Faculty Voices

Episode 12: The Politics of Food in the Age of Covid-19

Episode Summary

Gabriela Soto-Laveaga, Professor of the History of Science and Antonio Madero Professor for the Study of Mexico at Harvard University, discusses how food insecurity and the challenges of food distribution in the pandemic have underscored already existing inequities.

Episode Transcription

June:

Hello. Today we are talking to Gabriela Soto Laveaga, she is a professor of the History of Science at Harvard and she is also Antonio Madero Professor of the Study of Mexico. Welcome Gabriela.

Gabriela:

Well, thank you so much, June. It's a real pleasure to be here with you.

June:

So we're going to be looking at the issue of food security in Latin America. And I saw some really horrific statistics that the World Food Program projects that three million additional Latin Americans are going to be going without a meal. They'll miss a meal because of the pandemic this year. That makes a total of 13.7 million people. That's more than the population of the entire state of Pennsylvania. Gabriela, why are so many people going hungry?

Gabriela:

That's a really complicated, but really crucial question, June. And I think this is a question that we should all be asking ourselves. So first I want to state that no one currently living on this planet should be going hungry. We have enough food currently to feed everyone. Everyone should be well-nourished, everyone should have enough food to eat. So the fact that we have so many people currently going hungry and yes, as you said, the statistics are horrifying for post pandemic world and hunger. And the fact that we will have so many more millions who are going hungry is not so much a question of lack of food, but it is a socioeconomic and political situation. So when I say it's a complicated question, it's about how we distribute food, how we farm food, who gets to have access to food, who gets to have access to which type of food, if it's heavily processed food, or if it's nutritious food.

Gabriela:

So when you ask, "Why are so many people going hungry?" It's a really complicated spectrum that in a way begins to just touch the surface of our relationship as a society, to how we produce food, but more importantly, how we get food from one place to the next. So the system of how it's moving, but also how we procure it, if we go to supermarkets, if we go to food markets, to farmers' markets. So in a nutshell, giving that background, here's how I would answer it. There are so many people going hungry because how we currently think of food production is a capitalist system that does not provide food for all. And we need to revisit that system, and I think the pandemic has really laid bare some of the problems.

June:

Could you tell us some of the ways that the pandemic has laid bare some of those problems?

Gabriela:

Yeah, absolutely. So I think in terms of what the pandemic showed is that our current system of food provision has really had damaging effects, not just on the environment. And this is because we have in the last decades, especially starting in the early 20th century and mid 20th century, really focused on Mo monoculture. And we know from Latin America, that monoculture has detrimental effects on labor, on society.

June:

Could you tell us what monoculture is?

Gabriela:

Yes, absolutely. So monoculture is the production or the farming of one crop and Latin America has long been understood as a monoculture region. Think of everything from bananas to avocados currently in Mexico, to mangoes or pineapples or wheat or corn, if you think about that, that is a monoculture society.

June:

And this monoculture is causing people to go hungry? I don't understand that quite.

Gabriela:

Yeah. So let me backtrack a bit. So if you have a large agro industry, let's take wheat, which is a crop that I'm very interested in and is grown in one of Mexico's bread baskets in Sonora, which is one of the largest bread baskets in the world. So if you are getting money from one crop, which is wheat, that means that you're not diversifying as you should. So that in a way is distilling labor because the labor force that you need is only focused on wheat production. You're also damaging the environment because it's not good for the environment to only be dependent on one crop. But when you only grow one crop, you also make it really vulnerable to pesticides, to diseases, so you become more vulnerable. So how monoculture is leading to hunger is that there isn't a diversity. So you have these large agro industries that are producing for example, as in my case, a lot of wheat. But that means that small farmers cannot compete. So they are laborers in these larger farms and they themselves, aren't producing multiple crops on what would have been in some other era, a family farm or subsistence farming.

June:

That's fascinating. You're the Antonio Madero Professor for the Study of Mexico. So how does this play out in Mexico? Could you talk to us about Mexico for bit?

Gabriela:

Yeah, another great question, June. That's really interesting because when we talk about Mexico, in particular Mexico's relationship with food related health issues, isn't just about hunger. It's also about malnutrition and obesity, and all of these are interrelated. What this means is that many Mexicans are not getting the proper nutrients. And when I say many Mexicans, we're talking about 60% of Mexico's population, at least for not getting the right nutrition. Now this should be really surprising to a lot of people because Mexico is an exporter of food. Mexico exports, as I just said, wheat, but it's the world's leading exporter of avocados, but you begin to see a theme. It's an exporter of these singular... Of papayas. And so it's a great diversity of crops. So it exports, fruits, it exports vegetables, it exports grains, all of which are poor for a balanced nutrition. But that doesn't necessarily mean that all Mexicans are eating a balanced meal or balanced food.

Gabriela:

So when it comes to economics, about 7% to 8% of Mexicans, it's a really up and down number, in the post make about $5 a day. So when you have such a high number, 7% of Mexicans making less than $5 a day, then that begins to put into perspective what you can purchase to eat. And what most people purchase to eat are high processed foods that give you energy. But these are high processed foods that have a long shelf life, which aren't great for health and this contributes to hunger, but also to obesity. So someone who is obese most often is an indication that they're not getting the best nutrients. So how do you combat this? I mean, it's really complicated.

June:

Has the government done anything in this sense?

Gabriela:

Yeah. So this lack of nutrition or growing hunger in Mexico is not a new problem. One of the issues that I'm interested in is actually the creation of an institution in 1943, which was the Mexican National Institute of Nutrition because Mexican nutrition and Mexican society and food was already a question which was considered a problem in society. And it doesn't emerge in the 20th century. This was already a question as early as the Porfiriato. So we're talking about the late 19th century with Porfirio Diaz, who was president at the time, and there was a real racialized, racist attitude toward who was not eating well. And the idea was that it was indigenous people who did not eat well because they didn't eat enough European style food. So there was this real battle between the tortilla and bread. And in Porfirio Diaz's time bread won out because he was a Francophile and he believed that bread was more nutritious.

Gabriela:

It turns out that tortillas are more nutritious, but it took nearly 50 years to get there. So with the Mexican government, this has been a continuous issue, a continuous problem. And I'm actually really interested in nutrition, hunger surveys of the 1950s and 1960s that were sent throughout Mexico to try to find out what Mexicans were eating. And it turns out that Mexicans already in the mid 20th century, this study found, and it was a national survey, we're already lacking in nutrition. So this isn't a new problem. What is new are attempts at how to get to it. So there was this program that was created in, it was 2013 or 2014, with Enrique Peña Nieto and it was about trying to end hunger in Mexico. And this was the national crusade against hunger, and he had five goals, but the most important was zero hunger for Mexicans.

Gabriela:

And what he was going to do was tackle this not just as a hunger problem, but really look at it from the multiple aspects. It was not a successful campaign, but what was great was they were going to look at transportation of food, they were going to look at food in spaces like schools, they were going to look at who had access to food, and they were going to center it in what were considered the extreme poverty regions of Mexico. And June, I think it's really telling. These extreme poverty regions are usually 400 municipalities that are repeated over and over, a third of those are found in Oaxaca. So when we think of extreme poverty in Mexico, it's really localized and not coincidentally often the highly indigenous areas of Mexico.

June:

What's been happening with the pandemic? Has there been any response by civil society? What about the government?

Gabriela:

Yeah. So with the pandemic that's... That's a really interesting question because when you talk about civil society and hunger or distribution of food as you know so well in Latin America, the food kitchens that come up whenever there's an economic crisis, they're really popular. And we have seen those not just in Mexico, but throughout Latin America. There are also NGOs that have been not just in Mexico, but in other Latin American countries really tackling this. The Hunger Project is one that I always like to mention that has been in existence for almost 50 years, and it's been in Latin America for a very long time. So there have been approaches that are in conjunction or parallel to the government. But as I said, hunger is not necessarily a lack of food, it's an economic and a political problem. So if you don't have governments working together with civil society, working together with multilateral organizations, then you really need an interrelated relationship in order to solve these problems.

June:

In Mexico, what would that look like if you could wave sort of a magic of, okay?

Gabriela:

June, that is the question. I think what that would look like in Mexico would be a re-evaluation of land distribution, giving farmers, peasants rights and subsidies, but also looking at transportation. I also think that it would be a re-evaluation of what it means to be poor in Mexico in the 21st century. It would be labor guarantees and this might seem like it's a huge list of the important targets in society, but it's really important because we are really becoming a world of refugees. We're seeing not just climate refugees, but refugees due to economic situations. I'm thinking here most prominently of Venezuela, which was a wealthy country, but also, so we have climate, economics, but we also have social unrest.

June:

What can you tell about that in terms of what it means for the consumption of food and good food?

Gabriela:

That's the key, right? Because if we are thinking, as I said, what is a solution and I listed this roster of how a perfect society should function, core there is employment, labor. So in order to have a... You need to have access, but you also need to, once you have access to food, be able to purchase it. And what this means is hunger and poverty are sisters. So if we tackle poverty, if we tackle the core issues of poverty, hunger as a corollary also is being tackled. So how do you have access to good food? It's about providing diversity of foods, it's also about providing stable employment, good employment, good wages. So despite the fact that we talk about hunger, it's really difficult to talk about alleviating hunger without talking about the underlying socio-economic problems created by poverty, because they're so intertwined.

June:

Of course, one of the ways people think of getting out of poverty is through education. And during the pandemic, we've seen that although many countries depend on school lunch programs to get food into the bellies of children, classes have been disrupted. So I was reading about CEPAL, the big economic think tank and that feeding programs for the most vulnerable, and here we're talking continent wide have actually been strengthened. What can you tell us about such programs? They're not getting at the core issues, but do you think they'll become a permanent feature of society? Are they counter productive? Because they're saying, "Hey your kid's getting a warm meal every day, and so you don't have to worry about protesting in the streets to get your wages higher."

Gabriela:

So that's a really interesting question. And it's interesting because the way you pose it reminds me of the cafeterias that existed in factories at the beginning of the 20th century, right? And the idea was that you fed your employees, or you provided food either free or at a very, very low rate. And the idea was full bellies, happy employer. So there's a correlation between this idea of providing social welfare as food provision, but also, how are you thinking of members of society? And I think with the school food program, you bring up a really wonderful point that much of currently, and this is of course not just in Latin America, but across the world and really in the US where we've seen a spike in hunger rates.

Gabriela:

And especially for reasons among children who go hungry because schools have been closed. So what do I think of this? What you mentioned is about feeding programs, I think they're crucial at this moment of a pandemic, but can we maintain them so that they form parts of our society. And I think this goes back to reevaluating what we consider to be essential for every citizen to have to be able to thrive. And your question was about children and if these programs are essential and there's so many studies that show that we cannot learn, that we cannot absorb information if we are hungry. So if we are going to create, which I think is where your question was going, if we're going to create these stronger, healthier citizens, we need to start from the basis of understanding that without proper nutrition, that learning and better skills, and not just school schoolwork has to come from this point that people cannot, and young children cannot be hungry. So how do you do that? So this goes into gross domestic production and how... So I think it's essential, I think it's difficult, but if it was being done during a pandemic, I think it's something that should continue.

June:

During the pandemic and in this phase right now, where we're not post pandemic and in Latin America, many countries are squarely in the middle of it. Countries are having very different experiences with food distribution and with the way they're handling issues of food security. Are there some countries that you would give a good report card to?

Gabriela:

I think if you had asked me this question five years ago, I would have had one country in mind, but the pandemic has really shifted those numbers. And I think... So let me answer you as I would have answered you maybe in 2018 and or even 2019. And I would have said that one country to look at when it comes to food would be Chile. And I think Chile is the one country that the World Food Program and other international organizations often mentioned, but they were using really 2018, 2019 numbers. And if we know from the recent past in 2019, there was a lot of social upheaval about the problem of structural inequality in Chile, and then the pandemic hit. So even Chile which had been seen as a stable democracy country compared to other nations that could provide for its citizens, recent reports are that Chile's going through a food crisis as well.

Gabriela:

And soup kitchens have once again emerged in Chile, and that is why I said, if you would ask me this question, even just a few years ago, I would have had a very different answer. So for right now are there countries during this moment of mid COVID that are doing exceptionally well? I would say no. And this is really worrisome because it goes into this larger question of how our food system or our food supply system is so intricately linked with the rest of the world that we're all vulnerable. And the way that our food is often imported food or exported food and yeah, when we have that scenario, it's very difficult in mid pandemic to say, this country is doing well. I would say right now we have to wait.

June:

I'm wondering when you give that answer, whether you've been able to see any trend towards self-consumption where people can't export because the food distribution systems are broken down or are actually eating that food that they're producing.

Gabriela:

So that is a key question. So one of the ironies of Latin America when it comes to food, is that Latin America produces over 20%, it's something like 23% of the world's food is produced in Latin America. And yet you began this conversation by saying Latin America is one of the regions with the highest rates of hunger across the world. So that is a really stark contradiction. It produces so much food for the world, and yet so many Latin Americans are hungry. And one other the issue goes to this question that you just asked, you may have seen this, and there were these really riveting images coming in the middle of the pandemic, and this was about five months into the pandemic. So I'm thinking about late spring, early summer of 2020, when a lot of crops were coming due in the Central Valleys of California.

Gabriela:

And there was a sea of lettuce and other crops that were being destroyed and milk that was being poured down drains and destroyed at the same time that you have news that people were going hungry. And this goes into what I mentioned earlier, which is a food industry in which it's about profit. It's not about feeding people, it's a very different take. So we have that issue. And then your question is, are people able to consume? So the idea was, and sorry, I must mention this as well because it made the news last year as well, were supermarkets. Some had lost electricity and they wanted to give the food for free and they weren't allowed. So even though people-

June:

They weren't allowed by whom?

Gabriela:

By the corporation that owned the supermarket. And so when we talk about these contradictions, the priority is not about feeding people, it's about making a profit. And that's what comes to mind when you ask that question. But to answer your question directly, I think there has been a rethinking of what type of food provision we want and what kind of food future we want after the pandemic.

June:

Have you seen any countries or any organizations that are doing some concrete things about thinking of these best practices where-

Gabriela:

Yeah, so for a long time, there have been several organizations that have been pushing for a new way of thinking how our food is supplied around the world. And they're pushing for smaller farms, more family farms, less transport or transportation from one space to the other, more local eating and really, they're pushing for making, eating a political act. That what you consume is because you are aware of the impact that it has on the environment and on labor and on society. There's organizations that have had a long life like Via Campesina from the 1970s that still exist today, but there are other much smaller organizations like that, that really are pushing for a different type of eating, a different type of approaching food and consequently, how we defined access to it.

June:

What's the role of the companies that produce junk food in all this?

Gabriela:

So that's a really interesting question because... So as I started by saying, junk food in the pandemic as you know has been a real comfort food. So junk food has been a needed evil in the pandemic because it has provided comfort in a really unstable time. And you may have heard of the COVID-15, which is the average 15 pounds that the average person has gained during the pandemic. And I think I don't know about junk food companies' goals during the pandemic, but it's clear that there has been a larger consumption of junk food during this time in large part, because as I mentioned, the stress and cortisol levels go up which makes us hungrier, and we consume these foods. But also, when you think about junk food tends to give you this immediate energy rush, because it's high processed food, high fructose corn syrup that gives you this push. And if you are a worker or a laborer, if you need this energy level to keep you going, and junk food tends to be cheaper than the fresh fruits and vegetables that are needed for a balanced diet. So in terms of directly answering your question as the role of junk food companies, I'm not sure I can answer that with concrete numbers, but thinking of the overall role of junk food in this pandemic, I think is an interesting one.

June:

So let's go away from industrial junk food and go back to thinking about food production. You've written about the downsides of The Green Revolution in India and Mexico. So using the context of the pandemic, what's going on with agricultural innovation?

Gabriela:

It's interesting, and it's really nation specific and even region specific. So there is a push right now to really rethink what agro ecology is as a technology. So by agro ecology, I mean how we practice agriculture and its impact on human health and the environment, but also going back to crop diversity, to seed diversity. So The Green Revolution was really about creating hybrid seeds that could resist pests and could resist climate change and that was really about creating large monoculture across the world. And what we're really pushing for here is crop diversity and see that as technology, not so much trying to create a blanket solution for everything, but rather to begin to go back to diversifying. And that's really exciting because this is what indigenous people were doing well before. If you look at our current consumption of food, the majority of the world consumes right now just three crops. It's rice, wheat, and corn. So like 80% of what we consume in different types of iterations. So to think about diversity is really exciting.

June:

Tell us about that excitement. Tell us what's going on there.

Gabriela:

Yeah. So for example, with seed diversity, instead... For me, this is part of my research and it's something that I really love. And it's about really being in conversation for example, here in the United States, with native American groups that are trying to go back and find the native seeds and the seed diversity, many of which were lost. When we're talking about Mexico, it's creating these seed banks that are collecting corn diversity, so it's not just a single seed of corn, but a variety. And to me that opens up different conversations about new types of research that isn't centered simply on production, because the big goal of the mid 20th century was yield. Produce more. Produce more wheat, produce more corn. And now this technological shift is more about diversifying because we've come to realize that diverse with crops, that's also good for the environment. You rely less on pesticides, you rely less on insecticides, it's good for the soil, enriching the soil. So I guess that's where my excitement comes from, thinking about technology not as a single solution when it comes to crops, but as multiple solutions that are regionally focused, locally focused. Local knowledge is really playing a larger part and local knowledge is really in conversation with agricultural science.

June:

That's very interesting. You talked in terms of what's happening in Mexico. Do you have any examples of this quest for diversity in other countries?

Gabriela:

So I think this is happening throughout the world. We see it. And this became really... We saw how important this was in terms of diversifying in the Middle East with the recent tensions and the wars that were happening in the Middle East, seeds were saved. They were by human couriers taken out because seeds are so important. And the need to preserve the diversity of seeds is something that we as humanity for a long time... In archeological sites, you will find these urns of seeds. So for example, and the fact that we have the Svalbard, which is a seed bank for future food crises, or this continuing food crisis. So other countries like India, for example, which is also creating... They're called KVKs, and there are over 700 of them spread throughout India.

Gabriela:

And these are centers where farmers can come and learn about crop diversity, about how to better sell their crops. But the importance of not simply relying on one crop, and which is something that farmers knew. But in a way, it's relearning practices and showing that they can make more money by growing crops which they may have pushed aside and selling them at a local level and selling themselves. And so many of the farmer problems that we're seeing now in India are linked to the single seeds that they had to purchase, the single seeds to create these wheat empires of The Green Revolution of the 20th century. So I think we're seeing a resurgence of this crop diversification across the world at this time.

June:

And do you think that's going to go a long way to resolving the problem of hunger?

Gabriela:

I think that's just one part. The problem of hunger also has to do, as I said earlier, with land reform, it has to do with labor shortages, it has to do with supply chains. It has to do with a re-envisioning of the role of government within society. It has to do with how we design or think about a safety net in society. So to solve hunger, as I said at the beginning, it's not a problem of food. We have enough food, but how do you distribute the food, to whom do you distribute that food, and what type of food is distributed? And also we have a lot of food wastage currently. So solving the problem, it's tackling all of these other issues that go hand in hand. So it's simply saying there is enough food in the world, acknowledging that is important, but it doesn't offer a solution. So solutions, I think, have to be both at a municipal level, making sure as you said food programs or food education, but then at a national level rethinking the relationship between food, economics, large providers, small providers, et cetera.

June:

That's really interesting. I have one last kind of existential question, Gabriela. Some people are saying that the pandemic is an opportunity to build back better and to do a lot of the things that you're talking about. And other people say that the pandemic is going to toss Latin America back 100 years. Where do you sit on this continuum in thinking about food security?

Gabriela:

Well, I think to your second point, I have seen those studies as well, that Latin America right now with the hunger problems that it's facing, that it's going back to the levels of the 1990s. That what had been gained in the last 30 years has already been lost. And that's really alarming that what had been gained in the last 30 years we've lost, or are losing in terms of decreasing the numbers hungry in the region. So when it comes to building back better, and I love how you phrase that, how can we build back better? I think we need to rely less heavily on crops that need a lot of irrigation. And these are the main crops that we consume, which are rice and wheat, for example. So less reliance on those. I think urban agriculture is part of the solution. I have a graduate student right now, Weif Marshall who's working on what are called CEAs, Controlled Environment Agriculture, and his focus is New York.

Gabriela:

So he's looking at these CEAs in New York rooftops, in abandoned factories, and it has a really futuristic, really late 20th century feel to it. So how these individual urban agricultural experiments will be designed if they're not going to be designed with the model that we currently have, it depends on what future that is. So how do we build back better? I think we need to be forward-thinking like these CEAs, but also backward thinking and not in the sense of being backward, but looking back to traditional systems of like the family farm, using a diversity of seeds and not simply relying on hybrid seeds which you need to purchase every year instead of seeds that you could continuously use. And really, I think diversity is a key for building back better. I think understanding the role and the vulnerability of agricultural workers, which really came to the fore during this pandemic. And also understanding that much of the labor that is provided in agricultural spaces is migratory labor and to build back better. What do we do about transient migratory labor force that is often at the core of providing the food that we eat? So how do we build that better? How do we tackle that type of labor?

June:

Thank you very much. Is there anything that you would like to add that I haven't touched on?

Gabriela:

Oh, you covered so many topics. I guess one thing that we all know, and I think is worth mentioning and repeating is that hunger is a socially constructed disease, and it's often not about lack of food, but rather it is a reflection of poverty and unequal distribution of wealth. And currently today, right now, there is, as I said, enough food to feed the planet. And yet nearly one billion people grow hungry every day. One billion. That's remarkable, and that's a really sobering statistic, but I also think it says a lot about our global community that nearly one billion go hungry. But not to end on a negative tone, I also think it's important to also mention the many food kitchens that emerge with the spike in hunger. You also have society that comes together in places to make sure that the hunger does not continue.

June:

Thank you very much. We've been listening to Gabriela Soto Laveaga, she is a professor of The History of Science at Harvard University.

Gabriela:

Thank you so much, June.