Tenzo Note #5: How do we feed ourselves when scarcity becomes our reality?
I often ask myself why, in most transition spaces, where there is usually a very committed philosophy and care for food, this subject remains circumscribed to managing food in the context of abundance, without integrating the need to prepare for the reduction of food in the future.
During residencies at the Praxis Hub, our capacity to feel the suffering of the earth (ecospirituality) and our way of thinking about the world (modernism) is great, but the question of food shortage has not yet been integrated.
I wonder why it seems difficult to have a collective conversation about food when climate change can be regularly raised. It seems as if we are not equipped to talk collectively about something that might be the first consequence of climate change.
Yet the food crisis is no longer a threat but a reality
The globalization of our food production system no longer allows territories to ensure food sovereignty. The war in Ukraine has made its fragility visible.
Mono-cropping generates the risk of crop-destroying diseases in an almost constant way, and its adoption has contributed to the depletion of fossil fuel reserves, soil health, and water tables.
We are in a continuous state of crisis management between war, disease and water shortages, and this is only accelerating. According to David Bailey, Director of the World Food Programme: "After Yemen, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and southern Sudan, it is Somalia's turn to join the list of countries facing famine in 2023". Food insecurity also appears to be on the rise within Europe. Today in France, for example, 30% of the population now have difficulty in obtaining healthy food with three meals a day.
We know the answer to this crisis. It is mainly structural: regain our food sovereignty by producing a locally autonomous agriculture mainly focused on plant production for humans (today ⅔ of agricultural land in France is dedicated to industrial animal feed). This general movement is underway, helped by public authorities and the PAT (territorial management plan in France) among other initiatives.
But given the time needed to transform a globalized agricultural system, the time we have left may not be enough.
Furthermore, our relationship with food must evolve if we aim to be realistic, along with the time we dedicate to this activity – a duration that has decreased from 4 hours to 1 hour over the past 80 years in France.
On the other hand, if the change in agriculture will take several decades, the way in which we can change our relationship with food at home, in our communities and start to build an emotional resilience to the possible reduction in food shortage , can happen on time.
It is in this window that cooks have a crucial role to play.
They still have the time to develop culinary practices and connections that allow them to satisfy bodies and hearts in a deeper way that could bring peace to people and reduce anxiety.
We have enough time to develop a social technology that can withstand the panic of food insecurity and create a space of emotional security in the face of food anxiety and thus prototype a new food culture based on "just enough".
It is therefore urgent to ask the question of what are the strategies that will allow us not only to regulate ourselves emotionally in order to overcome the fear of the coming shortage, but also to rediscover the joy of living and creativity through the management of food as a collective.
These models will not be able to emanate from a single axis such as anti-waste,fermentation, or solar cooking, but from a food ecosystem that allows us to respond to the fear of lack through the life force generated by community embodiment.
I see this evolution as a multi-pointed star:
-
Good practice as humanity did before the Second World War:
-
support the farmers who feed us healthily
-
return to a way of cooking using few animal products and based mainly on cereals, vegetables and beans
-
relearn how to transform the abundance of summer into winter stock (fermentations, jars, sauces, dehydration).
-
no longer throwing away but systematically recycling
-
consider a way of cooking that respects the natural taste of the ingredients to achieve satiety that generates less appetite.
-
think of cooking in terms of balanced menus that generate satiety through variety (flavors, textures) rather than quantity
-
invent or adapting rituals to calm the fear of missing out
-
integrate contemplative silence into meals
-
generate the desire to increase the time devoted to our food (in the 1950 we spent 4 hours per day per household on food activities compared to 1 hour since 1990).
-
Deconstructing the notion of a fixed personal need: Developing facilities to realize the direct link between our relationship with food and the way it is produced. And if there is suffering, recognise the cultural responsibility of a system based on the fear of lack.
A Change of Posture
Engage in revolution not because of the crisis but because of the joy and sense of belonging others that it brings. By the creative possibilities it can generate when we allow ourselves to be in-formed by its nourishment, developing our natural capacity to hear deeply what needs to be done and how.
A dynamic posture that as Matt (current Life itself Praxis Hub resident) expressed it touches on rhythm in community. How to invite ourselves collectively to reappropriate food activities to be placed at the heart of the collective, and how to rethink food in movements integrated into a geography, a territory: the vegetable garden even if small, a lacto-fermentation lab, an oyster mushroom or shiitake culture, a dehydration space, a solar or terrestrial kitchen or any other idea that can both generate joy in a group and food resilience.
The invisible power of collective activity
Taking an interest in food collectively is, first and foremost, about organizing together, co-creating and sharing. It is the way to regain that sense of belonging that is essential to our emotional and mental equilibrium. In the context of mental health that is deteriorating exponentially and particularly among young people, proposing simple practices that make sense to live with others can transform the fear of the future into something more joyful.
It is therefore time for cooks to come together, to think together, to share their knowledge, to give themselves credibility and to mobilize as a living force of the transition in order to use their immense creativity and passion for the world in the development of processes that allow for a resilient food system in communities.
To Build together a different food narrative that empowers people, even in the midst of collapse.
My practice as a cook is directly inspired by the Tenzo practice of the Zen temples which, over the course of 800 years, have adressed the issue in such a way that it can serve as an inspiring framework.
The rest is up to the cooks, how to let yourself be inspired by collective creativity and let the solutions emerge in a relaxed and confident way?
In any case, this is my commitment and my passion at the Praxis Hub in Bergerac.
If these resonate in you like a call, then don't hesitate and come and join me in helping to pioneer the next food culture.
Sources
1. CNA : Conseil national de l’alimentation. 2022 report (France) 2. CNA conseil national de l’alimentation. 2022 report (France)
