Reflection Week 5
How do we approach fixing our current food system while also making sure that we are able to avoid all of the existing problems of inequity, accessibility, and the piecemeal nature of the system as a whole. The Pothukuchi and Kaufman literature overall identified just how many gaps there are in addressing this problem and how the responsibility of the food system isn’t tied to one particular entity. I’m getting the picture that almost everything was piecemeal and un-collaborative and this lack of communication and responsibility is just one reason why our current food system has so many flaws; particularly from a planning aspect. When I think of creating a food system for a community, I think of a developer coming in and requesting a parcel of land to develop into a grocery store. Based on various assessments, the planner decides whether or not this developer will get the permit to build it. The planner looks at whether or not this type of establishment will be suited for the community (i.e. Whole foods vs Walmart), if it will bring jobs into the community, whether there is transportation access and infrastructure to get people there, and the environmental and safety hazards that may come about from developing a new area. This type of framework, as I currently see it, lacks this collaboration component and tends to focus solely on the impacts of one community. When there are tons of individual communities allowing for development of food establishments, there is no thought given to the overall spatial placement or the gaps that are present for some neighborhoods to access these stores.
On the opposite spectrum of a new food entity, is the responsibility for those to fix the current system. In one of my other courses we are discussing the issue of food justice and ‘who to blame.’ Most often everyone points fingers at the ‘government’ but they never specify what part of government or why or what exactly went wrong in this piecemeal process that led to the current systems spatial makeup and production. It is easy to understand the elements of what went wrong such as large corporations getting too much control, subsidies not going toward local foods, education and theoretical frameworks of what to eat and how, the racial and social makeups of community that put certain races at a disadvantage, and etc. Yet, I don’t feel like we ever talk about the actual process. Who decided that subsidizing corn and soybeans was a good idea and where did they get that information from? Who was the person in power and what exactly influenced them (most likely big corporation $$$) to agree with this. When locations of supermarkets themselves are placed, who is deciding on a national scale what we want our food system to look like and how we want to be able to access it. Maybe the solution is in a long conversation on a regional scale that turns into a long conversation on a national scale.
I could keep going on, but do you think that there was any real original plan to industrialized food placement? Kaufman identifies the reasons why some planners don’t see food planning as they’re job, so who’s is it? Whose was it to start with?
Our food system is controlled by many different entities. This is why it seems to be so unorganized and irrational. I agree that the lack of communication between the entities plays a major role in our current flawed food system. Government subsidies for corn and soybean are essential in our current system because with them, farmers would not have enough resources to run their farm.
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