The Human-Food Gap and Empathy: How Ecopedagogy Transformation Can Aid in Disrupting Hegemonic Foodways

• In Event: Extending Empathy in Environmental Justice Movements: Understanding Missing Voices and Utilizing Transformational Praxis

Proposal

Upon consideration of ecopedagogy and the human-nature relationship, the unsustainability and the gap of our human-food relationship can be analyzed through agricultural and sustainability movements such as The Extinction Rebellion and the ongoing protests of farmers globally. Through the consideration and utilization of empathy when acknowledging systemic injustices within foodways, food systems, and agriculture, the unsustainable systems that cause the human-food gap can be further alleviated.

Currently, food is, in a way, created—a process that is wholly separated from the consumer. Animal agriculture especially is cited as a leading cause of the climate crisis we are currently facing—but is rarely mentioned. Nor are the living conditions of the animals and workers who tend to the process of creating meat for human consumption. The system is in squalor. We are at risk of antibiotic resistance and overuse, pesticide and other harmful chemicals and plastics contaminating our bodies, and a heightened risk of zoonosis-caused pandemic events from the staggering loss of biodiversity globally.

The future of food looks even more grim—a further separation of a natural process of growing is already forming. From recombinant DNA technology being used to create lab-grown meats to farms of tubes to mass-produce large quantities of algae, hydroponic farms replacing soil systems, and brewery biotechnology—we are furthering the human-food gap with anthro-centric solutions.

Protests have arisen out of government subsidy inequity in agricultural funding. Small, privately run farms are being pushed out in favor of large, monocropping systems and mega animal agriculture processing. Families are seeking a more stable life for their children. Farmer suicides are at a risen state in India due to the inability to repay loans from banks and private landlords, heightened instances of cancer due to pesticide use, and staggering environmental degredation (Kaur, 2022). The ‘organic’ production of food has converted to a ‘mineral’ fossil-fuel dominated system with the industrialization and capitalization of taste, convenience, and efficiency of consumption rather than local, seasonal, and thoughtful consumption. Humans have tailored foodways to produce more food in less time, biologically changing the entire facade of what we eat, how we live, and the state of our health.

In synthesis, the unsustainable gap that has been driven into our food systems have had a dramatic effect on global environmental systems - human and more-than-human beings have been drastically changed by the rapid industrialization and lack of empathy within bloated mono-producing structures. In order to alleviate burdens of dominant systems, ecopedagogical thoughts, like empathy, can be extended to food and educational systems in an attempt to lessen the human-food gap and return locality-based, thoughtful consumption and labor to agriculture systems in dire need of transformation.

Author

• Michaela Ensweiler, UCLA