Part II: Food for Profit
Part II: Food for Profit – How Corporations Engineered Hunger in a World of Plenty In a world of unprecedented agricultural abundance, I am sure that I am not the only one who is struck by the cruel paradox that billions still go hungry, while others are dying from diseases of overconsumption. This situation—scarcity amid plenty, malnutrition amid surplus—is no accident. I believe it is the calculated outcome of a food system built not to feed people, but to feed profits.
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The Fifty Shades of Regenerative
This morning, while doing my daily scroll through the RSS feeds (a ritual that still feels oddly rebellious in 2025), I noticed a theme popping up: “regenerative agriculture.” It’s everywhere. But what became starkly clear is that not all “regenerative” is created equal. First, I came across this piece from Daily Coffee News. It outlines a new certification scheme from the Rainforest Alliance focused on regenerative coffee farming. It feels grassroots, farmer-first, and run by a not-for-profit with a track record of actual field work. In short: it seems like the real deal. You can sense the soil under the fingernails.
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From Healthier Soil To A Fairer Fork
Let’s be honest. The way we produce and consume food is broken. It’s a system that looks great on the surface, with supermarket shelves overflowing with produce from every corner of the globe, available any time of year. But when you dig a little deeper, you find a system built on a house of cards, and it’s costing us more than we think. Our industrial food system is a master of illusion. It presents abundance while creating scarcity—scarcity of nutrients in our food, of biodiversity in our fields, of topsoil on our farms, and of fairness for the people who grow it. It’s a system built on an extractive model, where value is pulled from the land, from communities, and from our own bodies, with little thought for the long-term consequences.
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A New Charter for the Forest
Back in 1217, a group of rebellious barons forced King John to sign the Charter of the Forest. It was a revolutionary document for its time, a declaration that the forests of England were not the private hunting grounds of the king, but a vital resource for the common people. It protected their rights to graze their animals, collect firewood, and forage for food. It was, in essence, a charter for a forest commons.
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Saving the Season
Before the age of global supply chains and year-round availability, every season had its own distinct flavour, its own fleeting window of abundance. Summer brought a riot of berries and stone fruits, autumn a cascade of apples and pears. This bounty was a blessing, but also a challenge: how to honour this generosity without letting it succumb to the inevitable march of decay? Long before the first refrigerators hummed into existence, our ancestors devised ingenious ways to hold onto the harvest. They dried, they salted, they sugared, and they fermented. And in the art of distillation, they found one of the most profound methods of all: transforming the ephemeral essence of a season into a spirit that could last for generations.
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