Let’s Fix It: Food Systems

What is a food system?

Figure 1.   Food systems are defined by complex, 

interconnected relationships between society and nature.   

Food systems, at the most basic level, include the diverse spectrum of interactions between people and our environment that ensure access to nutritional resources that support healthy and productive societies.  Because most people reading this article will have neither grown the bulk of their own food nor experienced hunger, and because contemporary food systems are so heavily

regulated by distant entities, many of us have simply learned to overlook the nature of food systems as the central foundation of our economy.  Yet without a functional food system, we have no society, and without society, we have no economy.

Figure 1 illustrates a food system as a square foundation defined by four cornerstones that are interconnected, and therefore influence one-another.   The contributions of each cornerstone are summarized as follows:

Environment represents the entire natural resource base, including land, soil, air, and water, that is necessary for growing food.

Diversity represents both the biodiversity necessary to maintain healthy ecosystems, and the socioeconomic diversity ensures movement of goods and services throughout society.

Agriculture includes all the human interventions that go into the growing, gathering, processing, and distribution of food for human consumption.   

Health refers to the energetic state of the system, and may include human, environmental, or economic health.  A healthy system is dynamic and mobile.  A sick or dead system is static.

Figure 2a.   Food systems form the foundation that 

defines an economy.

Food systems define the economy

The relationship between a food system and the economy at large can be illustrated with a pyramid that places the food system at the foundation, commerce systems, including industries like transportation, communication, and manufacturing at intermediate levels, and governments that regulate access to resources at the top (Figure 2).  When governments foster a healthy foundation, economies remain robust and stable.  This is because those  resources that are in the highest demand, those that are most crucial for survival (food, clean air and water, etc.) remain accessible.  

Symptoms and Consequences of a Damaged Food System

                A food system is damaged whenever safe, nutritious food becomes inaccessible to any part of the population.    Obvious examples include those regions of the world where chronic hunger prevails.  However, earlier warning signs are important to recognize because early intervention is more efficient.  Early warning signs of food system decay include:

1.       Inflated prices of natural resources, indicative of increased demand and/or diminished supply of ecosystem services that an environment provides.

2.       Inflated food prices.

3.       Decreased diversity and/or nutritional quality of whole foods.

4.       Increased incidence of chronic and/or infectious disease.

5.       Loss of farmland to urban development.

6.       Decreased collective understanding of the relationship between humans, agriculture, environment, and health.

The consequences of these symptoms are felt at every level of our economy.   As the incidence of disease increases, healthcare costs go up, and workforce productivity declines.  As food and natural resources inflate, prices of food services and manufactured goods also rise.  This means workers with less income are paying more to meet their daily needs.  Meanwhile, those individuals who are not sick find themselves assuming larger roles, performing their own work and filling in for those who cannot complete their own.  Commerce declines and social unrest increases as more and more people are unable to meet their basic needs. 

Governments often respond with overarching “solutions” that force businesses and individuals to behave in a limited number of ways with the expectation that this restricted behavior will fix the problem.  Such “solutions” repeatedly fail because they don’t account for the fundamental role of diversity.  Since each individual’s environment differs, each individual’s needs differ. Therefore, collective solutions will always create new problems.

 For example, the United States Department of Agriculture notes that they have sequenced the wheat genome and the genome of the wheat stem rust pathogen, in addition to distributing new wheat germplasm globally as part of their effort to address food insecurity.   These genomic sequencing efforts involve enormous amounts of research, the costs of which are supported by taxpayers throughout the United States.  Yet in the United States, gluten intolerances and wheat insensitivities are reaching epidemic proportions.  This means that tax dollars said to be addressing food insecurity are developing technologies and providing mechanisms that increase production of a grain already known to make many people sick.  Now, I would never suggest that restrictions be placed on wheat production.  Wheat has provided food for many.  But when we subsidize efforts to grow a targeted crop, like wheat, we simultaneously reduce efforts to grow alternate, competitive crops.  And when we take money from a taxpayer to create something that is useless to that taxpayer, we have robbed the taxpayer of the resources that would otherwise be available to meet real needs.  This is one example illustrating why overarching, government driven solutions simply cannot provide meaningful solutions for restoring complex, diverse, and robust food systems.

So How Do We Fix It?

 First, we need to shift our focus from the intermediate levels of commerce and industry, to the foundational cornerstones of health, environment, agriculture, and diversity.  Second, we need to recognize that each cornerstone represents an enormous sector of our economy, so restoration efforts must be designed in manners that leverage natural processes.  Without leverage, costs will quickly become prohibitive.

 Because the cornerstones are interconnected, and because diversity occurs naturally in the absence of government regulation, efforts that focus on reducing regulations that limit the diversity of natural and socioeconomic systems, promise great leverage for fixing our food systems.  In the remaining discussion, I will describe powerful examples that illustrate how fewer regulations could result in diversification that restores all four cornerstones of our food systems.

Eliminating Regulations that Limit Biodiversity

In Maren Oelbermann’s text on Sustainable Agroecosystems in Climate Change Mitigation, my colleagues and I wrote a chapter, Using microbial community interactions within plant

microbiomes to advance an evergreen agricultural revolution, that details how microbial diversity could be leveraged to increase food production while restoring agricultural soils, decreasing input costs for growers, and improving plant resistance and resilience to disease, and mitigating the impacts of climate change.  As this chapter was being published, it was also becoming obsolete in that we, as authors, were suggesting a need for more research in order to leverage the microbial power driving agroecosystems.  Today, experts like Dr. Elaine Ingham, of Soil Foodweb, Inc., and leaders in organic agriculture and permaculture are demonstrating that the technology necessary to implement microbiome friendly practices is already available and affordable, and that the outcomes are beneficial to both growers and consumers.  Meanwhile, research emerging from human microbiome studies indicates that microbiome restoration can also have significant impacts on human health and nutrition.  

Yet when talking to growers, I find that the biggest factors influencing decisions to use chemical and mechanical methods that reduce the microbial biodiversity of their croplands are the government and industrial regulations and incentives that determine how their crops are grown, harvested, and handled, and the government funded research and education initiatives that provide information highlighting the benefits of chemicals without describing the secondary and tertiary impacts these chemicals have on the diversity, structure, and function of natural microbiome.  Factors influencing consumer’s choices to purchase foods that have been processed in manners that reduce microbial, biochemical, and nutritional complexity include the belief, fostered by government mandated labeling requirements, government sponsored health education, and government sponsored school lunch programs, that these processed foods are socially acceptable and nutritionally adequate.

Regulations that have been designed to eliminate pests and disease have resulted in the implementation of practices that simultaneously eliminate the multitude of beneficial microbes that help crops grow, help soils retain water and nutrients, and help plants and all who eat plants resist disease.  Regulations that determine the kinds of environmental analyses necessary to approve chemicals for agriculture, food safety, and pharmaceutical applications impose no penalties or restrictions on chemicals that disrupt or destroy beneficial microbial species that associate with living systems, cycle nutrients, detoxify wastes, and defend against disease.  As a result, these regulations provide false impressions of safety.  Finally, incentives to produce high yields of a few key crops reduce both plant and microbial diversity associated with agricultural soils.  This loss of diversity results in a loss of nutritional complexity associated with soils and the foods that are grown in them.

In human nutrition, regulations that oversee food packaging, distribution, and safety also emphasize elimination of microbes.   For example, it has long been widely mandated that milk be pasteurized before being sold.   Now, one might well argue that pasteurization has saved millions from food borne illnesses.  Yet we also know that through pasteurization we eliminated the capacity of milk enzymes and associated microbes to synthesize nutrients.  So by providing children pasteurized milk to drink, one is robbing them of the many nutrients microbes can provide.  This means there is a trade off between the cost and the benefit of pasteurization.   No doubt, many consumers prefer pasteurized milk.  But if regulations were restricted to truth-in-labeling, consumers would be free to determine the risks they are willing to take.  Some consumers would undoubtedly opt for pasteurization and reduced nutrition.  Others would opt for raw milk and rely on their relationship with the dairy and their knowledge of how their milk has been handled to reduce their risk of consuming poisonous microbes.   This opportunity for consumer selection would help to diversify the marketplace.

In health, as in agriculture, regulations that dictate acceptable practices for healthcare are often biased towards products that eliminate both hazardous and beneficial microbes.  While these regulations clearly reduce infectious disease, they also contribute to chronic disease by altering the structure and function of the human microbiome. Technologies that reduce the abundance of infectious microbes by fostering biodiversity, so that the growth of any single species is checked, are readily available.  However, these technologies do not comply with regulations, so they cannot be used.  

  

Eliminating Regulations that Limit Independent Thinking:  The Fuel of Innovation, Socioeconomic Diversity, and Economic Freedom

                It can be humbling to consider that, as a society, we have deliberately and methodically destroyed microbial communities which serve to build our soil, clean our environment, grow our crops, and maintain our health.   This sad reality begs a larger, and perhaps less politically correct question, “Quite seriously, how can we be so stupid?” 

                To answer this question, we must look more closely at the regulations that influence  the choices individuals make.  These include regulations that influence how people learn, and requires a serious look at public education.   Public education can be a powerful development tool, and can offer a ladder of opportunity to individuals who may otherwise live lives of poverty.  But it can also be a tool of repression, control, and manipulation.   

                In industrialized society where public education is mandatory, and curriculum is standardized, entire generations of our youngest and most vulnerable individuals are exposed daily to information that promotes conformity, compliance, and dependence at the expense of innovation and creativity.  These children are taught to accept and obey the rules. 

Curiously, when we review the dialogs about public education stemming from the nineteenth century, the dawn of the industrial age, we see that it was not long after the decline of slavery that industry began promoting public education as a way to meet the new demand for labor.  Too often, children in public schools are taught to sit still, do as the teacher says, and prepare for a decades of employment that requires them to work for someone else.  For more than a century, we have discouraged innovation and encouraged conformity by teaching our children that the “right” answer is the one in the textbook, that what our elders taught us is outdated, and that we can best contribute to society if we can qualify for a good job. 

                Yet when we look at leaders who have excelled in innovations that diversified our economy and improved our lives, we find they are often the rebels who questioned the status quo, followed their own instincts, and created new ways of being.  It is this kind of leadership that should be fostered through education.  To get from here to there, school systems must start by honoring the needs of the student rather than fulfilling the demands of the administration and the curriculum.  This includes honoring the student’s need for self-determination, and for learning experiences that are relevant to the student.  When students are encouraged to lead, rather than to follow, new ideas are generated, learning becomes experiential rather than prescribed, and entrepreneurial spirits emerge.  Entrepreneurs are the drivers of socioeconomic diversity.  By creating new opportunities in new communities, entrepreneurs stimulate change.  By placing themselves in positions where they make decisions rather than follow directions, entrepreneurs also become self-educated.

                An explosion in entrepreneurship would benefit our food system and many scales.   As new businesses, including small businesses, develop, opportunities for local and sustainable agriculture would improve.  More individuals would accept the challenges of growing and processing food in natural ways, and more food services would be available to meet growing demands for locally grown, naturally processed foods.  Such businesses would offer consumers more choices, and help change the mindsets that accept processed foods as inevitable, and as the only way to feed their families. 

Conclusions

                Food systems form the foundation of our economy at local and at global scales.   A process of diversification at biological and socioeconomic scales can: 

1) restore microbiomes to the agricultural, environmental, and health care systems that, together with diversity, define our food systems.  Doing so will increase crop yields, restore natural resources like clean air and water, and improve human health and nutrition.  

2) shift public  mindsets from conformity, compliance, and dependence  to leadership, innovation, and entrepreneurship.  Doing so will ignite a renaissance of innovation and an explosion of small businesses, including small businesses in sustainable agriculture, food services, and health. 

                This bi-scaled diversification would rebuild food systems in an ethical and organic fashion that respects both people and the planet. The best way to catalyze such diversification would be to reduce those government regulations that restrict life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  These include regulations that dictate how our food is grown, how our children learn, and how our sick are tended to, and how our income is spent.