The Road to Organic Island Episode 2: Why Food Justice Is in a Bind
This article reveals an unspeakable truth about the food system, a helpless predicament that we have all faced together over the decades since humanity developed biochemical methods (pesticides, chemical fertilizers, genetic modification, biochemical technology). It is all because these biochemical methods have been so effective over these decades that everyone has delved into technology and exhausted the means of biochemical technology to satisfy the surface-level demands of color, aroma, flavor and texture. This has given unscrupulous merchants the opportunity to act against their conscience, adding ingredients recklessly and even faking products, causing food to be widely superficial and increasingly unreal. Although this article uses vegetables as an example, the predicament of processed foods is the same, and even more widespread and more severe!
The Food Safety Predicament
"When Mom grows the vegetables, Dad won't demand organic certification," and of course that is true; but "when a farmer grows vegetables that are both beautiful and cheap, Mom will worry and hesitate." Why?
This is because when Mom grows vegetables and sees bugs, she would rather eat less than spray pesticide; but when a farmer hears there are bugs, he hurries to spray pesticide, because if the farmer does not spray pesticide he cannot guarantee this year's harvest, and the farmer's livelihood will be left with no way to support itself. The helpless thing is that we cannot tell farmers not to spray pesticide, because if we stopped farmers from spraying and left them with no food to eat, it would seem as though we were the heartless ones. But the even more tragic truth is that many farmers, in order to guarantee their harvest, have already put chemicals into the soil and water before sowing.
In fact, most people are aware of such food problems, but they are powerless to change them. This is because the commercial system that people rely on today, in pursuit of maximum short-term profit, carries out tight and massive division of labor, which causes "food miles" to accumulate endlessly, and thus consumers are separated layer by layer from the original nature of food by the commercial system. When food is stripped from the farmer (the producer) and the place of origin, food loses the appearance it should have and is left with only a simple surface (for fruits and vegetables, the pursuit of 'beauty and weight'; for processed foods, ingredients, color, aroma, chewiness, sweetness, consistency of clarity and turbidity, and long shelf life without spoiling). The result of this tilt of "food" toward "processed food products" also pushes food into a situation that is neither safe nor real, and this is the phenomenon of food development over these decades.
The Gravity of Human Nature
In fact, all of this is because our trading system has long been a cash-on-the-barrelhead "weighing by the catty and ounce" form of buying and selling. Such a trading system naturally leads farmers to have to make money by looking beautiful and weighing heavy. And for farmers to rely on adding the most effective chemical fertilizers and pesticides so that crops are not bitten by insects (beautiful) and gain weight is the simplest thing of all, because it is entirely natural for farmers to pursue profit through cultivation! These are all just natural phenomena of the "gravity of human nature." The beauty and weight brought about by today's chemical fertilizers and pesticides have gradually caused food to lose the essence it should have, and have even caused serious harm to human health and to the environment on which we depend for survival.
The Predicament of Food Justice
On this Earth of ours, ever since the so-called "Green Revolution" brought about by pesticides and chemical fertilizers, because these biochemical methods have been so effective, farmers can easily use pesticides and chemical fertilizers to manipulate the weight and appearance of food. Although we have worked hard to establish regulations and inspections, what we can ultimately expect comes down to farmers' conscience and self-restraint. The result is that people all over the Earth have been trapped in an extremely unjust food predicament, namely:
The more unscrupulous and heartless, the more they can make money,
while the more rule-abiding and conscientious, the less they can make money.
Of course we cannot say that anyone who makes money must be heartless; there are plenty of people who make big money with a clear conscience; nor is it that the rule-abiding cannot make money, but the reality of the situation is often like this. On the other hand, the commercial food system only takes "the safe amount a person can eat" as its boundary, that is, within the range permitted by regulations it uses the lowest cost and, through all kinds of added colors, aromas and flavors, sterilization and preservation, obtains maximum profit (pursuing profit is the entirely natural mission of running a company! There is nothing wrong with it). This is why even a cup of milk tea or a single bread has so many additives that it surprises you. We do not really want such food, but we simply find it hard to escape such a predicament!
The Gravity of Human Nature That Is Hard to Resist
The problems mentioned above, we all know. So people came up with a comprehensive inspection and monitoring system from water quality, soil, cultivation, and materials to packaging and shipping, and this is today's organic certification system. However, foods labeled "organic" usually cost several times more, yet unexpectedly this only adds to humanity's greedy pull. According to the principle of the "gravity of human nature," the organic certification system cannot escape this downward-sinking predicament of justice, because breaking the rules and faking things is even more profitable! Once we understand this principle of human nature, it is not hard to explain why, no matter how much penalties are increased, how much more manpower health authorities dispatch, and how many more inspections are added, incidents of adulteration, fakery and improper additives keep happening.
Simply put, behind today's constantly appearing phenomena of adulteration, fakery and improper additives in food, the essence is actually all rooted in the same predicament of justice: "the more heartless and unscrupulous the merchant, the more money they make," because today's chemical materials, chemical fragrances and raw material extraction technologies are all too advanced and too miraculous, and people truly find it hard to tell them apart. Think about it: if an unscrupulous merchant refines cheap oil unfit for consumption into edible oil that passes inspection, how are those rule-abiding merchants supposed to compete with him for business?
The Source of the Predicament and the Countermeasures: Recognize the True Face of the Problem, and the Solution Is Right There
"The problem itself is the answer." Once we recognize the problem, the answer becomes very clear.
If we look only at beauty and judge only by weight, it will lead to the most efficient biochemical methods; if we focus only on color, aroma, chewiness, sweetness and freshness, we will get food with added sweetness, added freshness, added chewiness, added aroma and added preservatives. In short, if we look only at appearances, then naturally someone will study appearances to make money, and that is entirely natural. The problem is that in this era, the biochemical industry has already far surpassed the senses we rely on for judgment, and we can no longer see the truth of whether food is good or bad from simple appearances.
As the saying goes, 'There are people who will do business even at the risk of beheading, but no one bothers with a business that loses money.' Let us return to the source, look at the problem and find the answer:
1. Farmers making money by 'weighing by the catty and ounce' leads farmers to pursue farming for 'beauty and weight.'
➤ Countermeasure: Do not price by "beauty and weight." Hire farmers with a fixed profit to cultivate real food on our behalf. Farmers' cultivation no longer seeks to increase profit by pursuing beauty and weight, but instead, according to the true intention of the eater, grows clean and healthy food. Let farmers no longer have to rely on pesticides and chemical fertilizers to pursue profit.
2. Judging only by "color, aroma and flavor," these appearances, leads to the addition in biochemical methods that pursues color, aroma and flavor.
➤ Countermeasure: Reduce food miles. Through interpersonal connections, communities and networks, skip the complex commercial system, get close to the source of food, and reduce the number of times it changes hands. Low food miles make food more real and safer.
3. No farmer is born loving to spray pesticide! Farmers are of course forced by circumstance!
➤ Countermeasure: Directly find farmers to cultivate on your behalf, so that farmers can rest assured and directly switch to friendly farming.
Conclusion: The Age of Injustice Will Eventually Pass
As long as people understand such injustice, then the age of injustice will eventually pass.
Now, we can directly find farmers to help us grow food we can trust.
Through "contract cultivation," we become our own masters of food, directly relieving farmers of the pressure to compete in the market through chemical farming methods, and directly transforming farmers' cultivation. This new model of contract cultivation can be applied not only to agricultural cultivation; the livestock breeding industry and the food processing industry can also directly find people for contract cultivation/contract raising/contract making, reducing food miles and transforming the predicament of food justice.
Or, by joining a "food cooperative" to support farming friends with the power of the community (CSA - Community Supported Agriculture), and then through farm work-exchange stays, work-exchange travel and other food journeys to participate in farming, letting farms achieve a Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) through community certification, food miles are reduced and this predicament of food justice is effectively transformed.