A recurring theme of the challenging Future of Food conference sponsored by Washington Post Live at Georgetown University on May 4 was the notion that the time for day-long discussions is over. It is now time for action, noted numerous thinkers, including the keynote speaker, the Prince of Wales, who between various Socratic questions issued this warning:
“Essentially, we have to do more today to avert the catastrophes of tomorrow.”
Prince Charles wants business to account for the true costs of food production, factoring in not just federal subsidies but also the environmental costs of Big Ag’s unsustainable practices. But should that be the first action in a movement that’s calling for many?
If the Washington Post Live conference proved anything, it’s that many issues seem to cry out for immediate planning: Should activists and farmers and legislators tackle soil biodiversity before all else? Or maybe genetically engineered alfalfa? Organic rules? Sustainable food systems? Farm workers’ rights? The obesity epidemic? Factory farming? Sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics on farm animals? The to-do list grew larger with each subsequent panel.
So as the conference unfolded, I asked some of the participants, and a few of the more prominent attendees and moderators, what issue we need to confront during our lifetimes or face serious consequences. It was an appropriately alarming question, I thought, for an essentially one-sided conference that raised many alarms itself. It was the kind of question that might focus minds, generate fear, sell newspapers and maybe, just maybe, develop a short list of priorities for a movement in which everything seems to be a priority. (Note to self: Maybe everything is a priority.)
The answers I received were, not surprisingly, varied. But the top response was an issue that was barely addressed during the conference itself: global climate change.
“We’re going to have the luxury of some time to solve most of these problems, except for climate,” said Fred Kirschenmann, a professor, organic farmer, veteran leader in sustainable agriculture and board president of Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. “That’s the big elephant in the room.”
“We have to dramatically reduce our greenhouse gases in the environment, and that’s the one thing that we don’t want to talk about, because it means we have to change the way we do business and the way we consume,” added Kirschenmann, who holds a doctorate in philosophy.
“The unfortunate thing is that we’ve convinced ourselves that materialism and the level of consumption . . . is what gives us a quality of life. But all of the data that comes from psychologists who have studied this are telling us exactly the opposite: that all of our quality of life indicators have actually gone down, especially since the 1970s. Rates of depression are higher. Rates of suicide higher, et cetera. This is why I think one of the things we need to do is to involve the arts more, because they can give us . . . the forms that we can understand and imagine a better future than the one that we have. If we can’t imagine that, it’s going to be difficult to get us the changes we need.”
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