level works within and accepts the existing structure. Perhaps monumental change to the neoliberal structure needs to be made at the expense of immediate solutions. Maybe meeting our future aspirations will require biting the bullet on present needs as painful as they may be. Is this even feasible? I’ve confused myself…
I think that the point you bring up about the risks of trying to “balance” too many different solutions is a really interesting one. I agree that many of the solutions we have work within our existing neoliberal system and perhaps this isn’t going to get us anywhere. But as someone in our first video conference said, capitalism/neoliberalism/big corporations aren’t going away. Maybe we just need to find away to make the way these inevitable aspects of the food system more sustainable and more just.
I took a really great environmental studies class at Dartmouth last year which focused on natural resource management strategies. My professor introduced the term “panacea” to me, which means “a solution to all difficulties.” He said that people try to come up with one solution that will work for all natural resource management problems because this seems easier to implement than finding many smaller scale, customized solutions. These solutions often fail, however, because people haven’t closely observed how the resource system works and haven’t assessed how exactly the solution to management would affect the resource system. I don’t think that you were proposing there be one solution to solve all problems in the food system, but when I frame the question of balance in my mind like this, having multiple solutions for the problems in our food system seems better than over-generalizing. BUT in this same class we also discussed the issue of treating the “symptoms” instead of the “underlying cause” of a problem. For example, trying to stop algal blooms in lakes rather than telling the owners of the farms around the lakes to stop using fertilizers. This could be what is happening with alternative food movements…maybe instead of coming up with solutions to work within the system in place we should address the root of the problem of our food system, which is neoliberalism.
I am confused about these questions too!