Home » Posts tagged 'Wayne Roberts'
Tag Archives: Wayne Roberts
Halfway Thoughts On Today’s Food Movements–Still Under Construction–Give Me Another Day!
HALFWAY THOUGHTS ON TODAY’S FOOD MOVEMENTS — STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION — GIVE ME ANOTHER DAY!
Some people wonder if youthful food movements spreading through cities across the Global North are half-full, half-empty — or maybe even half-baked.
The timing for such questioning is perfect. Once a new trend gets over its first flush, people start to judge it as a movement that will be around for a while. That’s when tough questions crop up.
The food fad/trend-turned-movement is in the midst of such questioning right now.
It’s an important learning opportunity — the social movement equivalent of teething.
We’re often too easily comforted by complacent sayings about how progress is made in social movement history. An old saying, sometimes wrongly attributed to Gandhi, has it that the path to success goes like this: “First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you….Then they debate you. Then you win.”
Sounds like a pretty smooth and easy ride.
Not so! From the inside of social movements, the order goes more like this: First, we’re exhilarated by the power of the new idea and the bounce it gets from friends and enemies. Then we find out that getting beyond our tiny circle of support is harder than we thought. Then people point out our mistakes. Then we rethink, regroup and set a course of action that leads to debate and win.
Food movements are at the halfway — hopefully half-full — point of this narrative arc.
A number of academic heavies have criticized food movement leaders for their inattention to food system policy, politics and government, and their elitist neglect of disadvantaged people who suffer most from food industry wrongs.
HALFTIME BREAK
It’s time food movements take a half-time break for rest, reflection and renewal.
I learned a lot from two informed, positive and well-written contributions to the discussion. One is an academic article by Lesli Hoey and Allison Sponseller. The other is Mark Winne’s latest book, based on his 47 years as an organizer working on food issues. I will present their arguments, and then offer some of my own.
To disclose any bias, I should say I know two of the three writers quite well.
I met Lesli about ten years when she invited me to speak at Cornell, where she got her Ph D in city planning. Two years ago, she invited me to do a speaking tour around Michigan University in Ann Arbor, where she’s a popular professor. She later joined me and our family and friends on a canoe trip through the wilderness of northern Ontario.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Pandemonium and City Food Security
Pandemonium and City Food Security
I supervised a university-level food studies class last week that, partly by design and partly by sheer accident, gave me some new insights into the challenges of city-oriented food security policy.
A team of students responsible for teaching a segment on urban food policy tried to stimulate direct engagements with their classmates by getting them to play a version of the software game called Pandemonium – by applying the rules of that game to an imaginary “real life” experience of food policy making.
As it goes with Pandemonium (the game and in real life), something out of the blue happens every two minutes that upsets the whole gameplan of the policy makers. Word of drought came one minute into the class exercize, upsetting the best-laid plans of a work team. News of an epidemic broke two minutes later, upsetting even more best-laid plans.
Just as the students were coping with these upsets, a real life security guard opened the door, apologized for interrupting the class, and calmly told us everyone had to leave the building immediately.
As they say in the pandemonium-watching business, it’s never a question of if pandemonium will break out; it’s a question of when.
My class of ten stood around outside the building with several hundred others who had been in the building. Police pushed people calmly and politely back, as far away from the building as possible.
The police knew nothing, or said nothing, about what was going on. In today’s world, that just meant that everyone got out their mobile phones, and within minutes learned that an unattended package had been found in the building, and authorities were worried that it might contain a bomb.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
It’s the Food Economy, Stupid!
It’s the Food Economy, Stupid!
New Equations of Regions, People, Nature and Food Chains
New Equations of Regions, People, Nature and Food Chains
We usually think of geologists as going deep, but when it comes to working through the layers of meaning behind local food, geographer Terry Marsden knows how to dig very deep.
Marsden sees food as a uniquely human enterprise because it, more than anything else we do, relies so much on the relationship between humans and nature. Food is inevitably a product of our social nature, and always different from products, artifacts and commodities that can be isolated from direct relations with nature, he argues.
I appreciate someone who sees that as a starting point of understanding and appreciating food, even though my special interest is food and cities, which are often seen as far removed from nature.
But Marsden’s work is as important for city as countryside dwellers, because cities and countrysides are going to be working together more closely than ever in the food system he predicts to be on the way.
Marsden sees the local food trend that’s developed in Europe and North America over the last 30 years as a sign of a new relationship between food producers and consumers — both of whom are co-producing a new regionalism that puts a high value on food quality, the environment and the human relationships that come to the fore when food is localized.
Unlike some writers who warn of the “local trap” – wherein local food merchandisers masquerade the same old/same old industrial food in a charming new local bottle – Marsden sees local and regional food as an exercise based on integrity on the part of city and countryside people. Both producers and consumers are looking for a way out of reducing food to a commodity, and in the process, reducing themselves and their own relationships to the same lowly status.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How to Grow a Local Job-Rich Economy
How to Grow a Local Job-Rich Economy
At a time when huge debates are raging over all the subsidies required by the 1 per cent of the business elite, Michael Shuman is working to shift public attention to the other, ultimately more positive, side of the picture – the sheer neglect of the 50 per cent of businesses that are local and independent, and don’t get much help from governments.
Shuman has long been an expert in the field of small, local and independent business, and has several excellent books to his credit. His latest, The Local Economy Solution, puts the issue of the 50 per cent versus the 1 per cent front and centre.
Half the population in North America works in public service or for large corporations, but half work in small and regional businesses. That half gets talked about a lot, but helped very little.
Shuman poses a choice that needs to be top-of-mind for people interested in the future of food, cities and regions. Victory for one side or the other will determine how food will shape the careers, lives, health and environment of the 50 per cent of the world population living in cities, as well as the 50 per cent of the world population living in countryside regions, where food security for entire nations comes from. From a city and food perspective, this book is about the 100%, not the 1% or the 50%.
A huge amount of taxpayers’ money hangs in the balance. According to Shuman, over 80 billion dollars a year now go to corporate boondoggles in the US that provide little in the way of jobs, community, public health or environmental benefits. In Canada, the level of annual corporate giveaways is even higher on a per capita basis. In 2014, the Fraser Institute documented a total expenditure of $684 billion over the years from 1981 to 2009.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
