The School Food Revolution

Public Food and the Challenge of Sustainable Development

Kevin Morgan, Roberta Sonnino

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781844074822
• eBook ISBN: 9781136552304
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

'The School Food Revolution is an important book that deserves success.'
Journal of Organic Systems

'A great new book that describes how 'the humble school meal' can be considered as 'a litmus test of... government's political commitment to sustainable development.'
Peter Riggs, Director, Forum on Democracy & Trade

'The School Food Revolution should be an inspiration for policy makers and for school heads and school canteen operators.'
Tom Vaclavik, President, Organic Retailers Association

School food suddenly finds itself at the forefront of contemporary debates about healthy eating, social inclusion, ecological sustainability and local economic development. All around the world it is becoming clear - to experts, parents, educators, practitioners and policy-makers - that the school food service has the potential to deliver multiple dividends that would significantly advance the sustainable development agenda at global, national and local levels.

Drawing on new empirical data collected in urban and rural areas of Europe, North America and Africa, this book offers a timely and original contribution to the school food debate by highlighting the potential of creative public procurement - the power of purchase.

The book takes a critical look at the alleged benefits of school food reform, such as lower food miles, the creation of markets for local producers and new food education initiatives that empower consumers by nurturing their capacity to eat healthily. To assess the potential of these claims, the book compares a variety of sites involved in the school food revolution - from rural communities committed to the values of 'the local' to global cities such as London, New York and Rome that feed millions of ethnically diverse young people daily. The book also examines the UN's new school feeding programme - the Home Grown Programme - which sees nutritious food as an end in itself as well as a means to meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

Overall, the book examines the theory, policy and practice of public food provisioning, offering a comparative perspective on the design and delivery of sustainable school food systems.

The cover illustration is by a Roman child. The authors would like to thank the City of Rome (Department for School and Educational Policies) for permission to reproduce it.

1

Public Food and Sustainable Development: Barriers and Opportunities

Sustainable Development: From Theory to Practice

At the dawn of the 21st century, the world is confronting a global environmental crisis of unprecedented magnitude and reach. The crisis, in itself, is not new: human interaction with the natural world has long damaged our environment. What is new is the speed at which pollution levels increase, the Earth’s temperature rises and animal and plant species disappear for ever.

Also relatively new is the widespread awareness that these global environmental problems are endangering not just our ecosystems; they are also threatening the future of our economies. At the end of 2006, Nicholas Stern, a former chief economist at the World Bank, published a seminal report arguing that global warming could deliver an economic blow of 5–20 per cent of GDP to world economies because of natural disasters and the creation of hundreds of millions of refugees displaced by droughts or rising sea levels. Dealing with climate change now, the Stern Report contends, would cost just one per cent of the world’s GDP; but if the problem is not tackled within a decade, we will be forced to invest almost US$1000 for every person on the planet – a figure that could push the global economy into its worst recession in recent history (Stern, 2006). Although the data provided by the Stern Report are still debated and discussed, the impact of this document in the media all over the world shows that global environmental problems have now entered policy debates in all fields and at all levels.

For many experts and policymakers, this global and multifaceted environmental crisis is raising the need to rethink the concept of development, shifting its fundamental goal from the basic idea of quantitative growth to the more encompassing notion of qualitative improvement in people’s lives (Daly, 1996). Practically, this means devising development strategies that move beyond the old modernization paradigm, with its narrow focus on economic growth, to embrace also the and social dimensions of our lives. In simple terms, it means promoting a development model that emphasizes, rather than undermines, the interdependence of economy, society and nature. In this context, the concept of sustainable development has become the most powerful ideological tool to catalyse attention on the social and ecological conditions necessary to support human life at a certain level of wellbeing through future generations (Earth Council, 1994).

It has been 20 years since the Brundtland Report, which provided the first celebrated definition of sustainable development as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (WCED, 1987). Despite the popularity of the concept in both academic and political discourse, so far progress towards sustainable development has overall been ‘slow, piecemeal and insubstantial’ (Carter, 2007, p356). With the exception of local debates around Local Agenda 21,¹ the discussion around sustainability has taken place primarily at a global and theoretical level, generating endless and mostly abstract speculations over the exact meaning of sustainable development.

Some scholars have emphasized a specific dimension of sustainability. For example, from a strictly economic perspective the goal of sustainable development is to ensure that the per capita income of future generations will be no less than that of current generations (Tisdell, 1999a, p24). This ‘weak’ version of sustainable development accepts a commitment, where possible, to protect natural resources, but it rejects the idea that economic activity should be confined within predetermined environmental limits (Jacobs, 1999, p31). Environmentalists have opposed to this anthropocentric view of sustainability a more ecocentric perspective, which concentrates on biodiversity and the protection of natural resources (Gibbon and Jakobbson, 1999, p106). This ‘strong’ version of sustainable development emphasizes the notion of ‘environmental limits’ – that is, it is based on a commitment to living within the limits created by the ‘carrying capacities’ of the environment – and situates humankind in nature and not above it (Jacobs, 1999, p31). Still other scholars have focused on social sustainability, which implies generating enough wealth for a society to reproduce itself, to maintain its institutions and to provide a sense of cohesion and community for its members (Gibbon and Jakobsson, 1999, p107).

On other occasions, the focus of the debate on sustainable development has been multidimensional. In an effort to promote a more integrated development approach, some scholars equally emphasize economic, social and environmental goals (Tisdell, 1999b). Pretty (1999), for instance, argues that sustainable systems must accumulate stocks of five different types of capital: natural capital (nature’s goods and services), social capital (the cohesiveness of people in their societies), human capital (the status of individuals), physical capital (local infrastructure) and financial capital (stocks of money).

In the light of these fundamental differences in how the goals of sustainability have so far been interpreted, some have argued that sustainable development is still a vague, if not ambiguous, concept, perhaps ‘too unrealistic, biased and naïve’ (Gibbon and Jakobsson, 1999, p104). For some scholars, sustainable development holds the potential to fit in with a wide variety of different political and economic agendas; hence, it can become ‘an insubstantial and clichéd platitude unworthy of further interest or research’ (Drummond and Marsden, 1999, p1). Richardson (1997, p43) captures this view by arguing that sustainable development is:

a political fudge: a convenient form of words […] which is sufficiently vague to allow conflicting parties, factions and interests to adhere to it without losing credibility. It is an expression of political correctness which seeks to bridge the unbridgeable divide between the anthropocentric and biocentric approaches to politics.

In our view, this is an essentially flawed debate, which fails to recognize that sustainable development has a relative and not an absolute meaning. Like many other important concepts, such as democracy and justice, it is fundamentally a ‘normative standard that serves as a meta-objective for policy’ (Meadowcroft, 2007, p307). At the theoretical level, sustainable development can contribute to shaping and focusing political and scientific debates; in this sense, its importance lies in what it symbolizes (Richardson 1997, p53). However, in more practical terms, it is crucial to remember that different societies differently construct and value their environments (Redclift, 1997). For this simple reason, sustainable development acquires concrete meanings and substance only in each specific environmental and socio-cultural context. Hence, the implementation of sustainable development requires going beyond the search for a universal formula to ‘embrace a plurality of approaches […] and perspectives […], accept multiple interpretations and practices associated with an evolving concept of “development”, and support a further opening up of local-to-global public spaces’ (Sneddon et al, 2006, p254). In short, implementing sustainable development is fundamentally a matter of negotiating its normative principles and adjusting them to contextually dependent priorities and needs.

Broadly speaking, there are three fundamental principles that inform sustainable development as a normative standard. First, sustainable development is about promoting more equitable forms of economic development across space and time. In other words, it is about attempting to meet the basic needs of all human beings while also recognizing the potential for imposing risks or costs on future generations.

The concept of sustainable consumption has emerged as a key tool to achieve this goal. Today it is widely recognized that there are growing disparities between mass consumption patterns in the world’s North and the inability to meet basic consumption needs in the South. To give just one example, Chasek et al note (2006, p3) that we would need about US$13 billion a year to provide basic healthcare and nutrition for the world’s poor; in Europe and the US, people spend about US$17 billion a year on pet food. By redefining notions of ‘wealth’, ‘prosperity’ and ‘progress’, sustainable consumption initiatives attempt to construct new social and economic institutions for governance that value the socio-environmental aspects of wellbeing alongside the economic dimension (Seyfang, 2006, p385). Fair Trade labels provide a good example of this kind of initiative. In fact, their aim is to reduce the direct impact of Northern consumption on scarce resources, while at the same time improving the social and economic condition of Southern communities that supply these resources (Carter, 2007, p219). In the context of current efforts to implement more equitable socioeconomic systems, sustainable consumption has also become a goal within the wealthiest countries of the world, where the pressures of competitive spending are increasingly widening the gap between rich and poor, with major consequences in terms of social justice. For this reason, as Carter (2007, p220) explains, ‘achieving sustainable consumption will […] involve both an overall readjustment in the levels and patterns of consumption in rich countries and the provision of basic needs to the socially excluded poor’.

Second, sustainable development fosters democracy through a vision of interconnected and highly participatory communities. Stemming from a critique of liberal democracy and of its intrinsic hierarchies, bureaucracy, individualism and inequalities, this principle proposes a model of participatory democracy that produces more environmentally responsible governments and fosters greater individual autonomy and involvement (Carter, 2007, pp55–56; see also Eckersley, 2004). As we will discuss later in this chapter, the Green State has emerged as a powerful conceptual tool to describe the role and potential of environmentally engaged democratic institutions in promoting sustainable development.

Third, sustainable development is about integrating environmental considerations into our economic development strategies, under the assumption that effective environmental protection needs economic development and successful economic development depends on environmental protection. In this regard, it is important to point out that environmental considerations include more than just ecological issues. Sustainable development acknowledges that the environment also has a human dimension that encompasses the values, needs and aspirations of the people who inhabit it. Writing about the environmentally related nature of disease among poor people (especially children), von Schirnding (2002, p632) rightly points out that:

sustainable development cannot be achieved if there is a high prevalence of debilitating illness and poverty, and the health of populations cannot be maintained without healthy environments and intact life-support systems.

The integration of environmental considerations into the political decision-making process then raises an urgent need to fully recognize the interdependence between the sustainability of the environment and the sustainability of the human species and to merge local strategies for reducing health inequalities with strategies for reducing environmental inequalities (Griffiths, 2006).

In this book, we will operationalize the concept of sustainable development by focusing on its three fundamental (and interrelated) principles of economic development, democracy and environmental integration. Many political and economic actors around the world have committed themselves to the ambitious agenda for change that these principles embody. In an effort to respond to the global environmental crisis, for example, many industrialized countries have produced national sustainable development strategies, often formally supported by the business world and civil society (Carter, 2007). However, much discussion is still taking place, in both scientific and policy circles, as to how to achieve in practice the radical shift in existing patterns of production and consumption that sustainable development requires.

Food has increasingly moved to the forefront of this debate. Compared to other sectors or industries, food has a unique status: we ingest its output (Morgan, 2007b). For this reason, it is a special prism through which to explore the interconnections amongst the economic, social and environmental dimensions of development. Indeed, food brings about a wide range of issues that lie at the heart of current sustainability debates: from public health to social inclusion; from sustainable consumption to the environmental implications of activities such as transport, processing and waste management. In many ways, food has then become a litmus test of our individual and collective commitment to sustainable development. In the remaining part of this chapter, we will explore the relationship between food and sustainable development. Our focus will not be restricted to the economic, ecological and social requirements necessary to sustain a food system over time. Rather, we will discuss the more general contributions that a carefully planned and managed food system can make to the implementation of the three broad principles of sustainable development.

Food and Sustainable Development: Re-localization as an Opportunity?

Social and natural scientists have shown over the years how food, in its most industrialized version, has widely contributed to the global environmental crisis – at all stages of the supply chain. At the production end, intensification of agriculture through an ever increasing use of pesticides and fertilizers has depleted the soil, polluted waters and killed wildlife. Agricultural specialization, in turn, has caused a dramatic decline in the number of crop varieties and a significant loss of biodiversity. As a result, landscapes, rural livelihoods and farming systems have all been progressively simplified (Pretty, 1999, p86). In the most industrialized countries, diverse and integrated farms employing local people have been replaced by specialized operations that rely on contract labour; processing facilities have become centralized and remote from many rural communities; and mechanization and the loss and consolidation of many farms (especially small farms) have reduced the need for human labour, with predictable negative effects on employment rates and rural service provision. In many areas of the developing world, these trends have irreversibly damaged not just local ecological systems – they have also negatively affected local socio-cultural practices. For example, in countries like Mexico and India, intensified use of herbicides has killed non-crop plants that provided food, fodder and medicine to native peoples, thereby seriously threatening their cultural identity, traditions and survival strategies (McMichael, 2000, p27).

At the manufacturing stage of the food chain, the enormous amount of fossil fuel used to process and transport food has significantly contributed to global warming and pollution problems. In the US, research conducted at Cornell University showed that in the mid-1990s more than 100 billion gallons of oil were used every year to manufacture food. More recently, it has been calculated that the average food item in the US travels between 1500 and 2500 miles from farm to fork (Kaufman, 2005). The situation is even worse in the UK, where a recent estimate suggests that food items travel on average 5000 miles from field to table (Pretty et al, 2005). As the environmental base crumbles, and one of the main ingredients of industrial agriculture – cheap oil – disappears, the future of farming itself seems to be increasingly at risk (Sachs and Santarius, 2007, p10).

Turning to the consumption end of the food chain, it becomes evident how the global environmental problems associated with the industrialization of food are also raising challenges to food security and public health. As corporate farmers have expanded their operations across the globe to engage in commercial food production that supplies mostly unsustainable affluent diets, half a billion rural people have lost access to the land to grow their own food (McMichael, 2000, p27). In some areas of the world, the industrial food system has arguably attenuated income-related class differences in food consumption by democratizing access (Goodman, 2004, p13). In other areas, however, the displacement of rural economies has left behind a series of ‘food deserts’ where people – especially low-income people – have little or no access to fresh, nutritious and healthy food (Wrigley, 2002; Guy et al, 2004). At stake, then, is also our individual and social wellbeing. In the UK, in 2003 the costs of obesity plus overweight were estimated at £6.6–7.4 billion per year (House of Commons, 2004). In the US, the public health costs associated with seven diet-related health conditions have reached US$10 billion per year (Kaufman, 2005). Simultaneously, and almost ironically, the incidence of hunger and food insecurity is on the rise, not just in developing countries but also in the wealthiest nations of the world. For example, many American cities are increasingly unable to provide adequate quantities of food to those in need (Pothukuchi, 2004, p357).

For all these reasons, many counter-movements have looked at food as one of the best examples of the cultural reductionism and unsustainability of modernization and its corporate logic (McMichael, 2000, p27). However, as much as it has been accused in the past of contributing to the global environmental crisis, today food is increasingly seen as part of the solution. Indeed, scientists and policymakers alike are beginning to realize that food systems hold the potential to deliver the wider objectives of sustainable development – economic development, democracy and environmental integration. But heated debates are still taking place around the most basic question: How exactly can food contribute to the emergence of alternative socioeconomic systems that deliver the wider objectives of sustainable development?

For many scholars and activists, the contribution of food to sustainable development is inextricably linked to the implementation of re-localization strategies that increase local food production for local consumption. Re-localization, for example, lies at the core of the concept of community food security, which advocates food systems that strengthen localities and communities by creating spatially closer links among two or more food system activities (Pothukuchi, 2004; Feagan, 2007). The same idea is implicit in the notion of food justice, which Wekerle (2004, p385) relates to concepts such as ‘resistance to globalization’. And, as we will see in Chapter 7, even traditional school feeding initiatives in developing countries are currently experiencing a home-grown revolution.

Scholars who have explicitly attempted to theorize the relationship between food and sustainable development have also centred their discussions around the idea of localization. For Kloppenburg et al (2000, p18), for instance, a sustainable food system involves productio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Boxes, Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Public Food and Sustainable Development: Barriers and Opportunities
• 2. Procurement Matters: Reclaiming the Public Plate
• 3. Fast Food Nation?: Reinventing the School Lunch Programme in New York City
• 4. School Food as Social Justice: The Quality Revolution in Rome
• 5. A Sustainable World City?: School Food Reform in London
• 6. Beyond the City: The Rural Revolution in School Food Provision
• 7. Home-Grown: The School Feeding Revolution in Developing Countries
• 8. Sustainable Development and the Public Realm: The Power of the Public Plate
• Index