The Future of Food, Food Systems and the Human Prospect in a Post-COVID World | EV&N 350

http://ecoethics.net/2014-ENVRE120/20200621-EV&N-350-Link.html

https://www.cctvcambridge.org/node/719840

YouTube Version

Post-COVID planning for a stable global food system will be critical. We can neither afford nor survive current petro-dependent food strategies in reconstructing our broken global food system in the post-COVID world.

For the historical and cultural background to the evolution of the “plantation economics” which emerged from the experience of colonial agriculture and subsequently developed in global petro-intensive agriculture see:

• ‘Our Food System Is Very Much Modeled on Plantation Economics’ | FAIR
• The “Green Revolution:” Its Essence, Achievements & Aftermath
• Agriculture, Topsoil and the Ecology of Colonialism
• No “Planet B.” Only One Earth. Only One Chance: COVID-19 ~ “Shelter in Place” Underscores Crystal Clear Urgency of New Strategies for Sustainability
• Overcoming the Multiple Legacies of European Colonialism: Can The West Survive Its Most Cherished Historical Myths? – Part 1 & 2
• Chapters in African Agricultural History: Much Needed New Investment? or “Neo-Colonial” Land Grab?
• Killing the Soil that Feeds Us: Food, Profit & the Fatal Impact of Petro-Dependent Agriculture
• Biofuels, Land Grabs, and the Right to Food: The Legacy of Colonialism and the Evolution of the Global Food System
• Climate Change, Soils and Humans as a Keystone Species in the Global Ecosystem
• How Europe’s Agricultural Policy Hurts Africa
• What Comes After Paris COP21…? Agricultural Stress ==> Food Insecurity and ==> the Demand for “Climate Justice”
• Food Shortages and Famine: Evolving Food Systems in Africa and Future Directions for Food Policy
• There will be no “post-COVID” world ….
• The Vulnerability of the Global Food System and the Strategies Needed for a Sustainable “Recovery”
• Monthly Review | Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatches on Infectious Disease, Agribusiness, and the Nature of Science
• No “Planet B.” Only One Earth. Only One Chance: COVID-19 ~ “Shelter in Place” Underscores Crystal Clear Urgency of New Strategies for Sustainability
• Maps, Stones & Plants: Agents of Empire and the Ecology of the Atlantic Trade
• What must we learn to survive as a species? Steps Toward an Environmental Ethic for Human Survival on a Small Planet
• The Tragedy is that “We treat soil like dirt” — Topsoil, Climate Change and the Collapse of Civilizations

There are many alternatives to the legacy of petro-intensive agriculture that emerged from the “plantation economics” at the core of our current world food system.  In contrast to the “extractive” and machine-driven “production” metaphors that dominate industrial agriculture the multiplicity of new models for agriculture are based on the restoring integrity to the bio-geological systems at the heart a sustainable ecosystem.

Efforts to promote regenerative agriculture and restorative agriculture emphasize the central importance of restoring and protecting biodiversity and restructuring rational water and soil management practices.  Drawing on a wide variety of social and civil society movements for the restoration of healthy diets and stable food systems, people engaged in this workd have focused upon and building natural soil fertility and carbon sequestration with a variety of land management, composting, integrated pet management and crop-rotational techniques.

The works and inspiration of Vandana Shiva have been particularly central to much of this work because of her emphasis upon “soil, not oil” as the basis for re-conceiving the organization of global agriculture.

People whose work has been seminal in establishing the importance of alternatives to petro-intensive agriculture include:

• Wendell Berry
• Wes Jackson
• Rattan Lal (background sources)
• Anna Lappé
• Frances Moore Lappé (background sources)
• John Liu (background sources)
• David Montgomery ( background sources)
• Marion Nestle
• Michael Pollan (+ background sources)
• Allan Savory + (background sources)
  and
• Jeffery Smith (background sources)

In addition, “The Food Tank” has drawn up a useful list of groups engaged in restorative agriculture as well as other alternatives to the petro-intensive industrial global food system.  See:

• COVID-19 Archives – Food Tank
  
• 119 Organizations Shaking Up the Food System in 2019
• These 18 Organizations Are Building a Stronger Food System Through Agroecology – Food Tank
  and, most helpfully
• Food Tank Lists Archives – Food Tank

See related:

• A global food crisis may be less than a decade away | Sara Menker
• Rethink Talks: The role of food in the COVID-19 pandemic
  and
• Malthus and the Anthropocene: An Essay on Population and the Evolving Global Food System