A Collection of Stories Shared and Treasured

I believe there is no place for irrationality in food: how do we produce a quantity of food enough to feed every hungry person there is, and yet temper our consumption so that we do not sacrifice sustainable production. Because we must not ever forget the stories of our stuff. Whether it be the story of our food or the story of our bodies, the histories of our lives and the lives of our stuff dictate our futures. This issue of blind consumption is bigger than food. Our blindness reaches into every corner of our economies and cultures. Unfortunately within our capitalist system there exists avenues to neglect the public for profiteering in the name of consumption and growth: a cover-up for irrationality. But what we all must ask ourselves is at what price do we seek growth? Is the price of our growth our habitat or our minds? If so, we must change our ways. If so, we must take back what we first sacrificed.

The issue at hand is bigger than food. The issue at hand is the recognition of culture as a critical factor in the evolution of our communities. Culture balances profit because of its ability to unite people around a common thread of remembrance. If you believe communities to be the interaction of a group of organisms within an environment we can say that our communities (whether nationally or locally) are for the most part growing weaker and weaker: we are not interacting as much or as meaningfully as we had in the past. Where I once saw investments of time and energy in other people I now see investments in individualism. The balance is lost and the result is a gluttony for immediate satisfaction. That is a cultural anomaly that can be witnessed whenever someone chooses profit over people. The solution? Human confrontation.

So, as much as food is a vital part of the puzzle of human culture and communities, the real change we need must be found in ourselves. Recognition that a mindless dependence on extreme industrialism and globalization to provide for us is unsustainable. We must change our ways, and the evidence is everywhere you look. Health care costs, war, and economies collapsing are all evidence of weak communities due to unsustainable growth.

The food system is just one other glimpse of the changing social conception of communities. The change back to localized, sustainable, organic farming proves people are dissatisfied with the current system that they are willing to vote with their forks and change the paradigm themselves. The change of diet and priorities in many parts of the country back to a concern for quality instead of quantity shows improvements in other portions of the food infrastructure: access to food alternatives, investment of time and energy in planning and preparing meals, commitment to a different kind of interaction around food, etc. The bottomline is we made sacrifices when we chose the industrial scale of production; we sacrificed culture. The cold rationality of fast-paced, efficient, production has it's negatives as well as positives and now we are feeling the stretch of gluttony. Just in time too.