The Complexities of Our Food System

I sat with a group of women farmers in the Oti Region that Madam Janet, a farmer herself, organized when I traveled to visit her. The women farm cocoa, rice and other food staples such as tomatoes, peppers, and onions. We talked about their day to day work as farmers, traditional laws on land, and female land ownership.

In our conversation, one thing that struck me was how unaware they were about who ate their foods, where their foods were sold, how their foods were used, and who was using their foods for what. 

Photography: Ekow Dawson

“70% of food we consume globally comes from small farmers", said Prof Elver, according to the UN Food & Agricultural Organisation (FAO). If 70% of food we consume comes from small scale farmers, then why do they have minimum knowledge of how the food system operates, and what happens to their food once it leaves the farm?

For instance,, there is something fundamentally wrong with the cocoa farmer who has bought their land, purchased their agricultural inputs, weeded, harvested, sun dried, and sold their cocoa beans but has never tasted chocolate. I ask, first, why are many small scale farmers too poor to buy the end product of the food they grow? Secondly, why does the farmer not know the processes involved to get their raw foods into a finished product?

Why should this matter?

Our food system is a series of interlocking networks coming together to work as a whole. This includes all the activities of production, processing, transport, and consumption involved from planting to consuming food.

We are food insecure, we are unsustainable, and our food production is a threat to natural resources. The growing competition for land, energy, and water has a direct impact on deforestation, soil erosion, and water shortages. We see the impact of climate change with increasing droughts, frequent storms, and extreme weather conditions.

We know what the problem is. Let’s call capitalism by its name. 

A vast majority of agricultural land is increasingly being used to grow feed for animals and fuel for cars. The majority of farmers growing food to actually feed people are not fairly compensated for their food. 

Who truly grows our food? And who is eating the food? And how does the food get from those who grow to those who consume? What happens between the farm and the plate? 

The food system is complex because capitalism is in our food.

Many small scale farmers are not typically consulted when policies about land, climate change, water, agricultural investments and inputs are created, even though they are the first, and most impacted.

I think about my own food journey, Adda Blooms, my food business, and I often wonder if i'm not contributing to the problem by turning my ancestral foods into a profit? I typically have a back and forth with myself, I pay for the foods above market price, and I ensure to buy directly from farmers. But, do the women I work with know what happens to the baobab once it leaves their village? And who is eating it?  And what am I doing to change that?