Food is nourishment to living species, it provides life and health. Yet the foods we ingest are not understood as the essence for thinking, its subsequent behaviors, the fuel providing human biological machines proper functioning, as well as the determining factor for their health.
The #agriculture business is made out of unhealthy systems governed by the monolithic crops of wheat, rice, and corn. Food generated is mostly processed. One of the most important global cogs in policymaking and economic management is generated from the food we provide our biologies and hence the nutrition it brings to the logistics of our lives, as well as to our reasonings. Nevertheless, it is the most wasted good in our societies. Food is also processed in the most unhealthy ways, and all nutritious crops are rare and expensive. What we eat and how we eat are still vital. From a biological, as well as a spiritual point of view. Health, wherein geography, education, ideology, spirituality, morals, hence responsibility is never included in the food concept. The whole cannot be dissociated with the entire body and mind management health. The consequences of nutrition on human, social and economic development are so important for physical and emotional health. Health is not apprehended as a crucial axiom to life and it should be. This is why the way agriculture and #foodsystems are implemented is essential since they shape economic development and society as a whole. Their policy making should be focused and properly financed, like a war budget.
We often read there is a problem with feeding the planet but it is never mentioned that food wasted to the amount of 40 % globally could be an alternative to feed the 925,000,000 Million hungry with the 1,300,000,000 Billion tons of food wasted. It is even less drawn to attention that gigantic wastes in food are about life's foundations, where we see still starvations or obesity as growing and coexisting factors. The solutions that are out there are overlooked because they deal with the conflicting and antithetical facts that simple resolutions through common good go against basic modern economy habits, profit, and waste. It is the same with Climate change and we persist with the convenient blindfolds that maintain a system that privileges political powers over ethical and disciplined actions.
Food production is also a barometer for #sustainability . The US and Europe are the lowest in rank. The shift to the economics of awareness and sensibility is needed where humanity currently extracts resources much faster than they can be regenerated, and to an irreversible state.
Until populations understand the simple connections between living well, having healthy agriculture, and water availability are major elements of a well-rounded natural cycle, bringing global growth and prosperity. Political stability, health, and economic well-being are all connected. Wars are always the end result of severe economic unbalances hidden under the pretense of ideologies. Calling attention to populations' responsibilities, familiarizing with daily changes of habits, bringing consciousness of society's needs, with the diligence of all. Life is a cycle that regenerates through an ever-growing natural cycle. But when the regeneration is broken and out of balance, it still can be adjusted before the point of no return. Populism arises from sudden movements of poor populations that are only trying to escape drastic conditions of lives generated by the domino effects of unfair politics & economics. This is not about a dream but about modern reality and the survival of a planet.
Agriculture, #forestry , and #fisheries are all part of a whole where #agrifood -food system policies and programs have to be fine-tuned and prioritized to provide for healthy diets and improved nutrition. Food systems do not only shape peoples’ diets, they connect with their nutritional, educational, and health systems. Through Education, we can provide and underline how healthy diets prevent malnutrition and how wrong policymaking ends up affecting politics and economics globally, and have repercussions on wealth and health issues, including the latest pandemic that shipwrecked the whole planet.
What and how we eat, how we treat fauna and flora, the air we breathe, and even how we treat others matters. It is making sense we also mainly reassess the role of our economic system as a whole, our politics, sadly driven by the incentives of pure #profit -driven #growth at all costs, versus purpose, ethics, and life's natural laws. It would be right to reevaluate our ways, become adults with our philosophies of living and what it means to be a human, where corruption is coming from, why nonsense, lies, and unhappiness permeates our lives, jobs, on television, online, in schools, in our streets, etc.
The stigmas of our respective cultures and religions are all connected. In order to prevent widespread misery and catastrophic biodiversity loss, humanity has to practice a much more environmentally sustainable alternative to business and strictly speaking mass-production economy with no hidden #greenwashing .
This prescription was well articulated by the world's leading scientists 25 years ago, but in most respects, we have not understood their warning. Think tanks also did a good job downgrading scientific information.
In 1992 scientists implored that we cut greenhouse gas emissions and phase out fossil fuels, reduce deforestation, and reverse the trend of collapsing biodiversity. There was even a pre-Greta who made a speech at the first conference on the environment in Rio. For many reasons, it did not really go anywhere... Today, we have to reassess the role of an economy based on more financial assets, we need to reduce #greenhousegasemissions, promote #renewableenergy, protect habitats, restore ecosystems, curb pollution, and halt deforestation because humanity has not taken the urgent steps needed to safeguard our endangered biosphere. Even stop taking drugs to numb the pain of unhappy and frustrated lives, and other improper foods for our bodies. Some of the steps humanity has to take to transition to sustainability, including reducing food waste through education and better infrastructure, is promoting dietary shifts towards mostly plant-based foods to fight processed foods intake. Fighting human trafficking. Reducing wealth inequality and pinpointing the real costs consumption patterns impose on our environment, to progress towards progress.
Since the 2008 crisis, politics have been globally handling regulations of finances internally and globally, as well as have adjusted financial governance to the effects of worldwide macroeconomic conditions. With a genuine #systemicchange change, societies can thrive.
2020-2021 are still years bringing new realizations about the missing logistics inside politics. Those times have also surprisingly unveiled how different populations can take the brunt of responsibility, and make genuine unsuspected social efforts to deal with the #pandemic mismanagement. Some regions have even gone along with steps and measures sliding towards repression. It has been also a lack of preparation and instant response to the spread of the epidemy that has led to a pandemic.
Among the solutions, the rise of technology has been a blessing. AI has the potential to adapt to every economy, for democracies to strengthen and modernize national policy frameworks, through proper international concertation. Unfortunately, the rise of influence in #socialnetworks has completely changed the rules. Because of some think tanks' propaganda and counter-information on social networks, science has lost credibility. Populism and political #extremism have played a toll on our modern societies. With the threat of these networks of ideas spreading, along with some governments taking advantage of emergencies, we have seen technologies such as Track and trace, or face recognition commonly adopted by populations, as well as potentially regulated #health implementations such as vaccine passports that have been talked about. Constructive progress through these technologies would be counterproductive. Nevertheless, technology is opening a new world of remarkable possibilities for humanity, where information through social networks and multiple international platforms are available to all and provides new communication windows for observation and resolution of long-standing issues, such as human rights in basic human needs. On the issue of food waste, access to new emerging traceability technologies positively used to curb, for example, IoT sensors, blockchains, and food-sensing technologies can reduce food loss by millions of tons if properly applied. This is a future showing long-standing unresolved human rights need to be supplied with food for all, lodging, and health through the means of these #technologies . Transitional environments of ecology as well can be redirected to a fruitful and positive outcome.
Pascale Rearte
Comentários