I always struggle with the idea of changing a part of the system versus changing the whole, and this idea stuck out to me as a central theme of this week’s readings. Holt-Gímenez wrote that people and organizations working to change the current, broken food system “focus on one of two specific components…rather than the system as a whole” (p. 1). I agree with his argument completely, in that a broken system isn’t like a broken piece of machinery that can be fixed with the replacement of one part. The food system is more complex than that, with feedbacks and complicated histories and unintended consequences of policies that may initially seem straightforward.

This stood out to me in the example cited in Ammond, in which Salaam describes some challenges the WIC system, both because of the unanticipated problems with the policy, and the way that fixing these problems was targeted at the parts of the policy and not the food system as a whole. First, the contradictions between the fact that dairy products are large percentage of those offered to the WIC participants, among whom 20% are African-American, yet 75% of African-Americans are lactose intolerant, suggest that the food system is incredible complex and no policy can be successfully implemented without looking into its links with the rest of the food system (p. 9). This example seemed to affirm Holt-Gímenez’s idea that systems thinking can be the only effective thinking in the food movement. However, the solution to this problem was based around new recommendations for the WIC program in order to better aid the populations involved with the WIC problem, a solution that focuses on a part of the system and not the whole. For instance, this solution does not aim to solve food justice issues, or question why the percentage of African-Americans participating in the program is higher than the percentage of African-Americans in the general population.

I want to be clear that I’m not criticizing WIC or the solution that was implemented in this case, but that I think it serves as an example of both why systems thinking is important in the food system and how much of a practical challenge this poses. I think Holt-Gímenez would agree that this example shows the “useful work” that can be done while working only on parts of the larger food system (p. 3). However, my question for Holt-Gímenez is how he sees us bringing about a new food system, logistically and practically. How can a food activist effectively make changes while focusing on more than one or two specific components? Time and resources are limited, including human resources in terms of how many challenges a person or organization can take on at once. Because of this, I think Ammons (quoting Eva Clayton) best sums up the course of action that we must take: “there is a need to connect [small projects] an pockets of work in order to achieve the scale needed to gain visibility, acceptability, and traction” (p. 15). If organizations and individuals can connect to one another and share the work they do, in formats such as the Addison County Hunger Council meeting or the UVM Food Summit, both of which I was fortunate enough to attend, the small changes can add up and I hope we can start to practically make the system changes that we need.