Article 2

Congruence Between Quaker Values and Food Choices

by Molly Anderson

Reflections on Friends testimonies have led many Meetings to examine ways to actively protect the integrity of earth’s ecosystems. For some Friends, the leading to resist the violent destruction of the natural world and other species is as powerful as peace-making and resisting violence against other humans, and has assumed the same weight as earlier Friends’ resistance to slavery. Even modest changes in food choices can lead to significant improvements in the environmental and social impacts of agriculture and fisheries.

A recent book from the Union of Concerned Scientists, The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices, attempted with careful research and documentation to show which actions people can take that really make a difference in their environmental impacts, and which are relatively trivial. Food ranks second only to transportation as a source of environmental problems, mainly because of habitat conversion, water use and pollution due to cultivation. Meat and poultry are more harmful than fruits, vegetables and grains. Mathis Wackernagel at Redefining Progress and a team of other researchers published a paper around the same time showing that human use of the natural environment has exceeded its regenerative capacity since the 1980s. Wackernagel is one of the creators of the ‘ecological footprint’ concept, the area required for the production of food and other goods and the absorption of waste.

We can reduce our ecological footprint in many ways. Some of the options in food choices are:

Eat lower on the food chain: Use more vegetables, fruits and grains and less meat.

Reduce ‘food miles’, or the distance food travels to reach your home. By choosing food grown close to home (or growing it yourself), you not only eliminate the cost of transporting it but also the costs of packaging and cooling it to survive its long trip. FoodRoutes is a national organization formed to help people find sources of local food and better understand its advantages (http://www.foodroutes.org/buylocal.jsp)

Buy foods raised by farmers who try to mimic natural methods of achieving soil fertility and pest control. The simplest way to do this is to purchase food that is certified organic. However, the environmental costs of shipping certified organic food from the other side of the country or halfway around the world outweigh the benefits to the environment. It is better to look for foods raised in your region, grown organically or with Integrated Pest Management to reduce synthetic pesticide use or with ‘natural’ methods.

Eat less! Overconsumption and obesity are more prevalent in the US than food insecurity. While they are complex problems aggravated by advertising and availability of junk food, you do have considerable control over what you eat. Eating out less and eating fewer processed foods allows you to keep track of how much you are eating and its nutritive value more easily.

It is vital that Friends go beyond individual actions and changes in shopping habits, to build a more just food system. As Friends, we are concerned with social justice as well as ecosystem integrity and health. Fortunately, it is possible to make food choices that are good for other people as well as being good for the planet. One of the ways to do this is by looking for ‘fair-trade’ products, certified to give producers a decent wage.

Buy fair-trade products. Equal Exchange Interfaith Program describes the benefits of fair-trade coffee, tea and cocoa and allows direct ordering from its online store. http://www/equalexchange.org/interfaith

Only a small number of food products prominent in international trade are fair-trade certified at present (such as coffee, tea, chocolate) because the primary impetus for developing fair-trade standards has been to alleviate poverty and labor exploitation that are part of the international agricultural trading system. For instance, the price of coffee on the international market fell over the last three years to a 30-year low, threatening the livelihoods of 25 million coffee producers around the world. This is not due to some miraculous technological breakthrough that allows farmers to produce coffee much more cheaply. It is because developing-country farmers, mostly poor smallholders, now sell their coffee beans for much less than they cost to produce and middlemen who buy, roast, package and sell the beans are making higher profits. With full globalization of markets and the consolidation of companies that trade foods, buyers can force down world prices. Frequently this means buying from countries that are in economic crisis or political upheaval, and lack standards on fair wages and safe working conditions—including prohibitions on child labor and slavery—for those who work in the fields. The top suppliers of coffee in the world in 2000-2001 were Brazil, Vietnam and Colombia. For cocoa, they were Ivory Coast, Ghana and Indonesia. In 2002, while news stories about the prevalence of child slavery in the cocoa industry were breaking, Nestle S.A. had the highest revenue of all worldwide food and beverage companies (over $57 billion) and was the 85th largest economic entity in the world, just below New Zealand. Fair-trade certification is the best possible guarantee that goods are produced without exploitation.

Food dollars can help to support a more just food system within the U.S. too. Community supported agriculture (CSA) is an increasingly popular option in which customers buy ‘shares’ in a farm before the growing season begins.

Join a CSA. Check for possibilities in your geographic region through a national database maintained by the Alternative Farming and Sustainability Information Center, the Robyn van En Center for CSA Resources, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Sustainable Agriculture Network and others http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/csa/csastate.htm.

Buy directly from local farmers at farm stands and farmers’ markets.

For products that aren’t available locally, check online for family farmers who can sell them directly to you through the Supermarket Coop (http://www.ruralcoalition.org)

Each CSA operates a bit differently, but the most common pattern is for shareholders to receive a box of fresh produce each week during the growing season. This system allows customers to share some of the risks and unpredictability of farming, while also developing a relationship with a local farmer and learning how to eat more seasonally. Buying directly from farmers, at farmers’ markets or farmstands, lets him or her keep all of the gross returns instead of whatever is left after middlemen take their cuts. Rural Coalition has started an online Supermarket Project that lets customers buy straight from family farmers, even if they don’t live close by.

Invest in socially and environmentally responsible food businesses, and participate in shareholder resolutions to improve company policies.

Socially responsible investment (SRI) is another way to support fair business practices in the food industry. Food and agriculture are huge industries, and several companies offer stock options. Coffee is the world's second most heavily traded commodity, after petroleum. A financial consultant who specializes in SRI can steer Friends with money to invest toward businesses that have superior environmental, labor and corporate governance records and policies, and toward Community Investment Notes that allow micro-loans to local businesses. Friends who decide for any reason to keep stock in a company with a poor environmental or labor record can vote in shareholder resolutions to change that company’s policies.

Questions For Reflection

After reading at least one of the selections above, reflect on the following questions:

• *Do I act in the assurance that food and drinking water are rights? How do I protect this right for others? How do I respond when I see a violation of these rights?
• *Do I respect life, and treat it with reverence?
• Who grew and prepared my food? Did others suffer so that I could eat? How can I remove suffering from my own food chain?

Illustrative Activities

1. If consideration of food system problems is new to your group, you might want to learn more about the specific mechanisms by which we are hurting biodiversity, the natural environment, and other countries by food choices. This information is easily available. You can begin with information available on-line and in print from some of the sources listed below. Several faith communities have published statements or study guides about food. One of the best is Food and Faith, a 2002 reader edited by Michael Schut about the environmental, ethical and social impacts of food choices and what can be done. Another good compilation that offers food for thought is the Fatal Harvest Reader (Kimbrell, 2002).
2. Share within your group various ways that individuals have changed their eating habits, as they have attempted to be more environmentally and socially responsible. In addition to sharing specific actions, talk about barriers that have been encountered (such as short growing seasons that restrict access to local fresh fruits and vegetables; lack of markets that carry locally-produced, fair-trade and organic foods; or time pressures that make cooking from scratch more difficult).
3. Think about ways that your individual actions can be linked to build strong, viable alternatives to exploitative food systems. Play the Community-based Food Game (see below) to open up discussion of some of these alternatives. How might a Meeting help to support its own members as they try to make food choices with greater integrity, and create a locus within a neighborhood or community for healthier food-system alternatives? Examples might include starting a study circle on food and environment, sponsoring a farmers’ market on Meeting grounds, “adopting” a local farm that wants to use the community-supported agriculture model, buying fair-trade coffee and tea for Meeting fellowship events, and supporting local organizations that provide nutritious food to homeless people and low-income children and parents.

Community-based Food System game. For a free copy contact Molly Anderson at mollydelcarmen@hotmail.com.

What Does the World Eat? Purpose: Understand the vast difference in food availability and diet among different countries in the world, and appreciate the special qualities of the foods used by different cultures. Instructions: From a world map, have each person in your group pick one developing country and include as many continents as possible among the group. Ask each person to investigate what people in that country eat, and supplement this with data on the extent of malnutrition among adults and children in that country.  This data is available on-line from the Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/y7352e/y7352e07.htm#. Plan a meal for the group in which each person prepares a typical food from his/her selected country.

How Did Your Food Get to You? Purpose: Understand the multiple stages of the US food system. Instructions: Divide the group into two parts, each with access to a large sheet of newsprint or a blackboard/whiteboard. Select a breakfast food item, such as oats or milk or bacon. In each group, one person will draw and the rest of the people will be coaches. Draw the different places that this food item went through on its way from field to table. Include producers, truckers, processors, distributors, wholesalers, retailers and waste handlers. Discuss the positive and negative aspects of this complex system. •

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