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Food Geographies

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View the page of Pascale Joassart-Marcelli

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What is the significance of food in our everyday lives? Pascale Joassart-Marcelli discusses the social, political, and ecological connections that food weaves between people and places across the world and revealing the centrality of food in the human experience.

Image courtesy of interviewee. December 1, 2023

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This video video discusses the concept of food geographies, emphasizing the intricate relationships that connect people, food, and the environment. It outlines how food is not just a social fact but a geographic one, influenced by the places where it is produced and consumed. These food relations encompass social, economic, political, and ecological aspects, highlighting the role of local environments in shaping food practices and how these practices, in turn, transform these environments.

The speaker addresses the complex issues surrounding food insecurity and obesity, noting their intertwined nature and the need for a systemic understanding that incorporates environmental, political, and cultural factors. They argue for moving away from a focus on merely increasing food production towards a model that prioritizes sustainability, equity, and community well-being.

The importance of empowering individuals to participate in food systems and decision-making is emphasized, along with the call to address inequities based on race, gender, and economic status. This video video also includes examples of sustainable practices and movements aimed at addressing food-related challenges, such as indigenous fishing practices, urban agriculture in Brazil, and the impacts of trade policies on local farmers.

The speaker aims to inspire readers to appreciate geography as an integrative discipline and encourages active involvement in building a more just and sustainable food system, asserting that solutions already exist but require the removal of socio-political obstacles and collaboration among communities.

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Food geographies are really the web of relations

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that connect people with each other

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and to the earth through food.

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Um, that also includes the places

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and the spaces that these relations create.

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And these relations are social, economic, political,

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ecological, which is why in the title of the book,

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I use the p parole form of geographies.

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Um, many people have said that food is a social fact.

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And I like to say that food is also a geographic fact.

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Um, food's always produced and consumed somewhere,

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and that somewhere really matters, on the one hand

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place, shapes what we eat, how we eat, what we grow.

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But at the same time, these activities also really transform

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those places and creates spatial connections

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at multiple scales.

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Whether we are talking about the body, going to the local

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and eventually to the global.

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Um, there's a lot of connections

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that are involved in the process of eating or growing food.

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Um, and we can break down this a little bit more.

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We can look at these connections.

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For example, environmentally, like I mentioned,

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food connects us to the physical

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environment where it's grown.

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Uh, the environment, the soil, the water, the biodiversity,

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the climate largely determines what we can cultivate.

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Although technology is changing that a little bit,

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but that very environment is also really transformed

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drastically by agriculture and food production.

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Um, we, for example, know now that about up to a third

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of greenhouse gas emission are generated by the food system.

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So these environmental connections are really important.

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Um, we can sort talk about the social

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and the cultural connections,

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but, eating in a way connects us to so many people

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who are involved in the production of food.

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We can talk about farmers on the other side of the world.

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It could be distributors, retailers, street vendors,

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dishwashers, chefs.

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Like the list is really long of the people

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who are touching our food at some point

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and help put it on our plates.

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Um, and I think this connection is also an

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emotional connection.

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We connect it to the people with whom we share food,

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people with whom we share meals.

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And while it often brings people together,

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it can also divide people.

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It can exclude the people who either cannot afford the food

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or whose food practices are sort

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of devalued, by society.

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Um, and a really important piece of all that is

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that these connections are also embedded within political

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and economic systems that shape them.

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The state regulate a lot of these things.

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And then of course, this very powerful economic actors,

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including large multinational corporations

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that influence a lot of this, what food we grow,

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how we grow it, where it's sold,

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how it's marketed, and so on.

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Um, and so that points to a lot

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of power imbalances within the food system.

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So really, food geographies, substantively

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is about all of these connections and the places

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and spaces that these connections produce.

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But at the same time, it's also about the interdisciplinary

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approach that we use to study these places,

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spaces and connection.

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And that includes a combination of physical geography,

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environmental, geography, cultural geography,

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urban geography and so on.

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So it's very interdisciplinary.

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It's very comprehensive,

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and it refers on the one hand to the phenomena

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that we studying, but also the theoretical

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and methodological approaches that we use.

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Food in a way touches us in such intimate ways,

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and it's so meaningful in our everyday life.

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And maybe the most important one, the most basic one, is

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the need to eat.

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Uh, so food is the most basic human need.

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We all need food to lead healthy lives.

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And historically, obtaining food, feeding

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of families has been our primary concern for human beings.

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And today, we don't necessarily acknowledge that

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or understand that.

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But even in very wealthy regions where food provision sort

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of seems secondary, we still work to earn an income

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so that we can buy food.

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We might be able to buy a lot of other things,

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but food is still a primary thing.

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We spend so much of our energy thinking about

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what we are going to eat, even if we have a lot of means.

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We still, what am I gonna have for dinner?

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You know, what, what would be fun to eat?

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So even though we have very sophisticated supply chains,

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we still spend a lot of time thinking about this.

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And these supply chains involve so many actors

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are controlled and regulated by powerful economic

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and political interests.

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And so if we want to understand things like

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food insecurity, which is a major problem in the world,

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one out of eight person is, is struggling with,

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food insecurity.

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Um, we,

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and if we want to understand, obesity,

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which is another related problem,

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they're not the opposite of each other.

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They really sort of are companions of each other.

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And more and more we realize that people

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who are food insecure are also struggling

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with excessive weight

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and with health issues related to obesity.

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And that points to some of the food system

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and things like the industrialization of food production,

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the rise in process, food, the role of food media,

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in terms of obesity or the cultural politics

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that are surrounding the body.

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Um, and so we cannot address these issues without thinking

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about it systemically from the political

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to the environmental, to the cultural world.

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And when we think about the, the significance

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Of food in our everyday life, it goes

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beyond food security.

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Um, a lot of this is also related to our

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social relations with each other and our identities.

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You know, we eat meals with each other.

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We use food to express ourselves.

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And one aspect of identity that comes

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to mind is gender, for example.

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Um, whether we are talking about the division

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of labor on farms or, in factories,

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or things that happen at home, like ideals of domesticity

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that are associated with cooking and feeding children,

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or even body politics that are linking femininity

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to certain ideals of thinness and bodies.

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So much of that is related to a very intimate level

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to our identities and who we are.

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Um, and so again,

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we are not gonna solve problems like food insecurity

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and, and, obesity.

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Some of these big problems that are often,

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discussed in the media without paying attention

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to the politics and the culture and all of these aspects.

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The book is intertwined between showing the relationship

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between sustainability and at the same time equity.

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And we know that food is putting a huge toll on the

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environment, and the book documents a lot of that.

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But as a human geographer,

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I also look at these environmental issues through political,

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economic and social perspectives.

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And so I try to understand these factors that lead

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to these extractive and exploitative system,

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and I make sure that people are part of the analysis.

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And that's why there's so much focus on, equity.

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And I really show the parallel between the exploitation

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of nature and the exploitation of people.

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And, I also emphasize the importance

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of empowering people to make change.

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Because if we don't deal with these equity issues,

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if we don't empower people, we're not gonna be able

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to solve the environmental problems, in,

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in the food system.

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And so the book really goes through a number of textbooks.

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Um, I, specifically decided

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to include a lot of textbooks.

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So each chapter probably has like three

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or four textbooks that are really almost like

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standalone examples.

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Like if a an instructor wanted to use the book,

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they could ignore the chapter and just focus on a case study

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and use that as an entry point.

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Uh, but they can also be used as kind of examples

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to illustrate the board broader point.

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And so, for example, I have, an example

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of indigenous people fishing

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on the Klamath River at the border between Oregon

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and California, and

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how they've been using sustainable practices for centuries,

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but how that has been damaged by the building of dams

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and, larger policies that are beyond the control.

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Um, I also have, a textbook on,

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Uh, corn farmers, in Mexico,

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indigenous corn farmer

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and how they've been affected by nafta,

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but how they're fighting this through a movement,

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towards food sovereignty.

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Um, I have a textbook on, women

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who are facing gender inequality in Malawi

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and kind of the social cost of that

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and some of the ways that we are trying to,

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that they're trying to, address that.

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Um, I'll give you maybe one more example, strategies

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that are anti-hunger urban strategies in Belo horizonte in

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Brazil, where they've built a whole system

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around urban agriculture and small producers.

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Uh, that's a very unique approach

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that has been quite successful.

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So I, I have a lot of examples like that

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that illustrate both the inequities in the system,

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but also some of the solutions, some of the ways

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that people are trying to, address these.

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It's clear. And I, I document that in the book in many ways

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that the food system is broken.

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Um, and one of the main problem is

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that the current food system really measures its success

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in terms of output, in terms of growth, in terms of profits.

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And it seems like the primary goal is

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to just keep producing more.

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And we have this fear that we are not gonna be able

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to feed the world, right?

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But in reality, we produce enough, we produce more

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calories than what we need, in the world.

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Um, so what we really need

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to do is we need to produce differently.

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We need to produce in a way that will

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preserve the environment and potentially even

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restore the environment.

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Uh, we need to support food livelihood so that people who

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take care of a food are not starving.

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Um, we also need to feed people healthy

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and culturally appropriate food.

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And so the focus really need to switch towards

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away from necessary producing more,

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but towards the wellbeing of the people

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and the planet, which again, leads us to equity questions.

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So we need to really reconfigure the power of relations

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and restore people's ability to control the seeds, the land,

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the water, the biodiversity, they own food culture.

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Um, and in the book, I, I refer a lot to the concept

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of the right to food, food justice, food sovereignty.

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These are related concepts that, help address

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this sort of strained relationship that we have

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between people, food, and the environment.

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Um, and again, many of these concepts point to the need

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to address and to empower people

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to participate in decision making,

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regarding these very intimate matters, like, food in

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so many ways is so intimate,

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and we need to address these inequities by removing racism,

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sexism, exploitation, oppression

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that really prevents people from

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building on their own knowledge.

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People have so,

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such good knowledge about their own ecological system

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that we are often ignoring and bypassing.

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Uh, so we need to empower them to access this knowledge,

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to apply it, to access resources like land,

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and to build on the connections that they already have

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to place in order to create a more sustainable system.

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So again, I provide a lot of examples in the book

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of people who've tried to do that, through ecology,

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agroforestry, permaculture, urban agriculture,

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mutual aid societies, democratic platform

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that people have built to discuss these things.

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And I also, try to speak to students

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who might be reading these books

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and try to show them ways that they can get involved

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by first learning

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and reflecting on their own practices, things

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that they might be doing, thinking about ways

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to eat differently,

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but also options for volunteering, becoming an advocate,

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helping organize, vote

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or support people who can vote, participate politically,

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just engage with the food system in different ways.

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First, I'm hoping that people will take food seriously

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and begin to realize that the future of humanity, in a way,

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I know it sounds very dramatic, but it depends on food.

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Our ability to live healthy, peaceful, dignified lives,

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to express ourselves, our identities, our culture

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to sustain our cultures, to care for communities

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and each other now,

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but also in the future really requires

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that food be produced, processed, distributed,

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consumed in ways that are both sustainable and equitable.

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So it's really important that people understand the,

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the significance of food in, in our lives,

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but also in terms of the environment.

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Um, a second goal

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or hope that I have for the book is

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that it will help reader gain a greater appreciation

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for geography as a integrative discipline

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that really brings together environmental, social, political

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and economic perspectives and looks at food

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or any topic for that matter.

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But within its broader context, I think geography is often,

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sort of less known discipline.

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And I'm hoping that the book will, will draw attention

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to the power of geography.

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Um, and I'm also hoping that hope, that, you know,

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readers will be motivated to get involved

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to build a more just and sustainable food system.

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And one of the things that I'm trying to show is

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that we already have answers to a lot of question.

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We sort of already know what we should do.

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We just need to continue documenting some of the successes.

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And we also need to keep a focus on removing some

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of the really strong political, economic

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and social obstacles that are in the way

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of building a more environmentally friendly

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and equitable food system.

00:00 - Food geographies are really the web of relations that connect people with each other and to the earth through food. that also includes the places and the spaces that these relations create. And these relations are social, economic, political,

00:20 - ecological, which is why in the title of the book, I use the p parole form of geographies. many people have said that food is a social fact. And I like to say that food is also a geographic fact. food's always produced and consumed somewhere, and that somewhere really matters, on the one hand place, shapes what we eat, how we eat, what we grow. But at the same time, these activities also really transform those places and creates spatial connections at multiple scales.

00:59 - Whether we are talking about the body, going to the local and eventually to the global. there's a lot of connections that are involved in the process of eating or growing food. and we can break down this a little bit more. We can look at these connections. For example, environmentally, like I mentioned, food connects us to the physical environment where it's grown. the environment, the soil, the water, the biodiversity,

01:26 - the climate largely determines what we can cultivate. Although technology is changing that a little bit, but that very environment is also really transformed drastically by agriculture and food production. we, for example, know now that about up to a third of greenhouse gas emission are generated by the food system. So these environmental connections are really important. we can sort talk about the social and the cultural connections, but, eating in a way connects us to so many people

01:57 - who are involved in the production of food. We can talk about farmers on the other side of the world. It could be distributors, retailers, street vendors, dishwashers, chefs. Like the list is really long of the people who are touching our food at some point and help put it on our plates. and I think this connection is also an emotional connection. We connect it to the people with whom we share food,

02:21 - people with whom we share meals. And while it often brings people together, it can also divide people. It can exclude the people who either cannot afford the food or whose food practices are sort of devalued, by society. and a really important piece of all that is that these connections are also embedded within political and economic systems that shape them. The state regulate a lot of these things.

02:46 - And then of course, this very powerful economic actors, including large multinational corporations that influence a lot of this, what food we grow, how we grow it, where it's sold, how it's marketed, and so on. and so that points to a lot of power imbalances within the food system. So really, food geographies, substantively is about all of these connections and the places and spaces that these connections produce.

03:12 - But at the same time, it's also about the interdisciplinary approach that we use to study these places, spaces and connection. And that includes a combination of physical geography, environmental, geography, cultural geography, urban geography and so on. So it's very interdisciplinary. It's very comprehensive, and it refers on the one hand to the phenomena that we studying, but also the theoretical

03:39 - and methodological approaches that we use. Food in a way touches us in such intimate ways, and it's so meaningful in our everyday life. And maybe the most important one, the most basic one, is the need to eat. so food is the most basic human need. We all need food to lead healthy lives. And historically, obtaining food, feeding of families has been our primary concern for human beings. And today, we don't necessarily acknowledge that

04:10 - or understand that. But even in very wealthy regions where food provision sort of seems secondary, we still work to earn an income so that we can buy food. We might be able to buy a lot of other things, but food is still a primary thing. We spend so much of our energy thinking about what we are going to eat, even if we have a lot of means. We still, what am I gonna have for dinner? You know, what, what would be fun to eat?

04:35 - So even though we have very sophisticated supply chains, we still spend a lot of time thinking about this. And these supply chains involve so many actors are controlled and regulated by powerful economic and political interests. And so if we want to understand things like food insecurity, which is a major problem in the world, one out of eight person is, is struggling with, food insecurity. we,

05:08 - and if we want to understand, obesity, which is another related problem, they're not the opposite of each other. They really sort of are companions of each other. And more and more we realize that people who are food insecure are also struggling with excessive weight and with health issues related to obesity. And that points to some of the food system and things like the industrialization of food production,

05:35 - the rise in process, food, the role of food media, in terms of obesity or the cultural politics that are surrounding the body. and so we cannot address these issues without thinking about it systemically from the political to the environmental, to the cultural world. And when we think about the, the significance Of food in our everyday life, it goes beyond food security. a lot of this is also related to our

06:06 - social relations with each other and our identities. You know, we eat meals with each other. We use food to express ourselves. And one aspect of identity that comes to mind is gender, for example. whether we are talking about the division of labor on farms or, in factories, or things that happen at home, like ideals of domesticity that are associated with cooking and feeding children, or even body politics that are linking femininity

06:38 - to certain ideals of thinness and bodies. So much of that is related to a very intimate level to our identities and who we are. and so again, we are not gonna solve problems like food insecurity and, and, obesity. Some of these big problems that are often, discussed in the media without paying attention to the politics and the culture and all of these aspects. The book is intertwined between showing the relationship

07:09 - between sustainability and at the same time equity. And we know that food is putting a huge toll on the environment, and the book documents a lot of that. But as a human geographer, I also look at these environmental issues through political, economic and social perspectives. And so I try to understand these factors that lead to these extractive and exploitative system, and I make sure that people are part of the analysis. And that's why there's so much focus on, equity.

07:43 - And I really show the parallel between the exploitation of nature and the exploitation of people. And, I also emphasize the importance of empowering people to make change. Because if we don't deal with these equity issues, if we don't empower people, we're not gonna be able to solve the environmental problems, in, in the food system. And so the book really goes through a number of textbooks. I, specifically decided

08:11 - to include a lot of textbooks. So each chapter probably has like three or four textbooks that are really almost like standalone examples. Like if a an instructor wanted to use the book, they could ignore the chapter and just focus on a case study and use that as an entry point. but they can also be used as kind of examples to illustrate the board broader point. And so, for example, I have, an example

08:34 - of indigenous people fishing on the Klamath River at the border between Oregon and California, and how they've been using sustainable practices for centuries, but how that has been damaged by the building of dams and, larger policies that are beyond the control. I also have, a textbook on, corn farmers, in Mexico, indigenous corn farmer and how they've been affected by nafta,

09:02 - but how they're fighting this through a movement, towards food sovereignty. I have a textbook on, women who are facing gender inequality in Malawi and kind of the social cost of that and some of the ways that we are trying to, that they're trying to, address that. I'll give you maybe one more example, strategies that are anti-hunger urban strategies in Belo horizonte in Brazil, where they've built a whole system

09:31 - around urban agriculture and small producers. that's a very unique approach that has been quite successful. So I, I have a lot of examples like that that illustrate both the inequities in the system, but also some of the solutions, some of the ways that people are trying to, address these. It's clear. And I, I document that in the book in many ways that the food system is broken. and one of the main problem is

09:57 - that the current food system really measures its success in terms of output, in terms of growth, in terms of profits. And it seems like the primary goal is to just keep producing more. And we have this fear that we are not gonna be able to feed the world, right? But in reality, we produce enough, we produce more calories than what we need, in the world. so what we really need to do is we need to produce differently.

10:25 - We need to produce in a way that will preserve the environment and potentially even restore the environment. we need to support food livelihood so that people who take care of a food are not starving. we also need to feed people healthy and culturally appropriate food. And so the focus really need to switch towards away from necessary producing more, but towards the wellbeing of the people

10:52 - and the planet, which again, leads us to equity questions. So we need to really reconfigure the power of relations and restore people's ability to control the seeds, the land, the water, the biodiversity, they own food culture. and in the book, I, I refer a lot to the concept of the right to food, food justice, food sovereignty. These are related concepts that, help address this sort of strained relationship that we have between people, food, and the environment. and again, many of these concepts point to the need

11:32 - to address and to empower people to participate in decision making, regarding these very intimate matters, like, food in so many ways is so intimate, and we need to address these inequities by removing racism, sexism, exploitation, oppression that really prevents people from building on their own knowledge. People have so, such good knowledge about their own ecological system

11:59 - that we are often ignoring and bypassing. so we need to empower them to access this knowledge, to apply it, to access resources like land, and to build on the connections that they already have to place in order to create a more sustainable system. So again, I provide a lot of examples in the book of people who've tried to do that, through ecology, agroforestry, permaculture, urban agriculture, mutual aid societies, democratic platform that people have built to discuss these things.

12:35 - And I also, try to speak to students who might be reading these books and try to show them ways that they can get involved by first learning and reflecting on their own practices, things that they might be doing, thinking about ways to eat differently, but also options for volunteering, becoming an advocate, helping organize, vote or support people who can vote, participate politically,

13:02 - just engage with the food system in different ways. First, I'm hoping that people will take food seriously and begin to realize that the future of humanity, in a way, I know it sounds very dramatic, but it depends on food. Our ability to live healthy, peaceful, dignified lives, to express ourselves, our identities, our culture to sustain our cultures, to care for communities and each other now, but also in the future really requires that food be produced, processed, distributed,

13:40 - consumed in ways that are both sustainable and equitable. So it's really important that people understand the, the significance of food in, in our lives, but also in terms of the environment. a second goal or hope that I have for the book is that it will help reader gain a greater appreciation for geography as a integrative discipline that really brings together environmental, social, political and economic perspectives and looks at food

14:12 - or any topic for that matter. But within its broader context, I think geography is often, sort of less known discipline. And I'm hoping that the book will, will draw attention to the power of geography. and I'm also hoping that hope, that, you know, readers will be motivated to get involved to build a more just and sustainable food system. And one of the things that I'm trying to show is that we already have answers to a lot of question.

14:40 - We sort of already know what we should do. We just need to continue documenting some of the successes. And we also need to keep a focus on removing some of the really strong political, economic and social obstacles that are in the way of building a more environmentally friendly and equitable food system.

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