Is Reslience the new Sustainability?

When I was in graduate school in Washington DC, I focused practical study for my Philosophy and Social Policy degree on environmental ethics and the ethics of international development. 

Without explicitly dating myself, I’ll tell you that this was around the time of the Rio Earth Summit, and sustainability was the new buzzword. I watched as the concept of sustainability became ‘sustainable development’. I saw the term ‘unpacked’ as philosophers like to say, in journal articles and report frameworks. Eventually sustainable development was institutionalized and formalized into organizational department names, job titles and new academic journals. 

Sustainability still makes sense to me today as a useful mental framework, in the basic structure I learned back then. Sustainable development is about meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability to meet needs in the future. Three kinds of needs must be met in a complementary way: economics, environment and society.  

More recently, I notice people using the word sustainability in a way that implies the word ‘self-‘ in front of sustainable; a program or development intervention is called sustainable if it can perpetuate itself without continued external support. It keeps itself going through permanent behavior change or natural incentives to generate necessary resources. Teaching a woman to fish to so she can feed herself and her family into the future would be considered sustainable. Giving her fish might no longer be considered truly sustainable, even if doing so causes no harm to future economic, environmental or social goods. 

In other words, sustainable development has to do more than simply avoid depleting the economic, environmental and social resources of the far future. That’s a given. Today, sustainable programs are expected to generate their own resources (at least eventually) to maintain activities and benefits today in present or near future. 

It’s a higher standard and probably appropriate in many cases. It implies a greater degree of engagement and responsibility from those designing and implementing the program, including those being helped. The fisher must see continued value in fishing for herself, or the program fails to be sustainable. 

So now what about resilience? 

I wonder if it is on the same trajectory as sustainability. The international conferences and programmatic categories are emerging already. There have been rich discussions of what the concept means for many months now. Will organizational and job title changes follow? How is it changing what we see, what we value in policy and how we plan and implement development programs for the future? 

Lawrence Haddad thoughtfully raises a number of important points about resilience as a ‘mobilizing metaphor.’ He concludes:

Much of our current development thinking was developed in the last half of the 20th century--in a world very different from today.   Even if resilience has no unique conceptual contribution (and for me the jury is still out), it is clearly resonating with many different stakeholders.

Perhaps the greatest contribution of resilience will be to create the space for new ideas to flourish and help us move development, food security and nutrition more decisively from the 20th to the 21st century. Time will tell.

My Inner Philosopher looks forward to seeing what happens next!

Book's I'm reading: Tomorrow's Table

Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food has been on my 'must read' list for quite a while now. But with all the work I do in agriculture every day, and 10+ years working in the industry, I wasn't sure what I could really expect to learn from another book on agriculture technology and the policy debates that surround it.

Boy, do I have a lot to learn!

Tomorrow's Table is co-authored by Pamela Ronald, an articulate and accomplished plant scientist and professor at the University of California-Davis, and Raoul Adamchak, an equally articulate and accomplished organic farmer in California. They happen to be married, and together have produced a very personal and fascinating primer on the technologies and issues at play in agriculture these days.

Here are a few of the things I appreciated about it:

• I love the book's basic approach of explaining new agriculture technologies by describing historic and current agriculture technologies and practices first. For people who don't have a good practical understanding of how agriculture works today, new technologies seem exotic and overly complicated. It's important to know just how complex agriculture has become, and why. The descriptions of farming practices, agriculture businesses of all kinds, and technologies are among the best I've ever read.

• The chapters are all structured around real-life experiences of the authors in their work and at home. For example, the chapter "Who owns the seed?" begins with Adamchak eagerly thumbing through a new seed catalog. As he describes the different characteristics and costs of the seeds, we learn how new varieties are developed, how 'heirloom' varieties are preserved, the use of hybrids and the pluses and minuses of each from the perspective of someone who actually grows them. Building on this context and understanding, Ronald writes the following chapter, "Who owns the genes?" These episodes in each chapter are perfect examples of what I call 'seed stories' -- that begin in familiar and concrete experiences and then illuminate the much more complex issues behind them.

• I also appreciated the fact that the book is written from the perspectives of a university-based scientist and a farmer. It doesn't represent the pro-technology agenda, or an anti-corporate mindset, nor is it a dry a policy treatise. Since I left the corporate world three years ago, I have come to really value and appreciate the different ways that there are to talk about agriculture science and technology -- particularly those that thread a narrow but distinct and important path between louder proponents and opponents.

• Finally, throughout the book there are engaging descriptions of conversations that the two authors have with students, colleagues and family members. These discussions are sometimes difficult, particularly among those with different opinions or beliefs about agriculture. But they are always respectful and seem to always end with everyone gaining a new insight. I admire the authors' open willingness to have these talks, and I wish all my conversations about agriculture technology could be this way!

I've already been recommending this book to colleagues -- and I'll probably even buy a few copies for friends and family. Check it out!

I wish I knew about this 5 days ago!

The "Live below the Line" campaign got started on Monday -- if only I'd known I would have joined from here in Singapore!

From this Monday, May 16 – Friday, May 20, a bunch of people across the US, Australia & the UK have been spending no more than US$1.50 per day on food and drink, to better understand and raise awareness about the challenges of those living in extreme poverty.

By the way, that's one-fourth of the people we share the planet with: 1.4 billion people!

What's most interesting to me is reading about the stories and experiences of my fellow Americans as they're going through the week. Many are complaining of hunger, and counting the weight that they've lost. The descriptions of meals of ramen noodles, rice, beans, oatmeal and eggs are a bit desperate in tone. Some are trying to add more nutritionally-balanced foods into the week, but it's hard when you only have $7.50.

This is what it's like to use the money you have available for food on things that will fill you up the most. This is how you avoid starvation but still lack the nutrients to thrive, to flourish, or to live a fully vibrant life. This is why rising food prices around the world hit the poorest the hardest.

What I love about this campaign (and I will join in next year, if not earlier) is that it makes these struggles very concrete and real for those of us who are used to spending $7.50 for a latte and brownie on a Friday afternoon.

PS: This is also why we need diverse, abundant and healthy agriculture to help end poverty!

A metaphor too far...

Check out this excellent column in Nature News that I'll be thinking about for a long time.

The Nature News column describes new research showing just how much influence metaphors have on our reasoning and opinions -- often without us even realizing it. When crime is described to people as 'a beast', they want strong enforcement. When it is called 'a virus' in society, they favor prevention and rehabilitation measures.

The writer worries that the use of metaphors to help describe scientific findings, theories and new technologies can be misleading, and too easily used for political purposes. They can also be difficult to dislodge when science moves on, as it always does.

"Metaphors....tend to stick," he says. In fact, Simplicity is the first principle of good communications advocated by my gurus, Chip & Dan Heath, in their must-read book Made to Stick. Metaphors and analogies are sticky because they substitute something easy to think about for something difficult.

Still, metaphors shouldn't be chosen lightly. As a communicator, I want to encourage the agriculture scientists that I work with to use words and concepts that people will understand, to "explain what is going on as clearly and honestly as we can," just as the columnist recommends.

The Girl Effect in Agriculture

In a blog post last year about the importance of women in agriculture, I recommended the original Girl Effect video, which blew me away with what it said about the role of girls in ending poverty and hunger -- and by how it said it.

This year it's the new video above that's got me going, and the Girl Effect blogging campaign, timed to coincide with International Children's Day on November 20, presents a perfect opportunity to catch up.

After all, women in agriculture were once girls in agriculture. What do we see when we run the clock back?

The statistics tell us that women grow 80 percent of the food eaten by poor families in developing countries. The Girl Effect tells us that many of these women are really just girls. Instead of going to school, they spend up to 16 hours a day working to grow food on their farms and fetching fuelwood and water. At every age, women struggle to get the seeds, fertilizer, training, and credit that might help them grow more and earn more -- extra resources that would in turn help keep girls in school.

There's another way that agriculture supports the Girl Effect if we turn the clock back even further to pregnancy and the first 2 years in the life of a girl or boy.

A child who receives the right nutrition during her first 1,000 days is less likely to die or be harmed by disease for the rest of her life! Sadly, the opposite is also true: a child that doesn't get enough of the right kinds of foods during this period faces irreversible health problems. To find out more, check out the 1,000 Days campaign, another great cause with another great video.

Although many of the poorest families in the world live on farms, they suffer from the 'hidden hunger' of under-nutrition. These families can usually grow enough to keep everyone alive, but their cheap and reliable staple crops aren't nutritious enough to supply all the vitamins and minerals that growing young bodies need in order to thrive.

Promoting home gardens to grow healthy fruits and vegetables helps -- as does providing vitamin supplements and processed foods that are fortified -- but there are still about 200 million children under the age of 5 who suffer from from chronic under-nutrition. More can and should be done.

Last week I was at the first Global Conference on Biofortification, with agriculture researchers and nutritionists who are working together to breed crops that are just as easy to grow but are a lot more nutritious. I'll write more about that soon, but to steal a line from the original Girl Effect video, do you see what's going on here?

Better crops > more nutritious food > healthier babies > healthier girls > the whole world is better off!

Genetically modified advertising

An eagle-eyed client was surprised to see the words "Genetically Modified" featured prominently in this automobile ad in Singapore last week!

We're more used to seeing marketing based on the absence of genetic modification (GM), with the words "non-GM" or "GMO-free" featured on packages of organic food. It's presented as something to be avoided, even if the labels don't explain why.

In contrast, this ad promotes the genetic modification of its product! Like the negative labels, it also neglects to explain why you should want to buy a car 'armed with completely modified DNA'. Perhaps it is somehow connected to a 'commitment to progression' that the customer shares with KIA.

Along with many others working in agriculture technology, I've always preferred the term 'biotechnology' because it sounds less frightening and mechanical than genetic modification. But I find myself using the term GM more and more often now. Perhaps the fact that the term shows up in car ad is a sign that others are finding it less frightening-sounding as well.

Which would indeed be a progression!

The Globalization of Food

There’s a lot written in the popular press these days about the ‘globalization of food’. Often these are pretty simple, yet interesting, accounts of what’s right or (more often) wrong with the way food is produced, processed, transported and consumed around the world. While I admire the way these stories catch my attention, and give me a new way of looking at things, I wonder what complexities are being left out of the headlines.

I picked up the book “The Globalization of Food” at my local library hoping to get a deeper sense of what’s going on underneath the surface. It is a decidedly intellectual collection of writing by sociologists and anthropologists from universities around the world looking at the globalization of food from different angles.

In fact, although I like to think that I have a pretty deep knowledge of food and agriculture, it took some time and effort to work through new terms from this field, and understand what they were getting at. I’m more at ease with the language of economists and political scientists, who tend to focus on food production and distribution mechanisms, while sociologists and anthropologists usually study food consumption.

What I learned from this book is that there are many different food ‘globalizations’. There is not one ‘global food system’ and there is no single definition of ‘local food’. If we learn to recognize and appreciate the diversity contained within terms like these then, in the words of the editors, “analysts of food of all hues will truly become refined connoisseurs of the most pungent, but also the most delicate, of all tastes that the many food globalizations of the future will have to offer.” Sign me up!

Here are some of the topics of chapters I enjoyed most, and a few of the ideas I took away from them:

• Slow Food – a fascinating history of the origins of the Slow Food concept in Italy, which celebrates and seeks to preserve traditional foods and production practices that are grounded in local communities. Yet it evolved into an international movement seeking the ‘virtuous globalization’ of the economics of food.

• The “Local Trap” – a discussion of the assumption that a local-scale food system will be inherently better than a national-scale or global-scale food system. There is nothing inherently good or bad about any scale of food systems – the outcomes of those systems depend on many things, including the agendas of the people running them. It’s better to focus on a desired outcome (sustainability, justice etc) and consider the strategies, including scale, which can be used to achieve them. (A recent NYT op-ed makes the same argument very succinctly.)

• Fairtrade food – particularly how Cafedirect, a UK Fairtrade coffee initiative, seeks to connect consumers and coffee farmers. One very visible connection comes in the form of images and short stories in marketing materials and product packaging that feature the producers’ lives, including the benefits that Fairtrade brings. Making our relationship with coffee into a relationship also with the people who produced it may be a step in the right direction. But do the lives of the farmers also become things to be consumed as images and labels on packages? (Lots more here about Marx and commodity fetishization if you’re interested in that sort of thing!)

I didn’t understand everything I read in this book, but it did open my eyes to different ways of thinking about food production and consumption. I made new linkages between things I thought were unrelated, and found new complexities in ideas I thought I understood thoroughly. Hopefully I’m well on my way to becoming one of those “refined connoisseurs” of the many globalizations of food!

The Globalization of Food, edited by David Inglis and Debra Gimlin. 2009. Oxford: Berg Publishers.