‘First comes food, then morality’, according to the ballad ‘What keeps mankind alive?’ from The Threepenny Opera. The lyricist, Bertolt Brecht, loved to provoke. He also enjoyed holding up a mirror to his audience and presenting an unvarnished depiction of reality. Including the bits no one wanted to look at. For example, the topic of food. Few topics are more mundane, complex and fundamental. And few remain just as relevant today as they were in Brecht’s time.
We cannot take food for granted
The term ‘Fressen’, as used by Brecht (meaning ‘food’, ‘grub’ or ‘to gorge’, among other things), is more commonly used in the context of animals, but it can also have connotations of eating to excess, decadence, gluttony and overindulgence. Most people in Europe are able to take the availability of food for granted. Rather than asking ourselves whether we will be able to eat, we find ourselves focusing on what we will eat, when and what kind of quality we can expect – and if the food tastes good, we tend to eat too much. We tend to think of hunger as a problem faced by other people. Particularly people in far-off countries.
However, with the current rate of inflation, a growing number of people in our country are finding that their budget is stretched to its limits just shopping for food. The issue tends to be hidden from view. The social institution Soup & Chill in Basel, for example, has been based in abandoned properties or containers for the past six years. The organisation hands out free bread, fruit, tea, coffee and soup during the winter months. Most of us are enjoying a different reality – one that features packed shelves and extensive variety, with year-round availability of produce that is meant to be seasonal. Dishes that have been processed to varying degrees – and elaborately packaged – are always available. We buy too much and we throw away what’s left, even though most of us are aware that this kind of consumer behaviour is problematic.
Food systems
Food production is becoming cheaper and cheaper, and, as a result, price pressure on farmers and all along the value chain is growing. At the same time, we are not eating healthily and that is generating costs in other areas. This is why there is increasing talk about the food system: we can’t bring about a transformation through isolated pilot projects in one part of the value chain. We need to take a systemic view and act together, in unison. Various nonprofit organisations are making a valuable contribution here, cultivating old varieties, testing new technologies and organising networks to help shape this transformation. Their work illustrates the diverse approaches to the issue of food in the world of philanthropy. It is a topic that is being discussed in a range of areas: in the healthcare sector, for example, the vitamin manufacturer DSM’s Sight and Life Foundation is committed to combating malnutrition. The Seedling Foundation, which provides support for climate protection, is focusing on the food system. And in the social sphere, Stiftung Schweizer Tafel collects over 25 tonnes of food a day and distributes it to social institutions, reducing food waste at the same time.
Security and sustainability
Food is connected to a whole range of current issues. And there is an acute need for action: to ensure food security, we need sustainable and regenerative food production. ‘Our food system is not sustainable. To maintain our livelihood and the basis for our economic activity, we need to realign the entire value chain,’ the foreword to the ‘Wege in die Ernährungszukunft der Schweiz’ report on Switzerland’s food future explains. The fact that we have grown accustomed to the availability of food items should not blind us to the fact that things do not have to be this way – and that we have a lot of leverage to hand here. The Federal Office for the Environment FOEN writes that agriculture was responsible for 14.6 per cent of Switzerland’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2020. Dairy and meat production were at the heart of this. A third of global greenhouse gas emissions can be traced back to the food system, WWF Germany writes. The environmental organisation counts emissions caused by slash-and-burn agriculture as indirect emissions here. While these occur a long way away, the fact that Switzerland is only 50 per cent self-sufficient means that the emissions are directly associated with the Swiss food system. Our biodiversity footprint is also negatively impacted at home and abroad by our consumer behaviour. FOEN maintains that food and animal feed have the biggest impact here. In other words, our food choices have serious ramifications. And that is why – with all respect to Bertolt Brecht – morality has to come first. And then food.