Action 2030 Institute

Food

"It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing warnings about
toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or two things still safe to eat."
~Robert Fuoss

The rising urgency of the global food crisis highlights the fact that there are no simple answers or solutions to solve the problem of food production and distribution on a global scale. As the impacts of rising prices for basic food items are felt around the world by rural and urban poor, the middle-class, and governments, the drive to find answers becomes ever more pressing. Our food production, distribution, and consumption systems need renewed attention on a systemic basis, and forward looking policy initiatives are called for that can help us transform the current unsustainable systems now in place.

In China there is growing awareness of the problems in the current food system. Wide-spread instances of toxic chemicals entering the human food chain have caused immense suffering, while raising conscioiusness about the serious problems associated with large-scale industrial food systems. But these problems are certainly not China’s alone, as the toxic nature of modern industrial food production is an issue around the world. And both in China and around the globe there are many initiatives and excellent examples of alternatives to continuing down the destructive path we are now on.

In March 2010, Action2030 co-organized the International Workshop on Sustainable Food and Agriculture in Beijing. The goal of this three-day event was to expand understanding of the global problems and challenges of our current industrial food and agriculture system and to promote unique and unusual broad-ranging conversations on current trends and potential pathways for more environmentally sustainable and socially sound food and agricultural systems. While there was general agreement on these broad goals, participants brought to the discussions a wide range of approaches and interests, with diverse framings of both the problems and potential solutions, which included suggestions for practical methods as well as policy ideas.

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Related Briefs:
Action 2030 Policy Brief: "Soybean Production, Industrial Agriculture, and Climate Change," Spring 2009.

Future of Food Film and Curriculum, 2008.

"How to Feed China," by Dale Wen, in Third World Resurgence, April 2008.

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