I spent three days at the end of November in Brisbane, a booming but still small-ish city, some 930 km North of Sydney, on Australia's east coast. I went for the 14th annual meeting of the Australasian Agri-Food Network, which brings social scientists of various stripes (rural sociologists, agricultural economists, foresters, nutritionists) together with a few public health officials, NGOs and others for a few days of discussion around the food system. The food system writ large, that is. Issues discussed ranged from the growth of private sector devised and implemented quality standards, to the social causes of obesity, to urban gardens.
The keynote address was given by Tim Lang, professor of Food Policy at City University, London. Tim is also Natural Resources and Land Use Commissioner on the UK's Sustainable Development Commission, an independent public body that reports to the Prime Minister on sustainable development policy issues. Tim's keynote speech talked about the food system and the role of social scientists in advocating urgently needed changes. Tim highlighted the very imperfect nature of the connection between evidence and policy in the real world, suggesting the need for more flexible but also more directed advocacy to avoid getting bogged down in proving each detail of the proposals made.
Drawing on his recent book, Food Wars, written with Michael Heasman, Tim discussed the big picture fight in the food system: emerging from decades of "productionism," where policy and technology have focused on increasing the total food supply available, come two divergent new paradigms. The first the authors call the Life Sciences Integrated Paradigm, which is centred on biotechnology and a view of food that is akin to medical science. Where the productionist view pushed chemical inputs to raise yields, the Life Sciences view uses biology - particularly gene research - to manipulate food to repress or enhance given traits (from drought-resistance to micro-nutrient content). The contrasting paradigm is called the Ecologically Integrated Paradigm. It is also rooted in biology, especially the biology of our ecosystems. But the approach is holistic rather than reductionist, and is based in integrated approaches to food that respect human and environmental health. As the authors say, this approach is not new, but it has been on the margins of food policy discussions for decades. With widespread agreement that our existing model has failed, we have the chance to put an integrated approach at the front of a renewed food system.
A simple example contrasting the two approaches relates to public policy responses to obesity. The first is to engineer foods to taste as sweet without the calories. The second is to think about the relative cost of food (candy bars and soft drinks that cost less than an apple), to think about where and how we shop (can we walk to the store or must we drive?) and to rethink policies that allow companies to market junk food to children, using films or pop stars to encourage unhealthy eating habits.
Together with Tim Lang, IATP is interested in and contributing to the emerging body of work that links human, animal and environmental health to farm policy and the food system. IATP's healthobservatory provides articles and analysis on these issues, ranging from campaigns to ensure hospitals serve ecologically sound and healthy food to their patients to monitoring antibiotic resistance that results from prophylactic use of antibiotics in "confined animal feeding operations" (industrial livestock facilities).
Brisbane was a heartening experience. A group of diverse, committed academics who are reaching out to the wider policy world with their work, committed to using their research to make a better world, and who know how to have a good time doing it (am I biased by having been part of the winning team on quiz night? Maybe just a little). The detailed program of speakers and papers presented shows the range of talent and ideas on display. For this "auslander", still new to the food policy circles of Australia, it was a wonderful few days of learning. My own contributions were a few thoughts on biofuels that had occurred to me working on a paper on the trade and investment issues emerging from the growing biofuels sector worldwide. More on that another day....
