This is such a great piece--thank you! The combination of history and thoughtful ideas for moving forward is so powerful. I love this idea: "A country that has settled the quantity question should judge its farm policy on a different axis: outcomes per calorie rather than calories per acre. That means measuring nourishment (aka: better health and wellness outcomes) delivered and surplus routed to people instead of landfills."
Excellent overview and certainly extensive research. Great perspective.
Personally, I think we are endlessly missing the point even in our own households.
We are dissatisfied with our own lives, and it manifests in a desire to empty-eat and feel something, anything from the dopamine that gives us that tiny 3-minute boost and then we want it again.
We need very little to actually survive, and we have more than enough to go around and share with other countries and to all have reserves, but our desire to fill our pockets and our landfills with more abundance is stripping us of eating the single sorce of nutrient-rich goodness we need: Self-love, self-truth, self-belief.
When we listen inward, it creates energetic exchange with all living things, inner love gives outer love, which means we finally start to need less. So what we are in is a cycle. We don't know ourselves, we crave, we consume, we crave, and we consume on repeat. And because it is not precious, we waste what we don't consume rather than finding alternatives.
We are missing out... and then this collective dumbing down is being offered by our non-nutrient-dense food supply and by over-expansion in every area except the embodied expression of our inner widsom, gifts and self-love.
I especially appreciated framing around obesity and hunger as two sides of the same failure, which is something we understand intuitively in this work but needs to be called out continuously.
One thing I'd add that I think strengthens your case is that *I believe* the 4,000-calorie figure actually strips out corn and soy going to feed, ethanol, and exports, and the food that actually reaches people skews heavily toward the cheapest engineered calories because that's what the commodity system is built to produce (because food conglomerates want cheap inputs so they can sell cheap processed food).
So what's "misrouted" isn't neutral calories waiting to be redirected but a supply that's already been shaped, upstream, into animal protein, added fats, refined grains, and sweeteners which really reinforces your point about judging the system by what it produces, not by how much.
Great piece as always. As Vandana Shiva says, we should be focusing on nutrients per acre rather than yield. The fact we don’t even grow enough “specialty crops” (lol) to meet the recommended 5 servings of fruits and veggies per day is ass backward. Again, it’s all about who Big Ag serves, an it ain’t the people.
Almost all of what you say is correct, but it's also all a moot point. What's going to drive change in agricultural policy and practice is not the fine print in the next farm bill but the pace at which the intensity, frequency, and soaring cost of climate change disasters are rapidly accelerating. Virtually everyone in the global food security arena assumes that these disasters will continue at their current rate, and will thus somehow be manageable, and that all we need to do is retrofit the industrial food system and government policy. But that's a fantasy. As Günther Thallinger, board member of Allianz SE, one of the world’s largest insurance companies, puts it:
“No governments will realistically be able to cover the damage when multiple high-cost events happen in rapid succession, as climate models predict.”
With this farm bill, Congress is basically rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, irresponsibly ignoring the looming iceberg. What's really needed is a robust, alternative, self-sufficiency garden food system, not to replace the industrial system or local farms per se, but to provide a decentralized, climate-resilient, strategic food reserve that's immune to faltering global supply chains. Such a feasible, proven-at-mass-scale system will serve us well when the multiple, high-cost climate catastrophes happen in rapid succession. Please see my Substack: Ultra-Local, Full-Circle, Self-Sufficiency.
I want to drill down on AGRA. The Asian Green Revolution (the historical template AGRA was modeled on) assumed irrigated, relatively homogeneous conditions and functioning input/output markets. Much of rainfed Africa doesn’t have that, so the input package needed complementary investment (credit systems, price stability, storage) that only a well-functioning, accountable state can deliver consistently. I would emphasize that weak recipient-country accountability plus short political time horizons is what created the market patronage. Further, farmers who took on debt for inputs and then faced a bad harvest had little recourse or voice in how the program was designed or adjusted. This is a standard democratic-deficit problem in aid: the people bearing the risk aren’t the ones evaluating the program.
Would love more ideas on how to fix that problem as well as explore new playbooks that reverse our ethanol- led ag system.
Good piece! The emphasis on cheap calories and staple grains in this country is one of the biggest challenges that we need to address at a policy level if we want to improve peoples diets
This is such a great piece--thank you! The combination of history and thoughtful ideas for moving forward is so powerful. I love this idea: "A country that has settled the quantity question should judge its farm policy on a different axis: outcomes per calorie rather than calories per acre. That means measuring nourishment (aka: better health and wellness outcomes) delivered and surplus routed to people instead of landfills."
Really strong explanation of the challenges of Agricultural policy amongst Food Politics.
You have written this so well and said what people need to do to start working on these problems which need change!
Excellent overview and certainly extensive research. Great perspective.
Personally, I think we are endlessly missing the point even in our own households.
We are dissatisfied with our own lives, and it manifests in a desire to empty-eat and feel something, anything from the dopamine that gives us that tiny 3-minute boost and then we want it again.
We need very little to actually survive, and we have more than enough to go around and share with other countries and to all have reserves, but our desire to fill our pockets and our landfills with more abundance is stripping us of eating the single sorce of nutrient-rich goodness we need: Self-love, self-truth, self-belief.
When we listen inward, it creates energetic exchange with all living things, inner love gives outer love, which means we finally start to need less. So what we are in is a cycle. We don't know ourselves, we crave, we consume, we crave, and we consume on repeat. And because it is not precious, we waste what we don't consume rather than finding alternatives.
We are missing out... and then this collective dumbing down is being offered by our non-nutrient-dense food supply and by over-expansion in every area except the embodied expression of our inner widsom, gifts and self-love.
I especially appreciated framing around obesity and hunger as two sides of the same failure, which is something we understand intuitively in this work but needs to be called out continuously.
One thing I'd add that I think strengthens your case is that *I believe* the 4,000-calorie figure actually strips out corn and soy going to feed, ethanol, and exports, and the food that actually reaches people skews heavily toward the cheapest engineered calories because that's what the commodity system is built to produce (because food conglomerates want cheap inputs so they can sell cheap processed food).
So what's "misrouted" isn't neutral calories waiting to be redirected but a supply that's already been shaped, upstream, into animal protein, added fats, refined grains, and sweeteners which really reinforces your point about judging the system by what it produces, not by how much.
Great piece as always. As Vandana Shiva says, we should be focusing on nutrients per acre rather than yield. The fact we don’t even grow enough “specialty crops” (lol) to meet the recommended 5 servings of fruits and veggies per day is ass backward. Again, it’s all about who Big Ag serves, an it ain’t the people.
Almost all of what you say is correct, but it's also all a moot point. What's going to drive change in agricultural policy and practice is not the fine print in the next farm bill but the pace at which the intensity, frequency, and soaring cost of climate change disasters are rapidly accelerating. Virtually everyone in the global food security arena assumes that these disasters will continue at their current rate, and will thus somehow be manageable, and that all we need to do is retrofit the industrial food system and government policy. But that's a fantasy. As Günther Thallinger, board member of Allianz SE, one of the world’s largest insurance companies, puts it:
“No governments will realistically be able to cover the damage when multiple high-cost events happen in rapid succession, as climate models predict.”
With this farm bill, Congress is basically rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, irresponsibly ignoring the looming iceberg. What's really needed is a robust, alternative, self-sufficiency garden food system, not to replace the industrial system or local farms per se, but to provide a decentralized, climate-resilient, strategic food reserve that's immune to faltering global supply chains. Such a feasible, proven-at-mass-scale system will serve us well when the multiple, high-cost climate catastrophes happen in rapid succession. Please see my Substack: Ultra-Local, Full-Circle, Self-Sufficiency.
Amazing piece. So well articulated.
I want to drill down on AGRA. The Asian Green Revolution (the historical template AGRA was modeled on) assumed irrigated, relatively homogeneous conditions and functioning input/output markets. Much of rainfed Africa doesn’t have that, so the input package needed complementary investment (credit systems, price stability, storage) that only a well-functioning, accountable state can deliver consistently. I would emphasize that weak recipient-country accountability plus short political time horizons is what created the market patronage. Further, farmers who took on debt for inputs and then faced a bad harvest had little recourse or voice in how the program was designed or adjusted. This is a standard democratic-deficit problem in aid: the people bearing the risk aren’t the ones evaluating the program.
Would love more ideas on how to fix that problem as well as explore new playbooks that reverse our ethanol- led ag system.
Good piece! The emphasis on cheap calories and staple grains in this country is one of the biggest challenges that we need to address at a policy level if we want to improve peoples diets