Blueberries ripening in my front yard.

A few days ago I was standing in my kitchen looking for a snack. Having just gotten back from vacation, there were no fruits or vegetables to be found and I was craving their nutrition. My first reaction was disappointment and my second was the need to add my favorite fruits to the grocery list. Bummed, I found another snack and moved on.

About a half hour later I was reminded to check on the blueberry bushes outside to see whether or not the birds had gotten underneath the netting. Blueberry bushes!!! Just 20 feet from where I stood, craving fresh fruits, are two blueberry bushes full of wonderful, colorful, scrumptious fresh fruit. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. It gets better…

While I was outside checking on the blueberries I noticed that an apple had fallen from one of our apple trees. Although it is a bit early in their season I picked another low slung, reddening apple to check its tartness and enjoy a burst of homegrown fruit. As I picked the apple I realized that it had been awhile since I had pulled nutrition from the earth myself, and realized just how far I had gotten from my food. I had one of those “aha!” moments that happen from time to time as I ate the juicy apple and contemplated not having to go to the grocery store to buy fruit, but instead eating from the earth in my own front yard. Apple trees take time to prune, initial purchase money to buy, other necessary care depending on the year and often much of the low fruit is lost to the neighborhood deer, but I also had a sense of God providing as I picked that apple.

Never have I felt further away from my food than in that moment. The act of picking fruit, however, reminded me of how Creation works to nourish us if we respect and care for its processes.

~Lana Lile

I recently watched the documentary Food Inc. and it blew my mind. This documentary goes deep into the United States food industry to show viewers where our food actually comes from. This movie aimed to show how the way food is grown and produced is hidden from consumers, and the realities of the origins of everything we eat shocked me.

One point the documentary argues was that our food comes from what we picture in our mind to be a typical American farm. The film states that much of our food does come from farms, but large corporations often own the animals on those farms, and thus have the power to control how our meat is grown and produced. The result of this is overpopulated farms, with animals living in unhealthy conditions (both for them and for us once we eat them!). Cows are fed corn when they are meant to eat grass, leading to a build up of E. coli in their system, which then is cleaned with ammonia. Chickens are grown in a manner that leaves them too large to walk. Also, many people who work in food producing factories are mistreated and underpaid, and the farmers who grow the food often end up with debt from standards that the corporations force them to uphold. Food Inc. argues that this system is harmful to our animals, our health, and the people who work hard to put food on our tables.

Another important topic the documentary discussed was the government’s relationship with the food industry. The government heavily subsidizes corn, wheat and soy, which can be harmful to our health, especially for those in poverty. Food Inc. points out that we can buy a double cheeseburger for 99 cents, but we cannot buy broccoli for this price. They argue that the reason for this is that calories in the double cheeseburger are cheaper due to heavy government subsidies.

The documentary goes in depth on many other issues related to the food industry, and toward the middle of the film I began to wonder if there was anything in the refrigerator that I would be able to make myself for dinner! Thankfully, they showed success stories of farmers and producers who grew their products organically and safely and still were profitable. They stressed the importance of buying foods grown locally to reduce your carbon footprint. They also discussed past successes in the food industry, such as the push from consumers that led Wal-Mart to stop selling milk products with rBST. They are confident that if consumers treat their dollars as votes, we will be able to tell the food industry what we expect from our food, and the system then will change to benefit our environment, our animals, our workers, and our health.

Food Inc. is an eye-opening documentary that depicts one point of view of the food industry, and I would recommend it to anyone. I learned a lot and now think about food in a different way. While it does give some suggestions about how you can have a positive impact on the food industry, I was still left with questions about how I should act on this issue, so if you watch it I suggest going to their Web site for more ideas. Also check out their blog.

So, I leave you all with some questions. Have you thought much about how your consumption affects your health, other human beings, animals and the earth? Has it changed how you eat? Do you have suggestions for those who wish to take action on these issues? I would love to hear ideas from all of you.

-Allie Stehlin

The following was written by Dr. Warren Chain, who recently led a trip during which participants learned about and reflected on ethical aspects of our food production systems and food choices.

From Thursday October 22 through Sunday, October 25 in Waco, TX, ELCA World Hunger gathered 20 campus and congregational leaders from Region 4 for a Leadership Training on the Ethics of Eating. The event was held at World Hunger Relief, a Christian organization which trains individuals in sustainable farming practices that are useful both in the United States and abroad. This event focused on three issues at the intersection of food and faith: justice issues affecting workers in food production, the intersection between agriculture and climate change, and hunger.

We engaged with a wide variety of speakers – Food Worker Activists Anita Grabowski and Sean Sellers, Theologian Shannon Jung, Waco Hunger Activists Shirley Langston and Kenneth Moerbe, and Climate Change speakers Dr. Travis Miller and Dr. Benjamin Champion. We also engaged in a number of activities. On Friday, we prepared one of our meals from live chickens and vegetables that we gleaned. On Saturday, we visited Farmer James Nors of Nors Dairy, a raw milk dairy farm. Through these speakers and activities, I gained a good deal of new information and had a number of personal revelations; I will share two of them.

On Saturday morning, Dr. Benjamin Champion provided an overview of some of the challenges associated with eating ethically, with a focus upon the impact of our food choices upon climate change. His research examined local food systems in the state of Kansas. There are a variety of ethical concerns to think about as one eats. For example, were the workers who produced and distributed this food paid a living wage? Was the food produced locally and sustainably, and with the intent to minimize its carbon impact? I was struck, in particular, by his data which examined the carbon impact of various aspects of the food system. Among those who are concerned about the carbon impact of their activity, much discussion has focused on eating locally. But, Ben’s data suggests that our own local transporation to and from the store where we buy our food, combined with the carbon impact of our food storage, can actually have a higher carbon impact than the carbon impact that stems from tranporting industrial food to our local store. This finding complicates the idea that eating locally is always better for the environment. If you would like to learn more, see Ben’s presentation (particularly slides 60 – 63) which is posted on the The Table, the World Hunger social networking site: http://elcaworldhunger.ning.com/group/region4ethicsofeating/forum/topics/benjamin-champions.

On Saturday evening, we screened the documentary film Mississippi Chicken, and afterwards had a dicussion with the producer Anita Grabowski and her husband, John Fiege, who was the film’s director. The movie chronicles Anita’s work to create a worker justice center in Mississippi to organize undocumented poultry workers in the summer of 2004. We began to hear about her work on Friday, as Anita participated on a panel that dealt with the justice issues faced by poultry workers and farm workers. We continued our learning with Mississippi Chicken, which highlights the multiples barriers poultry workers face as they seek to feed their families. While working in these poultry plants, workers face terrible conditions. Futhermore, workers are vulnerable to exploitation by plant managers while on the job, and by local police and criminals outside of work. These workers are vulnerable to exploitation because they often are either unclear about their rights, or are reticent to engage with the police due to their undocumented status. At the end of the documentary, our group was subdued and stunned by what we saw – it was not a graphic movie, but the social injustices faced by these workers are heartbreaking. Afterwards, John and Anita led a discussion about the film and how the individuals we met through the film have fared since it was produced. This film can be borrowed from ELCA World Hunger or it can be purchased from Amazon. I recommend it highly.

These are just two of the experiences that impacted me over the weekend. If you are interested in working on issues of food and faith, a number of ways to engage emerge from this event. I invite you to join our discussion on The Table (http://elcaworldhunger.ning.com/ & http://elcaworldhunger.ning.com/group/region4ethicsofeating). In addition, all of the participants will host an activity in their sending campus or congregation. So, if you see an activity on The Table that you would like to participate in or would like to sponsor in your area, feel free to connect with one of us to participate or to gain assistance.

Warren Chain, Ph.D.
ELCA World Hunger

The staff at Crossways Camping Ministries in Wisconsin spent a lot of time this summer helping kids deepen their understanding of hunger and it’s causes. Below is a follow-up to their original post. It is written by Ben Koehler.

Every week we talked with campers about how to help solve hunger problems. In these discussions staff members were encouraged by how responsive the campers can be.  The catch is that most leave and quickly forget what they have discovered. We were awestruck in hearing about two campers who went home to their congregation and asked for the loose offering to go to the Crossways Mission Project, which in turn goes to Hunger Relief and Disaster Response in Zimbabwe. Of all of the voices calling their attention inside and outside of camp, the lessons of hunger stuck.

Some of our highlights this summer were…

Fresh Veggies from the Garden

Working in the Garden

Weighing Food Waste After Meals

 Teaming up on Hunger Issues

 And, of course, learning as much as we could.

Changes at Crossway’s Waypost on Mission Lake are making for a more environmentally friendly and sustainable camp community. To learn more, check out this video:

http://www.godsworkourhands.org/v/445,summer-of-hope-crossways-waypost-camp.html

Joyfully,

Ben Koehler

If you’ve spent any time on this blog, you already know that I (and and many of my colleagues) have some thoughts on how food is produced and distributed here in the U.S. For a sampling of some of our thoughts on the issue, click here, and here, and here (and while you’re at it, go ahead and click here too).

These are pressing issues and worth our reflection. For one, so many of our food practices exacerbate global hunger and poverty. When it takes 10 pounds of feed to raise one pound of beef we strain food supplies (I know this is a simplification, but it still carries some truth). When 1/5 of our oil consumption is spent on producing and distributing our food we harm the environment by depleting finite natural resources and releasing harmful gases that cause global climate change (which, by the way, is the number one issue if we want to talk seriously about sustainable development of impoverished nations and feeding hungry people). When we subsidize large companies to make cheap food that then causes health problems we perpetuate a cycle of poverty (the last article linked above explains how this happens well). In short, there is lots of room for improvement when we look closely at how we do food in America.

Now, as I see it, there is no easy solution to all of these problems. I admit that I don’t know all the nuances and complicating factors. It is for this very reason that I need to think long and hard about the issues. I think the starting point is awareness that there is indeed a problem (of this I am certain). The next step is to find those ways in which we truly address root problems.

David Creech

I was on the Green Festival web site today (looking up the dates that it will be in Chicago – May 16-17) when I discovered Green Festival TV. In browsing the video clips, I ran across the following interview with Lester Brown. In 15 minutes, he does a nice job of explaining how things like climate change, food production, economics, and poverty are related, and why everyone’s urgent action is needed. I encourage you to take the time to watch the clip:

And if you happen to live in Seattle, Denver, Chicago, Washington DC, or San Francisco, you might also want to attend the Green Festival in your city. Seattle’s is this weekend! If you don’t live in those places, some of the highlights and lots of information are still available at the Green Festival web site, as well as the sites of Global Exchange and Green America (formerly Co-op America), who put on the festivals.

If you happen to be a person who plans events of any size, the video clip called “Greening the Green Festival” about how they minimize landfill garbage at the Green Festivals is pretty interesting and inspiring, too.