The Third Relationship 1 supermarkets. The implication of being fed by a system rarely enters
our minds. Implicitly we place our full trust in it. We assume the
modern food system will always be there. We expect it to continually
turn out more food, reinforcing our central belief that more is always
better.
It is the precariousness of this third relationship to food that sparked
this book. Looking back over time, we have seen people’s ability to
overcome scarcity, but no such ability to erase the ensuing unwanted
outcomes. When all we need to know about food is the location of the
nearest restaurant or supermarket, it is easy to ignore that unforeseen
consequences even exist.
The good news, however, is that our relationship to food is never
static. Rediscovering our reliance on forces always present but seldom
thought about sets the stage to fashion a new food bargain, one where
wants and realities become two sides of the same coin. But before we
can get there, we first need to understand how we arrived at this point
in the first place.
Four basic elements encompass the grand food bargain. This
book examines each, starting with taking stock of our relationship to
food in Part I. As we’ve already begun to explore, when we change
food, food changes us. Compared with the past, our relationship with
food today is a huge outlier. While the modern food system introduced
conveniences, there were never guarantees that being able to take food
for granted would last. Dismissing this broader understanding is just one
outcome of a modern food system that caters exclusively to individual
preferences.
Part II covers the forces that result in having unprecedented food on
hand. Five forces—the will to survive, the assumptions behind resources,
the norms underpinning governance, the beliefs placed on science, and
the values bestowed on markets—fuel the modern food system in its
drive to always produce more. Some forces are inherited, some were
already present, and some were human inventions. Understanding how
each operates, separately and together, is critical to recognizing where
the modern food system is headed.
Part III is about unexpected consequences. They include the
unforeseen, the unwelcome, and the unrecognized. They range from
polluted rivers to acute and chronic disease to global warming. Some