If Knut Hansum, the Norwegian Nobel Prize winner, raised his head, I wouldn’t believe it. On the one hand, to see his name restored, after having been disowned for his support of Nazism, and his recovered work, as an interesting graphic edition of ‘Hunger’, with illustrations by Martin Ernsten, which has just been published. On the other, to see that his country, the one in which he placed his heartbreaking description of a permanently hungry man, it has become one of the richest on the planet, a paradigm of the Scandinavian welfare state. Paradoxes of destiny.
But if hunger has disappeared in Norway, it has not in many other places. What’s more, the pandemic, as it cannot surprise anyone, has aggravated the situation. According to the United Nations, between 720 and 811 million people suffered from hunger in the world in 2020. Without going any further, we have seen it in some of our cities: queues of people to get food. Rising inflation which we attend is only deepening the problems of accessing a healthy diet.
And it is not because there is no food. Innovation and technology they have radically transformed their production. Just one piece of information: since the 1960s, the area devoted to food crops has increased by 12%; at that time, agricultural productivity has grown by 200%. On the other side of the equation are scandalous realities: a third of the food produced in the world is lost or wasted; rich countries throw away the same amount of food that sub-Saharan Africa produces.
Along with those who have difficulties in accessing food are those who suffer from obesity and malnutrition. Paradoxes of global reality. 1.9 billion people are overweight and more than half of the adult population is obese. And it is not a thing for the rich. Behind it is, to a large extent, the transformation of a food industry based on the large scale, which gives priority to ultra-processed foods, easier to preserve and prepare, and highly caloric and addictive. Do not it is more comfortable to eat a frozen pizza than a fresh salad? The result is not only an increase in health problems derived from a poor diet, it is also an increase in profound inequality.
These and many other data and reflections come from ‘Obesity and malnutrition. Consequences of food globalization ‘, by Kattya Cascante. A work that takes us into the realities of a food industry that has become globalized and commercialized at a forced marches in recent decades and that directly affects aspects as relevant as diet itself, climate change, the functioning of the global agenda, geopolitics or the appearance of conflicts in various places of the world (it is enough to remember the Arab springs).
In relation to climate change, according to Cascante, “The environmental impact of food is already in discount time & rdquor ;. It is significant that in recent days, in the framework of COP26, there has hardly been any talk about the food system, when it is responsible for 26% of greenhouse gases. Curiously, there has been a decision that fully affects the sector: the commitment of more than 100 countries to reduce methane emissions by at least 30% by 2030. Agriculture – especially rice cultivation -, livestock – especially ruminants – and waste – manure and landfills – are behind a good part of these emissions.
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In Spain these debates continue to be listed, with little analysis and high tendency to polarization. Do you remember the steak of President Sánchez? That is precisely another risk that any discussion about the food system faces: that it ends up forming part of the boomerang of the political agenda. We already see it in the forced association of concepts such as organic, ecological or veganism with leftist postulates, when food should not depend on ideology.
Food is not just a necessity; It is linked to culture, to a way of life, to some resources and some traditions. Knowing where it comes from and how it is produced, and its social, economic, political and global implications, better understanding how it affects our existence and that of the planet is part of our individual responsibility. A) Yes we can also demand better policies and decisions to our public representatives.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com