What Does "Food Security" Mean?

"So what do you want to do after college?" This sentence haunted me during my last semester of undergraduate study, but it wasn't because I had no answer. I knew that I wanted to work on issues pertaining to food security and development, and preferred to study cases in the African Sahel. However, most of those concepts are lost on, say, my grandmother who is a Realtor or my brother who is going pro in keg tapping. (Sorry Nana and Marshall!) I dreaded questions about my future because I am terrible at condensing my interests and ultimate career goals. Eventually, I got better at stating my point, concisely. "I want to study food security issues in developing African countries in graduate school, and hope to apply my expertise in a non-governmental body or with an agency like USAID." However, my friends and family still expressed confusion over what I meant by "food security."

Although many scholars still quibble over exact definitions of the terms "food security" or "food insecurity," many agree that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization provides a solid definition.

"Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.”

Essentially, those working to curb instances of food insecurity focus on a myriad of issues ranging from the micro-level (issues like household nutrition, best practices for sustainable household farming) to macro-level issues (such as World Trade Organization tariff quotas on agricultural products). Food security is an on-going and complex issue tied in to economics, culture, national and international politics, geography- I could go on. Recently I've been interested in how one country's domestic agricultural policy affects agricultural output in another. (For instance, how does USDA subsidization of corn affect output or price of corn in Zimbabwe?) I'm also interested in the politics of famine (did you know that famine can happen when a surplus of food exists in a country?!) and the role of intergovernmental organizations in impacting global food policy.

Seems pretty dry, doesn't it? Oh well. Food has had such a profound impact in my life at a level much higher than simple nutritional subsistence. Food sustains us physically, of course, but food can be a spiritual thing. Food has the power to connect us to the earth, to our past, to the people in our lives, and to people we'll never know. I doubt I'll have the ability to instill this reverence about food in others, and that certainly isn't my goal. I simply hope to make some small positive effect on the life or lives of those who are hungry and unable to help themselves. We'll wait and see how that goes.

Dinner Cooperatives

It's amazing how quickly things can change over the span of only a few months. I intended to get this blog thing up and running this summer, but life kept me from exploring and writing as much as I wanted to. Throughout the summer, I was preparing for a new director at the archive where I used to work. In August, I moved in to a new apartment with great people, but when I wasn't working we were playing. Then, after months of hedging my bets at my former job, I decided to move from Knoxville, TN to Ames, IA to be with my boyfriend. After moving in November, I'm finally more or less settled in. I have a part-time job at the local food cooperative, and I'm hoping to spend my free time leisurely. Come next fall, I fear that graduate school will keep me from having much leisure time!

Thankfully, I've had time to catch up on some interesting journal articles and newspaper clippings that have been accumulating over the past months. I've been sitting on Laurie Woolever's New York Times article "Saving Time and Stress with Cooking Co-ops" since June, and I'm excited to talk about it. "A cooking co-op, or dinner swap, is simply an agreement by two or more individuals or households to provide prepared meals for each other, according to a schedule. The goal is to reduce the time spent in the kitchen while increasing the quality and variety of the food eaten." Woolever explains that you can share meals to be frozen, or freshly cooked, and that the cooperative can work in my different iterations-- small households/large households, people with or without children, etc. The important thing is to set ground rules for how you'll share, and to group with like food-minded people.

The efficiency of making one big meal and dividing it up, thus dirtying the kitchen only once or twice a week is so appealing to me. For those of us without a dishwasher, washing pot after dish after cup becomes onerous. Plus, I hate making a recipe that could feed 8 and, with every good intention of finishing it over the week, seeing it go to waste. I suppose you could freeze your own meals, but that takes away the true benefit of activities like the dinner cooperative-- fostering community. For people in a big city who may not know their neighbors well, or for someone trying to find a social niche in a new town, a dinner cooperative seems like a relatively pain-free way to get to know people. Whether your group sets up a small party with drinks and snacks each month to trade dinners, or you walk frozen dinners to the next-door neighbor, you're cultivating a sense of community. Even more than the idea of pinching pennies and trying new food, the community-building quality of activities like dinner cooperatives seems to be missing in many American cities, at least on a micro-level scale. You talk to people face to face, and their food can speak to you as well.

I realize that the idea of building social capital in only face-to-face interaction is very Robert Putnam of me, and that a community of dinner sharing may still perpetuate undesirable or irresponsible trends in food production and consumption. However, a dinner cooperative could help build the same kind of community I have experienced in shopping at the local farmers' market. Maybe your dinner cooperative could go to the market together, or you could have themed meals which must include a seasonal, local ingredient.

I'm not sure I'm ready to start my own dinner cooperative, but after some time settling in at my new job, I'll likely start a lunch cooperative with my co-workers. Until next time, be adventurous and eat well.