What is a Food System?
And how we can have food security
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In the bible, Modecai lovingly challenges Esther, “Perhaps you are here for just such a time as this?” (Esther 4:13)
That is the question we must ask each other today….
Let me start with a short story about mud.
Have you ever gotten so muddy that you don’t know where the soil ends and your jeans begin?
This is, perhaps, something that we might accept when we can’t help it, but would you–or anyone–aspire to this?
A couple years ago, I was helping at a farm, Next Step Produce–the diverse farm where we get flour for our bread, our beans, rice, oats and many veggies. I was helping my dear friend and farmer Gabrielle with the first step of that year’s bean harvest.
This requires pulling the bean plants out of the ground 1 by 1 and stacking them up along the rows so they can dry. The machine would pick them up a few days later for sorting.
In order to pull the bean plants out, one must get down on one’s knees and “walk” carefully through the rows pulling as you go. One cannot do this without becoming one with the soil.
In fact, there is no washing machine on earth that wants to deal with the level of mud left in your clothes from that.
And yet, this is an example of humbling ourselves for our brothers and sisters. At the same time, you cannot help but notice the depth and detail of God’s creation when you are traveling on your knees–or hands and knees–carefully harvesting the beans. You see a whole new perspective–one that is often hidden from us here in this modern world, but one that we absolutely depend upon.
You’ve probably heard phrases such as “food system,” and “food security.”
But what do these actually mean?
Let’s talk about food systems first.
Many years ago, Chief Powhatan famously asked Captain John Smith “Why would you take by force that which you can have through love?”
Today, this question can provide deep insight if directed towards our food systems.
We live in a world that almost worships an extractive food system–sustenance taken by force while raping the ecosystems to such an extreme that crops and animals can only continue to produce through the violent and perverse inputs of chemicals and fertilizers.
This is a system in which man destroys God’s creation and the relationship between humans and the earth is broken.
It is, perhaps, symbolic of the ways in which our culture’s relationship with God is broken.
As a society, we are struggling right now.
We are in a deep spiritual crisis.
One cause of this crisis is our casual dismissal of God’s incredible creation and the abdication of our responsibility to steward that creation for the glory of God.
Our bodies are part of that creation. And our broken, sick bodies are emblematic of the disconnect we have with God and his creation.
As God instructs us in Corinthians “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit…You are not your own…. Therefore honor God with your bodies.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)
How will we treat the temples of our bodies that God has entrusted to us?
How can we honor God through our bodies?
Can we make our intangible relationship to God tangible through earthly experiences?
Honoring God’s ecosystems holds all the answers for us.
We know that plants, animals, fungi, lichen and bacteria are all part of a thriving ecosystem and ingredients in our health.
But our modern food system means that food production for humans is forced through coercion and rape of the earth, rather than brought on through peace and responsible husbandry while honoring God’s ecosystems.
Faith teaches us that we can have all things through love. In fact, that is the only way in which we can experience the true gifts of this lifetime–acceptance of God’s love for us and for the creation that God has given us.
Breaking bread together is God’s invitation to us.
Not just some of us. God didn’t exclude poor people when he made this invitation. He didn’t exclude people born in other countries. He didn't segregate us and say you at that table and you all over there get the crumbs. No, through Jesus, he brought us together to share in the abundance of the world he gave us.
He chose that we unite while sharing food and gratitude.
And so we must ask Chief Powhatan’s question of our modern food system and indeed with every bite we take”
“Why would you take by force that which you can have through love?”
As one farmer said to me, “The earth wants us here.” Food comes out of the earth to feed us and nurture us.
We can say “God wants us here, because he provides for our basic needs through the ecosystems he has given us.”
How can we honor him back?
It is, perhaps, our duty, our sacred responsibility to find links in our food system that base production on the profound truth of love. Not force, not extraction, but love.
And to honor God and his creation by supporting those who nurture the ecosystem.
You’re going to experience a fundamentally different meal when you come to a table prepared in love.
A table where the farmers growing the food are honoring their role as husbands to the land. A table where the food is prepared with love, with respect and a humility that we are all equal in the eyes of God whether we wear an expensive suit or jeans muddied by treks through rows of beans.
This food–grown, harvested and prepared with love–will nurture you in body, mind and soul–where there is love and stewardship from the beginning to the end.
It is only here, in the unspoken connection between God and man, man and earth, mother and child, father and son, where the intangibles come alive. Where we can feel the presence of the Holy Spirit.
This connection is as untouchable, yet deeply felt as God himself.
The food you eat–your food system–can be a celebration of the tangible circle of life on earth and the intangible presence of God in every bite we take.
Or, your food system can be complicit in the subversion of God’s creation by taking by force that which you can have through love.
But what is food security?
And how do food systems and food security relate to one another?
Food security is the ability to feed our households and communities where we are now. It is knowing what feeds us and heals us within our chosen ecosystem where we live, work, and worship. We simply cannot have food security without healthy ecosystems.
A couple weeks ago at church, the youth pastor was giving a sermon on discipleship.
He reminded us of this:
“Each generation must be taught who God is and what he’s done. We can’t pass on what we don’t have.”
And that is an illustration of food security.
We can’t pass on what we don’t have.
Do you know how to coax milk from a cow or goat, how to protect egg-laying chickens from hawks, how to fatten a calf and have meat for your family or butcher a pig and make sausage?
Do you know the forage that gives nitrogen and carbon back to the soil so that animals can graze and give us life-sustaining meat and milk, or how to make cheese from the milk your cow gives?
Do you know how or when to plant vegetables for seasonal harvest or how to grow or find the herbs that will bring you natural fertility, improve your blood circulation, and heal skin wounds?
Probably not.
We currently rely on 1% of our population here in America to produce our food. And that is through the industrialized, extractive processes that we’ve grown accustomed to and take for granted.
That is not food security.
That is a single point of failure and one that leaves many of God’s children hungry.
We’re not typically taught the many wonders of God in the garden.
Our industrial food system wants you to forget about God’s role in creation and the wonders and diversity of the plants and animals he has given us. The industrial food system wants you to rely solely on man’s inventions. This system wants you to elevate man to God through patented seeds, chemical inputs, lab-grown meat, and waste products processed, bottled and sold as “health foods.”
Food security is like a broken promise in this system.
How will our communities feed themselves without the knowledge of God’s creation passed down from generation to generation?
It is our duty to put God BACK in the equation of our food system and thus teach our next generation what food security IS. It is that profound relationship between God and man, heaven and earth. We must teach our youth to put God back in his rightful place of creator and to joyfully experience his creation through our stewardship.
Mothers–and women in general–have a unique role in this. It is we who nurture our families, who historically ensure food security in our households and communities. It is we who bring forth life and nurture that life from our own bodies.
Yet where are the leaders?
We are the ones who can make this all possible. Just like Jesus declared that the kingdom of heaven is for us, so too is the beauty and bounty of his earthly creations.
Yet, we can’t pass on knowledge and wisdom we don’t have.
And, as Mordecai says to Esther, “Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:13)
I am reminded of Esther’s courage and trust in the Lord as she faced the king. Her relationship with Mordecai and the God they trusted gave her the strength to ask for her people’s safety.
Today, we have that same choice–like Esther, we must also ask for our brothers’ and sisters’ bodily safety through food security and a food system that joyfully and reverently nurtures God’s creation FOR our communities. Make no mistake about it. This WILL take courage and faith.
And then we must teach what we learn–both the tangible of how to coax food we can eat from the earth, and the intangible existence of God–to the next generation. Our next generations will need both of those for the spiritual battles they will face.
It is our duty, our sacred responsibility, to put the awareness and love of God’s creation back into the minds, hearts, and hands of our next generation.
That, my friends, is food security. And with it comes the peace God wants for all of us–that which you can only have through love.
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This is the shit that keeps me up at night.
As the coyotes howl their midnight sermons, I lie there staring into the darkness, wondering how we got here.
Two million farmers in this country, each convinced we’re carrying Moses’ staff.
Whether we're spreading synthetic fertilizer across 10,000 acres or hand-pulling weeds in a 2-acre organic garden, we all believe we've figured it out. It's like a Tower of Babel, but make it agriculture — everyone speaking different languages, while the land keeps taking our experiments like an old pickup with 300,000 miles on the clock.
Your line about "taking by force what you can have through love" hit me square in the teeth.
Because the truth is, most of us think we are farming with love.
My grandpa believed it too — chasing marginal land like salvation, convinced he was doing the Lord’s work by squeezing grain from ground that wanted to be prairie. He’d tell me, pride thick as August humidity, how landowners welcomed him with open arms. But those stories, like old fence posts, marked boundaries that don’t always point the way forward anymore.
The reality is messier than a pig pen after a spring rain.
Some of us preach soil health, while others worship yield monitors. We're all convinced our way is the highway to agricultural salvation, as if we each picked up different pieces of the same broken compass and decided our fragment points true north.
Before we can fix the food system, maybe we've got to learn to shut up and listen.
Not the listening where you're just waiting to explain why someone's wrong, but the kind where you admit maybe you don't have all the answers. The kind that makes you realize every generation before us thought they had it figured out, yet each had blind spots big enough to park a combine in.
What if real food security starts with some food system humility?
The kind that makes you willing to get down on your knees in the bean field — not just to pull plants, but to learn from the farmer next door, even if their methods make you want to spit nails.
Just thoughts from someone realizing we're all stumbling around in the dark, looking for the light switch, carrying different pieces of the same map.🌱