What will life be like after peak oil, in an age of major climate shifts? Hollywood movies often depict it as a bleak, dystopian world where each day is a struggle to survive after every system we depend on has been stripped away. Unfortunately, that version of the story seems to be on track so far.
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The Independent Women’s Forum is a nonprofit organization that partners with Monsanto, defends toxic chemicals in food and consumer products, and argues against laws that would curb the power of corporations. Funded largely by right-wing foundations that push climate science denial, IWF began in 1991 as an effort to defend now Supreme Court Justice (and former Monsanto attorney) Clarence Thomas as he faced sexual harassment charges. In 2018, the group also defended Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the face of sexual assault allegations, and described Kavanaugh as a “champion of women.“
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Burger King has the meatless Impossible Burger. Del Taco boasts two plant-based burritos. Celebrities like J-Lo and Venus Williams have gone vegan. Seems like the message is out: eat more veggies and skip the meat. Not only for your personal health, but also for the health of the planet. Companies are responding to the demand for healthier and more sustainable foods. The intentions are good. The message is wrong.
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Right across from Atholton High School in Columbia, Maryland, sits a garden roughly a third of an acre with rows of vegetable beds and a newly added pond to encourage wildlife. The garden, located along the road so it’s the first thing people see when they drive past, is being managed mostly by students who planted their first perennial seeds to support pollinators last fall.
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As we hurtle into the 2020s, the future of our food economy (and food itself) remains a fiercely contested competition between diametrically opposed visions: a negative pole consisting of the concentrated forces of corporate agriBusiness, which view the dinner plate strictly in terms of their own profit margins, and a positive polarity of family farmers, consumers, food artisans, environmentalists and other grassroots advocates of agriCulture, who envision our food future from the ethical perspective of sustainability and democratic control.
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Editor's note: Sherri Dugger, executive director of Women, Food and Agriculture Network and the Indiana Farmers Union, and co-chair of the national coalition of U.S. Farmers & Ranchers for a Green New Deal, prepared these remarks for the Farmers, Soil & Climate 2020 Iowa presidential forum, held on Janury 25, 2020. Reprinted here with permission from the author.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Sherri Dugger. I co-own Dugger Family Farm in Morristown, Indiana, with my husband, Randy. I serve as the executive director for Women, Food and Agriculture Network and also for Indiana Farmers Union.
I want to start out by telling you a little about me. I like to tell people I was born to eat. As a newborn, I weighed in at a hefty 12.3 pounds. I’m certain that I tumbled into this world hungry. And, for as long as I can remember, I have always loved food. The only trouble is that I—like most Americans—never really thought much about what was on my plate. I never considered how the food was raised, what chemicals it might have in it, or the impact those chemicals would have on my body.
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"Why is it that farmworkers feed the nation but they can't get food stamps?" This comment by Dolores Huerta, a labor rights leader, resonates with me. Growing up in a farming village in Pakistan, the sight of yellow mustard fields on a cold morning with a backdrop of dense fog meeting a rising sun is engraved in my mind.
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“We all need more fruits and vegetables in our lives,” says Johnson, 57, who pays for the two bags with $8 in yellow coupons. “I love coming here to get [them] because they’re always fresh.” The price is right too. “You can’t go anywhere [else] and get a bag of pears like this for $4."
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Organic foods are very popular amongst people who care about their health and want to eat food without any added pesticides and harmful chemicals. Organic food can also put a hole in your pocket as it is very expensive as compared to inorganic food. The organic produce is very low as compared to inorganic produce which makes it more expensive.
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When Socrates, Plato, and the gang hung out at the farmers market in downtown Athens, they argued a lot about the essence of beauty, truth, and justice. They had no idea of the problems they would create for urban agriculture 2500 years later.
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