The Politics of Food

Excerpt from Growing Out Loud: Journey of a Food Revolutionary
by K. Rashid Nuri
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We all need to eat. We need to grow food naturally, as close to our family tables as possible, so that we can get the best food possible. The only reason to make these very simple truths complicated, is to make money, not health; and certainly not community wealth. After thousands of years of growing food, humanity basically has the hang of it. Seeds, soil, water, sunshine. Pull weeds. Harvest. It’s like: Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

So, why is much of our food inadequate for producing good health? Why is so much of our food downright dangerous for our health? And why are so many people hungry or have limited access to fresh, nutritious food?

It’s a power thing.

Modern civilization was built on our capacity to deliberately cultivate food—as I say so often, there is no culture without agriculture. As societies advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, they quickly moved into the division of labor. Thus, overall productivity was increased, and there was more time to further develop technology. Enter politics—the process of deciding how the expanding resources of the community would be distributed. Somewhere along the way, in spite of economic expansion, the deceptive philosophy of scarcity arose, and with it, the desire to control those so-called scarce resources. Today, that desire to control resources has evolved into a super-powered techno-elite with an insatiable appetite.

Another simple truth is: whoever controls your food, controls you. The politics of agriculture is about how you get food to the people. The modern division of labor is so extreme that many individuals in recent generations think the grocery store is the original source of food. They simply have no thought about how the food arrives in the store or its origin. They have never been required to connect to that process. That level of disconnect is simply unhealthy and leaves individuals and communities vulnerable to the power-based decisions of others. How can such technologically oriented individuals be expected to steward the Earth? They lack a fundamental understanding of growth and life cycles—understanding that is essential for self-protection, survival and sustainability.

The politics is this: there's plenty of food in the world. There is plenty of capacity to grow nutritious food, using local resources in most cases. We have vast pockets of poverty, where people are starving, or not able to get quality food or the amount of food that's necessary. There's always a political element to it. Somebody controls the means of distribution and exchange of that food. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 17 million Americans do not have access to “fresh” food in grocery stores. It’s easier to get food stamps than to get support for a small farm. Food stamps do not change the power relationships that exist. Putting land, knowledge and resources into the lives of people produces change.

All this leads to our capacity as human beings to create an equitable distribution of power and resources. Communities must have the knowledge, power and resources to grow their own food. Local control is one of the fundamental tenets of democracy, enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. In order to progress, we must go back to the future of American liberty and back to the future of agriculture. It is essential that people realize our power to grow food close to urban areas, where 81 percent of us live. It is also vital that we return power to smaller rural farms. We are all better off when agriculture uses more manpower and less chemical power, whether in urban or rural areas.