The De-commodification of Food: An Important Tool for a Just Society
Siddhant Garud explores what it means to be food insecure in India, and the ways we can tackle it
It is quite common knowledge that we produce enough food for everyone in the world. We produce enough food to feed 10 Billion People, and yet around 800 million people in the world have been food insecure, millions suffer from malnutrition, millions die of hunger, every year. This is not to say that women, children, poor people and specifically marginalised communities are not more insecure than others, with varying economic and social factors playing into their lives all the time.
Especially the pandemic has made it quite clear with a lot of system failures that people are going hungry in lockdown. Especially poor people, and women, not to mention the LGBTQIA community, particularly because they have been kept poor.
If we look at India specifically, our food insecurity is something of a stark contrast. India was sixty-seventh among 80 countries in the Global Hunger Index. According to the same data, in states like Jharkhand, and Bihar, more than 50% of children are malnourished. Yet, India also has a growing obesity problem, which comes with its own dire health consequences. These are just some specific examples to show just a peek at the food insecurity problem of just one country. All over, it is estimated that around 800 million people go to bed each night with an empty stomach.
Again, India has also been the largest producer and sometimes the exporter of food of various products. India is the largest producer of mangoes, bananas, papayas, and also of milk, to name a few things. Which should make one think — why is it that millions are still suffering from food scarcity?
This, I want to reiterate, happens even though we have enough food in the world to feed everyone and still have some leftover. This strongly shows that the problem with hunger all over the world is not that we don’t have enough food to go around, but rather how we distribute it to people. All over the world, only ten brands own most of the global food products. They acquire the food for us, package it to us, advertise it, and then slap a price to it for us to buy.
“But here too, most farmers are food insecure themselves. As a cruel twist of irony, while they grow the food, they are left with empty stomachs…”
All of these problems, even before mentioning that we are on the brink of climate catastrophe which would render a lot of farmland useless in just a few years, with soil erosion, earthquakes, forest fires, oil spills, fracking, ruthless drilling of petroleum, among just a few things which is destroying our civilisation and environment at large.
With the context of India, it is indeed true that most of the land is not owned by corporations for farming, unlike what happens in the USA. But here too, most farmers are food insecure themselves. As a cruel twist of irony, while they grow the food, they are left with empty stomachs because they have to trade it for money, either in the market or the government itself does not pay them enough.
These can be quite depressing numbers, unforgiving, but hope can still be one of the things which does not need to be destroyed. The proposal for ‘Decommodification’ of food can be just one of the things which can help us have a better society.
Food, water, medicine, housing are just some of the things that we humans need to live in a modern society. Without those necessities (not commodities) people suffer greatly, and many times just straight up die because they can’t get those necessary things for survival. I would argue any system or a person which enables that is firstly cruel, and also beyond evil. The survival of human beings should be dependent upon only one thing — that they are living creatures worthy of dignity and life. (This kind of thinking can be extended to animals and every living organism if one so desires, and one should desire that, to be honest). Food is a necessity, an essential tool of survival, what we might call in the Maslov’s pyramid, a “basic need”.
So why do we charge people money for it? By definition, if we put a price on food, that definitionally means those who cannot afford food, go hungry. The common argument is, to pay people who work on the farmland, to pay people who package and process it. But as mentioned earlier, farmers, the grower of food themselves do not get the majority of the money for literally making that food possible. Most of the money goes instead to CEO’s and the owners of companies who sell us the brand of food. But we can argue for the downfall of CEO’s all day (which, let us yeah), I want to talk about something else.
About how food, because it is a basic need for everyone, should always be available to every single person, as a matter of practical human right. How, food as a commodity, is inherently antithetical to human survival, and instead community ownership of the land to grow food on, and the community ownership of all the other resources to grow food should be controlled by everyone, the masses. Because if we give that opportunity to people, it only logically makes sense that they want to survive and live a fulfilling life. Because everyone does.
Food, has been ultra commodified all around us, we regularly order from Swiggy, Zomato, FreshMenu, more so in the pandemic. In a way it makes sense. Restaurants are not open, and ordering food is convenient. Less dishes to wash right? In fact if one lives in a city alone, Swiggy is amazingly convenient for fast delivery too. But even in the ecosystem of Swiggy, you see restaurants who are trying to mimic ‘Ghar Ka Khana’ as a selling experience to people. But it is just an experience, a food from a restaurant cannot be ‘Ghar ka khana’ it is ‘restaurant ka khana.’ They are selling you the feeling of authenticity instead.
Moreover, food delivery apps are the height of the commodification of food. They isolate you by telling you don’t need to step out of the house (I know how that sounds during a pandemic), be an individual, don’t depend on a community for your basic needs. Depend on us instead, give us money, and we will give you your basic need, you don’t need to do anything else. It is the atomisation of the individual, a way to separate them into data points, just so that that app will do what it was meant to do, take money in return for “convenience” (It is not actual convenience if you just look at it for more than ten minutes). It converts your survival into a transaction.
Then there are supermarkets in cities, where we get our vegetables, and fruits nicely wrapped up for us to look at it pretty while they throw away anything when it doesn’t meet their aesthetic standards even though it could be perfectly edible. The real evilness comes when the majority of the supermarkets throwing away edible food do not give it away to the poor, but throw it in the garbage so no one can use it.
SOME THINGS ONE CAN, MIGHT, MAYBE, SORTA, SHOULD DO
The decommodification of food is ultimately a system change, an overturn of how society is run globally. But that takes a lot of effort, and with it a lot of other strategies of organisation which will take a lot of time. In the meantime, these are just some of the things one can do, to make your surroundings and other people’s lives much better. This is a mix of individual action and also how one can join communities or start one yourself. Also keeping the pandemic in mind, this can be done practically, in day to day life, with social distancing norms too.
- Share Food: Seriously, when you buy something for yourself it is meant for yourself, there is a sense of ownership with food. “My momos,” “my CocaCola,” etc. And that impulse is quite strong and understandable too, especially if you are a “foodie,” or Joey I guess? But sharing of food is not only meant for destroying oppressive systems, it can also foster friendships and a sense of community. If we share food with each other, there can be a connection, maybe someone was hungry then. Maybe you even get a new friend, who knows? This can be extended to sharing food to the poor, to the people on the streets, they are often food insecure, and going hungry for days, sharing food with them can help them significantly even though it might not hurt you that much financially.
- Start a Free Food Distribution Network: Maybe get your friends together, sit around (or Zoom around?) and plan how you want to acquire food, maybe you can cook it, maybe you can get vegetables and fruits and distribute them directly. Maybe you can even buy some pre-cooked healthy food and then pack it up for distribution. You can use foil, paper bags as cheap packaging with minimal effort to pack them too. After you are done with the planning stage, one can just go around and see anyone who might need food, homeless people, poor people, beggars etc. Try to make this a regular activity if you can, maybe use a rotation system, or cover ground together. After all, someone who is food insecure already, wouldn’t suddenly not be food insecure if they get one bag of vegetables from someone that one time. Try to also make it local, in your neighbourhood, a couple of streets, one slum if there is one nearby, a marketplace. Because if you are local you can manage it pretty easily with low cost and low effort.
- Join a Free Food Distribution Network: If you think setting up a network of your own is quite difficult, you can join an existing one. The Robin Hood Army is a decentralised initiative which can be started by anyone. The organisation aims to collect food and then distribute it, by either collecting it from restaurants themselves or donors.
The Telangana Government recently started an initiative called “Feed the need”. It is an app, and also there are various places in Hyderabad at least with fridges and kiosks, where one can just drop off their excess edible food and that will be helped to distribute it for free among others.
The Sikh Community, all over India has organised Langars for anyone who might be suffering from food shortages. You can join their efforts to just help with serving of food or cooking by going to your local Gurudwara and enquiring about it, even if you are not Sikh yourself.
Some Muslim organisations too distributed food to people, especially daily wage labourers.
In fact, the RSS too distributed food to daily wage labourers and recorded it to show others, because they understand that during a time of crisis, a help like this forms communities and trust between people.
I have given just a few organisations, obviously they are not the full extent of it, I encourage everyone to just search up any organisation which might be doing relief work locally and join them, they can most of the times be found online too.
- Plant: Plant trees, plant plants. Tomatoes, Basil, Potatoes, Chilli, carrots, Eggplant (Bengan), Onions, are just some of the food sources which can be grown in pots, in your house, in your veranda. You can be self-sufficient with at least some of the food sources with that, they require comparatively low maintenance and are portable too, so you can move them around, and who’s to say, use them for decoration too (though I strongly suggest to use them for food purposes). I will give some links for other foods one can grow in pots.
Additionally, if you see a large unused swathe of land, or just a patch of greenery with just grass or some shrubs in it, you can throw seeds in the land, some plants are surprisingly resilient if only they can be left alone. But if you do care more, you can check up on them regularly, and dig up the ground, water them, maybe make it an activity you can do with your friends. One can do this in local gardens, just unused land, or any other piece of soil you see which can be used. If you are feeling passionate, just drop a whole lot of seeds on the soil and there is a very good chance they might grow and adapt.
If you also have a certain delicacy of hand and science, and if you have learnt it (which you can with minimal effort), you can try tree grafting. It is a method where two different types of trees or a bark from one tree can be joined to another, and it will bloom fruits from that other tree, as trees do not reject cell tissues like us humans do.
Conclusion
The sort of direct action strategies I have mentioned are just only some of them, and in no way represent an exhaustive list. Maybe some of the techniques do not work due to your living conditions or just contexts you acquire, but fear not, one can always use online methods to either spread awareness, or just think of new strategies. The goal is always to look at the material conditions and how they can be made better for everyone around you and others. Remember, as I say this again, Start Local (a couple of streets, a slum, a mohalla, just a market).
This will obviously not dismantle the system which has allowed companies a basic monopoly over food, and it will in no way solve world hunger tomorrow, but you can get a community who is committed to solving it, and more importantly, prime us and help us understand alternative systems of food production in a society destroyed by human-made climate change. It will help us form communities, which is an important tool for solving our problems months or even years from now.
Share food with each other.
Some extra sources I used to write this article, I have linked them above in the article itself, there are some more if anyone is interested :
People in Jharkhand go hungry during the lockdown, CM has to step in: https://www.news18.com/news/india/residents-of-jharkhand-village-say-they-are-going-hungry-due-to-lockdown-cm-steps-in-2567443.html
Millions go hungry during London’s first month of Lockdown: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jun/26/millions-went-hungry-during-first-months-of-uk-lockdown-figures-show-coronavirus
Children going hungry during India’s lockdown: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52210888
Food we can grow in pots: https://thegardeningdad.com/20-easy-vegetables-to-grow-in-pots-for-beginner/
How to graft a tree: https://www.wikihow.com/Graft-a-Tree
One can always look at other sources themselves if they found this interesting.
A student who studied journalism, Siddhant Garud cared about politics too late in their life so is trying to make up for it now
