Latest / The Future Herd / 30: AgriFood Names the Tension Between Capital and Care with Elaine Power

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30: AgriFood Names the Tension Between Capital and Care with Elaine Power · The Future Herd

• 0:01
  Jesse Hirsh: Hi, I'm Jesse Hirsch.
• 0:03
  Welcome to the Future Herd.
• 0:14
  Today's episode is a banger, one of those incendiary conversations that just
• 0:20
  kind of feels dangerous, that makes you wanna kind of hide somewhere, where no
• 0:26
  one's gonna see how you react to it, or whether you laugh, whether you gasp,
• 0:31
  whether you start to have revelations about a completely different food system.
• 0:37
  Elaine Power is the kind of intellectual that not only does Canada
• 0:42
  produce, but we sure need a whole lot more from, or at least we need
• 0:47
  to listen to a whole lot more from.
• 0:50
  And Elaine is kind of the person who, quite frankly, uh, reinvigorates my
• 0:57
  desire to use this podcast as a platform for provocation, as a platform for
• 1:04
  thoughtful policy as we kind of allude to at the conclusion of our conversation,
• 1:10
  but also to really encourage people to think about food and our relationship
• 1:16
  to food in an entirely new manner.
• 1:20
  Now, full disclosure, I recorded this conversation in May and then sat on it
• 1:25
  for a while, and part because it, it, it is so radical, it is so refreshing.
• 1:32
  It is, if anything, kind of dangerous to the status quo.
• 1:37
  And I wanted to make sure that we had a certain amount of political and, uh, uh,
• 1:43
  policy diversity, uh, in the can, kind of in our knowledge base before we lit
• 1:50
  fire to it all by chatting with Elaine.
• 1:53
  Now, granted, I am hyping up this conversation in hopes that
• 1:57
  you are excited to listen to it.
• 2:00
  Uh, this is where I will remind you that if this isn't the first time you've
• 2:05
  listened to this podcast, go and give us a rating somewhere, anywhere that
• 2:10
  other people might be able to access the episodes we're putting together.
• 2:15
  Uh, it certainly helps give us feedback, but more importantly, it helps give,
• 2:20
  uh, the knowledge and the conversations that we're producing some traction.
• 2:25
  'cause that's really the moral responsibility I felt after having
• 2:30
  this conversation with Elaine, that on the one hand we face, uh, some really
• 2:36
  challenging and difficult times ahead.
• 2:39
  But on the other hand, there is a range of policy ideas, cultural
• 2:43
  ideas, solutions that would really transform society and our food in,
• 2:50
  in a way that is truly revolutionary.
• 2:53
  So enough hype, uh, let's get into the episode.
• 2:57
  Uh, without any further ado, here's a lane power.
• 3:03
  Elaine, welcome to the Future Herd.
• 3:05
  Elaine: Thank you so much.
• 3:06
  I'm delighted to be here.
• 3:08
  Jesse Hirsh: Now, I, I've kind of worked up a ritual where the first
• 3:12
  question is meant to be a kind of intuitive, uh, almost roar shot test.
• 3:17
  Uh, what does the future mean to you?
• 3:21
  Elaine: Oh my gosh, the future.
• 3:26
  Jesse Hirsh: It's a loaded word.
• 3:26
  What could I say?
• 3:27
  Elaine: It, it is Jessie.
• 3:30
  Um, I am kind of worried about our future, I have to say, uh,
• 3:35
  with no matter which way you turn, uh, it feels pretty messed up.
• 3:42
  so I'm worried about, uh, democracy.
• 3:47
  I'm worried about the food system.
• 3:49
  I'm worried about the climate crisis.
• 3:52
  I'm worried about the food system.
• 3:54
  It's all kind of messed up.
• 3:55
  I have a, I have a 19-year-old, and of course I teach young people.
• 4:00
  I, I was teaching this past term, I was teaching, of course, on the food system,
• 4:06
  and I had to work really hard not to just really burden them completely,
• 4:13
  like, like kind of, you know, um, all in that, all encompassing sense of doom
• 4:19
  and dread and despair because the food, the, the dominant, the agro industrial
• 4:24
  food system is totally messed up.
• 4:27
  I, I, I'll, I'll refrain from using profanity, but, um,
• 4:31
  Jesse Hirsh: You may,
• 4:31
  Elaine: really is
• 4:32
  Jesse Hirsh: this is the benefit of podcast is we could fucking square.
• 4:37
  There's privileges there,
• 4:39
  Elaine: so if a system is really fucked up, it's really fucked
• 4:42
  up no matter which way you turn.
• 4:44
  So, yeah, so,
• 4:47
  Jesse Hirsh: on.
• 4:47
  Elaine: my, I mean, they, they, the young people I taught this year, um, they,
• 4:52
  they seemed, they seemed inspired by my passion for the subject and they also
• 4:57
  seemed to get that I cared about them as people and this messed up system.
• 5:04
  So, uh, and, but one, one day after class.
• 5:08
  One of the very bright young women came up to me and said,
• 5:12
  how do you stay optimistic?
• 5:14
  No.
• 5:14
  How do you stay hopeful?
• 5:16
  And I, and I, I refrain from saying, well, I'm not very hopeful.
• 5:21
  And then proceeded to, um, to talk about, you know, watching the birds
• 5:26
  in my backyard, um, as a, as a way to maintain my sense of stability
• 5:33
  and groundedness in the world.
• 5:34
  Um, I, every week in the class, I would do a section, you know, that I called in
• 5:39
  the news about things that were happening that we generally, um, in the news about
• 5:45
  that had some relation to the food system.
• 5:47
  It's very depressing.
• 5:49
  And so after she asked that question, um, the next week it was March, and
• 5:54
  the next week I put up pictures of, you know, the robins and the crocuses.
• 5:59
  Like, is really the only way to stay for me anyway, to stay from
• 6:06
  descending into total despair.
• 6:09
  Jesse Hirsh: Uh, and there is a kind of paradox between, on the one hand,
• 6:13
  I, I think a growing sense that our food system is at risk, that our, our,
• 6:18
  our global climate system is at risk.
• 6:21
  I'm personally feeling 2026 may be a breaking point on a number of different
• 6:27
  fronts, and yet every day I'm eating food that gives me pleasure and every
• 6:33
  day I'm learning more about food that makes me feel more human and makes me
• 6:38
  even feel healthier as I age, which was a paradox I had not anticipated
• 6:44
  or, or, and certainly welcome.
• 6:47
  Elaine: Yeah.
• 6:48
  Jesse Hirsh: I do try to focus our conversations here on the podcast on kind
• 6:52
  of the present and the future, I do feel a little bit of kind of responsibility
• 6:57
  to my audience to spend a little bit at the beginning, not so much on origin
• 7:02
  story, but getting a sense of where the guest's perspectives come from.
• 7:07
  And, and in your case, you've had a, a really interesting dance between
• 7:12
  your political interests and your research interests, where they are
• 7:17
  clearly reinforcing each other, but you're not necessarily the kind
• 7:23
  of academic or politically engaged person who has focused on a specific
• 7:28
  issue and stuck with that issue.
• 7:31
  W. It's guided your journey.
• 7:34
  And I say that 'cause you could have ended up anywhere championing any policy
• 7:39
  or fighting any, you know, tyranny.
• 7:43
  But the, the causes and the issues you've chosen kind of speak to maybe
• 7:48
  not a logic, maybe a, a method.
• 7:51
  I, I don't know.
• 7:53
  I, I'm curious if, if only because I, in, in sort of learning more about
• 7:58
  your background, I was blown away.
• 8:00
  I was like, wow, that, that seems like you had a really fun time.
• 8:03
  Even though to your point, you're dealing with issues that are kind
• 8:07
  of depressing and, and, and kind of difficult, uh, on an empathic level.
• 8:12
  To wrap your head around, I'm doing what I do, which is ramble.
• 8:15
  Uh, Elaine, uh, uh, help me out here.
• 8:18
  H how, how, how did you get to where you are now?
• 8:20
  Was it entirely accidental or were there some driving principles along the way?
• 8:27
  Elaine: I think, you know, I'm from the East coast.
• 8:28
  I, I grew up in Nova Scotia and, uh, I, I feel like the wind blew me here.
• 8:33
  Um, I don't, it's funny you should say that, this, because I was just, I'm
• 8:39
  just working on a paper right now that has a revise and resubmit and I'm kind
• 8:43
  of rethinking the literature review and thinking it's only I had specialised a
• 8:49
  little more, but it's not in my nature.
• 8:52
  I, I am kind of, I'm one of those people who likes to see the, like,
• 8:56
  to make the connections among the, the bigger the, in the big picture.
• 9:01
  And so, um, you know, the, the book that got me interested in food and
• 9:07
  food systems was Francis Mo La Pe Diet For a Lonely Planet, or, yeah,
• 9:14
  no Diet For What, what's it called?
• 9:16
  Diet.
• 9:17
  Diet for a Hungry Planet, not Lonely Planet.
• 9:19
  That's, that's the Travel People Diet for a Hungry Planet.
• 9:23
  which I read as an undergraduate, which is a long time ago now.
• 9:26
  And, um, uh, I got really interested in the politics of food because of
• 9:31
  that book and the idea that, uh, you know, we had lots of food and, uh,
• 9:37
  we, we, we needed, you know, to figure out how to distribute it better.
• 9:42
  and the idea that we didn't need, you know, meat necessarily to have a, a
• 9:47
  healthy diet and to have enough protein.
• 9:49
  Um, that kind of set me on a, on a journey that is long and rambly.
• 9:54
  And as I say, I think the wind kind of blew me here, but, um, I don't know if
• 9:57
  that answers your question, but Thank you.
• 9:59
  Uh, uh, it's kind of reassuring, especially today to that, um, to
• 10:05
  think about the, you know, the, the pieces that all came together
• 10:10
  to, to put me here, which honestly sometimes feels like a cosmic joke.
• 10:15
  Jesse Hirsh: Well, it does set up a natural follow up, which is why do
• 10:20
  you think that food, both as an area of research, but also as an area of
• 10:25
  practise, whether formally or informally, professionally or personally, why do you
• 10:31
  think it lends itself to generalists?
• 10:33
  Because as you were describing that, I was thinking not just of the people I've
• 10:37
  interviewed as part of this podcast, but the people I've admired and I've enjoyed
• 10:43
  that they were, for the most part, people who were interested in a lot of stuff and
• 10:48
  they used those interests as ingredients to make themselves and the food or art or
• 10:54
  research that they create even greater.
• 10:59
  So I, I'm curious, given, you know, the time you spent in these circles,
• 11:03
  whether you, whether you agree, whether you think that this is an area in
• 11:08
  which generalists are kind of not only encouraged to thrive, do thrive.
• 11:15
  Elaine: Yeah, absolutely.
• 11:16
  And I mean, uh, as you know, I, I think food is fascinating and it can lead you
• 11:23
  in, it can lead you in so many directions.
• 11:25
  I mean, from the very personal, um, you know, it's something we all
• 11:29
  need every day, several times a day.
• 11:32
  Um, it's, it's, you know, it's biological, it's physical, it's
• 11:36
  cultural, it's, uh, symbolic.
• 11:39
  It's, it can take in so many different directions into history, into art, into
• 11:44
  food systems, into the, you know, the, the big picture, the small picture.
• 11:50
  Um, I don't, I don't know, there's nothing really quite like it.
• 11:55
  Uh, I mean, and it's a source of pleasure, um, you know, kind of Uh, so from the very
• 12:04
  small, I mean, I, I did spend a few years as a dietitian, so you kind of thinking
• 12:09
  about, you know, nutrients and all the way through to, know, the, the climate
• 12:16
  crisis and, you know, global issues, and you in the news, you know, the Strait of
• 12:23
  Horror News, the war that's, that's going on right now, that's gonna have a huge,
• 12:27
  people are gonna die because food prices are gonna go up and, uh, they, they won't
• 12:33
  be able to afford the food that they eat.
• 12:35
  So it, it feels like something that connects both in both directions from
• 12:40
  the very, um, minutia to the, the global.
• 12:45
  And, and there's, like I say, there's delight and despair at
• 12:50
  the same moment, um, in food, in, in my pers from my perspective.
• 12:56
  Jesse Hirsh: Well, and again, you're sort of helping me understand my
• 12:59
  own interests, my own appeal to here, and, and I think it is because
• 13:03
  food allows us to connect the dots.
• 13:05
  It, it allows us to see how politics and economics and culture and family
• 13:12
  and, and, and our sense of being all kind of relate to each other, how
• 13:17
  these systems all impact each other.
• 13:20
  So still on the big picture piece, you know, I kind of inherited
• 13:25
  the word AgriFood when I started this podcast in that it was not
• 13:30
  necessarily something I thought about.
• 13:32
  It was just some, a word I heard other people use.
• 13:35
  And it was it by default, part of the framing of the EPIs of the podcast.
• 13:41
  And you were one of the first person to kind of poke at that word when I
• 13:45
  started communicating with you and, and got me thinking about where it
• 13:48
  came from and the role that it serves.
• 13:51
  And to phrase this in the form of a, a kind of question or observation,
• 13:57
  it strikes me that there's a real contradiction in the phrase AgriFood.
• 14:02
  And as I unpack it, it kind of feels that the agri side is really kind of
• 14:08
  right wing in its view of the world.
• 14:11
  And the food side is really kind of left wing in terms of its view of the world.
• 14:18
  And I'm not sure how conscious this kind of setup is, whether it's like
• 14:23
  deliberately evoking the French National Assembly or whatever.
• 14:28
  Am I wrong in sensing this kind of political, uh, uh, polarisation or
• 14:34
  political balance that has been created?
• 14:37
  Elaine: Wow, that, um, I've never thought of that, Jesse.
• 14:41
  I think it might be a really, um, it might be kind of illuminating, uh, you know,
• 14:47
  certainly, uh, agro or agri, you know, we have AgriFood, um, tends to for sure
• 14:56
  represent, I think corporate interests.
• 14:58
  Uh, the, there's another little part of me that says that the national,
• 15:01
  the people I know who are part of the National Farmers Union would kind of,
• 15:05
  would object to that, because of course there are also the, the small and medium
• 15:10
  sized farmers, which probably you're one.
• 15:13
  Um, uh, but, yeah, I think you might be onto something there.
• 15:20
  because, you know, the agra, the corporate, the corporate side of things is
• 15:27
  really, um, well, capitalism in general, I think turns things of value upside down.
• 15:33
  So that, and in the food system, the corporate food companies, those
• 15:39
  big multinationals are really all about creating, I think it was Tony
• 15:44
  Winston who said, they're like, create pseudo foods, you know,
• 15:47
  because that's how they make money.
• 15:49
  They take cheap ingredients and they turn it into something that we, call food.
• 15:55
  But really, you know, certainly in terms of ultra processed um, are
• 16:02
  just a vehicle for making money.
• 16:03
  And, uh, they might have some calories in them, but are really very, you know,
• 16:08
  they don't sustain life, and they're very destructive planet and for the,
• 16:14
  for the, you know, the natural world.
• 16:16
  So, yeah, I think you might be onto something there.
• 16:20
  Jesse Hirsh: Well, and, and I say this only because I am trying to understand
• 16:25
  these systems and the different dynamics in them, and I have always been alienated
• 16:30
  from the agricultural side in that I, I don't feel that they are including
• 16:35
  either the voices or the analysis or even, quite frankly, the data to,
• 16:41
  to understand the sector they're in.
• 16:43
  And, and a key point that, that you often bring up that I wouldn't mind
• 16:48
  kind of unpacking for people, 'cause it, it, it strikes me as both self-evident
• 16:51
  but also ignored is the extent to which labour in our food system is either
• 16:59
  unrecognised or radically undervalued.
• 17:03
  And I think farmers understand this.
• 17:06
  Farmers very much feel that their labour is undervalued largely.
• 17:10
  But I I'd love to hear your, your kind of, uh, insight or understanding of this.
• 17:16
  'cause I suspect that it, to your point, really emphasises the values that we come
• 17:22
  to the AgriFood or the food system with.
• 17:26
  Elaine: I'm just, I'm just repeatedly struck by the, labour that's invisible,
• 17:33
  uh, and or undervalued, if you think right from the, from the, from the farm.
• 17:39
  Um, if you think about, you know, bigger, more corporate farms that
• 17:43
  are employing in Canada, you know, temporary foreign workers or undocumented
• 17:47
  workers, um, labourers whose they're doing backbreaking work, um, that
• 17:55
  is, uh, under totally undervalued.
• 17:58
  They're feed, they're, they're feeding us, and yet, and that which is, you
• 18:03
  know, the basis of life for humanity.
• 18:07
  And yet we, we treat them poorly.
• 18:10
  We, we don't, we, we, they're invisible.
• 18:13
  They're wages are low.
• 18:16
  They're, they have long hours.
• 18:18
  Um, we send them home when we don't need them anymore.
• 18:22
  at, you know, with, with disruption of family ties and, uh, you know, all kinds
• 18:27
  of, um, uh, you know, dysfunctional relationships because they're
• 18:32
  travelling back and forth all the time.
• 18:34
  So from there to the supermarket where, you know, the, we, we gave, uh, workers,
• 18:41
  you know, heroes pay during the pandemic for a few months and then went back to,
• 18:47
  you know, minimum wages, uh, broken ships not, you know, not took full-time work.
• 18:53
  Um, low rates of, uh, you know, unionisation and benefits and
• 18:57
  all the rest to the, the domestic kitchen where, you know, um, with,
• 19:03
  and the thing about food is that it, it's actually, it's a lot of work.
• 19:08
  And so, um, you know, every, it seems like those who are able to wanna
• 19:13
  shuffle it off onto other people.
• 19:16
  You know, the, the second wave feminists in the sixties and seventies
• 19:19
  wanted nothing to do with the kitchen because it, because it is
• 19:24
  undervalued and because it is, you know, invisible and it's so much work.
• 19:29
  Um, and so, you know, the, the big corporate aggro man, food man, quote
• 19:34
  unquote food manufacturers, you know, started with TV dinners, but,
• 19:38
  you know, have, have capitalised on, like literally on this, um.
• 19:43
  The, the work and the undervaluing of food.
• 19:46
  So in a way, um, it's like, yeah.
• 19:49
  So I think those of us in who are food scholars who also think of ourselves as
• 19:54
  feminists, you know, have had to work at, um, bringing, um, that, trying to
• 20:01
  point out that this is, this work is fundamental to human life and, uh, it,
• 20:07
  it needs to be more valued than it is.
• 20:10
  So, um, I don't, I, I think because it's been women who are, you know, uh, at
• 20:17
  least, uh, in the domestic fear sphere, I think, you know, in the, the agricultural
• 20:23
  sphere, they're often racialized.
• 20:25
  You know, we, we think, you know, I think about, in the US with, you know,
• 20:30
  that it was black people, slaves who laboured in the fields, um, and it's
• 20:37
  still, you know, mostly racialized people in the, in the fields, uh,
• 20:41
  whether it's in the US or in Canada.
• 20:45
  Um, you know, I think, I, I don't, I, you know, as you were speaking, I thought
• 20:49
  about France where, um, you know, there is certainly more, more emphasis put on
• 20:55
  the, on cultural aspects of food, but I think their food system is also still
• 21:01
  very much, uh, based on exploitation of, of labour and, and the environment.
• 21:06
  I was just reading a piece in The Guardian this morning about seaweed blooms off
• 21:11
  the coast of France that, um, from agricultural runoff fertilisers and,
• 21:17
  and manure, um, that it, you know, it's, it's actually, it's literally killing
• 21:21
  people who, who step on these, you know, up to five feet deep piles of seaweed
• 21:26
  and it's releasing hydrogen sulphide and kill, like, literally killing people.
• 21:32
  Um, and, you know, undoubtedly also killing fish and, you
• 21:37
  know, wildlife and so on.
• 21:39
  So, uh, back to the original, you know, this is really depressing.
• 21:44
  It's really dark, but, uh, but yes, I think the, you know, know what it will
• 21:50
  take to re if we, if we were able to revalue food and the, the, like, real food
• 21:57
  and the labour that produces it, uh, I think we would, we would the world because
• 22:04
  it's so much at the heart of, of life.
• 22:10
  Jesse Hirsh: And as an aside, when you were at the beginning talking about your
• 22:14
  students', often reaction to you and, and, and I, what I was hearing in your
• 22:18
  observation was that on some level, in spite of your best efforts to help these
• 22:24
  students understand the horrors that await them, you are nonetheless inspiring them.
• 22:29
  And I think that inspiration partly comes from acknowledging what
• 22:34
  everyone is seeing, but hardly anyone is willing to talk about.
• 22:38
  And I, I, I think you did that just there.
• 22:41
  And I want to unpack a little because.
• 22:44
  You sort of alluded to something that I'm kind of passionate about myself, which
• 22:48
  is the, the curse of convenience that, you know, we've been sold this myth that,
• 22:53
  you know, convenience is good, whether it comes to our food, whether it comes to our
• 22:58
  social interactions, in my case, whether it comes to our technology, when, you
• 23:03
  know, there's value in making a healthy meal, uh, especially with others, right?
• 23:09
  And making that meal and sharing that labour and eating that food there,
• 23:13
  there's community building there, there, there's a social ritual there.
• 23:17
  So I'm, I'm curious, and, and you kind of alluded to this, but I'm curious on a, on
• 23:22
  a political level, both on the, the, the, the plane of community, but also higher.
• 23:28
  When we think about society, how do we counter the, that culture of convenience?
• 23:34
  How do we get people not just to value other people's labour when it comes
• 23:39
  to making food, which is essential?
• 23:41
  And, and to your point, it, it's not just agricultural
• 23:44
  labour that remains racialized.
• 23:46
  I mean, restaurant labour, right?
• 23:48
  Kitchens are also very racialized.
• 23:51
  Elaine: Yep.
• 23:52
  Jesse Hirsh: So while on the one hand, yes, we do need to be valuing the labour
• 23:56
  of the people who produce food, we also think, correct me if I'm wrong,
• 24:02
  we need to be valuing our own labour.
• 24:04
  Like thinking that it is worth us spending time to make a healthy
• 24:09
  meal for us and our family.
• 24:12
  A lot of people don't even, aren't even there.
• 24:14
  And that's one of the reasons why they're so seduced by this myth of convenience.
• 24:20
  Elaine: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 24:22
  I mean, when you, you talked about community building, you know,
• 24:25
  making food for oneself and others.
• 24:29
  I think it's also, it's an expression of love.
• 24:32
  It's, um, and, uh, yeah, so, sorry, I lost the question.
• 24:40
  But, um, you probably know I'm an advocate for basic income.
• 24:45
  Um, and one of the things that I think income might be able to help us with
• 24:51
  is rethinking how we spend our time.
• 24:56
  right now, as you know, we're, we're all having to scramble to, um, make
• 25:02
  enough money to put a roof over our head and food on the table.
• 25:06
  And, you know, some, of us, it's kind of a chicken and egg, isn't it?
• 25:12
  Because I think about how people are really scrambling to, um, I say, do
• 25:21
  that work, but also raise a family potentially, or to be, you know,
• 25:25
  to be involved in other activities.
• 25:27
  And it we're so.
• 25:29
  We're so time crunched.
• 25:30
  I mean, maybe it's a product of, I was gonna say maybe it's a product
• 25:34
  of the choices we make, but I, choice is kind of a such a loaded word.
• 25:39
  You know, I think we, we have li very limited choice actually.
• 25:44
  and so in a way, I think basic income would open up some space
• 25:48
  potentially for us to make other choices and for people to rethink their
• 25:52
  relationship to food in particular.
• 25:54
  That they could rethink how to, they get their food and how much they want to, how
• 26:00
  much of their own food they wanna grow.
• 26:01
  Um, and give us some breathing space.
• 26:04
  I mean, in a way, capitalism kind of depends on us not having that breathing
• 26:09
  space, you know, so that we are buying those convenience foods and like buying
• 26:13
  or buying instead of taking time.
• 26:16
  So, you know, there's a real, obviously there's kind of a, you know, such a
• 26:20
  relationship between time and, and money, um, inverse relationship.
• 26:25
  So those of us who have some money don't have the time, and those of
• 26:29
  who have time don't have money.
• 26:32
  so anyway, it's a, it's messed up.
• 26:35
  But, but absolutely I think, uh, you know, we have been sold this, um,
• 26:42
  bill of, you know, convenience that of course we all, we all want to work less.
• 26:49
  and, and then we forget about the, joy, the, the, the joy.
• 26:54
  Also the, the, pain of the, of that work, um, of, you know, producing
• 27:01
  our own food of, um, you know, that.
• 27:04
  Uh, but I, I honestly, there's, to me there's nothing like, it could
• 27:08
  be very simple food, but if it's homemade, it has a different quality.
• 27:12
  It's like the food that you grow yourself that tastes nothing like what
• 27:17
  you, what you get in the, in the store.
• 27:20
  Um, so there's that we, it, the, the convenience gloss is over the
• 27:26
  delight, the joy, the pleasures of, of other aspects of, of the food.
• 27:32
  Whether it, particularly the taste, but also that joy and pleasure of sharing
• 27:36
  the food of, um, you know, of the love that comes with that, you know.
• 27:45
  Jesse Hirsh: I kind of feel that we are, we're, we're evoking a larger culture of
• 27:49
  food and on the one hand we've already critiqued the kind of corporate culture
• 27:55
  of food at at least we've, you know, hit some of the edges around that.
• 27:59
  And, you know, to go back to my point about this juxtaposition between the
• 28:04
  politics of the agri side and the politics of the food side, I, I'm
• 28:09
  curious to what extent, again, also circling back to our generalist idea, w.
• 28:16
  Food studies as a larger, kinda a culture, as a larger kind of discourse
• 28:22
  of researchers, of activists, of eaters, of, you know, people who
• 28:27
  wanna make food more accessible.
• 28:31
  What role does culture play within that work?
• 28:35
  And, and I say this and playing on words that I always find it funny that the
• 28:41
  word agriculture relies upon culture.
• 28:45
  And of course that culture means lots of different things from fermentation
• 28:49
  to, you know, how farmers do things.
• 28:52
  But the food side has a culture to itself that I think you're describing
• 28:56
  when you talk about affection.
• 28:57
  When we talk about community, when we talk about valuing the labour that
• 29:01
  goes into these things, is there a, a meta consciousness within food studies
• 29:08
  around culture and psychology of food?
• 29:10
  I mean, there certainly is around health and around nutrition and around policies.
• 29:16
  Are there people, you know, elaborating and doing research around some of
• 29:20
  the, the concepts that we're, we're currently unearthing and throwing around?
• 29:25
  Elaine: Yeah, I think so.
• 29:25
  I think some, you know, you mentioned two other people that you've had
• 29:28
  on your podcast, and I would say both of them have, uh, you know, an
• 29:32
  awareness of, of cultural issues.
• 29:36
  Um, I think sometimes it gets buried in other, you know, I think each
• 29:43
  of us comes to, this, comes to food studies with our own preoccupations
• 29:48
  and and, you know, whether that's the environment, uh, and so on.
• 29:56
  So I, you know, there, I think it is in a way, maybe the substrate
• 30:00
  underneath a lot of what happens.
• 30:03
  Um, maybe again, kind maybe taken for granted somewhat, um, more than others.
• 30:09
  Um,
• 30:12
  Jesse Hirsh: Well,
• 30:12
  Elaine: yeah.
• 30:13
  Uh, sorry, I
• 30:14
  Jesse Hirsh: and
• 30:14
  Elaine: lost your question again.
• 30:16
  Jesse Hirsh: well, you, you're not losing anything.
• 30:19
  We we're, we're, we are, uh, quite joyously discussing very
• 30:24
  scary and at the same time, inspiring topics at the same time.
• 30:28
  Whi which kind of leads me to a follow up in, in speaking with Alyssa and speaking
• 30:34
  with Charles and speaking with yourself, I feeling a sense of revolution that,
• 30:41
  that, you know, within food studies there is a kind of revolutionary ethos,
• 30:47
  which to go to our earlier point is a consequence of using food to connect
• 30:53
  the dots and see the poly crisis that is threatening all aspects of our lives.
• 31:03
  Is, is food studies, uh, explicitly revolutionary or are there just a lot
• 31:09
  of revolutionaries in food studies?
• 31:12
  Elaine: That's such a great question.
• 31:15
  Uh, I, I think, um, many of us identify with a critical food studies that
• 31:21
  is deliberately attentive to issues of power and whether that's, um,
• 31:27
  you know, issues of gender, of race, of class, of inequality, of wealth,
• 31:32
  of the corporate kind of power.
• 31:35
  Um, I don't know that food studies is inherently revolutionary, but it really,
• 31:40
  you're right, it does attract a lot of people who, know, you don't have to go too
• 31:45
  far in, in thinking about food to realise, you know, it, it really exemplifies and
• 31:53
  reproduces a lot of the systems of, um, of inequality that, that structure the world.
• 32:00
  So, um, yeah, so I would say more that, you know, there are more or
• 32:05
  less there, you know, obviously there are, there are people in food studies
• 32:09
  who are particularly revolutionary.
• 32:13
  I think in Canada especially the food studies community really has always
• 32:18
  had an emphasis on thinking, imagining, um, a more just world and, um, and
• 32:27
  thinking about thinking about that through food and through the food system.
• 32:32
  Jesse Hirsh: And is that also true globally?
• 32:34
  Because certainly from my own biassed view, it, it does seem that when
• 32:40
  people focus on food, let's say outside of the agricultural industry,
• 32:47
  it does also lend itself to, Hey, our current systems are inadequate.
• 32:51
  We need to overthrow them and or replace them in order to sustainably
• 32:57
  feed people in a socially just manner.
• 33:00
  Elaine: Yeah, I, I think it depends how, you, probably depends how you
• 33:05
  define the boundaries of food studies.
• 33:07
  Um, know, I, I, because I, my work kind of crosses into, you know, a critique of
• 33:13
  food, charity in particular and, um, you know, kind of some anti-poverty work.
• 33:19
  There's, I think that there's actually lots of who publish in lots of food
• 33:26
  scholars who, or publish in food studies journals who I think are, be
• 33:34
  happy to tinker around the edges and make things a little bit better, but
• 33:38
  without a revolutionary or more radical kind of, um, agenda, I would say.
• 33:43
  Yeah.
• 33:44
  Jesse Hirsh: Well, and, and let's, let's unpack some of that, you know,
• 33:47
  criticisms, uh, of food, charity.
• 33:49
  And, and I say this because I, I'm certainly familiar with the concept
• 33:54
  that charity is an obstacle to justice.
• 33:58
  But the fact that I just said those words means that there are people listening
• 34:01
  right now who are like, what the fuck?
• 34:04
  So, uh, I'd love for you to, uh, share your own thoughts on the limits
• 34:08
  or problems, uh, with our current charity approach to addressing hunger.
• 34:15
  Elaine: How long do we have?
• 34:17
  Jesse Hirsh: We got time.
• 34:18
  Elaine: Sorry.
• 34:20
  Okay, so food, charity, specifically food banks, which are
• 34:26
  relat relatively new in Canada.
• 34:29
  Uh, you know, the first one opened in Edmonton in 1981.
• 34:35
  uh, that's within my lifetime.
• 34:37
  Um, know, it's a while ago, but, uh, it was a direct
• 34:42
  import from the United States.
• 34:44
  was very, it's a very clear that there was a, you know, a food bank
• 34:48
  in Arizona that set up in the sixties that was, and food banks at the, the
• 34:53
  origin, the origins of food banks were about redistributing food waste.
• 34:58
  And, and the US is very much characterised by this idea that if you have hungry
• 35:03
  people, you give them food and their food, their, I mean, the snap, the
• 35:07
  what the, the current, uh, iteration of food stamps is a, is different
• 35:12
  than that, but it's in its origins.
• 35:14
  It was meant to, um, help people, you know, connect them with food surplus.
• 35:21
  food banks originally were also about this idea that food was going to waste horror.
• 35:27
  And, uh, and they're hungry people, so you wanna connect them.
• 35:30
  Um, it, it, it, I don't think it's a coincidence that that happened at the
• 35:35
  same time that, you know, neoliberal political philosophy was taking root,
• 35:40
  um, with the, you know, shrinking of the state and the undermining of social
• 35:45
  assistance and, uh, employment insurance.
• 35:48
  And so the, the, at that it's a perfect fit for a neoliberal kind of
• 35:53
  political ideology, use, um, handoff responsibility for what used to be state
• 35:59
  responsibilities, including income to the private sector, to the charitable
• 36:04
  sector, to community organisations.
• 36:07
  so, you know, they just took root and proliferated.
• 36:11
  'cause there's a, there's a kind of common sense about it.
• 36:14
  It's like, well, people are hungry and it's also people are hungry.
• 36:18
  So we give them food.
• 36:19
  And I mean, I think most Canadians, bye.
• 36:24
  Those of us who have money or have the ability to feed ourselves, it just,
• 36:28
  it seems hard to imagine that there are people who are food insecure in a
• 36:33
  country that's so wealthy and so rich where so much food is going to waste.
• 36:38
  So there's also something, you know, we were talking about, you know, eating
• 36:41
  together as part of, you know, this communal community building and a sense
• 36:45
  of belonging and dignity and love.
• 36:47
  And so we, we, I think, uh, it's very, very personally to imagine
• 36:54
  that you could do something that would alleviate someone's hunger.
• 36:58
  so, but then food banks have also taken on all kinds of other, um,
• 37:03
  know, functions in our society.
• 37:05
  So, you know, uh, we have food drives that are team building exercises
• 37:12
  or competitions at work, or it's a way to show that you're, you know,
• 37:16
  quote unquote good citizen because you bring a, a non-perishable
• 37:20
  food item to the football game.
• 37:22
  Or, you know, you drop some things in the bin at the grocery store and then, know,
• 37:28
  it's also now more recently, you know, a place to, again, to alleviate food waste.
• 37:35
  So we're not sending food to the landfill and, you know, so we
• 37:39
  get to be good citizens and we get to be good green citizens.
• 37:43
  So they serve all these other functions.
• 37:47
  I think that the needs of people who are food insecure completely lost in those,
• 37:52
  in that, so we know from survey research that, you know, probably about, only about
• 38:00
  a quarter of the people in the country who are food insecure ever go to a food bank.
• 38:05
  And, you know, food banks are limited by their donation, what they have available
• 38:10
  by their donations, by their labour pool, um, their, you know, people.
• 38:17
  They have limited hours, they have to close the doors when they run out of food.
• 38:21
  There's, so, there's just so many problems.
• 38:23
  And so the, it's, it's serving all these other functions for other, um,
• 38:28
  you know, groups in society, but the needs of people who actually use them.
• 38:32
  But that, that's not one of that, those are completely overlooked and forgotten.
• 38:37
  Um, and I guess that's classic in a way that the, you know, his history's written
• 38:42
  by the victors and, you know, food banks are run by those who, who, who already
• 38:47
  have, um, as a way to, know, that, that I've, in a way it kind of takes the
• 38:55
  pressure off, um, at, you know, at we don't have people marching in the street.
• 39:01
  We don't have food riots, um, because we
• 39:06
  Jesse Hirsh: Not yet.
• 39:07
  Elaine: Um, now yet, yeah.
• 39:09
  And, and there's a way in which it locks the status quo into place.
• 39:14
  So it, when I think about the like thousands, probably hundreds of
• 39:19
  thousands of volunteer hours are soaked up in food banks and, you know,
• 39:25
  nobody wants to see people go hungry.
• 39:28
  but the reality is that lots of people go hungry in this country or ha are
• 39:33
  worried about going hungry anyway.
• 39:35
  If I think about all those hours, like imagine what else we could be doing with
• 39:39
  the, with those hours and with that time.
• 39:43
  I mean there are, there are lots of other things.
• 39:45
  There's lots of other work and, uh, lots of other, you know, labour or, you know,
• 39:52
  maybe people would be out learning how to play the guitar or writing poetry or
• 39:59
  Jesse Hirsh: Well, and.
• 39:59
  Elaine: food.
• 40:00
  I don't know.
• 40:02
  Jesse Hirsh: You know, on the one hand, I, I do think that some of the shortcomings
• 40:06
  or frustrations with the kind of food bank concept are starting to encourage
• 40:14
  some communities to think beyond them.
• 40:16
  And, and I want to come back to that in a moment, but I, I was personally shocked,
• 40:21
  uh, as part of doing this podcast to learn that a lot of food banks actually don't
• 40:27
  even make use of food waste, that they only buy food, which seems so illogical
• 40:34
  to me, given the amount of perfectly good food that is thrown away on a daily basis.
• 40:42
  I mean, as a, a, a relatively new food researcher, uh, again, I,
• 40:49
  every day I am still in shock at the amount of food that is thrown away.
• 40:54
  And, and my brain in, in its own kind of autistic way, is always going
• 40:59
  through scenarios in which that food could be effectively redistributed.
• 41:05
  I, I mean, I was, when I was younger, more familiar and, and, uh, slightly connected
• 41:10
  to groups like Food Not Bombs, which were kind of very much food justice groups.
• 41:15
  And, and there are some food not bombs still active in, in North
• 41:18
  America today, but, but what are some, some post food bank scenarios?
• 41:24
  What are some kind of radical, and, and, and, and let's do this in the context
• 41:29
  of if resources were not an issue, um, what are some scenarios or, or what are
• 41:36
  some concepts that that could, to your point about allocating all that goodwill,
• 41:41
  allocating all that volunteer labour, what are some of the ways in which we
• 41:46
  could channel that, you know, if we had both the resources and the political
• 41:51
  culture slash will to make it happen?
• 41:54
  A and I'll elaborate on that in a bit, but, but I'm curious to spend some
• 41:58
  moments brainstorming on, on what some of these alternatives could look like.
• 42:02
  Elaine: Could I back up just a, a bit, um, before
• 42:06
  Jesse Hirsh: Please.
• 42:06
  Elaine: that question, and because I wanted to talk to,
• 42:10
  just talk a bit about food waste.
• 42:13
  and, uh, you know, one of the things that is seared in my brain when
• 42:17
  I first moved to Toronto in the nineties, um, and I remember, um,
• 42:22
  talking to the head of the Daily Bank, daily Bread food bank at the time.
• 42:27
  Her first name is Sue, and I've lost her last name.
• 42:30
  But, she talked about getting two tractor trailer loads of, uh, almost, um, of,
• 42:42
  of oranges that were half rotting.
• 42:46
  And I wasn't there, but she had to kind of mobilise an army of volunteers to, through
• 42:54
  two tractor loads of to sort out the ones that were rotting from the ones that
• 43:01
  were still usable and get tho that fruit out to people as quickly as possible.
• 43:07
  And I've never, for, never kind of forgotten, even though I wasn't there.
• 43:12
  Like I, I imagine the smell and, and we've, I think probably most of us
• 43:18
  have had that experience of putting our fingers into an orange in the
• 43:22
  grocery store that's mouldy and to rot.
• 43:26
  And I just like, oh, oh.
• 43:30
  Jesse Hirsh: So
• 43:31
  Elaine: mean, she told me that story 30 years ago and I've never forgotten it.
• 43:36
  Jesse Hirsh: I, I, if I might, uh, digress just to, to around your point.
• 43:41
  A lot of it has to do with packaging.
• 43:44
  So think oranges, onions, other produce where if one of them in the bag starts
• 43:52
  to go, they throw the whole bag out.
• 43:55
  Apples is another limes, lemons and the amount of them that they are throwing out
• 44:01
  every day because one out of 10 or one out of 15 is rotten and there's no process
• 44:08
  to recover all the other good ones.
• 44:12
  That volume alone is unbelievable.
• 44:16
  Sorry, go ahead.
• 44:17
  Elaine: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 44:19
  And, and, and it's, it's also built into the system, right?
• 44:22
  Because partly like you talk about packaging and also the, the way
• 44:28
  that food is, you know, transported across, um, vast D distances.
• 44:34
  So it's actually the idea that, you know, that there's going to be food
• 44:39
  waste is like, it's built into the, the quote unquote manufacturing
• 44:44
  of, of the food that we eat.
• 44:47
  Um, or, you know, like the oranges, the fresh produce and so on.
• 44:51
  But also all the other perishable items, it's just assumed you know,
• 44:57
  at more than half, more than half of it is going to, um, be wa food waste.
• 45:03
  Um, so yeah, it, it, again, it kind of points to one of these like devastating
• 45:12
  critical weaknesses in the food
• 45:14
  Jesse Hirsh: And, and, you know, to, to circle back to, to my question, I, I feel
• 45:20
  that there are a, a bunch of converging trends, one of which is transparency.
• 45:26
  That, that we are in an increasingly surveilled world.
• 45:30
  And even those who are engaging the surveillance no longer control the
• 45:35
  ability to surveil, which is to say random people are going into grocery stores and
• 45:40
  sharing prices to other people causing a, a growing literacy of this stuff.
• 45:46
  And I think there is gonna be a growing literacy of just how
• 45:49
  much food is wasted and the way which that food could be diverted.
• 45:54
  And I correlate this to what I see growing radical sentiment amongst young people
• 46:02
  who are facing this poly crisis and going, what the hell are we supposed to do?
• 46:08
  So that brings me back to my question of what are some of the alternatives that
• 46:13
  we could be floating to people, uh, when it comes to either dealing with hunger
• 46:17
  or dealing with how we distribute food, or dealing with the ways in which we
• 46:23
  recognise the labour that goes into food.
• 46:26
  I, I have to imagine as a politically engaged person, you've either thought
• 46:31
  about this stuff or heard other smart people talk about this stuff.
• 46:34
  So I'm, I'm, I'm curious as we start to, uh, uh, approach the end of the
• 46:39
  episode that we give people, uh, maybe not a sense of hope that might be a tall
• 46:43
  order, but a sense of fire as to their, uh, being, uh, other ways to do things.
• 46:51
  Elaine: Yeah.
• 46:52
  Um, I mean, some might be less, some might be radical, some might be less radical.
• 46:58
  Like, I think we, we could start by reintroducing what we used to call home
• 47:03
  economics into the school curriculum so that people actually, you know,
• 47:08
  I, we maybe don't wanna call it home economics, but just so that, you
• 47:12
  know, have, people have a sense of confidence in their skills to actually
• 47:19
  Jesse Hirsh: Yeah.
• 47:19
  Elaine: food for
• 47:20
  Jesse Hirsh: Yeah.
• 47:21
  Elaine: Uh, maybe we wanna incorporate, you know, growing food into, uh, the
• 47:26
  school curriculums as well, so that people, again, have more of a sense of
• 47:31
  like, maybe, you know, the schools, of course are all, everything's awash in
• 47:38
  at this moment, but, um, maybe the way to counter that is to return to some
• 47:43
  really, like, some practical skills that we need to survive, um, on the planet.
• 47:49
  so I don't know.
• 47:51
  Some people might think that's more radical than other people,
• 47:54
  it feel, does feel like, um, but that feels like a place to start.
• 47:59
  I love the idea.
• 48:00
  I, I mean, I don't want, I, I don't waste a lot of food because
• 48:04
  I do cook a lot of my own food.
• 48:07
  Um, but, uh, given that if we're gonna stay in the current system, at least
• 48:13
  we could, I think we could take some of that food and maybe of, maybe, maybe
• 48:19
  one of the things we could do is, uh, a food not bombs kind of idea where that
• 48:24
  food waste is cooked or, and, or somehow redistributed, but not just for, you
• 48:30
  know, a small group, small proportion of stigmatised, uh, activity like a food
• 48:36
  bank, but actually like, you know, as like food not bombs, get they set up in
• 48:41
  parks or public spaces where anybody can come along and, uh, and have some food.
• 48:47
  Um, I've been involved in some work and some research on food insecurity
• 48:52
  on campus, including even at Queen University, which most people would
• 48:56
  not imagine would ever happen.
• 48:58
  And, you know, the one, some of the people that I did that research with,
• 49:02
  we talked a lot about, you know, having, um, quote unquote a soup kitchen.
• 49:09
  But, uh, you know, again, a place where students could gather with and make and
• 49:14
  make soup and then distribute it for, um, you know, people can pay what you
• 49:19
  can, you know, soup and bread in, in my idea of a university that actually
• 49:24
  cared about, or any institution for that matter that actually cared about
• 49:27
  the people, you'd have kind of have a soup pod in every corner with some
• 49:31
  fresh fruit and some, and some bread.
• 49:34
  And, and it could be really simple and anybody can help themselves at any points.
• 49:39
  Um, know, I, I had the.
• 49:41
  The principal of Queens at the time say, well, how do we
• 49:46
  de-stigmatize the food bank?
• 49:48
  It's like, well, you put it in a public place and you allow anybody to come and
• 49:52
  get the food, whatever they want, like
• 49:55
  Jesse Hirsh: Yeah.
• 49:55
  Elaine: questions asked.
• 49:56
  Like, anybody can just come and you put it in a public place.
• 49:59
  You don't make it, you don't hide it away.
• 50:01
  Uh, you make it the kind of normal part of.
• 50:04
  Um, but it's not really about the food bank.
• 50:07
  It's about, um, having food freely available, um, for everybody, everybody
• 50:14
  you know, the people who are cleaning the buildings to, uh, of the place.
• 50:20
  So, so that there's, again, kind of recreating a sense of community
• 50:25
  and communal, communal eating,
• 50:28
  Jesse Hirsh: Well, and it.
• 50:29
  Elaine: on your ability to pay.
• 50:32
  Jesse Hirsh: Y you know, treating food as, as a kind of luxury I is something I think
• 50:37
  we currently do, but we don't acknowledge.
• 50:40
  And what you're describing is treating food not just in the context of
• 50:45
  abundance, but, but treating it as if it is life, as if it is something
• 50:51
  that is inherently accessible.
• 50:53
  Because what I was imagining, what, while you were describing that, is some
• 50:58
  of the posh conferences and events I've been at where, you know, you're there
• 51:03
  with all these really important people and there's great food everywhere.
• 51:08
  And when I was younger, I used to kind of describe my religion as being the free
• 51:13
  lunch, that I would go to all these policy events and go to all these academic events
• 51:20
  because they'd have free lunches and I'd be able to get all this great food.
• 51:25
  Imagine if we could do that at a community level, at a society level where there
• 51:29
  were just places you knew you could go, anyone could go and there'd be great food.
• 51:34
  To me, that's not radical that that is common sense.
• 51:39
  Um, I I, I'm curious to what extent as a teacher, as someone who engages with
• 51:46
  young people, and of course as we age, it's easy to disparage young people,
• 51:51
  and our current society is certainly doing its best, uh, to try to disparage
• 51:56
  young people from all, uh, uh, sides.
• 51:59
  I, I suspect you do not have that view.
• 52:03
  And at the same time, I, I'm curious to get your sense of, of where the
• 52:09
  young people are at a, am I right in thinking that they're, uh, uh,
• 52:13
  uh, uh, open to radical ideas, itching for something different?
• 52:18
  Or is that me projecting and wishing that young people were, uh, uh,
• 52:22
  the way I was when I was young?
• 52:25
  Elaine: Yeah, I, I would say, you know, guess I'm at Queens.
• 52:28
  Um, we don't have a particularly radical student body at Queens necessarily,
• 52:34
  but, uh, one of the, one of the things that I find quite delightful after,
• 52:40
  you know, the, the food system course that I've been talking about at the
• 52:43
  second year course, there's students from all different levels taking it.
• 52:47
  But I've had, um, you know, several students, uh, write
• 52:54
  to me after the course.
• 52:55
  I had one in particular who sent me, you know, photos.
• 52:58
  It, the course inspires students to grow some of their own food.
• 53:02
  And so, um, there, there's some that I've kept in touch with who continue to grow,
• 53:08
  you know, some, some of their own food.
• 53:10
  I think if nothing else, it gives them a sense of appreciation for the work.
• 53:15
  Um, and the, the struggle and the, the riskiness, you know, whether the
• 53:19
  rabbits eat the lettuce or, you know, the frost kills tomato plants or whatever.
• 53:25
  Um, also, uh, you know, one of, couple of, some of the students said this
• 53:30
  year, oh, look forward to seeing at the farmer's market in the summer.
• 53:33
  You know, so I think it does help them, and they, nothing else, they
• 53:37
  don't take for granted anymore.
• 53:39
  The, the, the things that they buy at the grocery store, they
• 53:43
  have a little more awareness of the, the labour and the, the work.
• 53:48
  Um, and also the, you know, the, the, the environmental impact potentially.
• 53:56
  Um, so, uh, who knows where that goes.
• 54:00
  It's a bit like, I feel a bit like I'm a dandelion plant, you know,
• 54:04
  kind of spreading seeds and who knows where those seeds land and
• 54:10
  how long they might take to sprout.
• 54:12
  But, uh, yeah, I mean, when I first came to Queens a long, long time ago, in the
• 54:18
  early part of this century, um, I was really struck by, at the time the, the
• 54:25
  kind of resources that the students have.
• 54:27
  They're not all the, there's food insecurity on campus, but they generally
• 54:33
  have a lot of resources, um, not just economic, but cultural and social.
• 54:39
  Um, they end up with their degree from Queens, they go on to do amazing things.
• 54:45
  And so it's been a real privilege.
• 54:47
  I'm, I'm about to retire, but it's really been an incredible privilege, um,
• 54:52
  to some of those seeds, whether it's, uh, about social determinants of health
• 54:57
  or about the food system, you know?
• 55:01
  Yeah.
• 55:01
  It's, um, when I look at, when I look at the students at, certainly
• 55:07
  at the, the best students, I, I, I do feel hopeful actually.
• 55:13
  Yeah.
• 55:15
  Jesse Hirsh: Well, and the model of the dandelion as revolutionary
• 55:18
  certainly, uh, uh, holds well, uh, for the future success of the revolution,
• 55:23
  given how, uh, dandelions are quite resilient and the scourge of, uh,
• 55:29
  uh, many people who seek monoculture.
• 55:33
  Uh, as we kind of come to a close, uh, one of the questions I always like to,
• 55:39
  you know, offer at the end is, is if, has there, is there anything that we
• 55:44
  haven't touched upon that you would like to touch upon, uh, before we end?
• 55:48
  And, and I say this more as an invitation, Les, as a lament in that,
• 55:54
  Elaine: Hmm.
• 55:54
  Jesse Hirsh: you know, we have covered quite a bit of ground, but that suggests
• 55:58
  that maybe there's some big 800 pound gorilla, uh, in the corner that we
• 56:02
  should be addressing before we conclude.
• 56:05
  Elaine: Well, I, I did mention it, but, uh, you know, I've be, as I say, I've
• 56:09
  become an advocate for basic income and I feel like I have a hammer and everything.
• 56:14
  Basic income is the answer to almost everything.
• 56:17
  Um, not on its own, but, uh, you know, I do think it would, um, the,
• 56:23
  the National Farmers Union, for example, has at their, um, convention
• 56:28
  in the fall passed a resolution, um, supporting a basic income, I think
• 56:33
  of $50,000 a year for, for farmers.
• 56:37
  Um, and especially, you know, the average age of farmers is
• 56:40
  approaching 60, it might be 60 by now.
• 56:44
  Um, and so to support young, not gonna address the cost of land, but it
• 56:49
  will provide, uh, you know, kind of a foundation for young farmers, a financial
• 56:55
  foundation, foundation to, to enable them to survive all the ups and downs of,
• 57:02
  you know, the frost we had this morning here in Kingston, in the middle of May.
• 57:08
  Um, the, the vagaries of, of farming, which is, you know, it's really risky.
• 57:15
  I really have so much respect and admiration for people who, um, are,
• 57:21
  who are growing food other people.
• 57:24
  Um, so, so it would, it would provide an income floor for, for young,
• 57:29
  particularly young farmers, for, uh, and especially, you know, marginalised
• 57:33
  people from marginalised groups, whether in farming, whether that's
• 57:36
  women or, uh, racialized groups.
• 57:39
  Um, people who are, who want to create a different kind of world, and a
• 57:45
  world that's more just, and that it obviously is, is more, um, sustainable.
• 57:51
  Um, and of course it would, I mean, it's often thought basic income's often
• 57:56
  thought about as in relation to poverty.
• 57:58
  It would, it would create, again, an income floor if it were a livable basic
• 58:04
  income, it would enable people to afford, food and to be able to make different
• 58:11
  choices about the food that they eat.
• 58:15
  it could support, you know, people who want to do, you know, food,
• 58:19
  food processing for example, or like start small businesses
• 58:23
  on kind of food entrepreneurs.
• 58:25
  So, um, it would make a huge difference, I think, in the food system from
• 58:31
  production and consumption perspectives.
• 58:33
  Uh, I think, I honestly think it's too threatening, right now for, especially for
• 58:40
  you think about the low wage employers, um, including, you know, the fast food
• 58:45
  companies and, uh, the Amazons and all the rest who depend on a low, on a workforce
• 58:53
  that's desperate make some money.
• 58:56
  Um, and maybe, maybe that's where AI is going to push us, you
• 59:01
  know, quote unquote over the edge could push us over so many edges,
• 59:06
  Jesse Hirsh: Let, let, let me jump in right there.
• 59:08
  O only because, you know, AI is my domain of expertise and, and this is where I
• 59:14
  would argue that the narrative around AI and unemployment is entirely made up.
• 59:22
  And the reality is what you described, that the employment crisis is
• 59:27
  about greed and an unwillingness to pay people a decent wage, let
• 59:33
  alone give them a meaningful job.
• 59:36
  Like working at an Amazon warehouse is demoralising and dehumanising on
• 59:42
  so many levels that we're kind of using AI as this, you know, oh, that's
• 59:47
  what's disrupting the employment.
• 59:49
  That's what's disrupting the marketplace when in fact,
• 59:52
  it's, it's corporate practises.
• 59:54
  It, it, it's, it's terrible wages.
• 59:56
  And, and more and more people are saying, no way, I, I ain't gonna do that.
• 1:00:01
  And that is why they're having difficulties.
• 1:00:04
  As another aside, b before I became a farmer, one of the reasons I decided to
• 1:00:10
  get into farming was I met a farmer who said, we don't really have to worry about
• 1:00:15
  the cities flooding from climate change.
• 1:00:19
  We will all die way before that because of a bad frost in late May or early June.
• 1:00:25
  And it was that kind of insight into the brittle nature of our systems that
• 1:00:31
  made me think, I kinda wanna be at the front line of this change, so at
• 1:00:36
  least I am having a little more agency.
• 1:00:39
  But to that point of agency, after I've allowed those digressions of myself.
• 1:00:45
  What are some of the strategies or tactics that either you've thought
• 1:00:49
  about or that people in the larger policy space have thought about when
• 1:00:54
  it comes to advancing a, a kind of universal income or a basic income?
• 1:00:58
  Because on the one hand, I, I do think we have to acknowledge a lot
• 1:01:02
  of gains have been made, like we're having this conversation and it's
• 1:01:06
  no longer that radical an idea.
• 1:01:09
  But I think you rightfully pointed out it, it does threaten a, a, a lot of the power
• 1:01:15
  holders, the stakeholders of our economy.
• 1:01:18
  So what's the path forward?
• 1:01:20
  What, what are some of the ideas to, uh, really get this policy
• 1:01:24
  concept closer to, to implementation?
• 1:01:27
  Elaine: You know, I've, I've, as a social scientist, I've spent a lot
• 1:01:31
  of my career thinking that if we only have the evidence, you know, we
• 1:01:35
  have the, have a good evidence base and a strong evidence base that, you
• 1:01:39
  know, that's gonna change policy.
• 1:01:41
  And I've driven up on that.
• 1:01:44
  I, that was a very naive idea of politics.
• 1:01:48
  So, I mean, we, in the basic income movement, I've often said, you
• 1:01:52
  know, we need our Tommy Douglas.
• 1:01:54
  Like we, we actually need, someone who's willing to carry the torch and to, uh,
• 1:02:02
  at, at, at, at a, probably at a federal, well, it could happen provincially.
• 1:02:06
  I mean, we often compare ourselves to Medicare.
• 1:02:10
  You know, Tommy Douglas implemented Medicare in Saskatchewan.
• 1:02:13
  It, it, um, it was, you know, kind of took root there before
• 1:02:18
  it rolled out across the country.
• 1:02:19
  But it really did take, I mean, there were lots of other
• 1:02:22
  factors, but it took a champion.
• 1:02:24
  Um, you know, there's actually been a proposal to, uh, that's been
• 1:02:29
  costed for implementing a basic income in Prince Edward Island,
• 1:02:33
  which would be ideal because it's relatively small, lots of agriculture
• 1:02:39
  and kind of seasonal employment.
• 1:02:41
  Uh, unlikely that a lot of people are gonna uproot themselves and move to PEI.
• 1:02:46
  So they could be part of a, you know, five or seven year pilot on basic income.
• 1:02:52
  But it could work, we could work out the kinks and figure out how
• 1:02:56
  it fits or doesn't fit with some of the other systems that we need,
• 1:03:00
  like, uh, you know, PharmaCare and dental care and all the rest.
• 1:03:04
  Um, so that proposal's been, it's actually, it's a group of politicians,
• 1:03:12
  retired politicians and civil servants and economists have worked on that.
• 1:03:17
  It's there now.
• 1:03:18
  It's ready,
• 1:03:19
  Jesse Hirsh: So
• 1:03:19
  Elaine: go.
• 1:03:19
  It just needs federal funding.
• 1:03:21
  Jesse Hirsh: l let me follow up on that and, and I kind of feel that
• 1:03:25
  we are getting a little off track and I do have to end the episode
• 1:03:28
  soon, but what about Kate Breton?
• 1:03:31
  Like, what, what 'cause and, and I kind of wanted to bring up Kate Breton
• 1:03:34
  in terms of, you know, your, your own personal history and I also kind
• 1:03:39
  of wanted to speculate on whether farming on, on, on rocks is viable.
• 1:03:44
  'cause I, I have some ideas as to how it could be, but could the, the
• 1:03:48
  scenario you just described with PEI be applied to Cape Breton, but also in the
• 1:03:53
  context of migration that this would be a way to attract people to move to
• 1:03:59
  Cape Breton as a, a, a, a potential reversal of the, the demographics
• 1:04:03
  there, or, or am I being ludicrous?
• 1:04:08
  Elaine: No, I don't think you're being ludicrous at all.
• 1:04:10
  I mean, uh, actually, there is some good farmland in Cape Breton.
• 1:04:15
  Um, uh, and there was a little mini of migration during COVID,
• 1:04:23
  you know, uh, to Cape Breton and other parts of Nova Scotia.
• 1:04:26
  There's also, because the university in Sydney did, uh, at one point kind of throw
• 1:04:31
  open the doors to international students.
• 1:04:34
  There's a big population of people from India now who are living, who've chosen to
• 1:04:39
  live permanently uh, in, in Cape Breton.
• 1:04:44
  Um, so I think that's a grand idea of myself.
• 1:04:49
  Uh, of course it would depend on, um, you know, the provincial government,
• 1:04:56
  but then there's always, you know, the Cape Red Liberation Army that
• 1:04:59
  wants to from the mainland and, you know, set up our own government.
• 1:05:03
  And so,
• 1:05:07
  Jesse Hirsh: You've heard it here on the Future Herd Podcast first.
• 1:05:11
  Right on.
• 1:05:12
  Elaine: I don't know if that answered your question, Jesse, but I I, of course,
• 1:05:16
  I mean, I may or may not retire to Cape Breton when, or, or Nova Scotia at some
• 1:05:24
  point, but if I do, part of it will be to work on, um, basic income for Nova Scotia.
• 1:05:32
  And, uh, you know, I think the Atlantic, Atlantic provinces in general are strong
• 1:05:38
  supporters, but again, there isn't really that kind of champion like Tommy
• 1:05:42
  Douglas to really push it forward.
• 1:05:44
  So
• 1:05:45
  Jesse Hirsh: Right on.
• 1:05:46
  Well, and coincidentally, I do have the head of the PEI Federation
• 1:05:50
  of Agriculture booked as a guest.
• 1:05:53
  So I will bring up, uh, the subject of, uh, basic income in PEI to at
• 1:05:59
  least see if he's thought about it.
• 1:06:01
  If not, nudge him along.
• 1:06:03
  Uh, uh, the path.
• 1:06:05
  Our last question,
• 1:06:06
  Elaine: love that.
• 1:06:07
  Jesse Hirsh: the last question I throw out, uh, as part of every
• 1:06:11
  episode is, uh, the shout out.
• 1:06:14
  Uh, who are the people that you look up to or that inspire you or
• 1:06:19
  that, uh, uh, nurture your curiosity that you think the rest of us,
• 1:06:25
  uh, should be paying attention?
• 1:06:26
  Like the first question, this is meant to be intuitive.
• 1:06:29
  It's not like an Academy Award.
• 1:06:32
  Thank you.
• 1:06:32
  List.
• 1:06:32
  Like, just a couple of names of who first comes to mind, uh, that you want
• 1:06:38
  to kinda, uh, pass things forward to.
• 1:06:41
  Elaine: Oh, wow.
• 1:06:42
  I love that question.
• 1:06:43
  Um, you know, one of the people who's been really important for
• 1:06:47
  me, um, because of her work on Food Insecurities, Valter at the University
• 1:06:52
  of Toronto, you know, recently retired.
• 1:06:54
  I mean, she's kind of dedicated her life to providing a really solid
• 1:06:59
  evidence base on food insecurity.
• 1:07:03
  Um, some of the folks in the Canadian food studies Mustafa Cook, um, Charles
• 1:07:10
  Lev Co. Uh, they're, they're, you know, we might not agree on every, point in
• 1:07:19
  thinking about food justice or their food system or food insecurity, but
• 1:07:24
  I just really love them as people.
• 1:07:26
  Um, Jennifer Welsh, who's someone else, who's, she's retired from,
• 1:07:30
  um, what's now TMU, uh, who has had a big influence on, on me.
• 1:07:36
  Um, Heather McClain, who, uh, did more kind of women's health kinds of things.
• 1:07:43
  She, she was one of the people who introduced me to qualitative research,
• 1:07:47
  which, know, I had a, had a background in quantitative work and qualitative
• 1:07:53
  work, just like spoke to my heart.
• 1:07:55
  And that's where I've spent most, most of my career.
• 1:07:59
  uh, Joan
• 1:08:02
  Jesse Hirsh: And, and
• 1:08:03
  Elaine: in the United States, uh, was, uh, she died recently.
• 1:08:07
  She also, she was way ahead of her time in terms of thinking about food.
• 1:08:13
  Jesse Hirsh: right on.
• 1:08:14
  And, and, you know,
• 1:08:15
  Elaine: you gonna say?
• 1:08:16
  Jesse Hirsh: well, I was just gonna say, this is where inevitably the guest
• 1:08:19
  starts to feel a moral responsibility to continue to dig deeper and deeper
• 1:08:24
  for the names that they don't wanna leave out, in case anyone's listening.
• 1:08:28
  And that's where I have to absolve you.
• 1:08:31
  Uh, I have to absolve you from that and say, it's really meant to be, this
• 1:08:34
  isn't comprehensive, this is intuitive.
• 1:08:38
  And, and I have to thank you, uh, Elaine.
• 1:08:40
  This, this has been a, a fantastic conversation that that certainly allows
• 1:08:45
  me to fully, uh, uh, uh, uh, deepen the, the subjects and the analysis that we're
• 1:08:54
  trying to do here on the future herd.
• 1:08:56
  I, I've got this current, uh, a flippant saying, uh, that, that I
• 1:09:00
  keep throwing out, which is that we, we are currently in a society
• 1:09:05
  where we have no thoughtful policy.
• 1:09:08
  And the reason we don't have any thoughtful policy is not because
• 1:09:13
  people are not putting thought into the policy they're proposing, but
• 1:09:18
  because there is not diverse thought in the policies that are being proposed.
• 1:09:25
  I will say that doesn't apply to basic income.
• 1:09:27
  I actually think there is a lot of diverse thought being put into basic income.
• 1:09:32
  But it gets back to my, uh, insight around AgriFood, where agri is the
• 1:09:38
  right wing and food is the left wing.
• 1:09:41
  And part of what I want to achieve in the future herd is at
• 1:09:45
  least create the opportunity for some thoughtful policy because.
• 1:09:50
  Elaine: Hmm,
• 1:09:51
  Jesse Hirsh: For sure.
• 1:09:51
  The industry right now has the reins of policy, and I'm trying to make an argument
• 1:09:57
  that if they want their policy to actually work and be effective, they have to start
• 1:10:03
  inviting more people to the policy table.
• 1:10:06
  So I thank you Elaine,
• 1:10:08
  Elaine: Hmm.
• 1:10:08
  Jesse Hirsh: for helping to make that argument today by providing a
• 1:10:11
  perspective that absolutely needs to be part of the larger discourse.
• 1:10:16
  But I end by saying what I've said to a lot of others, I
• 1:10:19
  hope we can have you back.
• 1:10:20
  I hope that you can, uh, be part of the future herd and, and really help us shape,
• 1:10:26
  uh, uh, our response to what I think is an escalating crisis that you so eloquently
• 1:10:32
  articulated in the first answer.
• 1:10:34
  Uh uh.
• 1:10:35
  So thanks again.
• 1:10:37
  Elaine: Well, thank you.
• 1:10:38
  I mean, thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about the things
• 1:10:42
  that are I, I care so much about.
• 1:10:46
  Um, I, I, yeah.
• 1:10:47
  So I, and I don't think I ran it too much, so, um, thanks
• 1:10:52
  Jesse Hirsh: No, that, that was the brilliance.
• 1:10:56
  You didn't rant at all.
• 1:10:58
  Like did you indict our current food system as being unjust,
• 1:11:03
  tyrannical, and inefficient?
• 1:11:04
  Absolutely.
• 1:11:06
  Did you do it in the form of a ranch?
• 1:11:07
  Not at all.
• 1:11:08
  It was quite reasonable and
• 1:11:10
  Elaine: thank you.
• 1:11:12
  Excellent.
• 1:11:12
  Thank you.
• 1:11:13
  I guess that's a good thing.
• 1:11:16
  Jesse Hirsh: That was by far one of the most enjoyable conversations
• 1:11:21
  I've had as part of this podcast.
• 1:11:24
  And quite frankly, almost every single conversation I've had
• 1:11:27
  on this podcast is enjoyable.
• 1:11:30
  Perhaps my, uh, stoner mind, uh, has a short term memory bias here,
• 1:11:35
  that it always feels like the last conversation was the best conversation.
• 1:11:40
  Um, but this really was one that sat with me for a while, and maybe that's
• 1:11:45
  why I didn't release it right away.
• 1:11:47
  And I'm happy to say that there have been other conversations that
• 1:11:51
  built upon this one that I have since had, but not yet released.
• 1:11:56
  So I kind of feel that we're at a pivotal point here with the future herd.
• 1:12:01
  We're, you know, starting to catch a bit of momentum as a herd, as we're moving
• 1:12:06
  some of the, uh, technology episodes, some of the, uh, leadership knowledge episodes.
• 1:12:14
  And now some of the research and critical studies episodes are really starting to
• 1:12:19
  weave a picture of the Canadian AgriFood sector that I think is unique that I
• 1:12:26
  don't think you can find anywhere else.
• 1:12:28
  You know, people have their specialties, they have their domains, their areas
• 1:12:33
  of expertise, but I suspect only at the future herd are we getting the
• 1:12:38
  kind of critical perspective that people like Elaine Power bring.
• 1:12:43
  Uh, I don't know what that means for the future of the future herd, but I do
• 1:12:48
  know that we are gonna be taking this herd into unprecedented and exciting and
• 1:12:54
  interesting and stimulating territory.
• 1:12:58
  So if you got any feedback that you wanna share with us,
• 1:13:01
  please check out our website.
• 1:13:03
  There's a link there with our email address.
• 1:13:06
  Of course, you can see information about all the episodes we have, the knowledge
• 1:13:10
  we're generating, and quite frankly, the research, uh, that we're engaged in.
• 1:13:15
  Uh.
• 1:13:16
  I'm recording this on June 18th, and as an aside, I just got into the
• 1:13:23
  Cohere Labs Discord server today.
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  Uh, cohere is kind of the Canadian AI champion, and they're, uh, labs, they're
• 1:13:33
  open labs, uh, is kind of a place for open science, uh, researchers using ai, uh,
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  throughout, uh, society around the world.
• 1:13:42
  And what's great is I can say, Hey, I'm from the future herd.
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  I'm a food researcher.
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  I'm a farmer.
• 1:13:48
  I wanna see how we can use ai and I can point to the podcast as a public
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  example of the research we're doing.
• 1:13:57
  So it was kind of a proud moment, uh, to be able to say that we are
• 1:14:02
  building something here, something public, something accessible,
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  something interesting, and something we hope to drive change, uh, within
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  the Canadian AgriFood sector.
• 1:14:13
  So more on this in the weeks and days to come.
• 1:14:16
  Uh, again, uh, you can find us@thefutureherd.ca and let us know
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  what you think, uh, whether you like it, whether you don't, whether there's other
• 1:14:25
  people you think we should be talking to.
• 1:14:28
  Alright, until next time, we'll talk to you soon.