The following is an article that recently appeared in the Harvard Business Review. It is written by a good friend and the world’s leading food expert, Ellen Gustafson. She is founder and executive director of the 30 Project (whose audacious ideas have appeared in these columns many times before), founder of FEED Foundation and formerly worked at the United Nations World Food Programme.
Grow More Apples, Less Corn
“The modern food system is failing. In the past three decades, an increase in industrial food processing, the divestment of small and medium farms, and the overproduction of subsidized commodity crops like corn and soy have left us with an abundance of the wrong foods. No wonder we’re now grappling with twin epidemcis: hunger (in regions where food is scarce) and obesity (in areas where the affordable food is highly processed and lacking in nutrition).
What can we do about this? First, we need to dismantle subsidies that favor the overproduction of corn, soy, wheat, and cotton–and replace them with incentives that encourage more diverse, healthful agriculture. Today just 10% of supermarket purchases in the U.S. are fruits and vegetables; there’s no reason we can’t raise that share to half by 2020, consistent with USDA recommendations.
To get there, we’ll also need to find a middle ground between global, efficient, yet frequently low-nutrition Big Food, and local, small-farm agriculture. We’ll need to regionalize the food supply. Local food producers can join forces to compete at a regional level, while multinationals must pull regional and local sourcing into their supply chains.
Both shifts are already underway. In the U.S., an online service called Local Orbit lets customers order food from multiple local farmers and vendors at once. Meanwhile, Unilever plans to pull half a million small farmers into its supply chain by 2020–a smart strategy that helps the company secure diverse, sustainable sources of raw ingredients.”
Changing what we eat would make us healthier and thus save money on health care. Regionalization would also provide greater food security and lower the carbon cost of shipping food. But those arguments don’t seem to be enough to spur change. So let’s focus on this: Restructuring the food system would spur robust economic development at the local and regional levels everywhere. Our diet is tied to what we produce, and so is our economy. If we change our dinners, we can change the world.”
In so many ways, the economic vitality of our country–and the future of the world–is tied to both the quality and quantity of small farms and small businesses. Our ability to change the rules of the game–to prevent and reverse the annihilation of essential entrepreneurs–will determine how we recover and rebuild our economy. More than that, it will help us towards that long-dreamed about goal: that no child should ever go hungry, anywhere in the world.
(Cross-posted from The Journeying Progressive)
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