In the quest to address hunger and malnutrition, the success of some Malawi villages rests partly on another social cause often difficult to achieve: gender equality. In families where men cook and share chores with their wives, women can pay more attention to breast-feeding. That change, with other measures, brought about the closure of a child malnutrition clinic because the need had diminished.

With the Soils, Food and Healthy Communities project in the African nation, “Everyone is a scientist, entrepreneur, activist, cook,” said Raj Patel, one of three keynote speakers at the fourth annual University of Vermont Food Systems Summit this week. He is a research professor in the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin and a senior research associate at the Unit for the Humanities at Rhodes University in South Africa. His latest book, The Value of Nothing, is a New York Times best-seller.

For the first time, UVM partnered with Vermont Law School’s Center for Agriculture and Food Systems on the two-day summit, “The Right to Food: Power, Policy & Politics in the 21st Century.” Summit sessions explored solutions and obstacles to combating hunger and addressed several themes: the biophysical constraints to feeding the world’s population, the geopolitical context of the global food system and the implications of behavior and culture.

“UVM and Vermont Law School are leading academic institutions in the study of food systems and together are working to enhance our understanding of food systems, from local to international," said said Doug Lantagne, dean of Extension and director of the UVM Food Systems Initiative. "Vermont is a small state, but our communities are similar to other communities anywhere, and what we learn about community food systems can be applied globally.”

The summit, Lantagne says, is an opportunity to bring together diverse participants to discuss how to provide adequate and nutritious food to the world. About 300 people — scholars, farmers, scientists, business leaders and other food-system stakeholders — attended, in the Davis Center’s Grand Maple Ballroom.

Ideas of the world to come

Patel's talk focused on the northern Malawi project, which began in 2000, as the kind of grassroots, direct-action initiative that powers the fight for change. It embodies agroecology, or using ecological theories to design productive agricultural systems that conserve resources. The initiative shows how community organizing can be more effective in addressing food scarcity and poverty issues than moves by large corporations to simply add vitamins and minerals to products or take other measures focused on a return on investment.

Patel cited examples of what he calls “the businessification of food insecurity.” Among them was Coca-Cola’s Diet Coke Plus, with minerals and vitamins added, a product that didn’t last long. But “It’s the logical place to go when you ask businesses to help,” Patel said.

In what he calls “the era of poverty with added vitamins,” other companies have exploited food insecurity for profit. “It’s not really caring about the poverty part, the right to food,” he said.

That attitude is part of a prevailing food system that historically has exploited the environment and workers. “To bring cheap food back to the metropolises of the world, other cultures were subjugated,” Patel said. “Cheap workers need cheap care, need cheap food, need cheap fuel, need cheap nature.”    

That’s still the basis of the global food system, and there’s a nutritional fallout, he said. Prices globally for fresh fruit and vegetables have risen the most in the past 25 years, while the costs of processed foods have increased less or dropped.  

“We address that by protest…a demand to undo some of that,” said Patel, who both worked for and protested against the World Bank and World Trade Organization. “It’s a transformation in the way we think about work and agriculture.”

In Malawi, the transformation continues. One component of the Soils, Food and Healthy Communities project is Recipe Days, when families gather to share recipes and dishes — sometimes made from new crops grown to address climate change — and encourage men to cook and feed children. “It becomes a space of equality. Women and men get to teach each other,” Patel said. “It becomes an idea of the world to come.”

Another part of the project is farmer-to-farmer engagement to improve soil fertility, crop quality and nutrition through sharing seeds and developing shade cover to increase yields, among other methods.    

The Malawi initiative has produced other benefits, including better sanitation and health care and a system for grain storage. Such direct-action movements are an effective approach to agroecology and combating hunger. “People have discovered,"  Patel said, "they are more powerful than they think.”

PUBLISHED

06-18-2015
Jessica Clarke