- Explain three examples of injustices or inequalities (negative impacts) that result from the global production system of food, as discussed in this article.
- Why is the contemporary system of food production not challenged more successfully and changed?
- Who does the author argue should lead the way in fighting for change in the global food production system?
- What is your opinion of this article? Do you generally agree or disagree with the author’s arguments? Why or why not?
Deadly diets: geographical reflections on the global food system
Author(s): E. M. Young
Source: Geography, Vol. 95, No. 2 (Summer 2010), pp. 60-69
Published by: Geographical Association
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Geography Vol 95 Part 2 Summer 2010 @ Geography 2010
Deadly diets:
geographical
reflections on
the global food
system
Deadly diets:
geographical
reflections on
the global food
system
E.M. Young
ABSTRACT: This article considers the contemporary
food system and suggests that it is deadly in several
respects. The most blatant failure of the current
system is that it fails to feed approximately one
billion people adequately each year yet manages to
overfeed approximately 800 million people
worldwide. This binare contradiction, or ‘Our Big Fat
Contradiction’ (Patel, 2007, p. 1), is detailed at the
outset The system also fails to protect the
environment upon which we all depend for
sustainable food production; the second deadly
drawback the article considers. The final deadly
trend lies at the production and distribution end of
the food chain. Here power is being concentrated,
poor people are being marginalised and choice is
being eroded.
A?er detailing the most glaring problems the article
examines how the food system is organised, and
what ideologies and structures help sustain and
promote its diffusion across the globe. The core
question is, given its multiple failings, why is the
contemporary system of food production not
challenged more successfully and changed? The
answer points to the powerful vested interests that
profit from its operations, a few of which are also
considered. The article concludes that the system is
ethically suspect and unsustainable, and closes with
an evaluation of the efforts made by various
individuals and communities to implement a more
enlightened food system.
Introduction
and perhaps worst of all, our food is increasingly
bad for us, even dangerous’ (Walsh, 2009, p. 1).
In August 2009, Time magazine, not noted for
its radical politics or environmentalism, ran a
cover story about the problems associated with
the global food system. In recent years, popular
and academic books and articles about these
problems have multiplied and have raised
awareness about some of these problems (Holt
Gimenez and Patel, 2009; Pollan, 2006, 2008;
Lang and Heasman, 2004; Lawrence, 2008; Patel,
2007; Roberts, 2008; Schlosser, 2001; Weiss,
2007; Madeley, 2000; Shiva, 2000). For
geographers, the excellent Atlas of Food by
Millstone and Lang (2003) is indispensible and
Atkins and Bowler (2001), Robinson (2003) and
Dicken (2007) provide in-depth analyses. Books
multiply but the problems intensify. Celebrity chefs
in the UK and USA encourage consumers to
consider the health implications and ethics of food
production and consumption, with mixed results.
This article details some of the food system’s
most serious flaws, attempts to explain their
causes and suggests why change seems so
elusive.
First, however, it is worth considering the case for
the current system. Affluent consumers
everywhere enjoy a diverse and rich diet
unprecedented in human history. We pay very low
prices for all our food staples and even foods
previously considered ‘luxury’ items (e.g. shrimps,
oysters, scallops and chicken) are now within most
household budgets. Today’s affluent consumers
contrast markedly with all human communities in
the past by being assured of the availability of all
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? Geography 2010 Geography voi 95 Part 2
Deadly diets:
geographical
reflections on
the global food
system
Figure 1: The geography of
world hunger. Source: FAO,
2009.
I_;_
foods, all year and every year. What this article
considers in the real price of this system: who or
what might be bearing the burden of the system
that serves some of us so well. What social and
environmental externalities are concealed behind
the supermarket shelves?
Global malnutrition:
under nutrition
Malnutrition means ‘bad nourishment’ and it
includes not getting enough food (under nutrition
associated with hunger) as well as having too
much (over nutrition associated with obesity). The
most urgent problem with the contemporary food
system is that it fails to deliver a sufficient diet to
approximately 1.02 billion people (Food and
Agricultural Organisation, 2009). Most of these
people suffer from chronic daily hunger (as
opposed to acute hunger – see below) and
associated health problems. Contrary to some
optimistic predictions in the 1990s, the numbers
of undernourished people soared between 2006
and 2009, precipitating a ‘food crisis’:
‘2009 has been a devastating year for the
world’s hungry, marking a significant worsening
of an already disappointing trend in global food
security since 1996 … There have been
marked increases in hunger in all of the world’s
major regions, and more than one billion
people are now estimated to be
undernourished’ (FAO, 2009).
Measuring hunger is fraught with problems and
estimates of the number of hungry people may
vary significantly if just a few basic parameters are
adjusted. However, for the purpose of this article,
the general pattern shown in Figure 1 is adequate.
The geography of global hunger is complex and at
all places is mediated by sub-national variables
such as region, class, ethnicity, gender and age.
Essentially, patterns of hunger correlate with
patterns of power: those without power tend to
suffer first while those who enjoy access to power
seldom experience hunger (Young, 1997). Patterns
are also dynamic and show substantial seasonal
and annual shifts. High global food prices in
2007-08, for example, were estimated to increase
the number of hungry people by 75 million over the
2006 estimate (FAO, 2008). However, allowing for
these complexities, it is important to appreciate
that the majority of hungry people live in Asia,
where China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh
together account for most of the world total. The
prevalence of Asia in these statistics contradicts
popular perceptions that hunger is most serious in
Africa. Hunger is very serious in parts of sub
sanaran Africa, but because the total population of
the region is smaller, absolute numbers are less
than those for Asia. Figure 2 illustrates broad
regional totals.
Near East and North Africa
42 million
Latin America and \ ?!ve!?Ped countries
the Caribbean \_^JHz’on 53 million t^^>>^
Sub-Saharan Africa
265 million
Asia and the Pacific
Figure 2; Geographical
incidence of hunger by
world region. Source: FAO,
2009.
61
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Geography Vol 95 Part 2 Summer 2010 @ GeograPhV 2010
Deadly diets:
geographical
reflections on
the global food
system
Figure 3: The global
incidence of obesity.
Source: WHO, 2006.
62
Fifteen out of the 16 countries where the incidence
of hunger exceeds 35% lie in sub-Saharan Africa
and at present severe hunger threatens to
overwhelm populations in the Horn of Africa. Here
we may introduce the concept of acute hunger
which, in contrast to chronic hunger, implies a real
threat of death if emergency relief is not available.
In October 2009, 25 years after the Food Aid
concerts launched by Sir Bob Geldof during the
crisis of 1984-85, Ethiopia was in the headlines
again with the World Food Programme warning that
famine was again imminent. Although drought may
be the proximate (immediate) cause of the current
crisis in Ethiopia, as it was in 1984, the causes
are complex. All food emergencies are, in essence,
the end result of a toxic mix of economic, political
and environmental factors, hence the term
‘complex emergencies’ and the specific
contribution of each factor will vary in nature and
significance.
Global malnutrition: over
nutrition
The second deadly symptom of the contemporary
food system is the emergence of a global obesity
pandemic, a different manifestation of
malnutrition. Major global structural changes
explain its emergence (Rayner et a/., 2007) and
the major proximate (immediate) factors are
detailed below.
‘Changes in the world food economy have
contributed to shi?ing dietary patterns, for
example increased consumption of an energy
dense diet high in fat, particularly saturated fat,
and low in carbohydrates. This combines with a
decline in energy expenditure that is associated
with a sedentary lifestyle, with motorized
transport, and labour-saving devices at home
and at work largely replacing physically
demanding manual tasks, and leisure time often
being dominated by physically undemanding
pastimes’ (WHO, 2002, p. 1).
Both developed and developing nations are paying
a high price for malnutrition (Halweil and Gardner,
2000). Simple distinctions between the incidence,
costs and nature of malnutrition in the affluent
global North and less affluent South are no longer
satisfactory. Hunger persists in some communities
in wealthy countries such that the World Health
Organisation (2002) now identifies health
problems linked to over nutrition as one of the
most serious public health issues facing countries
in both the North and South.
Beware; Figure 3 provides an excellent example of
the dangers of casual map interpretation. It
employs aggregate data for very large countries,
and suggests, for example, that the problem of
obesity is non-existent in China and India when in
fact, it is alarming public health officials across
Asia. Sadly, and paradoxically, as with traditional
patterns of malnutrition (hunger), Asia is emerging
as the world centre of obesity and its associated
health problems. Indeed, across the developing
world obesity is already a significant problem and
estimates indicate that it will worsen. The health
problems associated with obesity (it is correlated
with a number of chronic diseases, including
diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancer) are
U
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? Geography 2010 Geography Vol 95 Part 2 Summer 2010
expensive to treat and generate dilemmas for
public health officials trying to balance budgets
between treating traditional killers, like infectious
diseases and the more recent conditions
associated with non-communicative diseases.
Countries across the developing world are facing
this ‘double burden’ of disease and its multiple
social and economic impacts (WHO, 2009).
Industrial agriculture:
some social impacts
Having considered the Janus-faced nature of the
global food system with reference to nutrition, let
us now examine some of its social impacts.
Capitalist agriculture evolved in Europe and is
associated with enclosures and dispossession
from the fourteenth century which initiated mass
rural poverty and out migration. In the mid
twentieth century prevailing models of capitalist
farming were transformed and industrial food
production emerged in the United States. This
model diffused to Europe after the Second World
War, and has been vigorously marketed across the
globe ever since (Atkins and Bowler, 2001). Its
emergence and dominance can be explained with
reference to powerful agro-business interests
largely based in the USA and the EU. We return to
this below. At this juncture, it is more important to
summarise its most devastating social and
environmental impacts.
The diffusion of industrial farming systems in the
twentieth century has helped generate some of the
largest mass migrations in human history. Just as
capitalist farming and its associated privatisations
displaced millions of peasant farmers in Europe,
and colonially imposed agricultural production
systems displaced millions between the sixteenth
and twentieth centuries, so today, industrial
farming, driven by corporate monopolies, is
responsible for displacing small landowners and
peasant farmers. Across the developing world rural
poverty and landlessness explains the pattern of
rural-urban migration and the inexorable rise in
urban populations (see the interactive map of
urbanisation trends since 1950 on the BBC
website).
The geography and mechanics of the process are
too complex and contested to examine in detail
here, but since the 1950s, millions of small
peasant farmers in the developing world have
suffered a catastrophic decline in their livelihoods
(Magdoff, 2008). Sadly, this also applies to small
farmers in the developed world and transitional
economies too, where subsidies and ‘efficiencies’
have meant that farm units must be very large to
survive the vicissitudes of market volatility. The
experience of small farmers in Poland is
representative of this trend. Mr Lopata, an activist,
describes how the small farm sector in Poland has
suffered since joining the EU:
‘[M]ost of our farms are tiny by EU standards,
about seven hectares – and they play a huge
role in protecting our biodiversity, as well as
providing us with fantastic food … [now in the
EU] Polish farmers are finding that the practices
they adopted hundreds of years ago are now
illegal. It’s become a nightmare’ (quoted in
Seedling, 2008, p. 26).
Access to land is obviously an essential
component of small-scale farming and, as
industrial farming expands, small farms are
incorporated in larger units, rendering their
previous occupants landless. This process is well
documented in the Punjab in India after industrial
farming was introduced in the 1970s (Shiva,
1991). During the 1980s and 1990s vast areas of
fertile land in Latin America, previously used to
grow human food crops, switched to the intensive
cultivation of soya, which has been described by
some as ‘[0]ne of the most destructive
developments in agriculture over the past two
decades’ (Seedling, April 2009, p. 3). Soya has
become an indispensible component of intensive
livestock farming (or confined animal feeding
operations (CAFOs)) that are now entrenched in the
developed world and expanding rapidly elsewhere
(MacDonald and Iyer, 2009).
In recent years, another process has been
identified – the ‘land grab’ by corporations and
governments of extensive acres in the developing
world. This land may be leased or purchased, but
either way it becomes unavailable for food
production for local populations. The land may be
used to cultivate food to supplement domestic
food production (as in China, Japan, Libya and the
United Arab Emirates). Indeed, ‘[T]he Beijing
government is about to make the buying of land
overseas to produce food for export to China a
central and official government policy’ (Seedling,
2008, p. 4). Many of these land purchases are
driven by speculative activity whereby corporations
Deadly diets:
geographical
reflections on
the global food
system
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Geography Vol 95 Part 2 Summer 2010 ? Geography 2010
Deadly diets:
geographical
reflections on
the global food
system
are hoping to cultivate increasingly profitable
crops, specifically biofuels and sugar. So, the
diffusion of industrial farming comes at a very high
price to many small producers and their plight, in
turn, creates multifaceted social problems for their
governments when, dispossessed, they migrate to
the urban areas. Having considered examples of
the social implications of the contemporary global
food system, we now review some of its most
glaring environmental impacts.
Industrial agriculture:
some environmental
impacts
Since the 1960s concern has been raised about
the negative environmental impacts of industrial
food production (Carson, 1962). Increasingly,
however, the catastrophic costs of its externalities
have been more accurately mapped and measured
(Altieri, 2001; Kimbrel, 2002; Pretty, 2005; Halweil
and Nierenberg, 2008). The problems are
numerous and here we summarise just a few of
the most urgent.
A core problem is that industrial agriculture is
completely dependent upon petroleum. Petrol fuels
the system from start to finish:
in the fields petrochemical derivatives,
fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides, are
employed to secure high yields
huge amounts of petrol are used to drive the
heavy machinery that has replaced labour in
this production system
the raw materials are transported to factories,
6 1
sometimes thousands of miles away for
processing
the processed food products are then
distributed by fleets of refrigerated ships and
lorries to the retail outlets where they are
refrigerated again before being bought by
consumers who arrive and depart from the
supermarkets in cars.
Thus, the high profile ‘food miles’ issue is only one
small element of a much larger problem.
A Greenpeace (2008) report attempts to quantify
the direct and indirect contributions of industrial
agriculture to greenhouse gas emissions. They
conclude that agriculture contributes between 17
and 32% of all global induced greenhouse gas
emissions. The livestock industry, especially the
massive increases in cattle production to satisfy
the world’s insatiable ‘carnivorous cravings’
(Holmes, 2001), helps explain some of the
methane contributions. Carbon dioxide is released
at every point in the system where petroleum is
employed at the same time as carbon-absorbing
forests are cleared for farming (FAO, 2006).
Rainforests are particularly at risk, and campaigns
to prevent the further destruction of these precious
carbon sinks and biodiversity-rich habitats are
underway (Rainforest Action Network, 2009).
Water is essential to all agricultural production
systems, but the demand in traditional systems
was modest compared to the phenomenal use in
the industrial food system. At every link in the
industrial food chain, water is required in very high
volumes. Most crops are irrigated with water drawn
from ground water aquifers or reservoirs, both of
which can be environmentally damaging, and the
construction of the latter often incurs awful social
costs (Scudder, 2006; Roy, 1999; Magalh?es and
Hernandez, 2009). However, applying water to
crops in fields and livestock (while alive) is only a
fraction of the water usage. Beef production
requires huge volumes of fresh, clean water: from
the rather anachronistically called ‘dairy parlour’
through to the abattoir and post-kill processing.
Concerned environmentalists insist that the
demand for water associated with intensive meat
production is completely unsustainable and are
calling for the auditing of food chains for their
’embedded water’ use (GRAIN, 2008, p. 14).
However, it is not simply the demand for water that
is problematic; the industrial food system is also a
major source of water pollution. Oceans, seas,
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? Geography 2010 GeoqraDhv Vol 95 Part 2 Summer 2010
rivers, ground water and wetlands across the globe
have all suffered to a greater or lesser degree from
pollution from agriculture. The storage and
disposal of animal waste has long been a serious
problem and the diffusion of CAFOs, from Vermont
to Vietnam, is exacerbating the problem. Gurian
Sherman’s (2008) expos? of such facilities
describes how they have been subsidised in the
USA, and such food producing units (with all their
attendant costs) are appearing across the
developing world too.
Some of the most serious water pollution results
from run off from farms and factory units:
excess nutrients, such as nitrogen and
phosphorous, cause eutrophication and algal
blooms
ammonia and nitrates can accumulate to toxic
levels in ground and river water
heavy metals and salts can leak from manure
and contaminate surface and ground water
pathogens from intensive farming are
increasingly implicated in disease outbreaks.
The combined environmental impact of these
pollutants range from being minor nuisances to
severe ecological impacts involving damaging the
health and well-being offish, birds and mammals,
and even humans. Having suggested some of the
most serious environmental burdens placed on our
ecosystem by the diffusion of industrial farming
practices, how may we understand the advance of
the industrial model of agriculture?
Industrial agriculture:
vested interests
The industrial model of food production has been
accompanied by an unprecedented concentration
of power at both ends of the food chain and at all
the links in between (Barker, 2007). A few very
powerful corporations control every aspect of the
production, processing and retailing of our staple
foods which allows them to manipulate prices to
maximise their profits. Patel describes the
asymmetries in the system:
‘Somehow we’ve ended up at a world with a few
corporate buyers and sellers … And when the
number of companies controlling the gateways
from farmers to consumers is small, this gives
them great power both over the people who
grow the food and the people who eat it’ (Patel,
2007, p. 12).
This power, allied to their financial clout (which
dwarfs that of most other sectors), means that
such corporations remain largely unaccountable to
producers, consumers or governments who
attempt to manage their less seemly practices (for
example, marketing junk food to children). Some
argue that they ‘call the shots’ at every level: at
the international level they have impressive powers
of persuasion within the World Trade Organisation
(WTO) and at the national level, where their deep
pockets help ‘sway’ national power brokers (Patel,
2007, p. 107). Yet few readers will recognise the
names mentioned below. How have such
phenomenally influential players, who literally
control vital sections of such an important global
economic activity, escaped popular attention?
Vorley (2003) maps a convincing picture of
corporate power with reference to every aspect of
the food chain. The trading and processing of
cereals and oilseed are highly concentrated, with
Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) alone
reputed to control about three-quarters of global
cereals, while Bunge, ADM, Cargill and Dreyfus
dominate oilseed trading and crushing. Vorley
(2003) exposes a similar concentration in the soy
and sugar sectors, and examines the markets for
commodities produced by millions of poor farmers
in some of the poorest countries in the world. Of
coffee and cocoa production, he states ‘[T]he
balance of power in the coffee chain has shifted
dramatically in favour of commercial interests in
the industrialised world, with only around 10% of
I Deadly diets:
I geographical
I reflections on
I the global food
I system
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Geography Vol 95 Part 2 Summer 2010 @ Geography 2010
Deadly diets:
geographical
reflections on
the global food
system
retail value retained in producing countries’ (Vorley,
2003, p. 11). Small producers (whether in the EU
or Ethiopia) have little or no leverage against such
structural realities. At the retail end of the chain,
the pattern is depressingly familiar: in the
developed world (and increasingly in the emerging
markets and developing world), a few powerful
conglomerates have emerged and enjoy enormous
power at the check outs. A factor they use to great
effect to modify our diets and constrain our
choices.
Having reviewed some of the most obvious failings
of our food system we pose another question:
given these multiple failings, why is the
contemporary system of food production not
challenged more successfully and changed?
Corporate power has driven the agendas in food
and agricultural policy for their own ends, profit
maximisation. Since the 1980s, as globalisation
has intensified, corporate power has enjoyed ever
greater access to previously protected markets,
both to produce the raw materials and to market
their processed goods through internationally
owned retail outlets. Part of the globalisation
process was explicitly designed to ‘open up’
markets in the developing world for foreign
investment (Rayner et a/., 2007). Robinson argues:
‘[l]n the last three decades both food production
and distribution have been radically restructured
in favour of a more global scope and character,
with TNCs (Transnational Corporations) playing
an increasingly important role, especially in
activities “upstream” and “downstream” from
farms’ (Robinson, 2004, p. 53).
Corporate power is of course facilitated by many
other actors and agents. Many governments,
especially those with major agricultural interests
(e.g. in the EU and USA) have assisted their
accumulation of power. Often, governments used
their weight at international trade forums to
promote corporate interests, by insisting on trade
liberalisation by others while retaining their own
protectionist policies (Barker, 2007; Young, 1999,
2004).
Multiple business opportunities come in the wake
of the corporate penetration of emerging markets
(in Russia, Brazil, Philippines, India, China, etc.)
and there are, undoubtedly, many who are
financially and personally equipped to exploit these
spaces. A great many businesses benefit from the
current state of affairs; employees and share
holders are unlikely to complain as the food sector
retains its profit margins while most other
economic sectors are failing. Millions of wealthy
consumers in India and China, as well as the USA
and UK, generally see little wrong with the status
quo. They enjoy a diet divorced from seasons or
fluctuations in price and spend a smaller
percentage of their income on food than ever
before, but many are now beginning to appreciate
that things are not quite right.
Conclusion: alternative
futures?
All manner of groups, at the local, national and
international level, are emerging to challenge the
nature and impacts of the current food system
from a variety of perspectives. Concerns range
from human rights to animal rights and from
human health to environmental health and
sustainability. However, at the core of their
concerns is the threat posed to all of these from
the globally integrated food system governed by
corporate agendas. Change may be most effective,
however, if fought for by those most seriously
burdened by the system at present: small
producers in the developing world and vulnerable
consumers who are coping with increases in staple
food prices. These consumers are more likely to
challenge their politicians and the status quo than
those of us who are sheltered from major food
shocks. It is from within these populations that
some of the most serious challenges are obvious;
it is from these communities too that some of the
most inspirational figures emerge.
A global alliance of non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) and civil society
organisations (CSOs) is the International
NGO/CSO Planning Committee (IPC). The IPC
promotes the concept of food sovereignty, that is,
the rights of producers and consumers to control
the food system and to challenge the power of the
corporate food producers. The IPC includes social
organisations representing small farmers, fishing
communities, indigenous peoples, agricultural
workers’ trade unions and human and
environmental activists from the world regions. It
launched its initial agenda in a Forum for Food
Security in 1996 where it introduced the concept
of food sovereignty. The IPC has since broadened
its objectives and presents a more radical agenda
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? Geography 2010 Geography Vol 95 Part 2 Summer 2010
than that suggested by mainstream policy makers
(see IPC website).
La Via Campesina (LVC) provides another example
of a global grassroots movement that is
challenging some of the most serious injustices in
the food system. As with the IPC, it promotes the
concept of food sovereignty. LVC too, has members
from across the globe fighting to change economic
development policy, so that small sustainable
producers are protected and corporate power is
restricted. Their core sentiments were articulated
recently by a Canadian farmer who argued that the
‘time for talking is over’ and that:
/Jf the world is serious about eradicating
hunger, there are not many options. We have to
support and encourage small farmers to
produce food for their communities in
sustainable ways. A genuine solution to the food
crisis means that small scale farmers, not
transnational corporations, must regain control
over food producing resources such as land,
seeds, water and local markets/ (Via
Campesinas, 2009)
Their campaigns are designed to retain control of
the food chain at the local level and they lobby
against things like the introduction of genetically
modified seeds, and for things like a fairer
international trading regime.
Numerous organisations coalesce around
humanitarian concerns, thus religiously based
chanties and human rights activists appreciate the
centrality of the food system to livelihoods and
poverty reduction. Oxfam continue to fight for
human rights and sustainable livelihoods for the
poor and the organisation recognises the central
role of agricultural policy to this objective. Oxfam
has published excellent review articles that expose
the way the international trading system is biased
against small farmers. More recently they revisited
the role of agriculture in development and
published recommendations which are available
online (see Fraser, 2009; Alpert et al., 2009). The
organisation’s in-depth investigation into cocoa
production is an exemplary study that illustrates
the bitter price of chocolate (Cappelle, 2009).
The problem of obesity and its potential costs are
beginning to frighten policy makers, therefore
public policy interventions are being considered in
a variety of areas. The International Obesity Task
Force (IOTF website) examines the causes and
consequences of obesity world wide and supports
research and analysis. The findings inform national
governments’ health policies. IOTF has recently
advocated the adoption of The Sydney Principles’,
a set of guidelines to govern the marketing of food
and non alcoholic drinks to children. In the UK high
profile advocates advise the government on the
links between the food system and the nation’s
health and suggest new policy directions (Lang and
Rayner, 2002; Ambler-Edwards et a/., 2009)
Animal welfare groups, from the mild to the radical,
challenge the worst examples of animal cruelty in
farming systems. They can now add the dangers of
animal diseases and their potential to infect
humans in their war on animal exploitation
(Nierenberg, 2005). Also, political leaders appear
to be more prepared to accept that environmental
issues really do demand attention and cannot be
debated without reference to agricultural and food
policy. The concept of sustainable development
may yet help deliver a more equitable system and
serve as a rallying call for people in diverse areas
of the food system. In the UK, diverse NGOs
promote sustainable food and farming (see
websites for National Trust, RSPB, Soil Association,
Sustain).
The negative links between globalisation, changing
diets and the food production system are now
established, but, on a more positive note, there is
evidence that grassroots resistance to the worst of
its implications is gaining momentum too. As this
article details, food, more perhaps than any other
commodity, illustrates how people and
environments across the globe are connected;
changing the nature of these connections is vital to
ensuring more people enjoy access to a healthy
diet from a provisioning system that is more
socially and environmentally sustainable. Some
argue that agriculture is now at a crossroads
(Greenpeace, 2009). As consumers we can
influence future directions by educating ourselves
about such everyday geographies and perhaps
change our patterns of consumption accordingly.
As citizens we can lobby governments and join
campaign groups dedicated to addressing the
problems detailed in this article.
Deadly diets:
geographical
reflections on
the global food
system
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Deadly diets:
geographical
reflections on
the global food
system
^9
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- Contents
- Issue Table of Contents
p. 60
p. 61
p. 62
p. 63
p. 64
p. 65
p. 66
p. 67
p. 68
p. 69
Geography, Vol. 95, No. 2 (Summer 2010) pp. 57-112
Front Matter
Editorial: Facing up to the global food crisis [pp. 58-59]
Deadly diets: geographical reflections on the global food system [pp. 60-69]
The EU sugar reform and the responses of Caribbean sugar producers [pp. 70-79]
Teaching about multicultural food to multicultural students in a multicultural school [pp. 80-87]
Resourcing the food crisis: geographies of food [pp. 88-93]
This Changing World: Thai aquaculture and adventures in geography [pp. 94-98]
Challenging Assumptions: Re-thinking ‘the obesity problem’ [pp. 99-105]
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URBAN EARTH [pp. 106-111]
Back Matter