Weber, Karl, ed. (2023) Food, Inc.2. Inside the Quest for a Better Future for Food. NY: Hachette Book Group-Public Affairs. ISBN: 9781541703575. 336 pages.
Ellen Messer
Cover design is clever and informative: It features what looks like a Holstein dairy cow, with a bar code on its flank, looking out at the reader from a plowed grassland with out of focus industrial landscape in the background. The book is a “back for seconds” entry into the publisher’s Public Affairs series, “A Participant Guide” promoted as “an inspiring companion to the acclaimed film.” The authors are many of the talking heads who narrated talking points in the earlier film and the update.
The introductory section, “Wake Up Calls” begin with Michael Pollan’s “The Sickness in Our Food Supply” and Eric Schlosser’s “The Essentials: How We’re Killing the People Who Feed Us.” These effectively review the unhealthiness of the current industrial food system for humans and the planet, and especially for workers all along the food chain. Part II: “Mapping the Issues—and the Answers” contains some up-to-date articles on: cooking versus industrial ultra-processing (Carlos A. Monteiro and Geoffrey Cannon), the need for a new dairy system that allows small-farmers to survive and contribute values (Sarah E. Lloyd), food and land-justice (Leah Penniman), negative impacts of industrial animal agriculture (Lisa Held), labor organizing in the food-service sector Saru Jayaraman), the “changing the culture of capital to support regenerative agriculture (Lauren Manning and David LeZaks), labor organizing in agriculture (by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers), U.S. food politics (Cory Booker), protecting aquatic food sources (David Kelley and Andrew Zimmern), new laboratory designed foods (Larissa Zimberoff), healthy food for children (Nancy Easton), different approaches to meat eating for the future (Christiana Musk) and additional high-tech investments in food (e.g., (Google’s Food Lab) )(Michiel Bakker). Part III, “What you can do” features Danielle Nierenberg’s “Food Tank” approach to nourishing people and the planet, and a final chapter with links “to Learn More and to Get Involved.”
All these chapters are beautifully crafted and written. They highlight the importance of punchy and informed food journalism and activism by researchers, practitioners, and writers, who demonstrate admirable mastery and capable communication of facts and frameworks, and manage to end on hopeful notes, based on deliberate policy choices and conscientious networking at multiple levels. Among highlights for me were Sarah E. Lloyd’s “Dairy Together: Fighting for a System that Gives Small Farmers a Fair Shake.” “We dairy farmers have been on a roller coaster [of volatile prices] for a long time” she begins (p.58), and then proceeds to review the 20th through 21st century history of consolidation that squeezed small and mid-sized farms out. I had first encountered her in a set of “Agriculture of the Middle” sessions at the Food Studies meeting in Athens, Georgia two years ago, and was glad to have this up to date academic and personal practical account of dairy farmers’ growing dilemma in the American heartland and her recommendations for still possible improvements (p.72):
Wisconsin and the rest of the United States can choose how we would like to structure the production of dairy. We can enact policies to support small and mid-scale farms and have a system in which many such farms can exist and thrive independently. We can enact a system of federal price policies that sends a strong signal to reduce overproduction. We can force anti-trust laws already on the books to limit consolidation and concentration in our economic systems and to give people a fair shot in the market.
We can do all this if we choose—or we can do nothing. … The time for action is now!
As another example, because I am dedicating significant time to a Tufts University initiative on cell-agriculture (cultivated meat), I appreciated Christiana Musk’s comprehensive chapter on the future of meat-eating: “The Four Bites: How We Can Transcend Divisive Debates and Nourish Humanity Sustainably.” The four “bites” are four examples of meat dishes that represent four different paradigms for understanding future meat-eating in relationship to sustainable environments and human diets: Improved (“more efficient”) conventional (cold cuts), Reduced animal protein (plant-based alternatives), Regenerative, holistic livestock rearing that renews the land and sequesters carbon (organic or natural beef), and Disruptors, meat from cells (Upside Foods duck). The analysis shows how these concepts and operations don’t have to be siloed but could be working more effectively together rather than at cross-purposes. This author’s brief bio showcases her wide-ranging experience inside academic food-policy settings (in her case, British), while she also figures as a key influencer for thinking positively about innovative food possibilities. She manages a carefully named philanthropic fund, Flourish Trust, that “fosters healing for people and the planet,” hosts a BBC podcast named “Unreasonable Impact: Food Solutions,” and invests in various environmental and social business and philanthropic ventures, including clean energy retailer, Green Mountain Energy, and Zaadz.com, which is an on-line community networking platform for positive thinkers.
Like all the chapters, this one is well written, thoughtful, and aims at solutions, not intractable dilemmas. All the chapters furthermore encourage additional explorations that reveal spiraling and intersecting connections among the many players in the future-of-food space. In this “future of meat-eating” case a quick on-line search revealed much more about Musk’s family connections: her husband Kimbal Musk (self-identified chef, restaurateur, and philanthropist) is a multi-millionaire investor in brother Elon Musk’s businesses and also a prominent restaurateur, a founder of Kitchen Bistro, the Kitchen Restaurant Group. His decisions in response to COVID-19 shutdowns merit their own classroom discussion on labor and management values and actions. The couple are also prominent investors in innovative food ventures, such as Upside Foods (formerly Memphis Meats).
The final chapter, “Learn more and get involved” (pp.273-280) provides brief introductions to dozens of organizations promoting sustainable, fair, and just food systems. It continues the stream of “food first” and sustainable environment thinking and networking that became available in Frances Moore Lappe’s pathbreaking Diet for a Small Planet that continue through the networking efforts of Daniel Nierenberg’s Food Tank. The only missing pieces are the recipes for how to eat sustainably (“lower on the food chain,” now more commonly phrased: for health of people and the planet) although some of the chapters (Musk’s “Four Bites”) provide mouthwatering descriptions of food. There are lots of data on trends, sometimes seasoned with business–“acting like an innovator,” “lessons learned about driving impact for good at scale” and also self-actualization tropes that have been used for social mobilization since the 1970s (“choose to believe you can—and will–make a difference”). All three are from Michael Bakker’s chapter (15): “From Food Services to Foodshots: Notes from an Unexpected Change Leader at Work,” which describes the evolution of Google’s food operations—from feeding workers to research on behavioral change related to their Food Lab. Some of the positive thinking language made me wonder whether these authors and the people they influence were graduates of The Hunger Project, a spinoff of the self-actualization “strategic” organization, est, and its successor, The Forum. But that can be left for another essay.
FoodAnthropology 