Food for Thought

Today I was reading a journal article by Ingrid Burkett of the International Association for Community Development. The article discusses the idea of re-localisation, and particularly the recent interest in local food:

Yes it could be said that local food systems potentially contribute to ecologically sustainable development because they can reduce the food miles of our diets...it could also be said that local food systems play an important role in building strong and vibrant local economies...however, many of the 'organic' and 'slow food' events that are occurring around the world reach out to the 'gourmet' food market with relatively little attention paid to questions regarding how poverty, access and inequality are addressed by local food production.

I think the last point that Burkett makes is an important one, as it tries to get to the heart of the real purpose of local food production.

A very simple example of 'local food' production I read recently can be found here. It tells the story of Alexandra Reau, a fourteen year-old girl from Michigan, who has converted her family's backyard into a small farm. She grows fruit and vegetables and sells them to regular customers in her neighourhood, who claim to value both the quality of her produce, and the fact that this initiative comes from a local youth. The story is testament to how much a fourteen year-old can accomplish when he or she makes efforts towards a noble goal.

Reau's farm contributes to her own development (she tells us that farming requires a lot of patience!) and in some sense to the local economy, both commendable ends in themselves. But what would change if this project were linked to a larger goal of community building? Or, more simply, was conceived of as providing a service to one's community? How would this change the concept of local food?

Burkett believes that "a renewed longing for community" is the real "starting point" and "social push" behind local food movements.

If we are to re-localise our communities, our motivations could be based on building strong relationships with our neighbours, engaging with the local cultures/s, improving our health and the health of those with whom we live, generating friendships across diversity or even just eating healthier, tastier food.

These "strong relationships" could be build on trust, love and a mutual striving for individual and collective progress, and would naturally lend themselves to an exchange of material goods and services for the wellbeing of all.

I use the term 'naturally' because of a fundamental belief that each one of us has been created to bear fruits (metaphorically, at least), to develop our various talents and capacities for the benefit of others and ourselves. And where else would this service be expressed but in the spiritual and material wellbeing of one's community, the latter implying the need for a vibrant local economy to facilitate this exchange of services.

Understanding the link between communities and service, of which local food is just one example, helps us better conceptualise one purpose of the practice known as 'community development'.

Burkett does warn against romanticising the local food movement as a move back to past 'traditional' ways. The OECD has echoed this warning in its publication Community Capacity Building: Creating a Better Future Together, in the context of community capacity building:

Community capacity building and/or economic development should not be an attempt to recreate the communities or businesses of the 1950s. The world - its people and its economy - has simply changed too much...we should guard against the assumption that the past, or an alternative vision of the future, are the only or the most appropriate visions for the futures of communities today...it is clear that the concept of community is changing. Nevertheless the geographic, indeed local element, cannot be overlooked.

Another trap to avoid falling into is believing that the greatest power an individual possesses is his or her buying power, so that the act of choosing to buy local becomes an end in itself. Human beings are not mere consumers, even though modern urban cities have been designed to promote the values of a consumer society. Brenda and Robert Vale explain this in the book Designing High Density Cities:

Most recent planning theory has ignored the vital relationships between food, energy, water and land because of access to cheap and plentiful fossil fuels. This has meant that food can be grown at a long distance from settlements and transported to them...

A capitalist society would best operate with everyone living at high densities so that the maximum number of people would need to buy everything they required, having little opportunity to provide basic services, such as growing food themselves. A high-density city is necessarily a consumer city.

Burkett describes how the concept of local food does more than change our buying habits but "challenges us to move from being consumers and passive recipients in these systems to being active participants, citizens and co-producers of the systems."

I love this idea of moving from consumers to actors, and would love to hear some more practical examples about community farms and gardens within the framework of community building. In particular, reflections on the role of the community as a "starting point". If anybody is involved in this area, please share - we're keen to learn more about it!

At the Heart of Social and Economic Development

Recently I attended the Baha’i Social and Economic Development Conference in Orlando, Florida. The theme was “Baha’i Inspired Development and the Growth Process: Partners in Transforming Society”. A co-worker and I had the honor of presenting the work of the Tahirih Justice Center and share the history and learnings of the organization to two very captive audiences. The conference itself offered an opportunity to learn from many others — young and old — involved with development/service work in their communities.

Among the questions explored in the conference was the meaning and source of “development”. Of course the term “development” is not new to anyone. Nations have been striving towards “development” for centuries. And who can deny that humanity has made astounding advances in scientific and social development in the last two centuries alone? Notwithstanding these benchmarks of progress, another fact rears its unpleasantness: a majority of the people inhabiting the planet have been left far, far behind. Ironically the gap between poor and rich is widening even as “development” has morphed into a global enterprise that seductively (and rather self-righteously) markets itself as targeting “the poorest of the poor”.

“Born in the wake of the chaos of the Second World War, ‘development’ became by far the largest and most ambitious collective undertaking on which the human race has ever embarked. Its humanitarian motivation matched its enormous material and technological investment. Fifty years later, while acknowledging the impressive benefits development has brought, the enterprise must be adjudged, by its own standards, a disheartening failure. Far from narrowing the gap between the well-being of the small segment of the human family who enjoy the benefits of modernity and the condition of the vast populations mired in hopeless want, the collective effort that began with such high hopes has seen the gap widen into an abyss.” (One Common Faith, 2.4)

Why has “development” failed? The question is intimately linked to another — what is the nature of true human/societal development? Is it purely material? The experiment of the last century was an exercise in applying the notion of development defined in purely material terms. Its dogma caused us to believe that human progress rested on material accumulation alone. We therefore pursued development projects that narrowly sought the economic exploitation of the environment, promoted the violent cultural intrusion of societies, and tolerated the kind of painful structural adjustment programs which the IMF and the World Bank implemented in developing countries at the expense of health, education, local infrastructure and the overall welfare of local peoples. Unembarrassed by both the immediate and devastatingly long-term tangible human suffering caused by the injustices of these policies, our world seemingly continues to blindly follow a credo fed by an insatiable, brutish appetite for material wealth.

The problem is not material wealth per se — rather it is the motivating impulse that drives the processes involved in the aim to improve the conditions of life. Consumer culture has operated under the conviction that those with means must become slaves to their senses and continuously satisfy their material wants and desires. With spending perceived as the pulse of healthy social and economic development “[s]elfishness becomes a prized commercial resource…Under appropriate euphemisms, greed, lust, indolence, pride—even violence—acquire not merely broad acceptance but social and economic value.” (One Common Faith, 2.3)

Part of the problem lies in a deep rooted perception of human nature as incorrigibly selfish. People, we are told, are fundamentally self-interested actors. By design the social and economic structures we have built under the various development regimes are meant to harness those impulses to fuel human progress on the path to “modernization”. Or so we’d like to believe — reality tells a different story, one that is hard to ignore: the disintegration of the family, mounting violence and crime, disappearance of community life, the degradation of the environment etc.

What if we painted a different picture of development? What would it look like? What if development was more than just a measure of income and material wealth? What if development also can start with interpersonal relationships, between two neighbors? What if we viewed true development as unlocking the potential of the individual and building their own capacity to identify problems and take social action within their own community? Does development really begin with material resources and capital? Or does it begin with collaboration and commitment to a broader vision born of a community of people who aspire for something better for themselves and future generations?

Slowly, we are learning that at the heart of how we understand development is a fundamentally different way of looking at human nature — each of us are intelligent beings with the capacity to overcome our baser qualities, with the capacity to do good, to serve, to give sacrificially for the benefit of the whole…the choice has always been ours. We have the agency, what has been missing for far too long is the will.

If we viewed human beings as having capacity to improve their own conditions would necessarily change the way the world “does development”. And here’s how: Currently, most development projects and programs are, by design, top-down in approach. It somehow presumes that pouring resources into a country will naturally lead to development—the project has only to be engineered and orchestrated in right way by the learned “experts”. It presumes that any failure to reach the intended results is due to missteps in the process of execution. If we are to throw out the underlying framework of the development model that is currently imposed on the peoples of the world, something else will have to take its place.

In order to move away from a model that too often regards the “poor” as “charity” or as “untapped human resources” that simply need training by the “experts” to be productive members of society, we need to embrace the idea that every individual is the agent or protagonist of their own learning and development, as human beings with capacity and the ability to build upon it. This idea firmly affirms that whole communities of people can develop the capacity to identify their needs and work together to address the challenges of their community, thereby becoming truly empowered, as they have taken ownership of their learning and growth in a manner most suitable to their environment and current development. We would perhaps start to look at “poverty” as not lack of material wealth, but as a life wasted due to lack of opportunities to achieve their highest potential to contribute to the welfare of the wider community.

So that leaves each of us — protagonists of change, agents of social transformation — at the heart of the matter.

Social and Economic Development can begin, and in reality, does begin with each of us. We all have the capacity to contribute to the betterment of our neighborhoods, the quality of our relationships with young people, the ability to serve each other. Through these grassroots initiatives, be they formal or informal, taking part in service or “social action” and working diligently towards these ends will release the potentialities of the human spirit in ways we have yet to fully realize.