Great post Scott!

T.R: You make a great point about food being one of the most obvious connections between people and natural systems. I think the rising popularity of local/organic food speaks to exactly what you’re saying because eating is such an incredibly sensuous activity to begin with. The mechanized, divorced-from-the-land, factory farm model misses that, and the rediscovery of food as experience is pretty powerful for people. I’ve seen friend’s faces light up when eating an awesome dinner in the same room with the farmers who picked the tomatoes from the vine and raised the turkeys – it’s powerful stuff. The rediscovery of the connection food has to the world somehow feels almost animalistic – and connects with some deeply human bit of us that frozen TV dinners never could.

And that loops back to your point, Sharon, about strategies for making the hard social change happen. If you can connect with people in a way that isn’t just intellectual, but engages senses, provides a meaningful set of values, and is secure and welcoming – then you might have something. Food seems like one pathway for getting there: everyone eats, and everyone likes good food, and everyone seems swayed by a connection to their food.

Understanding the difference between the factory model and the local/organic model is a great intro to the kinds of larger changes related to sustainability, I think. I’ve lived in both urban and rural areas, and in my experience, food is a great way of connecting with the very different kinds of people you find in both places. The urban sophisticate-type might be delighted by farmer’s markets, while a struggling single mom here might want to give her kids healthy food. And a few of my friends from the country love the connection they make with the food/the world through hunting. All expressed differently, but all related to making healthy connections in a time when disconnection is the name of the game.

Well said, and right on point. I think the inherent disconnect (or twisted) relationship we have to the natural world as defined by our industrial mindset creates a framework that ultimately destroys the very living system we depend on for life.

Much of sustainability falls into place when we start to see ourselves as part of the ecological system, and find beneficial ways to support ecological performance.

As a side note – the fastest and clearest connection I have seen for most people is their relationship to food. Food is an ecological service, that for the most part requires functioning relationships to maintain health. The failures of modern agriculture emerge when these relationships fails (factory farms causing increase risk for resistant bacteria for example).

Great Post.

Good point, Scott…I am presently reading a book called ‘Leadership on the Line’, which distiguishes between technical and adaptive challenges [the former is familiar, and already within our repertoire; the latter represents challenges that disturb people's values, habits etc]. It discusses why this fallback to techfix occurs – in times of adaptive pressures, people want to hear answers, and they want security, from their leaders, and because leadership becomes ‘dangerous’ when encouraging people to face adaptive challenges, all too often we retreat to the technical approach.

This issue has also been raised in a post to The Ecologist a few days ago.

‘None of the various technofixes on offer alter the fact that humanity has to learn to stop living on the last drops of cheap energy, and to start living within its means.’

The question for social change [including sustainability activists] is how can we help people recognise and deal with adaptive challenges?