On August 24, Lindsey Haynes-Maslow and Ricardo Salvador, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, published a commentary on race and ethnicity in food systems in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development.
In “The Food System Should Unite Us, Not Divide Us,” they argued that before reformers start changing aspects of the U.S. food system, we must redefine the system’s ultimate goals and pursue changes designed to foster a system that serves the needs of everyone, rich and poor alike. In an interview, Ag Insider asked Salvador what he and Haynes-Maslow hoped to achieve by raising the issue of fairness and equity in agriculture as it relates to race and minority groups.
“It took all of us to build the present food system, yet at present the food system serves almost no one well–not farm laborers, food chain workers, farmers, and least of all eaters, the majority of whom get sicker as the processed food industry gets richer,” he said. “The colonial/slave model–your land, your labor, our profit–still defines the broad outlines of today’s food system. It needs updating and rectification, and without it the other reforms we all want in the structure of agriculture and food will scarcely be meaningful or possible.
“Thus the appeal to equity. Since we all ‘built it’ and continue to enable it, the benefits should likewise be equitable. Even people who believe that the modern food system is a success and that they are well served by its abundance and affordability are some of its main victims, as evidenced by rampant and unprecedented metabolic disease and shortened lifespans.”
In related news, Duke law professor Jedediah Purdy published an excerpt from his forthcoming book, “After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene,” in Bloomberg View. Purdy suggests that the good-food movement has the potential to improve ecology in ways the environmental movement has failed to, by blending the experiential pleasures of the natural world with the practical demands of feeding the world.