10 Agriculture and Food Systems
analyses whether Americans overeat. A review of the structures and actors in the
US food industry then follows, including how marketing imperatives drive taste,
cost, convenience and confusion. Through all this is the corporate need to pro-
mote eating more, especially amongst children, who then get the habit for life.
Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation deservedly received great public atten-
tion. It has a clear and simple message, and documents just how fast food has come
to dominate diet and life in the US. It could be said to be simplistic, in identifying
corporate institutions as the main protagonists of dietary change. On the other
hand, the obesity crisis emerged quietly at the end of the 20th century, with only
6 per cent of adults obese in the early 1980s, and 25 years later it affects more than
25 per cent. In this chapter, Schlosser explores the wide range of approaches taken
by a single restaurant corporation, McDonalds. It is modernism at its most effec-
tive – a common language and culture spread across all employees, all restaurants,
in all countries where they operate. The focus on children as customers (not the
parents) is clearly exposed – advertising is directed to children, who use their ‘lev-
erage’ or ‘pester power’ to affect the behaviour and choices of adults. Fast food
companies spend $3 billion annually on television advertising in the US. In the
late 1970s, a teenager drank 7oz of soda daily; today it is three times as much. This
is liquid candy or empty calories, serving just to increase the incidence of obesity.
Part 4: Localized Food Systems
In the first article, Jack Kloppenburg and co-authors set out the compelling con-
cept of the foodshed, and indicate just how connections to food and place can
make a difference for both consumers and producers. As they say, ‘if we are to
become native to our places, the foodshed is one way of envisioning that beloved
country’. They, too, though, show that fundamental changes are required if we are
to evolve more ecologically and socially responsible agricultural and food systems.
This raises questions about the nature of economies as a whole – are they simply
geared in such a way so as to prevent sensible outcomes for people and nature? Or
can they be changed too? The idea of the foodshed, a socio-geographic space, in
which human activity is embedded in the natural integument of the particular
place, is powerful and could help to provoke some serious rethinking about whole
agricultural systems and their sustainability.
There are many perspectives on what constitutes sustainability and how it can
be applied equally across agricultural contexts. As a result, a variety of analytical
approaches have been developed, including energy accounting, economic valua-
tion of non-marketed goods and services, ecological footprints, carbon accounting
and the use of indicators for sustainability. Most of these approaches have only
focused on environmental impacts up to the farm gate, and have not assessed the
additional environmental effects of transporting foodstuffs via processing to retail
outlets and then to the point of consumption. Evidence is mounting that these