All Rights Reserved, Copyright of Kris Vester.


Local 101. Saturday, March 13th, 2010. Politics, Economics and Local Food Systems

Good afternoon. I would like to begin today with a line from the great German poet, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,.

“Erst in der Beschraenkung, zeigt sich der Meister.”

“It is only within limitation that a master reveals himself as such.”

   Thank you for taking time from your busy lives to assemble here today to learn more about that which is the very foundation of our civilization, which is all too often cheapened, adulterated, contaminated and taken for granted, food. Food is not only that which fuels us but also that which provides the building blocks of life from which we are initially assembled and constantly renewed and, as such, its importance is obvious to any human with even the slightest awareness. As Vandana Shiva has said, there is no such thing as a post-food society. I am here today to impart to you, my fellow citizens, some insight into the bigger picture of local food and local food systems, that you might leave here today a little wiser and much more motivated to do what you can to ensure that we, collectively, pursuit a path of progress in regards to food which will respect and serve both this beautiful earth, which gave rise to us, and ourselves well, now and in the future. Specifically, I wish to give you a deeper understanding of what local food is, to outline briefly the evolving economic paradigm which has resulted in a decidedly non-local approach being applied to our food systems and, finally, to offer my thoughts on how we can and, I would argue, must engage as citizens in our communities and in the democratic process if we wish to create a new economic paradigm which will result in the revitalization of a sustainable and vibrant local food system.

   If we are all to be committed to this goal of creating a vibrant, local food system, we had better have an acceptable definition for local food which might guide our thought processes and our deliberate actions. So what exactly is local food? The definition which guides my own involvement in the local food system, both as a farmer and an activist, is the following: local food is the food on your plate which was produced using local resources, both in space and time, and does not negatively affect either future generations or the delicately balanced life support systems which maintain all life on earth. Let me try to explain what exactly this means, beginning with locality of space, which is often far more complicated than it would seem on the surface. It is overly simplistic to believe that local food is local purely as a function of geography. To begin with, even though a particular product may come from a farm less than 20 kms. distant, there is the question of where the inputs used to make the product come from. Is an apparently local egg still local if the corn and soy, which makes up the largest portion of most chickens’ diets, comes from several thousand kms. away? I think it is clear that an agricultural product cannot honestly be called local unless the resources used in its production are also mostly equally local. As well, I believe ardently that to define local food exclusively in terms of geography almost completely ignores the issue of sustainability and, as such, does justice neither to our biosphere nor to future generations. Civilizations of the past, having collapsed due to their failure to create sustainable agricultural production systems, probably found little comfort in the fact that they were at least local.

   In addition to recognizing this importance of locality of space, i.e. geography and the human culture which inhabits it, a full and genuine understanding of local food is also contingent upon recognizing locality of time as it relates to food production. It is in our ability to create local food systems which reflect locality of time and space that sustainability can be achieved. Ideally, what this means is that local food is produced using resources which are available to us here and now; sunlight, soil, water, the biological systems which support all of life on earth, our domesticated livestock, our diverse supply of domesticated plants, our 10000 plus years of experience as agriculturalists and our own ingenuity, energy and capacity to reason, with little or no inputs drawn from our finite and extremely valuable ancient reserves of fossil fuels. As an aside here, I would like to point out that our industrial agricultural production systems currently use 9 or 10 calories of energy, mostly finite fossil fuels, to create one single calorie of food energy. Is this efficient? Is it sustainable? Consider as well that 150 years ago, when almost all of our food was local, in both time and space, and 100 % of it was organic, we got two calories of food energy from every calorie of human and animal energy invested in production. Food systems which fully recognize the importance of locality of time and space do not generate wastes in the form of concentrated amounts of animal feces and urine which can contaminate surface and ground water far and wide, wastes which are often carrying pharmaceuticals, hormones and pathogens such as E. coli and have a direct impact on human health, nor do they result in fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide and fungicide run-off and thus contamination of the entire ecosystem, the damaging consequences of which, due to bioaccumulation up the food-chain, affect us more than almost any other life form. To those who say that our regulatory authorities have permitted the use of such substances, ergo it must be safe to use the 4 billion plus pounds which are released into our environment each year, I say this: most of these dangerous substances have never been subjected to long-term studies funded by impartial scientists, instead, our governments accept the data from tests conducted by the manufacturers themselves in deciding whether to approve their product. This was the case with DDT, agent orange, Dieldren, PCBs and countless other substances which have since been proven to be too dangerous to use and the regulatory approval process has not changed significantly in 50 years. Farms which do strive for locality in time and space focus on growing nutrient dense food, maintaining natural soil fertility, maintaining plant and animal diversity, finding an appropriate rate of return in terms of energy invested and food energy produced and avoid any practices which will result in costs being born by the ecosphere and by future generations of humans. Let me give you two contradictory examples which will illustrate what role locality of time does or does not play in local food production.

   The first example is of your typical, conventional, industrial farm, like most of the farms which surround our own out near Carstairs. They grow grain and hay to feed to their cattle, which might eventually become the steak on a local consumer’s plate, or canola, which might end up as oil on the shelf in your kitchen. To begin with, farms such as these are almost entirely dependent on large, industrial machinery to produce their commodities. The manufacturing of these machines is itself dependent on the use of huge amounts of fossil fuels to mine the raw materials, smelt them into usable metals, form the metals into parts and finally, put it all together into a functioning tractor, swather or combine. On top of this, their production inputs are almost all derived from fossil fuels; diesel provides the power to operate the heavy machinery, oil provides the lubricants, the synthetic fertilizer which stands in for fertile soil is mostly derived from natural gas and the herbicides, pesticides and fungicides are all derived from natural gas. Before a crop has even been harvested on such a farm, large amounts of ancient, stored energy, non-renewable fossil fuels, have been consumed. Now let us turn our attention to the non-local effects of such farming methods. The fuel burned by the machinery creates, amongst other emissions, greenhouse gases, which cumulatively have the potential to irrevocably alter the climate, thus endangering the ability of future generations to engage successfully in agriculture. A significant percentage of the synthetic fertilizers applied to the land do not stay on the land, but rather, they go into solution and become agricultural run-off, contributing to degradation of the integrity of our watersheds and our oceans. There is clear evidence linking the large oceanic dead zones, zones where complex life forms can no longer exist due to anoxia, or absence of oxygen, with the synthetic fertilizer run-off from industrial agriculture. Similarly, the herbicides and pesticides, whether organo-phosphates or chlorinated hydrocarbons, do not all stay on the land. There is drift of these substances in the slightest breeze and ultimately, most of them enter our watersheds and become persistent organic pollutants. Considering that most of them are known carcinogens (cancer causing) and/or mutagens (chromosome disruptors) and that many of them can persist in the environment for unspecified periods of time, effecting both human health and the health of countless other organisms far and wide, we can hardly consider their effects to be limited in a local sense, either in space or time.  I believe it is fairly clear that an agricultural operation such as the one in this example is not able to limit itself to using local resources in either space or time, nor is it able to avoid consequences which will be a burdensome cost for the entire biosphere and for future generations of humans. The point that its products might end up being used by local consumers becomes moot when we consider the far-reaching consequences of the practices of such operations.

   Our second example here is one near and dear to me and I am convinced, as hard as this may be to believe in the contemporary industrial context, that it represents the future of agriculture in addition to being the past. Thompson Small Farm is run by two friends of ours, Andrea Thompson and Johnathon Wright, and except for the relatively small amount of fossil fuel used to deliver their products into the Calgary marketplace by means of a CSA, or community supported agriculture project, they use no fossil fuels or fossil fuel derived inputs whatsoever in producing local food. This is an operation which has less than 10 acres of cultivated land devoted to herb and vegetable production and all of the field work is carried out by a team of four horses and by human hands. Other than seed, there are no external inputs invested in the production of their food. This is as close as one can get in the present moment to being truly local in both space and time. Their practices maintain soil fertility by means of manure and compost amendments and do not result in any costs, whether environmental, health or social, being passed on to other forms of life either in the present or in the future. Our farm, Blue Mountain, operates in this same way, but with 110 acres of cultivated land and no draught horses, we are still dependent on fossil fuels to provide the power for cultivating the land and harvesting our forage and field crops. But, if it is in a real sense more efficient to grow food using human and animal power and it is only the distortion of a highly flawed market which allows industrial food, whether local or not, to evade its true costs when it comes to pricing and if it is also true that the non-renewable energy, which makes industrial, non-local agriculture possible, will, as supply and demand dictates, inevitably become increasingly expensive, to say nothing of the costly aftereffects of relying on it to produce most of our food, then I think that we all know where this is heading. There are those who say that the future of agriculture is in nano-technology and genetic engineering, but I assure you that in the future we will be investing in some kind of draught animals and the equipment designed to be used with them.

   What I have attempted to give you here is a full understanding of the factors which should be considered when we are speaking of local food, that we collectively might set goals and make policy which will take us down the path of genuine progress, and that you might yourself make very informed decisions which will directly result in a better, more sustainable food system, local in both space and time. My words are not a prescription for what I believe must happen tomorrow. I am neither foolish nor naïve enough to believe that reviving sustainable, local food systems will not be a life’s work. Fortunately, we have at our disposal, should we bravely choose to employ it in an intelligent and mature fashion, that very cultural agent which has resulted in our food systems being so incredibly non-local and unsustainable. That agent is the free market.

   I would like to begin this portion of my presentation by reminding everyone that markets, in the abstract sense of the word, i.e. the free market, the capital market, or market forces, are an invention of human culture. They were not foisted on us by some divine power in the way that medieval European nobility forced its subjects to accept its exploitative and often harsh rule. Rather, they were initially established and regulated by so-called civilized states in the modern era, and have evolved over time as economic policy has changed in that area of the world which first championed abstract markets and most benefited from them, the so-called western world. Knowing this to be the case, we must always remember that as long as we live in democratic states, we have the power to bring about changes in the economic policies which are to be implemented by our elected governments. We will return to the role of democracy in building sustainable local food systems later. For now let us focus on the role which economic policy, manifesting itself as the free market and embodied in corporations, has played in destroying them.

   For those of you with a grounding in economic theory, the concept of externalities will not be a new one. For the rest of you, suffice it to say that externalities are the costs which are associated with the production of any item which do NOT need to be calculated into the sticker price which will confront consumers in the marketplace. Take, for example, the chemical industry. For years, this industry was, and to some extent, still is, allowed to dump its toxic wastes into our watersheds, and the costs which arose as a result of that dumping, real costs to human health and to the broader environment, simply did not have to be included in the price of their products. Who does bear the burden of these real costs, then? The public does, in terms of increased health expenditures and decreased quality of life, now and in the future, and the ecosphere does, in terms of degraded habitat and loss of bio-diversity, now and in the future. In other words, we all pay for it, now and in the future, while the private capital which multiplied itself several times over moves on and turns to the next most profitable undertaking it encounters. Corporations, with the power of large pools of capital behind them and no social conscience to temper their behaviour in pursuit of return on investment, have become not only expert at investing to achieve efficiency by virtue of scale but have also become expert at externalizing as many of their costs as possible. It is for this reason that so much capital has, in the last two decades of so-called globalization, been invested in areas of the world with relatively lax labour laws and low environmental standards. Corporations are able to externalize more of their costs in these regions than in the western world, thus realizing greater returns on investment than they could in the very nations where they came into being. In essence, our governments have, for at least the past thirty years, pursued economic policies which favoured the interests of capital over all other interests, including the public interest, and capital, using the corporation as its vehicle, has sought profits in apparent economies of scale and by externalizing costs as ruthlessly as possible, practices which could not help but be applied to agriculture and agribusiness. In the context of food, what this means is that agricultural operations which were extremely good at being local in time and space, were gradually made less competitive as large-scale, capital intensive agricultural operations gained the ability to produce cheaper, non-local food by externalizing many of the real costs. The net result of this has been the production of cheaper food, but this cheapness is artificial, as the costs which are externalized in industrial, non-local food systems are being born in the present time by the biosphere and by the public, in terms of negative health outcomes, the displacement of farmers, the dying out of vibrant rural communities, the loss of high quality food and loss of natural soil fertility. These externalized costs will continue to be a burden on future generations and on the biosphere for some time to come, even if we begin now to move towards models of production which strive to be local in both space and time. The question is, then, is the current model of industrial agricultural production, which externalizes real costs to the commons in the present and in the future and achieves no degree of sustainability whatsoever, acceptable? I have a nine year old son, and for those of you with children and those who wish to have children, I think the answer is obvious. When it comes to matters of food and the production models which will serve us best in the future, the industrial, non-local model is a failure. The conclusion which I and many other progressive thinkers draw from all of this is that we need to change the economic policies which have allowed capital,corporations and industrial farms to engage in practices which result in artificially cheap products, be they food or other consumer products, through the externalization of costs. If the same powerful and creative market forces, capital and corporations, were no longer allowed to externalize costs but were required to adopt true cost accounting principles, these market forces could create what Paul Hawken, the author of the Ecology of Commerce, calls the Restorative Economy. This would be an economy which does not reward waste, over-exploitation of resources, whether renewable or non-renewable, social displacement and economic insecurity, degradation of the atmospheric and ecological commons, actions which negatively effect human health and the passing on of costs to future generations. Knowing that the free market is a manifestation of economic, and thus, public policy, we also know that these policies can be changed. It is in engaging as enlightened citizens in our communities and in the democratic process that these changes can be realized, for the good of all, now, and in the future.

   It is ironic that a certain attitude of economic determinism has come to be entrenched in our democratic nations. Many people, especially the ideological adherents of the theory of the free market, act as if the free market is a gift from God, something akin to the ten commandments which Moses brought down from the mountain, and, as such, these so-called free market principles are not up for debate. However, this becomes much more understandable when we recognize that the staunchest defenders of our present economic paradigm are those who have personally benefited the most from them. This is, in the end, a very small number of people, as is demonstrated by the ever growing gap in income disparity, as the very rich get richer, the middle class continues to shrink and the poor grow poorer and become more numerous. There is, to my knowledge, no peer-reviewed academic paper published anywhere, which demonstrates that our current economic paradigm of globalized corporations and capital is resulting in development which is sustainable. At the same time, there are thousands of academic papers published each year which show evidence of the decline of all the systems at work on earth which are necessary to support life. From the oceans to the icecaps, from coastal fisheries to tropical forests, they are all in decline as the result of human economic activity exerting pressure everywhere on the planet. It will not be enough to try to change this unsustainable system through our purchasing decisions. What is required of us is that we act as citizens, not as consumers, and that we take seriously our rights and responsibilities to engage in the democratic process.

   Democracies work best when they involve an educated populace which is aware and educated. If citizens are going to engage in the democratic process than they should have at their disposal full knowledge of the factors which should be considered when it comes time to cast a ballot. It is here that we have a real weakness in our own society, as many of our fellow citizens simply are not aware of the most important challenges which we are currently facing. There is a role for all of us, in our homes and in our communities, to engage our fellow citizens in order to spread awareness of the most important issues of the day. It is not required of us that we preach, or get angry and shout, or be self -righteous. We simply need to find the strength and courage to ask questions. Awareness begins with the asking of questions and the search for more and better information, and it leads, in the end, not only to more questions, but also to considered decisions imbued with wisdom and policies which will serve the public interest. To me, public interest includes the best interests of the biosphere. Because our system of education, our political institutions and our media have failed to do so, we must engage our fellow citizens if we are to have any hope of using our democratic institutions to effect real change. If we really want a vibrant, sustainable, local food system, then we must take seriously our right to be involved in the democratic process and our responsibility to ensure that our fellow citizens, who are not yet aware of the issues surrounding local food, become educated enough to help us with our cause.

   For those of you who are already engaged in the democratic process, and by this I mean more than just going out to vote, the issues I have addressed here today need also to be raised within our traditional political institutions. If you are a member of a political party, regardless of the political stripe, you need to raise these questions within the context of policy meetings and policy discussions. If you find that your questions are not dealt with seriously, then you need to participate in the creation of new political organs which will deal with these questions seriously. It is a serious flaw in Canada’s democracy that we do not have an electoral system which accurately reflects popular will in our legislative chambers. This is another issue which we must address if we wish to effect real change, whether in regards to huge issues such as economic policy or smaller issues such as public transportation. Our politicians often talk the talk when it comes to democratic renewal, but as of yet, no single traditional political party has made a serious commitment to altering our electoral system. Therefore, it is left up to us to move this agenda forward, so that public interest, as represented today, in the context of this event, by the need to rejuvenate sustainable, local food systems, might yet trump individual and political self-interest.

   Ladies and gentlemen, as you can see, when we speak of local food and local food systems, considered in the light of locality of time and space, we are forced to address systemic issues within our civilization, which in the minds of some have the status of sacred cows. We face myriad and highly complex problems that need to be addressed in order to secure a brighter future for generations of humans yet unborn, to say nothing of the living earth which nourishes and sustains us. It was food and our historical development as agriculturalists, which initially gave rise to complex societies, which we now define as civilization, and I believe that we have a duty to return food and agriculture to a position of appropriate reverence and primacy in order that our civilization might have a solid and sustainable foundation going into the future. We might just find that in doing so, we will be dealing with so many of the other great challenges which now confront us, from obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure to cancer and congenital birth defects. In doing so, we might just find that we here, living on this great plain we call the prairies, will finally be able to develope a unique food culture which does justice to the soil beneath our feet and reflects this beautiful place we inhabit back to us. In so doing, we might just find ourselves on a path of genuine progress which will bring us real quality of life. The time has now come to stop pretending that profit must take precedence over people and the planet. Let us honour ourselves  and our earth and take seriously our role here on this planet, let us, to put it simply, grow up. For all of us, there should be no higher cause on this plane of existence than to actively promote sustainability and the future of humanity, which is inextricably tied to the integrity of the biosphere. I wish you courage and good spirits and joy in this. Do not be afraid to ask the difficult questions. Our children and generations hence will be grateful to you for having done so.

Copyright 2009 Kris Vester

All Rights Reserved, Copyright of Kris Vester.

April 1. 2011
 

The 3.8 Billion Year Curriculum

There is no forward motion without legs, no growth without roots, no bright future without the struggles of the past and present. I fear not to tread on this fool’s day on the sacred cows our culture holds so dear, for with mirth and love in heart and head there is a serious lesson, which I would spread. In a past beyond the imaginative capacity of most of us, nigh on 4 billion years ago, on this raw planet life took hold, by what means we do not fully know. What we theorize is that in this elemental mix of gases, liquids, and solids, we like to call primordial soup, the heavens struck the vital spark from which all life would descend.

From the first community of prokaryotes a lifeline runs deep into the heart of our own. The means, the mechanisms, the materials, the modes remain more or less unchanged. In the deceptive sheen of our human world, this line is hard to trace. But the fact remains, if we open our eyes, that the communities of the human race rest on a foundation, which was laid by communities of communities of communities of life over the course of billions of years. Without the prokaryotes there could have been no multi-cellular life and no photosynthesis. Without photosynthesis, the energy from the sun would never have been tapped into by life’s early forms and the conditions on the planet would not have changed to allow for the emergence of terrestrial life. Life on earth flourished, with new communities of life finding balance within the ever-increasing diversity. Each new entrant to the evolution of life built itself up on the last, finding its niche by drawing vital energy and nutrients where it could and then, whether alive or deceased, providing energy for other life forms in turn. In this way a balanced community was born, with nutrients and energy endlessly cycled, the process of death itself becoming a source of energy for life. The program of this earth seems to favour diversifying life, as long as climatic conditions do not change dramatically, which they sometimes have, and as long as a population does not outgrow the carrying capacity of the communities of life upon which it depends. Hominids are very much latecomers on the ecological scene, beneficiaries of 3.8 billion years of evolution. Considering contemporary ‘Homo Sapiens’ utter disregard for the ecosystems which support us, our taking for granted the stable climate which sets the conditions for our kind to thrive, and our mindless, uncaring destruction of the rich bio-diversity from which we chanced to evolve, to call ourselves, homo sapiens, wise man, I think is nearly obscene.

We think of life’s lessons as those learned hard by us in our youth, but the truly important lessons for life are those laid out for us in evolution. The vital nutrient and energy interface of human communities with other ecological communities is that thing which we commonly refer to as food. We cannot live without food and we cannot expect to achieve a high degree of physical, social and spiritual health without a food culture which is good, clean and fair. Food is the root of our civilization, both our metabolic fuel and our cellular building material. Our current food system, that complex marriage of cultures of production, distribution and consumption, is something to which we humans should be paying much greater attention. For it is at our own peril that we would assume that all is well in the world of human food, that corporate agri-business and our governments are enacting food policies which have, at heart, the best interests of all human beings and the ecosphere, this community of communities of life, of which we are but one small part and on which we depend so completely.

The list of concerns, which have driven this farmer in word, in thought and in deed, is lengthy and the issues are most complex. From questions of sustainability of industrial production which is fully dependent on finite fossil fuels, to the cultural and material impoverishment of local agricultures under the pressure of a global food industry; from diversity destroying mono-cultures to the steadily declining nutritional quality of the food that we eat; from the Pandora’s box of genetic modification to the serious threat posed by loss of soil and soil fertility; this list could go on and on. But I will not, for others, authors, lecturers, academics and even peasants have already delved into this sphere in great detail and done us all a great service. If you need more information about what is wrong with our food systems, I would encourage you to seek out their works.

My intention here is to shed some light into the murky world of ‘why”? Why is it that we have developed a food system, which creates so many problems and raises so many serious questions? For most of us who are not blinded by ideological faith in theories of economics, the question is quite rational. All romanticism of the big red barn aside, given the choice, most people would prefer to support modes of food production which supply them with nutrient dense food which is fresh, delicious and grown in their own rural communities. Likewise, most people would support food policies, which help keep family farms viable, maintain bio-diversity, contribute to the long-term viability of human populations and treat domesticated life forms with dignity and respect? The answer to “why” is quite simple, and for many, especially those in the western world, who have been lulled into a false sense of security by a hundred years or more of cultural manipulation, it is also quite unpalatable. The reason that we now have a food system, which delivers on none of the aforementioned positive aspects of agriculture, is that the food system is not designed to do so. It is designed to do one and only one thing: to deliver to the masses food which is plentiful and as cheap as possible, even if the cheapness is artificially achieved by means of externalizing many of the real costs of industrial production by framing food in fundamentally flawed theories of economics.

‘Panem et circenses’ -‘Bread and circuses’. This phrase has had resonance in our western culture at least as far back as the Roman era. In such times of gross, immoral inequality, the ruling elites of the day knew that they would be able to maintain their superior status and grip on power, which was never going to be defensible on moral or philosophical grounds, only if the numerically superior masses of slaves, peasants and poor free citizens were kept quiescent with sufficient quantities of food and distracting entertainments. The very fact that this has been, and continues to be, a necessity for elites, speaks volumes about the inherent desire for fairness, equality and decency, in short, humanism, which is common amongst human beings. It is also, to my way of thinking, a complete repudiation of the dominant theory of economics as espoused by the Chicago School in the US and its local sycophantic offshoot, the Calgary School. Truly, it is high time for this morally and intellectual bankrupt concept of ‘homo economicus’ to be laid to rest. If anyone doubts that we live today in a period of serious and increasing inequality, then I would encourage you to check out the statistics as reported by our own governmental agencies. In both Canada and the US, the richest 20% of the population owns roughly 90% of the financial wealth, and this disparity has been growing since the 1980’s. Even if they are detrimental to the prospect of long-term sustainability and work contrary to any real standards of progress, cheap, plentiful food and vacuous, propagandertainment, both conveniently delivered very profitably by the economic elite, are the only tools elites have, besides indefensible violence and incarceration, to maintain their control and keep their unjustifiably high standard of living.

Our food systems have been subverted, perhaps even perverted, for the purposes of maintaining gross social and economic inequality and injustice, offering the corollary benefit of further enriching the economic elite in the process. I would argue that as citizens of democratic nations, it is our moral duty to strive to change this situation by peaceful means, as long as we live in democracies in name and in law.

The first and most important step to be taken in making real progress in terms of food and food systems is the personal recognition we each need to achieve in regards to the interconnectedness of communities of life on this planet and the intrinsic and equal value of all life forms, human and otherwise. The human arrogance which is expressed in our economic policy of growth for growth’s sake, regardless of the consequences for marginalized populations and other communities of life, needs to be exposed for what it is; a self-serving and ultimately self-defeating delusion. If the theory behind our economic policies is the improvement of the standard of living of humans, then why do we not utilize a system of evaluation, which is actually capable of measuring progress? The system of economic metrics currently used by business and government to demonstrate that we are making progress, in terms of percentage of economic growth, is not such a system. In fact, GDP and GNP deliver a report on progress, which only measures economic activity as a whole, regardless of the nature, whether positive or negative, of that economic activity. In a speech given shortly before his assassination in 1968, Robert F. Kennedy summed up this situation eloquently and powerfully. I would like to quote it here.

"Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product ... if we should judge America by that - counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.


"Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile."

If we are ever to hope to institute a system of measuring progress, such as the Genuine Progress Index, or something akin to Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness, it is going to be required of us that we engage in the democratic process in a most active and serious way. The elites who currently set economic policy are well served by the GDP/GNP, as it allows them to assure a concerned but distracted citizenry that we are in fact making some kind of progress. This change will not be achieved easily, but then, the progress of past eras, such as the abolition of slavery, the civil right’s movement and universal suffrage, was also not easily achieved. The intrinsic rights, which all people have, as members of the community of life, are never recognized and entrenched in law and practice, without a struggle. We will have to demand these changes, we may have to march in the streets for these changes, some of us, as demonstrated recently by our brave and selfless fellow beings in the Arab world, may even die fighting for these changes. But then, from my perspective, there are worse things than dying for a cause which is just and will better serve future generations of humans and the communities of life required to support them. A life lived in a meaningless, inconsequential, comfortable and self-indulgent way would be to name but one.

The other way, in which we might all help to foster and promote a healthy, sustainable food system is to bring our own personal financial power to bear on the issue. This can be achieved on two levels. The first of these is to stop supporting the industrial and corporate food system with our spending power. There are now ample and ever-increasing opportunities to support local farmers who are committed to the production of good, clean and fair food in a sustainable way. Whether you become involved in a Community Supported Agriculture Project, go to the farmers’ market, buy directly at the farm gate or seek out the food retailers which are truly committed to supporting and promoting sustainable local food, your food dollars can go a long way to changing the food system.  The other financial tool, which many of us have at our disposal, is the wealth that we have accrued and invested in various financial instruments. Whether you are aware or not, your savings are probably being invested in corporations which are engaged in business which may be working in complete opposition to your own personal moral and ethical values. If even a small percentage of our total invested wealth were to be redirected towards sustainable, local agricultural production, as proposed by the nascent Slow Money movement, great change could be wrought in the food system. The only limitations to what could be achieved on this front are the scope of our vision, the power of our imaginations and the courage of our moral convictions.

Civilizations of the past have been built on the foundations of the communities of life in which they found fertile ground, and all, without exception, have fallen when the demands they made of the communities of life which once flourished in the soil, the water, the forest, the mountainside and the meadow, exceeded the capacity of these communities to support them. I believe in the value of our human culture and it is for this reason that I am a farmer and an advocate of sustainable food systems. It is only by using huge quantities of non-renewable energy that we humans are able to feed ourselves, albeit poorly, with roughly one billion of our fellow humans suffering consistently from malnutrition and another one billion suffering from obesity and other diseases caused by the industrialization of our food supply. But eventually, our cultures will have to come to terms with the communities of life on which we depend and the limits to growth which are simply a fact of the natural world. I think it is time that we paid all of these communities of life, including our own, the respect that all life deserves, by seeking to restore our own culture’s dynamic equilibrium within the natural world. Our knees may shake slightly with fear at the prospect of this great challenge, but if we find a point of balance within the community of life, our legs will be strong enough to move us forward. Help me, help us, help yourself, to strengthen roots anchored deep in the beautiful, living earth, which gave rise to us. The struggles are inevitable, but this time, in contrast to every other civilization of the past, with our depth of knowledge, our clean technologies, our wisdom, our desire for justice and our will, we might just be able to create that brighter future for many generations to come.

All Rights Reserved, Copyright of Kris Vester.

Pecha Kucha SFC Presentation- November 23, 2011. Thanks to my wife, Tamara, for all of the beautiful photographs

1. It is an honour to  have been invited here to give a brief presentation on Slow Food under the rubric of “reclaim”, as Slow Food, both locally here in Calgary and internationally, is passionately committed to the idea of reclaiming our food systems, the foundation upon which our entire culture rests.

1. To give you all a brief idea of what Slow Food represents and how it is trying to reclaim our food culture, we must start with a brief history lesson. When we think of a nation whose food culture is a praiseworthy manifestation of pleasure, community, family, diversity, geography, history and climate, Italy might well come to mind. It is not without reason that this phrase, La Dolce Vita, the sweet life, has come to encapsulate all that is right with Italy.

1. However, in 1986, like a deathstar on the horizon, the golden arches appeared for the first time in Italy, not in some tasteless mall or bland suburb, but in the very heart of Rome near the Spanish Steps. This was a wakeup call for many intellectuals and gastronomes, who realized that this meant that not only their food culture, but their culture as a whole, was now under serious threat of being undermined by the homogenous forces of global capitalism. Slow Food was born.

1. Both the founders of Slow Food and those who followed in their footsteps, including myself, understand that food is a manifestation of a culture’s complex and myriad relationships. Our food and our food culture reflects our relationships with the ecosphere which nourishes us, of which our domesticated plants and animals are but one small slice, and it also reflects our relationships with each other.

1. My purpose here is to urge all of you to take those steps which will help us to reclaim the dignity and sacredness of our relationships with food, and thus to all life on this planet. Our roots as complex, organized civilizations are all anchored deeply in our history as agricultural peoples, and given the many serious problems we are currently facing, I believe that if we can restore the dignity and sacredness of our relationship to food, we will have started down the path of a just society which will be healthier, happier and more sustainable.

1. If we are to restore these relationships we need to begin by looking no further than to our grandmothers and grandfathers, who are the repositories of generations of accumulated wisdom and experience in regards to food. My own father, now 86 and pictured here on the right, was born on a small farm in Denmark where all of their work was done by horse or by hand. There are countless others like him, and we need to stop looking at their generation as a burden which must borne, and start asking about their valuable and irreplaceable experience and knowledge.

1. There is no better way to appreciate the sacredness of food than to be involved in growing it. This is something that is accessible to all and I encourage you all to dig in, whether in your backyard, your childrens’ school, a community garden plot or planters on your balcony. The deep satisfaction of growing food from seed to plate is something with which very few activities can compete and in terms of building a real relationship between yourself and the life of our planet, there is nothing, perhaps with the exception of becoming a parent, which does.

1. Even for the most committed gardener or farmer, there is no getting around the fact that you will have to buy some of your food. Going to a supermarket where you will be another faceless, anonymous consumer browsing the isles of agricultural commodities is not going to rebuild a meaningful relationship to food. Seek out the real farmers’ markets and get to know and support your farmers. Barring that, find the retailers in your community who nourish meaningful and supportive relationships with farmers. Either way, you will have more fun than going to the big box down the road.

1. We all like to indulge in the experience of going out to eat. Here too you can deepen your relationship to food by choosing to spend your dollars at establishments which have real relationships with farmers, rather than standing orders with food service corporations. Such restaurants respect and foster the important role played by food producers in their bioregion and your support reinforces the choices they make in using quality, local ingredients. By seeking out and supporting such food establishments, you are choosing to support and build vibrant local communities.

1. Eat together! There are few pleasures in life as genuine as those which arise from taking the time to eat an unhurried, delicious meal in the company of those you love or perhaps even in the company of pleasant strangers. This sharing of food, and perhaps a little drink as well, reinforces the shared, vital interest we all have in taking sustenance. It also makes time and space for thoughtful conversation in a fast-paced world which seems to conspire against thoughtful conversation.

1. As a farmer, there is no greater lesson learned than the importance of cooperation. In fact, were it not for the historical relationships built by people acting cooperatively in the pursuit of a better future, there would be no civilization to speak of whatsoever today. Committing ourselves to the project of a better, healthier and happier future is not an individual undertaking. Such a goal can only be realized by respecting the importance of every human being and fostering strong relationships within the community.

1. Within the present context of food, where so many of us are almost completely alienated from the life processes which give rise to our food and the farmers who guide those life processes, one of the most important things a person can do to deepen his or her relationship to food is to get to know your farmers.

1. Educate yourself as to the importance of soil, for without soil, there is no food and without healthy soil there is no healthy food. Industrial agriculture acts as though soil is merely a growing medium, a place for roots to anchor and nutrients to rest until required by a growing plant. This could not be further from the truth. Soil is the life blood of our food system, a complex mix of organic and inorganic, living and dying, a spoonful of which contains more cells than are contained in your entire body. Add to that the fact that almost every failed civilization of the past has collapsed due to depletion of soils and soil nutrients, and I think you might understand its importance. Your life depends on your relationship to soil.

1. Seeds and seed-saving are an inheritance of our collective, global culture. The bias of governments, especially in Canada and the US, towards corporate control of seeds and genetic modification, pose a real risk to this inheritance. Slow Food is strongly opposed to GMOs and corporate control of this incredibly valuable treasure trove of genetic diversity and supports the right of all eaters to know whether the seeds used in the production of their food are genetically modified. If you want to reclaim a positive relationship to food, plant seeds and learn how to save them.

1. Bees play a critical role in our food system, the importance of which goes way beyond their production of that sweet golden nectar called honey. It is estimated that one third of our food supply would disappear if bees were to disappear. The vital relationship of humans to bees is self-evident and we would all do well to learn more about them and to create the conditions for bee colonies to thrive rather than the toxic environment industrial civilization has created, which is killing our pollinators. We are blessed here in the Calgary bioregion to have a very active urban beekeeping movement. Seek them out and learn!

1. Those of us who are omnivores cannot pretend that the animal products which we eat come from the supermarket. Behind these animal products are animals, and we do not pay ourselves or these animals the respect they are due by allowing them to be kept in appalling and cruel conditions commonplace in industrial agriculture. Omnivores who wish to have a dignified and respectful relationship to the animals who supply their eggs, dairy products and meat, should be fully informed as to the provenance of their food.

1. The reality of our situation here in Alberta is that we live in a rather harsh northern climate where nothing grows for about five months per year. The flip side of this is that our intense summers yield great quantities of quality produce which can be preserved for those dark, cold days. The satisfaction of putting up your own preserves, preferably by getting together with your friends canning bee style, and enjoying them in the winter is one of the best ways to restore the dignity of your relationship to food.

1. We all need to recognize that human beings, in spite of the massive impact we have on this planet, are not a species separate from the rest of the ecosphere. If we truly wish to reclaim a dignified and respectful relationship to food, we must recognize the reality of the interconnectedness of all life. This means leaving the wild spaces wild and making room in our civilization for all life forms, both for the sake of our own spiritual health and for the sake of future generations.

1. Standing here in our pond on a glorious summer day is one of my primary motivators in my own personal efforts at reclaiming and promoting a sacred and dignified relationship to food. My son represents not only his generation but generations yet to come, and we must take back control of our food system from those corporations who cannot think beyond the next fiscal year and career politicians who cannot think beyond the next election. To me, reclaiming our food systems is reclaiming our own dignity as a part of the web of life on this planet.

1. On the 10th of December, international Terre Madre, or Mother Earth, day, Slow Food Calgary and Hillhurst Sunnyside Community Association are hosting a potluck and public dialogue on food. This event, held concurrently with events around the world, will seek to promote discourse around both the Pleasure and the Politics of Food. The event is free and details about it will be posted on the slow food Calgary website in the next couple of days. I hope to see some of you there. Thank you for your time and attention.