Through watching the first couple videos about the complexities of systems and systems theory, I found myself asking, how can I make the connection from systems to food? Understanding that systems are made up of interworking parts, input and output energy, and have complex reactions with the environment was easy for me to process. But what I found difficult to conceptualize, was how to apply this to food, and how this theory could then prove to be meaningful when thinking about the world food system. It wasn’t until the lecture, when this was put into perspective for me. Professor Litfin stated, “but the dark side of connectivity is that, if and when the chain breaks, the whole chain becomes at risk really” (Lesson 2 Lecture). This quote brought the idea full circle for me. I was able to understand systems in relation to food through understanding what happens when a part of the system breaks down. For me, I instantly thought of starvation, and lack of access to food. People in the world have little food and starve to death, meanwhile on the other side of the word people have unlimited access to food, and are eating themselves to death. These are both the extreme examples of both sides of the spectrum, however it’s important to realize that there is a flaw in the system when food is so readily available, but not in some areas of the world.
In Michael Maniates’ reading, “Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World?”, he discusses the reaction to our planet’s environmental issues, the “individualization of responsibility. Maniates writes, “When responsibility for environmental problems is individualized, there is little room to ponder institutions… Instead, the serious work of confronting the threatening socio-environmental processes that The Lorax so ably illuminates, falls to individuals, acting alone, usually as consumers” (Maniates). The individualization of responsibility can also be seen in the food shortage crisis in parts of the world. We, as individuals, know that there is a problem at hand and due to politics and institutions being slow moving, we’re left to deal with the problem on our own. This comes in the form of donations, service trips, and local activism. As individuals working towards solving a greater systemic problem, we form our own system in dealing with it.
My first encounter with virtual water and water footprint studies was actually in the popular documentary, “Before the Flood”. Leonardo DiCaprio discusses the impending climate change that the earth is facing, as well as options for people to do their part in resisting global warming. One of the options was to stop eating animal products. The documentary went into the same detail that was discussed this week in class: just how much water is used for a small amount of food. I found myself shocked and appalled at how much water was used to create one pound of beef, a glass of milk, and even the amount of water used to create the food for the cows to eat. I said to my husband, “That’s it, I’m not eating anymore meat! Look how much water is used!” This inspired us to look into how much water was behind everything we consumed and used daily, from our coffee in the morning, to the bread eaten at lunch. “The Hidden Water We Use” from National Geographic was an amazingly helpful tool in recognizing how much goes into the smallest item in the food system. Last week my realization and shock came from sitting and thinking about how far my food has come through its production to my dinner table, and this week I find myself shocked about how much water was used to create the frozen chicken that’s sitting in my freezer right now.
Growing up we were taught slogans like “Reduce, reuse, recycle”, and taught to conserve energy by turning the lights off when we left the room, and to conserve water by taking shorter showers, turning the water off when we were brushing our teeth, and so on. However, in the highly publicized effort to save the planet, I find it strange that I had never even heard or thought of the amount of water being used to produce food until the documentary I watched, and until this week in lesson 3 of this course. This is an issue that needs to be brought to light on a larger scale, because I know that if people were familiar with the facts and figures, they would be sure to think twice before buying animal products.
I admire your vulnerability in discussing the intellectual process by which you come to integrate systems theory with your experience of the world food system. You use a deeply moving quote from the lecture material to demonstrate comprehensive understanding of complexity within the global food system and the peripheral ripple-effect issues that affect our world.
As you mention, our understanding of and approach to large-scale issues tends to involve individualization of responsibility. With that, we fail to think systemically and often don’t consider these issues on an institutional level. Global crises are reduced to the sum of individual consumer choices.
I appreciate your exploration of virtual water consumption – a concept that seems to have emotionally affected many of us taking this course. It seems as though virtual water consumption is rarely discussed in *popular* ecological and environmental activist movements, despite it being so critically important. Your writing brought up curiosity and suspicion around the potential reason for this discrepancy.
Virtual water is in everything we consume; it’s a single precious thread, woven throughout the global food system. If pulled, that thread is positioned to threaten the prosperity of industries across the board. I suspect that all involved parties (producers, processors, major companies and industries) avoid addressing virtual water consumption due to the projected cost and risk associated with exacting change around something so ubiquitous and inherent to the function of our global food system. As a call-to-action, “saving the planet” seems to be presented to the public in a way that intentionally promotes individualized responsibility. Perhaps by focusing on individual consumer choices, institutional responsibility is never addressed – institutional responsibility being the root of the issue and the greatest opportunity for systemic change – and thus these large players within our global food system continue to dodge the bullet they so deserve.