On September 20, I was part of a workshop called “Food as the Building Block of Society.” This workshop made up a small segment of the annual food fair MAT (mat=food in Swedish) and the audience consisted of stakeholders in the area: politicians, people working with food in schools, hospitals and elderly homes, small-time farmers and food entrepreneurs. Each presentation was followed by a workshop segment where participants discussed questions raised by the presentation. My own contribution was preceded by Olga Grönvall Lund, founder and general secretary of the NGO Reformaten, who spoke about the food justice and food sustainability project “Neighbourhood Kitchens: Local Solutions to Global Problems” (great initiative, more here). I’ve run into Olga at other events, and she is a great force for practical and inclusive food system change.
My own presentation was on the topic of Future Food Systems and while I did not completely ignore climate fiction, the point of the talk and the workshop that followed was primarily to historicize the existing and unsustainable food system and to consider what stands in the way of a profound transformation of the way that food is produced, transported, marketed and consumed. I made the point that we eat in the way we eat partly because we have been genetically engineered to consume sugar and fat. This is a fact that the market actors/colonizers/plantation owners of the early world system took advantage of. Indeed, the early colonial project was driven partly by the need to find suitable ground for sugar plantations. I also suggested that our way of eating is informed by a certain cultural heritage and by the function that food plays in the making of gender and group identities (see, for instance, the connection in Western society between meat and masculinity). In addition to this, I noted how the global and capitalist food system – engineered to produce what Patel and Jason W. Moore call “Cheap Food” – has become an essential and insidious part not only of our diet but of the fabric of Swedish society (and of many other societies).
When various actors attempt to transform the existing and erosive food system, all of these factors must be considered. During the workshop, we discussed pending food system transformation mainly in relation to perceived cultural heritage and via the concept of sacrifice. The point here is that the capitalist food system produces what scholarship has termed “sacrifice zones”. The most glaring examples consist of the burning of rainforests to make space for palm oil plantations or cattle ranches. What is sacrificed is not only this particular land, but the people who live on this land and the biodiversity that is, in fact, essential to keeping the planet and its people healthy. Then, people are also likely to feel that they sacrifice something when they give up certain types of food, or – and this is potentially an enormous problem – when they give up profitable (or at least functioning) careers in the global food industry.
The workshop element that followed the talk was extremely rewarding. It is always gratifying to hear the people who work with food in different ways consider food security, food justice, the generation of sacrifice zones, and the impact of cultural (food) heritage on food habits. It is a privilege to start conversations with the very people who are (or are not) agents of future change. I have spoken to chefs in training a couple of times and I have thought that these are the people who will invent new ways of eating. I’m sure this is partially true, but the discussion I had today made me think that what matters even more is the school subject home economics (home knowledge or hemkunskap in Swedish). This seems an enormously important space where food and food heritages can be historicized and new ways of eating introduced.
And one more thing: cultural heritage is, as my colleague UNESCO professor for heritage futures Cornelius Holtorf has long argued, an enormously flexible and transformative. The only thing we know for certain is that the food heritage of today will change and evolve. How can scholars and stakeholders participate in this transformation?