It’s the Food Economy, Stupid!
I believe Rod MacRae (shown here) is one of a handful of experts to develop a critique of today’s food system based on its bad business case and its failure to do proper scenario planning.
If you don’t like reading arithmetic, you will find his writings tough going, but as soon as you subtract that problem, it pays to keep on reading. This is powerful stuff that more food system critics need to understand.
Just to be straight about my relationship with Rod, he’s the one who taught me food math back in the mid-1990s, when I called on him to help with the economic case that Jack Layton, Gary Gallon and I were trying to make for our newfound Coalition for a Green Economic Recovery. We enjoyed our conversations so much that we decided to work on a book together, and the result was our 1999 book, Real Food for a Change, which was also co-authored by my wife, Lori Stahlbrand. If I may say so, this book was one of the first to make the case for local and sustainable food that fostered “health, joy, justice and nature.”
Subsequently, I replaced Rod as manager of the Toronto Food Policy Council, and he became a consultant and popular professor of environmental studies at York University.
Apart from knowing how to add, Rod is steeped in agriculture and ag policy. We’re different on both scores. I don’t check the math on my restaurant receipts, let alone charts in articles. And I am into the city side of food.
So, apart from presenting what Rod has to offer everyone, I will throw in my own two cents worth about how a city perspective could add new dimensions to Rod’s work.
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