When I lived in Madagascar, my very good friend Augustin was struggling to support his family after the bottom fell out of the world coffee market. I know it's important for family farmers around the world to diversify to protect themselves from economic shocks like that, but his situation also brought home to me how our purchases in America--and our government's policies--affect people in the farthest reaches of the planet. I highly recommend Oxfam's Make Trade Fair site for more on the issue and to get involved. www.maketradefair.com

Jeffrey Allen
New York, New York, USA

Do you think we give enough thought to where our food comes from?
- What are your thoughts about the links between agriculture and poverty?
Where people can grow there own food for subsistence and sell enough to send their children to school there is no poverty, but if a family can only make enough to eat, then there is poverty.
- What do you think of genetically modified foods? Organic food? Locally grown food?
I do not agree with genetically modified foods and do not support this technology by trying not to purchase such foods. I prefer locally grown organic foods because I know I am actually supporting the environment and my community on earth by eating these foods, not to mention my own health
- Do we need global food supply chains to feed everyone?
I do not understand global food supply chains
- How can small farmers be more supported? Should they be?
Small farmers could be more supported if local super markets, big chains, would buy from the farmers in their areas. Local consciousness is lacking when we're dealing with national chains.
- Are there any particular programs that have inspired you?
Saturday markets in my home town

I have been going to a Clagett Farm CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) for several years now. I love helping to pick the vegetables, learn about different vegetables, etc. It is also great exercise. I have learned how to cook squash, greens and other vegetables that I didn't know how to cook before. Here's a link my farm images. Also here's a link to a cool flash film about organic vegetables titled Grocery Store Wars.

You are farmer? http://reallydrugs.com

I whole heartedly support the local/organic foods movement, and make sustainable food consumption a significant part of my life (and budget). However, I'm conflicted about some characteristics of the movement, which is persistently classist and elitist. It's great that high quality organic fruits and vegetables have become widely avavilable, but they are completely unaffordable to anyone with a limited budget. Going even further, even the non-organic fruits and vegetables that are available in urban supermarkets are of much lower quality than those in wealthier, suburban supermarkets. In fact, vegetable quality differs from neighborhood to neighborhood even in the city - the wealthier neighborhoods have clean, well-stocked produce whereas the same supermarkets in poorer neighborhoods have terrible selection, and much of the produce is near spoil. I think the food movement needs to expand its economic and racial horizons to make better food available for everyone.

To follow on to Alex G.'s comment...

The charge that supporters of sustainable food movement are elitist may stem from the movement's inability to balance the many factors that collectively help define -- but do not individually define -- sustainability. For instance, "organic," "local," and "non-GMO" are all respectable guidelines for consumers to live by. Standing alone, these sound great. I don't know many thinking people who would disagree that each of these components of sustainability seems "better" than their alternatives (use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, unnecessary use of fossil fuels in transport, uncertain long-term health effects).

Yet these various facets of sustainability, and the different values they represent, inevitably come into conflict with each other. Is organic yogurt from a multinational corporation that sources ingredients from Idaho to New Zealand better than yogurt from a local farmer that includes strawberries grown with pesticides? Is it right to prevent the development of GMO crops, when genetic modification can hold the promise of increasing crop yields for subsistence-level farmers? We spend proportionally less of our incomes on food than ever before in history, but does that make it okay to force that economic argument on a family of four living on $20,000 a year? Better for what, and okay for whom? When does the environment trump poverty as the more important issue, or vice versa?

Sustainability in its broadest sense must be defined in a way that takes into account intersecting social issues. When individuals promote one form of purchasing over another as an absolute, they are taking the value underlying it and presenting it as paramount. "Organic is better than non-organic" thus becomes (or is perceived as) "organic is the best, so everyone who cares about sustainable food should eat organic."

Moving the movement beyond this is difficult. "Organic" is a simple and, by now, easily understood term that is too often used as shorthand for "all those good fuzzy practices that result in food the way it's meant to be grown and eaten," and that's why people feel the incongruity when organic goes corporate. If we use "organic" as shorthand to hook people into the movement, we need to recognize that it's a double-edged sword, because doing so collapses all those diverse values into just those represented by organic farming.

Creating a food movement that is sustainable in every way, not only in environmental terms but also in economic and social terms, will require give-and-take between the various values we care about.

Our current agriculture is not sustainable. We truck
food thousands of miles. We keep in refrigerated
storage for prolonged periods. We require annual
injections of chemical fertilizers (from petroleum) to
keep it going. Our soil is less and less fertile.
Fertilizer runoff enters oceans where it causes over
growth of algae leading to vast "dead zones" where
there is not enough oxygen to support life. The
average family uses as much energy and releases as
much carbon into the atmosphere from buying food in a
supermarket as it would were it to go out and buy
another SUV.

But countries have shown they can be totally self
reliant in vegetable production using organic
agriculture techniques. Cuba has done so over the past
decade after losing access to fertilizers from the
former Soviet Union. If more people were involved in
local food production, it would be a boon not only to
the environment but also to health and to psychic well
being as gardening can be a very rewarding activity
which produces something of obvious value to the
people involved.

Sincerely,
Bill Boteler

Despite the bright outlook on diplomatic and economic relations between China and several African nations, the green future of Africa, inspired by the likes of Wangari Maathai, 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner from Kenya, seems a far-off goal. A report released in 1998 by the World Health Organization (WHO) noted that of the ten most polluted cities in the world, seven can be found in China. If China offers development models with its economic deals, what will be the cost to Africa’s environment, already struggling for sustenance? Contrarily, money might afford supplies for more efficient future land use. But how far into the future?

The farming community is the one which prepares the industrial folks fully fed and attend their offices and factories.

I'd like to point out the existence of a book FOR HUNGER-PROOF CITIES. You opened up the subject and I want to let people know they can read about some insights on how is our world planed to exist for many years to come.
The 20th century has witnessed a massive growth in urban populations. In 1990, one-third of the world's people lived in cities of one million or more. As well, hunger and malnutrition are on the increase worldwide, as the global food system fails to satisfy the growing demand of the urban consumer.
For Hunger-proof Cities is the first book to fully examine food security from an urban perspective. It examines existing local food systems and ways to improve the availability and accessibility of food for city dwellers. It looks at methods to improve community-supported agriculture and cooperation between urban and rural populations. It explores what existing marketing and distribution structures can do to improve accessibility and what the emerging forms of food-distribution systems are, and how they can contribute to alleviating hunger in the cities. Finally, the book discusses the underlying structures that create poverty and inequality and examines the role of emergency food systems, such as food banks.
For Hunger-proof Cities includes contributions from farmers and professors, young activists and experienced business leaders, students and policymakers, and community organizers and practitioners. It will interest academics and students in sociology, politics, economics, environmental studies, social work, nutrition and dietetics, urban planning, and health sciences; practitioners in dietetics, nutrition, public health, and social services; community organizations and NGOs working in food systems; and governmental and international organizations working in food policy and food security.

THE EDITORS

Mustafa Koc is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Ryerson Polytechnic University, Toronto, Canada, where he directs the Centre for Studies in Food Security.

Rod MacRae is Director of the Toronto Food Policy Council, Toronto, Canada.
Read an interview with Rod MacRae from Reports Online.

Luc J.A. Mougeot is Senior Program Specialist at the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada. Dr Mougeot leads IDRC's program in urban agriculture: Cities Feeding People.

Jennifer Welsh is Professor and Director of the School of Nutrition, Ryerson Polytechnic University, Toronto, Canada.