Food Systems
by Sean Connelly
I recently picked up Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins’s 1977 book Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity. This was the follow up book to Lappe’s hugely popular Diet for a Small Planet. Although it was written nearly 40 years ago, the key message of the book is still relevant. The authors suggest that food provides the most useful tool to make sense of our complex world and that food is the right place to focus our attention and energy if we want change to occur. While the nature of global and local problems have shifted since that time, I believe the underlying message holds true. It is worrying that after 40 years, we are still grappling with similar problems.