We lived on farms, then we lived in cities, now we are going to live on the internet”. This quote is from the film ‘The Social Network’, voiced by a media guru.
This struck me forcibly when I first heard it. It is true of the last three generations of my family – my grandparents spent all their lives on farms in Ireland, my parents moved to the city – London, and now I do tend to live on the internet. But it’s also inaccurate. Many of us spend a lot of time on the internet but we can’t live on the internet. Despite all our modern trappings, what we need to live on is as basic as it ever was – air, water and food. And they can’t be virtual!
Internationally, 733 million people are facing hunger and over 2.8 billion are unable to afford a healthy diet. This is despite the right to food being recognised as a basic human need by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And at the other extreme, for many of us, food is often taken for granted and unappreciated.
To help address this, World Food Day is celebrated annually on 16 October. This date honours the date of the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations and the theme for 2024 is ‘Right to foods for a better life and a better future.’
But why do so many people have to cope with hunger and poor nutrition?
Small-scale food producers feed 70% of the world’s population, producing food for local markets and communities using ecological techniques. But this is threatened by the growing dominance of corporations in the global food system. International agribusiness is grabbing more and more land, pushing privatised seeds and promoting mass usage of expensive chemical inputs. As big business profits, small farmers struggle to keep control of land, seeds and their way of life.
For two decades, Columbans have believed that the introduction of genetically modified crops and food stuffs on the pretext of feeding the hungry is wrong. It raises serious moral, spiritual and environmental issues and puts the control of food resources in the hands of profit-driven corporations. Columbans have joined lobbies to challenge industrial agriculture and the companies that push it such as Monsanto. Columbans have highlighted the plight of farmers seduced into growing transgenic crops, tribal communities robbed of their local genetic riches through patenting laws, and the loss of diversity in native food species through genetically modified crop contamination. In some places, like the Philippines, Columbans run organic farms.
Here in Britain, we have supported the ‘Fix the Food System’ campaign of CAFOD, a Caritas agency which supports the right of farmers to save, use, exchange and sell their own seeds. It urges the UK government and the World Bank to protect small-scale farmers. For generations, they have freely swapped and shared a wide variety of seeds to produce food and maintain biodiversity. More recently, small farmers have also developed seeds that ensure crops are more resilient to climate change.
Food security has also been undermined by some pretty disastrous decisions that human society has made about paths to development that have meant a loss of habitat and poisoning of the environment. Did you know that every third bite of food we consume depends on pollination by bees, but all around the world hundreds of millions of bees have disappeared. Do we realise how much this matters? Columbans in Britain now have beehives at our headquarters near Birmingham, Columbans campaign to protect biodiversity and the 2023/24 Schools Media competition in Britain and Ireland focused on ‘Biodiversity Matters’.
The huge issue of Climate Change needs to be addressed in a much more serious way. Climate change is a factor in the chronic drought, falling crop yields and loss of livestock affecting many countries. Columbans in Fiji have supported Archbishop Peter Loy Chong of Suva who told a Vatican conference in June that, “the world has yet to really listen deeply to the voices, particularly to the cries, of Oceania people.” They face loss of livelihoods and a less fruitful environment due to climate change – exacerbated by mining – and demand urgent action by the international community. According to the UN Development Programme, approximately 75% of the population of Pacific island nations is affected by more severe weather shocks.
Conflict also undermines food production. In Myanmar, Columbans report that tens of thousands of Christians who have endured persecution since the coup of 2021 have been left destitute by bombing of villages and by soldiers stealing their cows, pigs and chickens. Displaced people are without a secure food supply.
For us here in Britain, we must re-learn appreciation of food. The organisation Green Christian suggests that food we consume should follow the LOAF principles as far as possible, LOAF is an acronym for food that Locally produced, Organically Grown, Animal friendly and Fairly Traded.
We could reflect on some of the important occasions in our lives that have involved the sharing of food. And what connections are there between food and faith? Despite the Catholic focus on a Eucharistic meal and celebrating the gifts of creation, too often Christians have alienated themselves from the natural world which provides the air, forests, water, soil, crops and animals which we depend upon for life. Columbans have stretched solidarity with the poorest of humanity to solidarity with the natural world as well.
On the positive side, in our parishes and schools, beautiful liturgies will mark World Food Day and the Harvest Season. An increasing number of schools are eco-schools are part of Food for Life programmes where food is grown on school green spaces. Through growing food, children can see, smell, touch, and taste first-hand the miraculous and fragile processes of birth, growth, death, decay, and rebirth that are all part of God’s wonderful creation and which provide us with food
Previous generations of farming families would have understood that Earth – ‘Our ‘Common Home’, according to Laudato Si’ – hosts an ecological web of relationships. Among many of the world’s great faith traditions, the eating of food is accompanied by some form of a grace-saying act. Saying grace shows that we do not take food and our lives for granted. Let’s give thanks by saying Grace on World Food Day.