The story has its origins in one of Aesop’s fables, “The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse.” Its moral advises that it is better to live in self-sufficient poverty than to be tormented by the worries of wealth. City life, while it promises instant gratification and worldly pleasures, does not give us independence and safety.

The tale was hugely popular with the ancient Greeks. Then, the polis reigned: city-states in which the majority of labour was done by slaves. Consequently, being from either the city or the country meant a whole lot. However, as the time of the polis came to an end, so did the interest in this story.

Centuries later and to the west, Europe was chaotically emerging from feudalism. City-states once again defined politics. As land was bought up by the wealthy, an itinerant and unemployed peasant class flooded the cities. Now, being from the country or from the city was more important than ever, and Aesop’s fable became common once again, with several new translations and interpretations. Yet despite their differences, all versions had one thing in common: a characterization of the country mouse as simple and boorish, and the city mouse as well-bred and well-mannered, perhaps a bit stuck up.

Both [Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina] bear a strong idealization of on the one hand the city, with its semblance of progress and riches; and on the other the country, with the fantasy of self-sufficiency.

Fast forward to 19th century France at the height of the industrial revolution. Most peasants had been kicked off their land, going on to crowd factories and mines at low pay. The nobility inhabited an increasingly precarious position, and the bourgeoisie was growing. In 1856, Gustave Flaubert published Madame Bovary, often considered the first modern novel.

In the novel, a doctor, Charles Bovary, marries the daughter of an impoverished farmer, Emma Rouault. They move to a small town. Now ‘Madame Bovary,’ Emma becomes bored and depressed, and she begins two different affairs. From this point onward, she becomes obsessed with city life, making trips to Rouen, the nearby town, frequently. Emma – spoiler alert – ends up in debt from living beyond her means, and finally commits suicide by eating arsenic.

Flaubert deftly depicted the struggle of a country woman to become a city woman, set during a time of unprecedented social transformation in France. As Stephen Heath put it, “The main impression [in the novel] is one of mobility, money on the move, an economic and social transformation in which a truly middle class is finding itself.”

The history of literature maps neatly onto the history of the changing dynamics between the city and the country.

Another famous novel, Anna Karenina, was written 20 years afterward. In the novel, Anna has an affair with Vronsky, a dapper military man. The affair goes sour, and Anna becomes ostracized by the rest of society. Tolstoy splices the story with imagery of progress – the train thunders throughout the novel, carrying the characters to the city and back again. Finally, Anna throws herself in front of it.

Another character in Anna Karenina, Levin, raises similar questions to Anna’s, struggling to balance his ideals with those of his society. His story ends in a way similar to Tolstoy’s own life: his hatred of the city and the idea of progress that accompanied it caused him to spend his final days running a farm, caring for his family, and writing in peace about art, religion, and anarchism.

Both novels bear a strong idealization of on the one hand the city, with its semblance of progress and riches; and on the other the country, with the fantasy of self-sufficiency. Both female characters are crushed by social forces: Emma is overburdened by debt; Anna is no longer accepted in high society. And modernity kills them: Emma swallows poison from her husband’s medicine room and Anna is crushed by a train. Meanwhile, trains, carriages, and money bring all the characters to their destinations, promising pleasure and privilege.

* * *

In a short story by Nguyễn Huy Thiệp, “Lessons from the country,” published in 1987, a boy from Hanoi escapes to the country to stay with his friend’s family, intending to work for his keep. There, he meets the village teacher, who asks him, “Do you feel superior to country people because you live in the city?”

The boy says he doesn’t. “Don’t despise them,” he remarks, himself a former urbanite. “All city people and the educated elite carry a heavy burden of guilt when it comes to the villages. We crush them with our material demands. With our pork stew of science and education, we have a conception of civilization and an administrative superstructure that is designed to squeeze the villages.”

Vietnam, at the time of writing, had recently decolonized. This required reforming the European property rights that had been stamped all across the country by the French. Thiệp’s story was also written in the context of globalization, when the country opened itself up to foreign investment, eventually resulting in widespread uprooting of the rural class.

This passage from Thiệp’s story crystallized a jumble of ideas in my mind. First, literature is literally shaped by the divide between country and city. Everywhere you look, it defines characters and plot. The history of literature maps neatly onto the history of the changing dynamics between the city and the country, from Aesop to Thiệp.

There is something inherently oppressive in a society that prioritizes cosmopolitanism: the success of one class is dependent on the expropriation and labour of another, more marginalized class.

One historian, Immanuel Wallerstein, sees all politics in these terms: the richest societies – what he calls the “core” – extract a net positive of materials from the poorest – the “periphery.” In his view, development of one part of the world requires the extraction of resources, labour, and land from another. This, of course, requires transportation, and it’s no surprise that as cities grew, so did the reference to trains, roads, and vehicles in literature.

Additionally, the relationship between country and city is one of debt. Cityfolk owe all their material wealth to the country, while at the same time, countryfolk are seen as less civilized or boorish. There is something inherently oppressive in a society that prioritizes cosmopolitanism: the success of one class is dependent on the expropriation and labour of another, more marginalized class. This material oppression is then justified by social oppression: like the country mouse, countryfolk are ‘common,’ ‘peasants,’ ‘uneducated,’ or ‘uncivilized.’ Yet the life of the oppressed becomes idealized – Levin, of rich noble stock, dreams of self-sufficiency in the country.

This dynamic can also be seen between Indigenous people in America and European colonizers. While Indigenous land, necessary for the colonizer’s wealth, is taken at gunpoint, they are deemed uncivilized and simultaneously idealized for their peaceful, ‘more natural’ livelihood.

Finally, it drives home the realization that we should always remember what makes living in the city possible. Nowadays, visionary ideas of endless cities and utopian images of pristine cosmopolitan worlds abound. It becomes easy to forget – and therefore erase – how we are indebted to life beyond the edge of the city.

Currently, the world’s most materially impoverished people are farmers, peasants, and rural refugees. The most disenfranchised in North America are people who moved into cities to survive after their land was privatized or sold: migrants, Indigenous people or people whose ancestors were ripped from their rural livelihoods and themselves sold into slavery. The current economic system continues to most impact those uprooted from the country, causing shockwaves that ripple across the world, into literature and our cultural imagination.

A Bite of Food Justice is a column discussing inequity in the food system while critiquing contemporary ideals of sustainability. Aaron Vansintjan can be reached at foodjustice@mcgilldaily.com.

The post Country mouse, city mouse appeared first on The McGill Daily.

A month ago, I was staying in Tay Ho, a neighbourhood of Hanoi known for its growing expat population. Here I found chain supermarkets, unfinished luxury apartment complexes, brand-new chic boutiques, and dog spas. In between all of this, there remain some thin strips of orchards, garden plots, and vegetable markets hidden in the alleyways. A wealthy and mostly foreign social class seems to be increasingly encroaching on agricultural land. These, I thought right away, are the telltale signs of gentrification.

I wanted to find out more. Unable to interview in Vietnamese, hire a translator, or glean accurate information from the English media, I found the next best thing: Roman Szlam. Roman is a volunteer guide for Friends of Vietnam Heritage, an English teacher, a blogger, and also happens to be a walking Wikipedia on the history of Hanoi.

“I’ve noticed everything you’ve noticed,” he noted, recognizing my discomfort. “I see all the farms disappearing, all the high-rises coming in here. All the luxury development.” But Roman didn’t seem too troubled by the changes in Tay Ho.

Apparently, everyone who originally owned land in Tay Ho has been able to sub-lease it at high prices. “Even the farmers,” noted Roman, “who are losing their farms here directly around West lake, tend to be happy. There are no protests from anyone.” What’s more, agriculture in the neighbourhood was primarily for decorative plants – in no way would the sale of this land affect the need for food access in the city.

I wondered whether it was really all that rosy in Tay Ho: were there some people that weren’t as happy as others? Nevertheless, to Roman, the real gentrification problems were occurring in the outskirts of the city and in the city centre.

What’s really happening in Hanoi?

In the early 2000s, Hanoi was facing mounting traffic problems, while the Old Quarter, the prime tourist attraction, was being slowly destroyed by untrammeled development. In 2008, the Vietnamese government allowed Hanoi to expand its borders significantly. To do this, they re-zoned huge swathes of land for commercial and high-income residential uses.

The re-drawing of Hanoi’s borders coincided with a spate of farm acquisitions by the land management department. Officials offered farmers a small payment in return for the land and then leased it to developers – often acquaintances – at inflated prices. In other words, outright corruption. These developers thought it was the perfect time to build houses for Hanoi’s new upper-middle-class. But this didn’t go so well.

“Nobody bought any of these developments,” Roman explained. “As they began to go bankrupt, these people who had borrowed 90 per cent of the money could no longer repay the banks.”

The criminalization of the informal sector, which grew in large part due to land dispossession, in turn sets the conditions for the creation of a cheap new labour market.

At the time, many government-owned corporations had started investing in the stock market. Come the crash of 2008, Vietnam’s banks had no more money, and foreign investors started pulling out, causing a banking crisis that still hasn’t been resolved. What’s more, a group of farmers started making a stink, holding in-your-face protests in front of the government buildings.

“This huge land grab,” remarked Roman, “became a national scandal. It couldn’t be hidden anymore. There was no money to be had anywhere. Consequently, a lot of the food production around Hanoi has been lost.” In a city where 62 per cent of the vegetables consumed are locally produced, you can imagine the effect on food prices.

Around the same time, the city cleaned up its downtown core by, on the one hand, criminalizing street vendors, and on the other, promoting supermarkets and shutting down two of the city’s open markets, replacing them with high-end – but mostly empty – malls.

Noelani Eidse, a PhD candidate at McGill, has been researching the case of Hanoi’s street vendors and how their livelihood has been affected by land grabs on the urban fringe. “It’s all part of this larger push for Hanoi to become a global city,” Eidse said. “The rationale behind banning vending is that vendors are adding to traffic congestion. A less explicit reason is that vendors are seen as uncivilized and their livelihoods are considered to be anti-modern, and a hindrance to development.”

There is no doubt that gentrification is an international phenomenon, and what links each case is the opening up of markets, privatization of public goods, and collusion between the market and state.

Eidse has found that it’s often the same people who were pushed off their land who are also forced to make a living in other ways. “For a lot of these people,” she explained, “it’s either working in factories or working informally.”

Those who choose informal work, like street vending and trading trash, are now being targeted by these new laws. Arrests and fines are more and more common, making it difficult for these people, mostly women, to practice their livelihood.

In sum, the unfair leasing of farmland to developers, shuttered and empty markets, lack of space for food vendors, and the inaccessibility of supermarkets for most Hanoians, has meant that many people in the city centre are now facing increased food insecurity and precarity. And so, the cycle of dispossession, precarity, and criminalization continues.

The all-too-real effects of gentrification

In Hanoi, top-down decisions to make the city more appealing to foreign investors helped trigger a nationwide banking crisis, followed by a shortage in food production and access locally. This is gentrification at its worst – far more devastating than a fancy boutique in the expat neighbourhood.

The changing of land rights, the corruption that came with privatization of land, and the increase in high-end development projects – all of these happened at about the same time that Vietnam opened its markets to foreign investment and encouraged foreign factories to set up shop. The criminalization of the informal sector, which grew in large part due to land dispossession, in turn sets the conditions for the creation of a cheap new labour market. People have no choice but to start working in the new factories run by foreign corporations.

Before I go on, I have to stress that Hanoi is unique. Vietnam, as a socialist state, also has an unusual land rights system and one-party-closed-door-politics. Pair this with increased liberalization, and a system of state-owned corporations, and you have a one-of-a-kind situation. It is also important to reiterate how sometimes it isn’t all that bad, like in the case of Tay Ho and its wealthy expats.

But it’s striking how these patterns repeat in other cities, like Lagos, Nigeria. Eidse noted that Singapore’s model of development and regulation has been a reference point for Hanoi’s own city planners. Gentrification in London and New York is well-documented. There, social housing and tenant rights were increasingly eroded through active government policies encouraging outsider investment. There is no doubt that gentrification is an international phenomenon, and what links each case is the opening up of markets, privatization of public goods, and collusion between the market and state.

In all cases, gentrification should be understood as the concerted effort, by a coterie of businesspeople and government officials, to profit from communal wealth.

It’s easy to vilify the upper-middle class – those taking the Google bus or the expats moving into the new high-rises – but if you really want to address the problem, you need to follow the money.

In all cases, gentrification should be understood as the concerted effort, by a coterie of businesspeople and government officials, to profit from communal wealth. In Hanoi, this came in the form of land grabs and policies targeting the informal economy, but elsewhere it can happen through the privatization of social housing, or the branding of a city as a haven for the creative class.

It all seems a bit hopeless. Yet, there are plenty of avenues for resistance. In Hanoi, a group of villagers who had been pushed off their land started protesting in ways that made it hard for the media to ignore them, or for the police to beat them up. As a result, they were able to bring national attention to endemic corruption and initiate a series of laws to protect against land seizures.

While gentrification hurts those who have little to start with, those who have lost the most often have the loudest voice. If we want inspiration for future actions, it’s these voices we should listen to. These villagers have it right – they followed the money, smelled something fishy, and created a stink.

A Bite of Food Justice is a column discussing inequity in the food system while critiquing contemporary ideals of sustainability. Aaron Vansintjan can be reached at foodjustice@mcgilldaily.com.

The post Just what is gentrification anyway? appeared first on The McGill Daily.

In 1998, Janet Poppendieck wrote along the same lines, arguing that food banks came about as a symptom of a failing welfare state and that they take the responsibility of ending hunger away from the government. To Poppendieck, food banks are like a doctor with only a first aid kit: sometimes band-aids just aren’t enough for an ailing society.

Even this argument isn’t new. In Oscar Wilde’s 1891 essay The Soul of Man under Socialism, he famously argued that “the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good.” In other words, charity does not help the poor, it merely preserves the status quo, making sure that the root of society’s problems are not addressed. Wilde was likely thinking of the Dickensian soup kitchens that proliferated throughout London’s East End at the time, where thousands lined up to receive a bowl of soup every day.

Food banks have the potential to be revolutionary places where those most affected by society’s problems gather and find ways to fight against them.

To Wilde, the alternative to these band-aid remedies is socialism: going to the root of the problem and restructuring society so that poverty and hunger are no longer possible. To Poppendieck, the alternative is to reinstitute welfare, strengthening the social safety nets of a society that has become more and more unequal. These sentiments of moving from private property to collectivism, from charity to solidarity, are central to leftist ideology. Along with this line of thinking comes automatic disdain for hand-outs, particularly in the form of food aid.

It’s clear that food banks are problematic. Not only do they help keep a system of inequality alive without challenging it, but they also rely on the very system that is killing many people slowly: industrialized and highly processed food. But – and there’s always a but – food banks also carry promise.

In Canada, those showing up to food banks are often migrants, Indigenous people, single mothers, and seniors. It’s no accident, as they are also the people who are most affected by institutionalized racism, sexism, and broken healthcare and welfare systems.

One of the ways by which the Black Panther party is most remembered is their free breakfast program: there, they provided food to underprivileged children every morning, while also handing out pamphlets, offering reading groups, and hosting workshops. Those most affected by racism in the U.S. were also the ones who most needed a free meal. The Black Panthers saw this and created the program as its primary mode of recruitment. This strategy was so effective that, not only did the U.S. government copy it soon after with its own free breakfast program at public schools, they were also called “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country” by J. Edgar Hoover, then-director of the FBI. The threat of revolution was quickly neutralized by the FBI through widespread persecution, arrest, and assassination of their leaders.

Like the free breakfast program, food banks have the potential to be revolutionary places where those most affected by society’s problems gather and find ways to fight against them. Food is the universal social glue, and the most impoverished, who are often the most isolated, need as much social glue as they can get.

“We’ve always strived to provide a festive ambiance. A more cooperative base as opposed to a more paternalistic, Dickensian atmosphere that makes people hesitate to come in.”

These places aren’t just theory, they exist. The Stop is a food bank turned community centre in Toronto. While they do hand out food, they also host community kitchens – many directed at migrants – programs for single mothers, a ‘good food’ market, a greenhouse, and many other activities. In doing so, they bring together those most affected by racism, ageism, and sexism, as well as those interested in farmers’ markets or urban agriculture.

“In eating with others,” said Nick Saul, the director of The Stop Community Food Centre, in a recent article in the Montreal Gazette, “You can build community and you can express your background and culture. It’s a good way to do community organizing, a good way to get at big issues.”

My own Masters research centres around a food bank in south-west Montreal, the Réseau d’Entraide de Verdun. There, food distribution is partnered with workshops, community kitchen programs, and an at-cost grocery store. The Réseau also tries to provide all their services in a dignified and inclusive manner. As one staff member told me, “We’ve always strived to provide a festive ambiance. A more cooperative base as opposed to a more paternalistic, Dickensian atmosphere that makes people hesitate to come in.”

What interests me about the Réseau is not just that they provide food to the needy and have diverse activities. Despite being a charity, which by law must refrain from being political, they show that politics can be done differently. They work with local political groups, providing them material support in the form of food. If any organization, such as the local Inuit centre, the women’s centre, and the organization Solidarity Across Borders, needs a meal cooked for an event, the Réseau can help them out. Likewise, they’ve partnered with local groups, establishing what they call a ‘broad front’ of neighbourhood solidarity, which, combined, has more power to challenge state policies than just one group acting by itself. They also work with regional networks, such as the Table de la Faim, to pressure the government to do something about rising hunger and inequality.

Activism should be inclusive and address people’s actual material needs. If we really want to change things, we need to go to the spaces where people already are, and work with them on their terms.

The Réseau, while being a charity and handing out food, challenges the state, advocates for better welfare, and helps support local community and activist groups with material resources. In short, they’re living proof that something like the free breakfast program is still possible, and still radical – not radical as in fanatical, but radical as in basic, essential, and far-reaching.

Why am I interested in food banks? In the long run, we need to shift from an economy predated on violence, dispossession, and over-extraction. To get there, some advocate degrowth or the solidarity economy, yet others prefer anarchism. Such economies wouldn’t be possible without places that provide essential resources to those most in need. I think some food banks – by offering those resources, helping to break isolation, and providing collective solutions to individualized problems – give a glimpse of the kinds of institutions we’d want in this new economy.

In the short run, it’s imperative that activism is accountable to the people who are most directly affected, and that we start working toward new ways of managing material resources; either locally, non-hierarchically, and toward access for all. Specifically, activism should be inclusive and address people’s actual material needs. If we really want to change things, we need to go to the spaces where people already are, and work with them on their terms.

As another staff member at the Réseau, who prefered to remain anonymous, recently told me, “In the last political demonstrations, we made food for other groups. Our people are not young and they might not see the point in demonstrating. However, they prefer making food for other people and that makes sense for them.” Protesting on the streets is not for everyone, but most people can cook together. Sharing meals doesn’t require knowing anyone beforehand. It also saves money and time.

It’s understandable that people who want a radical change in society would simply dismiss food banks as charities. But work has been done at some food banks that has challenged the status quo more strongly than food co-ops, infoshops, lobby groups, or even many NGOs. This is because they provide something that everyone needs – food – and do so in ways that are dignified, inclusive, and political.

That’s what food justice is: working with those most affected by an unjust food system, rather than creating spaces outside of it only accessible to the privileged.

A Bite of Food Justice is a column discussing inequity in the food system while critiquing contemporary ideals of sustainability. Aaron Vansintjan can be reached at foodjustice@mcgilldaily.com.

The post The potential of food banks appeared first on The McGill Daily.

By 2050, world population is expected to hit 10 billion. How are we going to feed all those people? And how can we do so without further impacting the environment?

In a 2011 paper published in Nature, “Solutions for a cultivated planet,” a host of scientists – including McGill professors Elena Bennett and Navin Ramankutty – attempt to provide the answer. The authors suggest stopping harmful agricultural expansion, while at the same time increasing agricultural productivity where possible, changing diets, and reducing waste.

On first read, this sounds great. But what doesn’t sit well with me is the idea that we must improve ‘underperforming’ land. It’s a way of continuing colonization, justifying the forced privatization and acquisition of people’s land.

The first great land grab

Wahéhshon Shiann Whitebean is a member of the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk Nation, and practices Longhouse traditions. Whitebean has lived in Kahnawake, a First Nations reserve just southwest of Montreal, for most of her life. She is a mother of three, community organizer, gardener, and student at Concordia University.

During our discussion, I explain how corporations are currently buying up land, artificially raising its prices for profit, and evicting people who use the land to survive, in the name of food security and sustainability. Whitebean seems unsurprised. To her, this is exactly what happened on first contact in Canada, and demonstrates why colonization is still ongoing. “Any time you talk about land grabbing, it’s Native people’s land. […] There are other Indigenous people in the world who literally die to protect their land.”

“That’s the thing people don’t realize about colonialism. All the things that happened to us, happened to them first. The truth is that this was done already to non-native people.”
Wahéhshon Shiann Whitebean

Whitebean tells me how before European contact, her people had systems to manage land collectively. They lived in extended families in Longhouses, and “women managed food production and distribution. Those two things are key in societies where the women had high status. […] There was no burden on one woman or one man to raise a family. There was no hunger. Everyone took care of each other.”

“All of that was changed by colonization,” says Whitebean. In the 1800s, Europeans enforced conversion to Christianity, which stressed a husband’s control over his wife. In addition, only men were allowed to hold land titles. “Now, women were subject to male dominance, and land rights were no longer the women’s role.” To Whitebean, it was precisely the moment when land rights changed that her people could no longer continue their traditional way of life.

Whitebean also argues that they weren’t the first to have this happen to them. “That’s the thing people don’t realize about colonialism. All the things that happened to us, happened to them first. The truth is that this was done already to non-native people.”

I bring up Silvia Federici, a researcher and activist. Federici argues that the same type of land theft in America and Africa happened to Europeans first. During the enclosure movement in England and Wales starting in the 17th century, land that was used – mostly by women – for subsistence farming was bought up and fenced off by wealthy nobles and merchants. Peasants were pushed off their land, with no option but to seek low wage labour in the cities. According to Federici, this set in motion the witch hunts and later colonialism. As Whitebean says, what happened to her people happened to Europeans earlier.

Academics like Bennett and Ramankutty need to stop taking an apolitical perspective and recognize the role of violence on women, changes in land rights, and colonization in bringing about hunger globally.

Justifying dispossession

From the enclosures to colonization, land grabs were justified as ‘civilizing’ the locals. In the English enclosure movement, merchants and nobility argued that the commons were mismanaged ‘wastes’ – if wealthy merchants could show peasants how to farm, they could help them improve their lot. In America, Indigenous peoples’ lands were ‘wastelands’ and they needed to be taught to properly manage it.

The justifications for land grabbing today are very similar. ‘Under-performing’ land – in other words, subsistence farming, or self-sustaining farming – is not productive enough. Locals need to be taught better farming practices so they can enter the global food market. But what’s wrong with this? In the end, doesn’t privatization increase productivity?

In a 2009 interview, Federici points out how land grabbing harms primary caregivers the most. “Subsistence agriculture in particular, mostly done by women, enables millions to live who would otherwise have no means to purchase food on the market. […] In some parts of the world (Africa above all), 80 per cent of the food consumed is produced by them. […] Their ability to grow food is increasingly threatened by increasing land scarcity, the privatization of land and water, the commercialization of agriculture, and the shift in most Third World countries to export-oriented agricultural production.”

The new land grabs

Is the current spate of land grabbing – where companies buy up massive tracts of land for agricultural development or speculation on its future worth – really just colonialism? Claire Lagier, from her experience working for GRAIN (an activist group that tackles issues like land grabbing), claims otherwise.

“It’s not colonialism in the sense that we mean when we talk about, for example, colonization of Africa or the Americas.” She remarks that, in this case, it’s not just Europeans buying up land. “You have a lot of companies that are based in Malaysia, or in India, or in Singapore, or in Brazil, grabbing land. So it’s not so simple to say it’s a ‘North-South’ type of colonialism.”

However, new and old colonialisms seem to be compounded: “In Africa, [modern land grabbing] relies very heavily on structural oppression that already exists.” This structural oppression comes in the form of patriarchy, inequality, and violence rooted in a history of colonization at the hands of Europeans.

Land grabbing today is also driven by unique situations. Lagier adds, “The food crisis and the financial crisis made land and agricultural production a very strategic asset. If you invest money in farmland right now, you’re going to make more money than if you invest on the stock market, gold, or in real estate.”

“I’d like to focus more on effecting changes for the future, to improve the quality of our life. In my own life, I’ve learned that you can’t do everything all at once. You have to start with the small things.”
Wahéhshon Shiann Whitebean

Alternative solutions

So what are some viable solutions for a cultivated planet, where land is being speculated on, local farmers can no longer grow what they want, and people are being pushed off their land?

For one, there needs to be a land rights revolution, ending a legal system that drives ownership of land by the rich, for the rich. Food production needs to be taken out of the hands of those who seek profit, and be put in the hands of local people, specifically women. Indigenous peoples’ ways of life should be defended, not attacked. Finally, academics like Bennett and Ramankutty need to stop taking an apolitical perspective and recognize the role of violence on women, changes in land rights, and colonization in bringing about hunger globally.

The people I talked to all had their own solutions as well. Ella Haley, who is researching and engaging in activism around the land grab in Ontario, recommends that farmers establish land trusts and community bonds to protect their farmland. This is a legal framework where people can have control over what happens with the land, barring it from being sold to speculators and investors.

Lagier is now working on a campaign for Quebec pension funds to divest from land grabbing projects. She wants to highlight that Quebec labour unions are actually funding the dispossession of people from their land, through investment in the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec.

Whitebean is focusing on trying to build relationships in her own community, healing the wounds inflicted by ongoing colonialism. “I’d like to focus more on effecting changes for the future, to improve the quality of our life. In my own life, I’ve learned that you can’t do everything all at once. You have to start with the small things.”

Her hope in the long run, however, is to fundamentally change land rights for First Nations. “Women were traditionally seen as owners of the land. I’m trying to find a way to revert privatized land to collective women’s ownership. That’s why I’m studying now.”

A Bite of Food Justice is a column discussing inequity in the food system while critiquing contemporary ideals of sustainability. Aaron Vansintjan can be reached at foodjustice@mcgilldaily.com.

The post Who’s hungry? appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The first of a two-part series – read part two here.

“This area is known as a bread basket,” says Ella Haley, a resident, activist, and professor at Athabasca University. She’s referring to Brant County, which lies southwest of Toronto, just a 30-minute drive from Hamilton. “It has very fertile farming communities.”

That is, until recently.

In 2005, Ontario delineated one of the world’s largest greenbelts around Toronto, restricting development on prime farmland in the hopes of preserving farmland and conserving nature. Brant County, and other nearby counties like Simcoe, Niagara, and Wellington, happen to be just outside of it. Since then, many local farmers have sold their land and become millionaires.

Now, one community in the county, Langford, is dotted with what Haley calls ‘agri-slums’:  whole acres of farmland where heritage barns are bulldozed and prime farmland is deteriorated. A development corporation by the name of Walton International, Inc. has various development plans to transform the county for good.

When farm-land, especially one of Canada’s breadbaskets, is taken over for housing, [it] can have serious ramifications for an already precarious food system.

When word of the land sales reached community members, many were concerned about the lack of consultation. A petition was signed by a coalition of Mohawk activists, a United Church minister, and environmentalists. Walton’s plans went on, largely unhindered. Presentations to council didn’t do much either. One particularly meticulous resident, David Langer, started digging up the fine print.

Over the phone, Haley guides me through one of the documents Langer had posted online. It’s from the Ontario Land Registry, listing the shareholders of a Walton-affiliated purchase.

“This is very strange,” observes Haley. “Usually, when you sell a farm you sell to an individual, or you sell to a couple. But in this case, this farm is broken up into 663 shares,” Haley says. This is no usual development project; people from all over the world – Singapore, Malaysia, and Germany – are buying in to these shares, even though they won’t be planning on living there.

But what’s the issue? The land banking company, with the help of its investors, buys up property, proposes development on the land to the municipality, and then as the development is approved, land value increases. That doesn’t seem so bad.

The problem, Haley thinks, is that this kind of speculation and development ends up being worse for local communities. “What you’ll see is that land bankers and speculators are coming to Brant County because land is cheaper, because they’re outside the green belt. When they buy it, they keep it as farms until they want it. This leads to ‘agri-slums.’”

Sometimes it’s large corporations and foreign shareholders that buy up land. Sometimes it’s whole governments like China or South Korea that invest in land to secure food access in the future.

From fertile to fallow land. The development of massive tracts of land has another side effect, says Haley. Given the current economy, it’s easy to import fresh foods from abroad. But with recent oil price spikes and global food crises, that kind of cheap food may not always be available. “Food security means ‘do we have enough food?’ But food sovereignty is: ‘can we grow what we want, where we want? Can we grow it locally?’” When farm-land, especially one of Canada’s breadbaskets, is taken over for housing, this can have serious ramifications for an already precarious food system.

Brant County, it turns out, isn’t alone. People all over the world are experiencing similar enormous land acquisitions. In some cases, the land they live on is sold from under their feet overnight by international investors. “The plunder of Brant County’s foodland,” says Haley, can be linked to a global trend: land grabbing.

* * *

It’s hard to talk about land grabs without talking about GRAIN, a small non-profit organization working to support small farms worldwide. GRAIN’s mission is to support people’s control of their own food production – food sovereignty – and to maintain biodiversity throughout the world. By supporting and connecting small farmers, social movements, researchers, and grassroots movements, they strive to develop a network all over the world to fight against large agri-businesses.

In 2008, GRAIN started to notice reports of governments and companies travelling across the world to acquire huge swaths of land. As they say in one 2013 article, “The sheer number of such reports signalled something new; we had not seen this intensity of investor interest in farmland before, and in our view it was a reaction to the food crisis and the financial crisis of that same year.”

GRAIN quickly published a report, Seized! The 2008 land grab for food and financial security, and in so doing, initiated a global wave of activism, protest, and research to fight the phenomenon.

Land grabbing, explains Claire Lagier, who works for GRAIN and is completing a masters in Environmental Science at UQAM, is a complex process. Each case is different. Like in Brant County, sometimes it’s large corporations and foreign shareholders that buy up land. Sometimes it’s whole governments like China or South Korea that invest in land to secure food access in the future. “There’s a lot of very fertile land that’s being bought,” says Lagier, “especially in Africa, in countries where land rights are very poorly defined.”

It’s not just foreign nations and investors that are buying up land. Canadians are doing it too.

But again, what’s the issue? Why should we be worried?

Lagier explains that land grabbing often ends up harming local communities more than it might be intended to help them.

“[For example] there’s a lot of countries where women are traditionally, culturally, in charge of producing palm oil, processing it, and selling it on markets. Then these companies come and negotiate with the chiefdom to either buy the land or lease the land for 100 years. They install palm monoculture. Within five years you have no traditional small production sector, because it’s been replaced by large-scale production. All these women who had their income derived from this, suddenly don’t have anything any more. When women lose their financial independence they receive all kinds of abuse, entering prostitution systems, derived of poverty, violence, gendered violence.”

When lands are seen as common, women tend to support their families through subsistence farming. Take away that common land, privatize it, and the wages received from working on these plantations will not be nearly enough. Whole communities are affected, and sometimes they put up resistance.

“You have some cases of grabbings where [there is] a private security or local police force that comes, and if they meet any resistance to the grab that they’re doing, they will intimidate people, and they will kill peasant leaders and social movement leaders to intimidate resistance and to get people to stop organizing,” explains Lagier.

It’s not just foreign nations and investors that are buying up land. Canadians are doing it too, even though they might not know it. “Pension funds and investment funds are some of the biggest players of the financial industry, and in the past five to ten years they’ve been investing about $15 billion in land, which is expected to double by 2015. It’s something that’s growing really fast right now.”

What’s confusing about land grabbing is whether it’s a recent phenomenon, unique to the past decade, or actually a continuation of older processes.

“La Caisse de dépot et placement, which is the biggest pension fund in Quebec, just announced last year that they will be investing some money that they’re managing for unions into a company created in Brazil to acquire land. That means it’s a first instance of a Canadian pension fund investing [in land grabs]. We also learned very recently that the Canada Pension Plan has also just made its first investment in farmland. It’s a very new trend of Canadian pension funds to do this.”

These funds are being used to buy up largely forested or ‘unused’ land, in the hopes that they will produce some profit in the future. And it’s only increasing, says Lagier. “This is a gold rush that is happening with farmland all over the world, but especially in Africa and some parts of South America and Southeast Asia.” GRAIN says that 60 countries have been targeted, and Oxfam estimates that 33 million hectares (about eight times the size of the Netherlands) have been leased or sold since 2001, and about 60 per cent of the projects are in Africa. It’s clear that land grabbing is a global trend that is on the rise, with little to stop it.

This all sounds very familiar. Foreign investors buying up huge swaths of land? People claiming that locals aren’t ‘efficient’ or ‘productive’ enough and are mismanaging the land? Taking advantage of local legal structures for the sake of profit? Violently taking people’s land and then forcing them to work on it? It bears a really strong resemblance to the history books, particularly the chapters on early colonialism.

What’s confusing about land grabbing is whether it’s a recent phenomenon, unique to the past decade, or actually a continuation of older processes, like the large-scale privatization of land that happened when Europeans colonized other continents. The next part of this series will delve into that question by considering how the two are linked, why they’re different, and how colonialism continues to this day. I will also show what people all over the world, but especially in Canada, are doing to fight it.

A Bite of Food Justice is a column discussing inequity in the food system while critiquing contemporary ideals of sustainability. Aaron Vansintjan can be reached at foodjustice@mcgilldaily.com.

The post Who’s hungry? appeared first on The McGill Daily.

That’s a pretty common line of logic. It’s also the basic argument of North America’s number one food guru, Michael Pollan. In a 2009 New York Times article, “Big food vs. big insurance,” Pollan links cheap bad food to the obesity ‘epidemic.’ The problem? That ‘bad’ food (like corn, potatoes, and wheat) is subsidized, making it cheaper, and people are eating too much of it, which has led to a rise in obesity. The solution? Stop subsidizing, and educate people to “vote with their fork” by buying locally and organically.

It turns out that this line of reasoning is totally false. It is also elitist, classist, racist, and fat-phobic. But before debunking Pollan, I want to put the discussion of food and health in a different context.

*  *  *

Anna Pringle is a student and food activist in Montreal. “Right now,” says Pringle, “one of the things I’ve been working on with other people is accessibility. How can we work on the idea of having healthy food for all, rather than healthy food being defined by very expensive organic food not for everyone? I don’t really know how much good moralizing is going to do for people when they just can’t afford to go to health food stores.”

Pringle is involved with the Food For All campaign, which works to improve access to food in Montreal, particularly undocumented migrants. In this work, she directly sees how food activism and racism can intersect. “If you want to start changing people’s health,” says Pringle, “you might want to be aware how that might be a racist act.”

Food racism happens when certain foods are excluded in favour of the dominant (white) culture’s idea of good food.

Why is it racist to say what food is healthy and what food isn’t? For one, this presupposes that the food from one culture is more ‘nutritious’ than that of another. Two clear examples: Canada’s Food Guide and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Pyramid. In both, dairy is seen as cornerstone food group, despite findings that in the U.S., 70 per cent of African Americans, 74 per cent of Indigenous Americans, 90 per cent of Asian Americans, and 53 per cent of Mexican Americans are lactose intolerant. On the flip side, high-calcium foods traditional to some of these cultures (for example, collard greens) are not included.  Food racism happens when certain foods are excluded in favour of the dominant (white) culture’s idea of good food.

Secondly, health itself is racialized. As Pringle says, it involves “saying that a certain type of body is better than other types of bodies.”

Ideas of health often presume a certain type of body. This doesn’t take into account how other cultures see health, nor does it acknowledge that the dominant idea of a ‘healthy body’ in North American media is most often thin and white. Healthy bodies shouldn’t be defined by what they look like.

*  *  *

Julie Guthman, writer and professor at UC Santa Cruz, takes aim at Pollan’s simplistic argument in her 2011 book, Weighing in: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism. Guthman completely destroys the idea that the obesity epidemic is caused by eating too much bad food.

First of all, she shows that it’s not just governmental subsidies that make for cheap food. Cheap food is driven by cheap labour. In the U.S., food was able to be cheap firstly by stealing ‘cheap’ land from natives, then, by importing ‘cheap’ slave labour, and later still, by importing Europeans to do ‘cheap’ labour in return for the promise of their own land (also stolen), and now by making use of ‘cheap’ migrant labour from south of the highly-securitized U.S. border. Fast food is cheap because it went to great lengths to destroy unions, taking away employees’ bargaining power, pushing wages as low as possible. What makes for cheaper food? The exploitation of people already in precarious situations. Then it’s fed back to those of us who can’t afford otherwise, further exacerbating reliance on a destructive food system.

It seems that people are more interested in proving why fat people are eating too much than actually examining what environmental factors affect people negatively.

Second, an obesity ‘epidemic’ simply isn’t caused by too many people eating too much. As Guthman says, “The evidence is just not there that people eat more calories than they did a generation ago or that different socioeconomic groups eat different amounts of calories.” Guthman points to research that instead implicates epigenetics, toxins in food packaging, and environmental toxins as factors that may have caused a rise in the average body-mass index. The energy balance model, where more high-energy food has a direct, causal link to more obese people, just doesn’t hold up.

Third, there’s a big problem when we link size to health. The problem is what Guthman calls co-production: when scientific assumptions actually become the variables. For example, most studies evaluating causes of obesity only measure variables that are assumed to cause obesity: the number of gyms in an area, the number of ‘healthy’ grocery stores, the number of fast food stores. In other words, people think fatness is the problem, and then try to prove it by seeking factors they assume cause fatness. This is not just a chicken-or-egg problem, it’s fat-phobia. It seems that people are more interested in proving why fat people are eating too much than actually examining what environmental factors affect people negatively.

Guthman argues that we need to go beyond shaming fat bodies. She turns to fat activists to show how this can be done. “Health at every size” is the most well-known slogan of the fat acceptance movement. This movement aims to battle the stigma against fat bodies. The slogan strikes at the heart of the mistaken assumption that weight and health are intrinsically linked. One issue with the slogan, however, is that it still prioritizes health over weight. Everyone should be respected, regardless of how healthy or unhealthy they seem to be.

*  *  *

What should the food movement’s slogan be? It shouldn’t be Pollan’s “vote with your fork,” that’s for sure. This excludes those who can’t vote, from lack of time, money, or privilege. It also shouldn’t be “good food for all,” as this takes for granted that it’s even possible to define what good food is, requires someone to judge what food is good, and what food everyone should be eating.

I can’t really think of an appropriate slogan for a food movement. Maybe this whole sloganeering thing is not for me. I ask my friends, Grace and Micah, sitting by me as I type late into the night, what they think.

“Eat to live!” Grace shouts, punching their fist in the air, mouth full of salad.

“I like it. It keeps it real. That’s why we eat,” says Micah.

I like it too. It’s about affirming people’s choices and people’s struggles, while emphasizing how the food we eat can be harmful, not because it makes us bigger, but because some can choose and some cannot.

A Bite of Food Justice is a column discussing inequity in the food system while critiquing contemporary ideals of sustainability. Aaron Vansintjan can be reached at foodjustice@mcgilldaily.com.

The post The racism in healthy food appeared first on The McGill Daily.

But what struck me about their piece was the way it focused on how St. Henri’s working class past was making way for “vibrant” younger residents and “grand” expensive lofts. The Daily’s article is a very clear example of something I see all the time: writers trying to be neutral in their stories. As it turns out, this neutrality is really just silence on essential parts of a story.

* * *

Walk through Notre-Dame-de-Grâce (NDG) now and you’ll see some old derelict theatres and warehouses, but many more new condos rising up. There’s a new sports centre and a stadium. The super-hospital – a spanking-new conglomeration of several English-language hospitals – looms over the same Turcot highway that has a reputation of shedding cubic metres of concrete onto passers-by.

It’s easy to mistake the new as progress. After all, younger and richer people are moving in, there are fewer ugly buildings, and new stores and restaurants are popping up. NDG, which also shares a working-class history, seems to be in the process of a new and exciting “revolution,” in Chinnick’s words. This assumption overlooks how this “revolution” affects people who are struggling the most. It can push them out of their homes and take their food away.

* * *

The NDG Food Depot is a food bank-turned-community centre that got kicked out of its space last April. Most news articles covering the incident glossed over the reasons, staying clear from laying blame or politicizing the event. “NDG Food Depot forced to move by week’s end,” read one headline in the Montreal Gazette, but it went no further than mentioning disagreements with the landlord.

A friend, Adrian Turcato, and I, decided to investigate. A series of clues – condo developers making an offer the landlord couldn’t refuse, a new super-hospital moving in down the road, another community space getting kicked out two years ago – led us to one culprit: gentrification.

Like in St. Henri, gentrification happens when neighbourhoods become appealing to developers and new residents. Institutions that work hard to bring people together and serve to make neighbourhoods safer – such as the Food Depot, cheap grocery stores, Head & Hands and Action Communiterre down the street, cheap restaurants – help to make neighbourhoods more attractive. The sneaky thing about gentrification is that it’s precisely such places that are most affected when new, richer residents move in or mega-projects get built in neighbourhoods. Another effect is that long-time residents are pushed out of their homes and unable to access the things they need.

Cynthia Angrave, who works at the NDG Food Depot, already feels the effects. “It’s going to be a neighbourhood that will be pushing people like me out,” she said. “I definitely live in full knowledge that I will receive a letter from my landlord at some point that he’s sold the building […] for condos. Condos were built right next to me in what was an empty lot, and I can just see it encroaching. This is a real concern for me.”

The fact that the Depot was pushed out of its space to make way for a condo is proof that gentrification negatively affects those who are already most vulnerable. In this case, it literally takes the food out of their mouths. But that’s not the end of the story.

As the new super-hospital was being built, efforts were made to ‘consult’ the community. An open discussion was held, and Bonnie Soutar, director of development at the Depot, was in attendance. She told everyone there about the neighbourhood’s issues: new development was pushing people out, and many community groups were feeling the negative effects. “They nodded their heads but I never heard any follow-up of it,” Soutar said about the consultation. “Everyone said, ‘yes, yes, we have to help the Food Depot find a space,’ [but] we didn’t really get a result from that.”

The effect of the super-hospital, then, isn’t just that it pushes people out. By moving into a neighbourhood, bringing in new residents, and at the same time not cooperating with the essential services that already exist, the super-hospital actually helps to destroy the lives of old residents and the organizations they rely on.

Similarly, when journalists write about a new development or increased gentrification without reporting on how communities are affected, they help force people like Angrave out of their homes through not making the public aware of the flip side of the gentrification coin.

So when talking about St. Henri, why not talk about other community groups than the historical society? Why not talk about St. Henri’s vibrant churches, resident-initiated food markets in the midst of food deserts, people uniting to resist being pushed out of their homes, the plans to destroy Village des Tanneries by expanding the Turcot highway and the local movement to stop it, and cheap grocery stores that help tie the community together? These are part of culture too, and ought to be included in a newspaper Culture section.

Not including these aspects of what makes a neighbourhood thrive means, first of all, erasing the lives of many still-struggling low-income people in favour of the mostly affluent, and second, actually exacerbating the negative effects that expensive new lofts and condos can have.

“The canal below the hill,” and the coverage of the NDG Food Depot are two very clear examples of something I see quite often: in trying not to be too political, in attempting to be ‘objective,’ journalists miss a huge part of the story. In so doing, they can actually make matters worse.

The NDG Food Depot now runs out of the basement of a church. If you’re interested, you can help them out by stopping at their new address, 2146 Marlowe, or find out more at depotndg.org.

A Bite of Food Justice is a bi-weekly column discussing inequity in the food system while critiquing contemporary ideals of sustainability. Aaron Vansintjan can be reached at foodjustice@mcgilldaily.com.

The post Gentrification is not grand appeared first on The McGill Daily.

But what does that actually mean? Who are the people who make local food happen? Someone who made their way to Canada through the temporary foreign workers’ program probably plucked the raspberries. Their pay is below minimum wage. They have no legal protection, no guaranteed health care service, and they get deported if there’s any labour dispute. When the season is over, they go back to their home country. If they stay, they’re seen as illegal, hunted down by authorities, and deported.

If you’re worried about the state of the food system, “going local” might seem like an easy choice, yet it’s harder on others. But what can you do besides buy locally or organically?

* * *

On August 29, I attended a barbecue hosted by the Réseau d’Entraide de Verdun. The Réseau – as people call it – is a food bank located in the basement of a community centre in Verdun, down the street from a McDonald’s. The Réseau cooks meals, hands out food, and organizes collective kitchens for people to get together and cook.

The atmosphere at the BBQ was classic: children refusing to eat kale, grown-ups demanding more relish, and sweet tunes playing from the speakers.

But this was a special BBQ, co-hosted by the Food For All committee of Solidarity Across Borders. Solidarity Across Borders is a network of activists fighting for a ‘Solidarity City’ – a place where people can access all essential services, regardless of who they are or where they come from. The goal of this event was to raise awareness and bring people together around the issue of food access for people without residency status – often referred to as “illegal immigrants,” an extremely dehumanizing term.

Aaron Lakoff, a member of the Food For All committee, listed some of the reasons why it’s also dehumanizing in practice. “If you’re an undocumented migrant living in Montreal, you’re probably going to be living a very financially unstable life, for the very simple reason that you can’t get a work permit, so you have to work under the table, often-times in very low-wage jobs. […] You have to live in substandard housing. People have a problem accessing cheap and healthy food. Add to that this really insidious practice of food banks demanding official documentation that non-status migrants can’t get, just for the very fact that they’re non-status in this country. It means that there’s a real, serious food security problem.”

According to another member of the collective, Gwendolyn Muir, organic food and other ‘back to the land’ ideologies are inaccessible to most. “We’re taking a very different approach and talking about access as the starting point, in order to try and change the structures that people have to deal with every day.”

When you hear the term “alternative food movement” you might think about Michael Pollan, farmers’ markets, or organic labelling. However, this is the food movement for the rich. Thinking that organic food is going to change an unfair food system is like trying to win Monopoly by buying only the most expensive property: the other players aren’t always going to land there.

In recognizing this, Muir and Lakoff are part of an alternative alternative food movement, often referred to as “food justice.” Food justice activists are people who realize the whole game is rigged, and if you’re unlucky, you lose. Food justice comes down to the idea that, in order to change our food system, we need to work together with those who are the most affected by it.

In this case, the Solidarity Across Borders network works with migrants who are often pushed to work in Canada because multinational corporations forced them off their land in the first place. Migrants are refugees of international capitalism, trying to find a way to support themselves and their families despite the odds.

As Muir points out, “There are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ immigrants. There are people who come here, who risk everything to search for a better life, who bring their families, and who deserve to stay. We [in Solidarity Across Borders] fight for the freedom to move, the freedom to remain, and the freedom to return.”

As I was interviewing Lakoff, a police car pulled up and several cops strutted onto the sidewalk. Thumbs hooked under their belts, they asked to speak to someone in charge. A tense hush descended on the previously pleasant scene. No doubt many present didn’t have too many good memories of police – Verdun is a poor neighbourhood, which comes hand-in-hand with a strong police presence and excessive racial profiling.

The irony wasn’t lost on me that this party, intended to raise awareness over the trouble undocumented people have in accessing food services, was crashed by these professional party-poopers. Their presence reminded me of the fear that many Montrealers carry with them all the time: fear of not having enough food to eat, fear of not even being able to attend a food bank, fear of deportation, fear of not being able to pay rent next month. This isn’t disconnected from the food I eat; it is intrinsically connected to an international food market, local food in Quebec, and what I can get at the grocery store. Fighting against an unjust food system also means fighting for migrants’ rights.

* * *

If you’re looking to break beyond attending pricey farmers’ markets, there are many things you can do. If you’re at a loss, you can email any of the organizations or individuals listed below.

To get involved with the Food For All campaign, email food4allmontreal@gmail.com.

To get involved with the Réseau, stop by at 4400 Boulevard LaSalle, Verdun or email them at info@entraideverdun.org.

To learn more about the Solidarity City campaign, visit www.solidarityacrossborders.ca.

Aaron Vansintjan is a second-year MSc. student studying Renewable Resources. If you have comments or questions about food justice, you can contact him at avansintjan@gmail.com. 

The post Eating organic and local food isn’t enough appeared first on The McGill Daily.

McGill professors were asked to respond to the prompt, “What should McGill University look like in the future?” Here, “the future” may refer to a distant future (say, the year 2050), or a nearby one (next year).

The idea was to gather diverse and creative thoughts on what function a university has in society, what it should have, and where McGill should go from here.

In addition to contributing critical thought about the role of the university, such an exercise may allow readers – staff, students, and professors alike – to think beyond the faults of this institution, and to think about the possibilities within.

Professors are well respected in our society, but while their opinions are heard at conferences and in lecture halls and journals, they are often not heard in the public discourse of the university. Professors are often disinclined to engage in public and political discussions. Education, it is often said, ought to be neutral, and therefore teachers must be silent on contentious topics. These responses were solicited to break that silence. Hopefully these pieces are just the beginning, and the conversation can continue throughout the new year. If you are interested in contributing, please contact commentary@mcgilldaily.com.

—Aaron Vansintjan

***

At 78, it still feels good to stretch my legs and walk across campus at McGill.

The year is 2050, and while the student outfits have changed since 2005 when I started working here, their concerns for the well-being of their fellow students, the environment, and people around the planet have not. On my walk across campus, I see installations about the work that various teams are doing to improve their environment and the lives of others. I stop to read the plaque describing one such initiative, and am pleased to see that the team undertaking this project to recycle phosphorus in campus waste to be used as fertilizer on the campus gardens is composed of students, professors, physical operations staff, and administrators. Gone are the days when it was primarily students participating in these types of activities. Since McGill initiated a policy to recognize and reward staff involved in such betterment projects, both campuses have become flurries of activity and everyone gets involved. The results are dramatic, and not only because of the projects taken on formally. One of the most important effects has been the increased casual communication between students, staff, and the administration that happens while they are working on the projects.

In addition to this policy to seriously reward professors and staff for involvement in local service, McGill has undertaken other important initiatives in the past 35 years. McGill’s decision in the twenty-teens to become the premier place to study ecological agriculture and environment in Canada has really paid off. The Macdonald Campus, still home to programs in agriculture, environment, nutrition, and agricultural engineering, is now also home to programs like ecological agriculture and global food systems. Students and staff now grow, harvest, prepare, and serve most of the food consumed on campus as part of a learning laboratory. People come from around the world to participate in this hotbed of new ideas about food from all perspectives. High-speed rail lines linking downtown to the West Island has made it even easier for students to move back and forth between the two campuses, ensuring that these Macdonald Campus programs are enhanced by strong linkages to existing downtown campus programs.

Invigorated by my walk across campus, I sit on a bench and am thankful to have had the opportunity to participate in this university at such an amazing time in its history.

—Elena Bennett

Assistant Professor, Natural Resource Sciences and McGill School of Environment

***

“We are all McGill.” It was a line invoked by many parties over the previous academic year – a year that included the MUNACA strike in the fall, the February occupation of the sixth floor of the James Administration building in response to the voiding of student referenda, and the various protests and picket lines throughout the year associated with the Quebec-wide student strike against tuition hikes, which in November occasioned the first incursion of riot police onto the McGill campus since 1969.

While each of these events had their own cause, they all also raised crucial questions regarding how matters of collective concern are addressed and discussed at McGill, and how decisions are made. One of MUNACA’s demands, after all, was to have greater say over the handling of their pensions; the sixth floor occupiers sought greater student control over the status and funding of their organizations; the student strike and ensuing social movement it awakened sought to reinvigorate the very processes of democratic participation. I would argue that the protests, picket lines, and other forms of dissent we saw last year at McGill were (among many other things) attempts to create public spaces for the consideration of these issues. Their participants were engaged in alternative forms of what the University likes to call “shared governance,” particularly by giving voice to those who are currently without substantial institutional power.

What should McGill look like in the future? In light of these events, I’d say that it should look like (and be) a place that really shares governance. For starters, in my future McGill, faculty, students, and staff would hold more seats on the Board of Governors (the body that has final authority over all university matters). Senate would have its power extend beyond academic affairs. There would be involvement of McGill’s various unions in institutional governance protocols. University initiatives would be developed from the ground up, not through “consultation” but through democratic processes that are laid out with some transparency. And the administration offices would share physical space with faculty and students, rather than operating behind a wall of security guards.

What should McGill look like in the future? It should enact the slogan “We are all McGill” in its institutions and its decision-making practices.

—Derek Nystrom

Associate Professor of English

***

McGill should look however the people who work and study here want it to look, while serving the interests of the larger societies and ecosystems that contain and sustain us. How can we tell, and then get, what we want?  Only by having the final say, by democratic vote, over the matters that most concern us. This idea applies not only to the university community as a whole, but to its various departments, faculties, et cetera.

One important area of concern is of course who our leaders and representatives are.  In our municipalities, provinces, and nations we take for granted the right to elect our mayors, legislators, and presidents. Is it not shameful and absurd that in universities we students, staff, and faculty tolerate anything less than the right to elect our chairs, deans, principals, and a majority of our governors?

Businesses that run democratically not only promote far greater equality, but also fulfill their missions more successfully than firms adhering to the standard model that subordinates workers to both managers and shareholders. The germ of democracy cannot, and should not, be quarantined to the ‘political’ sphere. We must bring it into our places of work and study.  Our experiences there will make us more effective in larger polities as well.  Leonard Cohen wrote in a poem that “Democracy is coming to the USA.”  Let us bring it now to his alma mater.

—Gregory Mikkelson

Associate Professor, McGill School of Environment and Department of Philosophy

The post What should McGill look like? appeared first on The McGill Daily.

At the same time, emerita Professor of Economics at McGill University, Kari Polanyi, and Montreal anti-capitalist activist, Jaggi Singh, led a discussion at Concordia on activism in the context of worldwide austerity measures and predatory capitalism.

The next day, 700 people were arrested in New York while peacefully protesting the current financial system.

The world is changing, and people are mobilizing to change it. In all of these events, I was surprised to see so many different people discussing, learning, and acting together. But even though our age, backgrounds, and biographies may differ, we are all affected. We are worried about the future. We know that something is not quite right. And we feel that something must be done about it.

To focus the discussion, we need to be aware of what is at stake, what problems we are dealing with. There are three issues that I feel are most pressing:
First, the financial crisis. This crisis is not a ‘market’ crisis. It is a people’s crisis. It means debt and insecurity, fear and helplessness. It means the inability of most to make the choices they have been working for all their lives and the prospect that even fewer choices will be available for their children. Meanwhile, a small minority have all the freedom to choose where and how they live, and how their children live. This is feudalism in a globalized world.

Let’s look at it this way: One fifth of all profits in the US return to finance, insurance, and real estate. This sector is also one that has grown more than any other: from 15 to 16 per cent profits in the 1970s, to 40 per cent now. These profits far exceed the function of the services the sector provides. Meanwhile, 49 of the poorest countries, inhabited by 11 per cent of the world’s population, receive only 0.5 per cent of the global product – equal to the income of the world’s three wealthiest men. 90 per cent of the wealth on the planet remains in the hands of just 1 per cent of its inhabitants. For every dollar made by a typical worker in 1980, a chief executive made $42. In 2000, that number had grown: chief executives made $532 for every dollar made by the average worker. The world has gotten terribly unfair.

Second, a food crisis is underway. The numbers are in: despite extensive water management systems, high inputs of artificial fertilizers, state-of-the-art machines, and genetic modifications of crop species, hunger has actually gone up in the last two decades – what was 824 million hungry people 1991 has now become 1 billion. This is coupled with a water crisis, in which already-stressed water systems are failing. For example, in India, already the world’s most malnourished country, water supplies are projected to be exhausted by 2015. The Ogallala aquifier, which supplies 30 per cent of US agriculture, may run out by 2030.

Our food system is broken, and it will only get worse. According to a report published this past summer, food prices may rise to 180 per cent by 2030, and the 1 billion–and rising–hungry people will not be able to afford this. And despite what our chief economists have been saying since the 1960s, hunger isn’t just a technical problem of yield or a relationship of supply and demand. It’s a financial, legal, and structural monopoly, where a select few, intentionally or not, have been able to determine how the majority of the world ought to live, work, and eat.
Third, climate change is happening faster than we thought it would. According to most recent reports, the northern ice cap will probably melt by 2030. For the first time in 3 million years, the Earth will have an open Arctic sea. Given that humans have only been around for 175,000 years, we’ll be in for an unprecedented shock. Some consequences:  we may lose 20 to 70 per cent of all species on the planet, about 634 million people may be affected by rising waters, two thirds of all cities with populations over 5 million could be partly under water, and the world will have to start dealing with a mass influx of climate refugees.

When you graduate, the world will be a different place. Political inclination – whether you stand on the ‘right’ or on the ‘left’ – won’t mean much. The world of the future isn’t going to be socialist, communist, or even dominated by a free market. These are old and inadequate concepts for new problems. Now we have free-market communists, environmental conservatives, and tradition-oriented radicals.

We’re dealing with enormous issues that we’ve never faced before. But this doesn’t mean we should pick an ideology blindly. Every opinion must be constantly questioned; every step must be made knowing what is at stake.

Being at a university, we are both separate from and an inextricable part of human affairs. We have the opportunity to mobilize for a different world and experiment with new ways of living together. We need to practice new ways of life and create the institutions that can deal with the problems of tomorrow.

As students, we must be vigilant and aware. More importantly, we must act. As Kari Polanyi, the former McGill Economics Professor who spoke at Concordia, remarked, “It is a huge challenge. It is not an easy world. We need a lot more activists. We need a sense of imagination.”

Aaron Vansintjan is a U4 Joint Honours Philosophy and Environment student, Chair of the Daily Publications Society, member of the QPIRG board of directors, and a Former Design and Production Editor for The Daily. You can contact him at aaron.vansintjan@mail.mcgill.ca

The post Crisis and action appeared first on The McGill Daily.

“We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil,” said Adlai Stevenson, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, in 1965.
Spaceship Earth means that we are self-contained – everything we need is right here, and we’re here to stay. But it also means that we live in a simple system – the sun gives us light, plants give us air, and we eat the plants. All we need to do is control the variables, inputs, and outputs. In this case, we don’t have a choice – we need to make do with what we’ve got.

In Aliens, the 1986 science-fiction film directed by James Cameron, “planet engineers” colonize space with funds from “The Company.” One executive says, “It’s what we call a shake ‘n’ bake colony. They set up atmosphere processors to make the air breathable. Takes decades.”
In the film, Earth has lost contact with one of these colonies. Something must be wrong. A squadron of soldiers is sent to investigate, and Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, is sent with them. “What exactly are we dealing with here?” asks one soldier.
“I’ll tell you what I know…” begins Ripley.
“Look man,” says another soldier, “I only need to know one thing. Where. They. Are.” She pulls a fearless scowl and takes aim with her make-believe gun. Bang.
Seeing the atmosphere processor towers in Aliens, I couldn’t help but think about a geo-engineering project proposed in 2007, when John Latham and Stephen Salter suggested a fleet of wind-powered yachts to roam the oceans, pumping sea-foam clouds into the atmosphere from billowing chimneys.

But terraforming isn’t only relegated to the world of science fiction. One year after Aliens hit the box office, a U.S. company called Space Biosphere Ventures decided to model the earth’s climate in a tightly sealed 12,000 square metre structure called Biosphere 2. By controlling the inputs of air and building simulated environments – a coral reef, a savannah, and a jungle, for example – the research group wanted to explore the interactions between different species and atmospheric conditions. This was the embodiment of “spaceship earth;” the network of plants, animals, and biomes was specifically designed to examine the potential for space colonization. But it was an inversion of Stevenson’s metaphor: an ideal earth was viewed as a model for space travel, rather than space travel being the model of an ideal earth.
By 1993 the experiment was doomed. To quote one New York Times article, “The would-be Eden became a nightmare, its atmosphere gone sour, its sea acidic, its crops failing, and many of its species dying off. Among the survivors are crazy ants, millions of them.” The hordes of ants started eating the silicon of which the structure’s geodesic dome was made. The fabricated environment was literally eating itself from the inside out. With a lack of oxygen in the sealed structure, the human subjects started hallucinating and suffered from drowsiness. A feud emerged between those trapped in Biosphere 2. Should they open vents to allow in more oxygen or trust the artificial ecosystem to correct itself?
In 1995 the pavillion was bought by Columbia University to become a research facility for an entirely different scenario: climate change. A micro-model of the earth in space became a micro-model of the earth under the yoke of geo-engineering. Spaceship Earth, embodied by Biosphere 2, exemplified the difficulties of trying to engineer the environment.

Climate change is almost inevitably associated with disaster, and geo-engineering is seen by many as a “necessary evil” to mitigate the worst of it. In the article “Hacking the Sky,” Jason Mark, an environmental journalist, considers geo-engineering as a solution to the oncoming disasters. “[I]f we shy away from manipulating the whole globe and continue on our present course, we could be left with a burnt Earth unlike anything ever seen. The scientists who are encouraging government-funded research into geo-engineering are driven by a powerful motive: fear.” Mark, like most, describes geo-engineering as a “double bind.” He says, “Either we keep our hands off the sky, and hope we act in time … Or we try our luck at playing Zeus.”
As David Keith, a well-known Canadian scientist who advocates the study of geo-engineering, said in an interview, “There would be consequences and side effects. I’m not saying this is a perfect solution. But as far as I can see, it’s the only tool we have.”
Some governments are also expressing enthusiasm. In 2009 Germany – in defiance of a U.N. moratorium – decided to fund a geo-engineering project to dump iron sulfate particles into the ocean to encourage algal blooms in an experiment with carbon-capture technologies.
Geo-engineering is most often either championed as “the only way out” or demonized as “hubris.” But it’s this kind of dialogue, driven by fear, which obscures the whole picture. When you shoot the enemy point-blank, all you see is the barrel of your gun.

James Ford, a McGill Geography professor specializing in the analysis of the vulnerability of communities to climate change, is skeptical of the current drive behind geo-engineering.
When I sat down with Ford two weeks ago, he recalled a 2009 conference on geo-engineering where the airconditioning system in one of the lecture halls broke down, much to the organizers’ embarrassment. “That metaphor relates the difficulties of controlling the climate. If we can’t control the climate in a single room, what are our chances of controlling the climate on a global scale? One of the myths is that there is this techno-fix out there, it’s just a case of developing the technology.”
The myth stems from the long-standing belief that technology can be fully integrated with our environment and can always solve our problems. During the Biosphere 2 project, millions of dollars were spent and increasingly complex systems of control were developed to fix its atmosphere, only to fail when the ecosystem proved too difficult to maintain and started destroying itself from the inside.

Beyond the question of viability, Biosphere 2 also demonstrated that environmental control, even when affecting a small group of people, quickly becomes politically heated. One 2008 review, “Ranking Geo-Engineering Schemes,” attempts to provide some basis for weighing the costs and benefits of the different geo-engineering plans available. “It is time,” say the authors, “to select and assess the most promising ideas according to efficacy, cost, all aspects of risk, and – importantly – their rate of mitigation.” Yet, as quickly becomes apparent, there is scarcely any data available to assess these ideas with. Hidden deep in the article, they mention that “other important but very uncertain aspects of risk, such as geopolitical and economic changes, require further research.”
Ford, who also specializes in the “human dimensions” of climate change, thinks it’s not quite as simple as a cost-benefit analysis: “I don’t think it’s cost, I don’t think it’s technology, I think it’s politics,” he said. The wider view that looks beyond the gun is often lacking, says Ford. “Geo-engineering debates tend to be dominated, at an international scale and in policy circles, by climate change modelists: people who have not given too much consideration to the kind of social consequences or the politics that geo-engineering might have.”
And when disasters – like the volcano eruption described by Dyer in his scenario – do strike, we won’t know who to blame. China now spends an estimated $114 million a year on its weather-manipulation program to irrigate its farmlands. But when Beijing was hit by major out-of-season snowstorms, China Daily blamed the government’s weather control.
As Richard Alley, a paleoclimatologist, said in an interview with journalist Jeff Goodell, “We spend a lot of time arguing about the weather now … Imagine what it will be like if I can blame somebody every time my tomatoes don’t ripen on schedule.”

As a response to the fear that geo-engineering itself will become unmitigated in its spread, many scientists and politicians are now suggesting that treaties should be put in place to prevent solutions from getting out of hand. As Keith said, “I think there are questions about whether we should start thinking about what the norms of international control are. Whether we need some kind of international treaty process perhaps.” Commenting on this trend, Goodell remarked, “Unlike nuclear or biological weapons, geo-engineering is not about annihilation. It is about dominance and control.”
All the main proponents of the geo-engineering debate are male and white, all claiming to be “reasonable” and sincere. Geo-engineering will become another issue of dominance, where the West should, according to Keith, once again  control the recalcitrant East, which is portrayed to be easily swayed by its emotions. As Dyer told me when he visited McGill last year, “people can be quite unreasonable when they’re starving.” Systems have to be put in place, so the argument goes, to ensure that nobody acts out of line, nobody acts irrationally. The duality of West versus East is another instance of the reason versus emotion, man versus nature, and male versus female duality – ways of thinking that, many argue, lie at the root of environmental degradation.
Fear of a catastrophic future drives this argument, but geo-engineering is also driven by the same interests as climate denialism in the West.

These interests don’t always come down to the preservation of the climate. When the U.S. Chamber of Commerce finally stopped denying global warming it remained nonchalant: “populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioural, physiological, and technological adaptations,” they said in a press release. Similarly, the Harper Government’s refusal to cooperate last May on drafting a geo-engineering ban is indicative of its main interests: business. The lack of meaningful action at Copenhagen and Cancun is reflective of the interests of those in power: to stay in power and preserve their stakes in the market. Few governments have actually had the nerve to take on the fossil-fuel industry. In this way, the myth that technology can predictably control the mechanisms of the Earth will result in different, yet no less detrimental, systems of control.

Geo-engineering, it appears, won’t mean the end of the world, but it’s not the solution to climate change either. As more money gets invested in research, we might find more practical solutions and possible technologies to mitigate the “worst-case scenario.” But the discussion is part of a wider movement that will entail shifts of power, just as nuclear technologies meant changes in international policy and power struggles.
Like Ripley in Aliens, we are often tempted to combat threats with a point-and-shoot mindset. Just give us a target, and we’ll shoot. As new treaties are drafted, the security of borders, fear of the unknown enemy, and the blaming of others won’t cease to direct dominant political dialogue. Corporations will have a fair bit to say in this game: as the carbon-trade grows and billionaires get richer, even “philanthropists” may become main players. In a world where the temperature is controlled and engineered, someone’s hand will have to be on the thermostat and someone else’s hands will be tied. You know there will be civilian casualties whenever there’s a hero with a gun.

The post Geo-engineering and its discontents appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Many students share this frustration – we often come to university expecting to learn how to make a difference in the world, but much of our work never sees the light of day. McGill has often rejected the “how-to” sensibility. Want to effect change in the world? Join a club or volunteer for an organization. But don’t expect to do it through a class.

There are however, opportunities for involvement that some may not be aware of. Applied research is a broad term, but generally means research proposed by a student or an institution – be it a community group, non-profit group, or corporation. It means that your essay doesn’t just collect dust, but can make a change in the world around you. You’re helping the world and getting credits for it too.

“There’s a fine line between applied student research and extra-curricular activities,” said Ari Jaffe, a student now involved in the creation of applied student research programs through the Office of Sustainability. “But McGill does have a lot of avenues that you can take [to do applied research].”

Most students don’t know that systems are being put in place to facilitate applied research. Many professors are also becoming sympathetic to the idea, also known as community-involved research.

“There’s often this understanding that there’s a big disconnect between student-university life and academia and the real world,” said Caitlin Manicom, a QPIRG board member who sits on the organizing committee of this weekend’s Study-In-Action, a conference that, in her words, tries to “bring those two worlds together and give students a place to promote research that is socially useful.”

Applied research allows students to deal with real-world scenarios, which, according to Jaffe, will help students from all faculties search for job opportunities. “If you had one independent study that allowed you to specialize, it would offer you a competitive edge, you could sell yourself better to your employer.”

According to George McCourt, a McGill School of Environment professor involved with applied research, it also helps students learn better. “I think a better way of [teaching critical thinking] is having people do research projects as opposed to sitting in a classroom and being given a bunch of information.”

But the most important aspect of applied research is that it seems to empower students to make change that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to make. Lilith Wyatt, the administrator of the Sustainability Projects Fund (SPF), who also facilitates sustainability-oriented applied research, said, “the students that participate in that kind of research would have a chance to engage meaningfully in the campus and have an impact on it. And have a chance to not just read and learn about the kind of change you can make in the world theoretically but have a chance to do it and to see it. Some people call it campus as a living laboratory.” McCourt added,  “you can be a Don Quixote and joust at windmills or you can get inside that windmill and try and make change.”

Applied research is also valuable to the university. Often understood as “ivory towers,” the institution’s role in society can easily be discredited. That the university structure is becoming less recognized is increasingly clear from government funding cuts all over the world. McCourt suggested that more diversity in research and more community involvement could mean a wider recognition of universities’ importance. A logical way out of the funding crisis in education would be to prove that universities do make a difference. As it is, it seems that the large population of undergraduates are a wasted resource for the university.

Not only that, but the university’s massive structure makes it very difficult to do applied research. Manicom, who wishes she had done applied research before graduating, said that, “there are really interesting ways to do research at McGill but you have to really search them out … it’s really hard sometimes, it feels like you’re facing McGill University’s entire academic history, trying to break down those walls.”

According to McCourt this is because the university, as an 800-year-old institution, is still very conservative. “So much of what we’re seeing right now requires the taking down of barriers. The infrastructure of universities is still set up with significant boundaries between disciplines.” Manicom added, “I think that there’s often a tendency within academia to do research on behalf of a community without actually engaging with that community or without necessarily doing research that’s even being called for. But I think that it can be a really empowering thing to be doing research that people are asking to have done.”

Manicom explained that students initiated the community-University Research Exchange (CURE), for this purpose. CURE links community groups with students willing to do community-involved research, but who don’t know where to start, and offers information and resources for students to do so. It presents “different types of learning that aren’t always validated within the academic context.”

After her experience trying to get her own applied research approved, Jaffe does think that it takes a lot of effort to pursue, but warns against a flat-out critique of the structure of the university. “It takes a bit of organization on the student’s part as well. I think it would be a little bit myopic to blame the administration on not having enough options, because I think those avenues exist, you just really need to take the reins.”

It’s clear that awareness of applied research is on the rise, even though there are limited systems in place to support it. “I think it is on the increase,” said McCourt, “but it’s a slow process. Universities are big institutions. Big institutions don’t change quickly.” A different understanding of a university may be taking shape, but putting better systems in place for alternative types of research may yet take a while. A view of the university as simply a space for academic research and an assembly line of undergraduates may be giving way to an understanding that it does have responsibilities for the society in which it exists.

The post Bringing university into the real world appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The event also celebrated important projects between students and MFDS. Student initiatives such as McGill Feeding McGill have been critical primary steps toward increasing sustainability on campus. McGill Feeding McGill is an initiative that will make the farms on Macdonald Campus McGill’s main fruit and vegetable supplier beginning next fall. MFDS is also working on plans to serve more sustainable seafood, pork, and chicken.

The recent appointment of Laura Rhodes as food systems administrator, who spoke at the event, was another major step towards sustainability.

The position of Food Systems Administrator was created to encourage food sustainability on campus, initiate a Strategic Action Plan for MFDS, help organize applied student research, and facilitate collaboration between administration and students on such issues.

The Strategic Action Plan, drafted in the fall of 2010 outlines the short-and long-term changes MFDS will undergo with regards to food sustainability, transparency, teamwork, trust, and a more sustainable business model.

Recently, MFDS has come under a lot of criticism from student media, in particular from The Daily.

According to Oliver de Volpi, executive chef of MFDS, who also spoke at the event, these criticisms are often one-sided and miss signs of progress.

“We’ve screwed up a bunch of times, but for everything that gets screwed up that gets printed, there’s three or four actions that are good, and sometimes the screw-ups aren’t as they’re put out to be… There are two sides to these things and we’re hearing one side only,” he said.

De Volpi referred to Monday’s Daily article, which criticized MFDS’s recent price hikes. “The balance has to be made: what we can do for sustainable initiatives and what the students are willing to accept paying for. That’s what we’re trying to do, figure how much they want, at what time frame they want it, and what they want first. We consult with students all the time on these things.”

Sarah Archibald, a student co-coordinator of the MFSP who has been working closely with de Volpi and the MFDS, has had a very positive experience so far. “For me, it’s the first time I’ve worked with ‘the man’ and it’s been incredibly empowering to see this change.”

“When you are working on a scale to feed 30,000 people it’s pretty easy to be critiqued, I’d say,” said Archibald, “but they’re always open to consultation, criticism, and questions.”

Dana Lahey, another student involved with MFSP, said that one of the reasons for the success of recent projects was the collaboration between students and staff.

“To me that’s what’s made this whole process work,” said Lahey. The changes were made possible when they approached the administration with a positive attitude: “We wanted to work with them, and we wanted to understand their perspective.”

Much of the discussion at “Deconstructing Dinner” revolved around applied student research. Many changes have been initiated by students. For example, a GEOG 302 Management Proposal created in 2009 suggested that MFDS hire a food sustainability coordinator, independent research projects on chicken purchasing options, and the possibility of offering more vegetarian meals.

“I think [applied student research] is the best thing that we have to offer as a university,” said de Volpi. “It makes us look so good, it gives students the opportunity to do research that they wouldn’t be able to, it gives the farm the opportunity to do more work. All around, everybody wins. We’re doing 95 per cent of the recommendations already.”

“We really want to include applied student research and collaboration throughout the entire cycle,” said Archibald, “Everything from food scraps to the planting at Mac campus, where the Plant Science students will be involved – it’s all a cycle.”

After the speeches Lahey spoke of the importance and of the event.

“I’m hoping that events like this will keep on making those personal connections, and that more and more people on campus start talking together and working together,” she said.

“It’s really exciting to think of where this could go and the idea that this University could actually be a model for the world,” added Archibald.

De Volpi was equally positive: “We’re going to be something that I hope other universities are going to look at as a model,” he said. “I hope people are going to look at us and say, that’s something to be proud of.’”

“Trying to cultivate systems outside of the industrial food system box really works when we become part of the food system instead of a recipient. We really have to push ourselves out of the box,” said activist Jon Steinman during his talk at the event.

According to Steinman, this involves students working with administration instead of against. For Rhodes and student speakers, the progress made so far is proof of this.

The post McGill food services see positive change appeared first on The McGill Daily.

I would hope that the medical institution I pay for takes far better care of me than sending me home with a prescription and telling me to come back “if symptoms worsen.” When you have pneumonia, you can’t wake up at 7 a.m. to drag yourself to Health Services before everyone else gets there. You just can’t. To truly “err on the side of safety,” the doctor could’ve done a lot more.

I will use this space to give Pierre-Paul Tellier two pieces of advice:
1. Allow for more specialized attention of specific cases, such as follow-up appointments, referrals, and information about each patient’s case.

2. Since my experience, I’ve been told by students that there are plenty of walk-in clinics all over Montreal that are covered by my health insurance. Why didn’t I know about this before? An institution that’s under-staffed and over-worked should provide patients with the advice to go elsewhere.

As it is, I have my Belgian health care to thank that I’m still alive, not Health Services. They don’t excel, and for me, they weren’t even adequate. The simple fact that the treatment I got elsewhere was far better than that which I got at McGill shows that there is quite a bit of room for improvement. And if there isn’t any room for improvement (Health Services is squished into a tiny townhouse, after all), then Health Services and its staff should inform students about their alternatives.

Aaron Vansintjan
U3 Philosophy & Environment (Joint Honours)
McGill School of Environment Journalist
Secretary, Daily Publications Society Board of Directors
FormerProduction & Design editor

The post Health Services has room for improvement appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Westvleteren is a Trappist beer, which means that it’s brewed by Catholic monks of the Cistercian order to support their livelihood. The Trappist monks make a vow to respect the rules of the order as laid out by St. Benedict, and live by their own means, hidden from society in abbeys. There are six Trappist breweries tucked away in the corners of Belgium, and one in the Netherlands, all far from any major city.

My mom, who grew up about half an hour away from the Westvleteren monastery, remembers the rare event when her dad would bring home a crate. Once, when she was ten, he let her have a sip of the beer. “I still remember the taste, I’ll never forget it,” she tells me (over and over and over). But this taste comes with a price: the waiting list to get a crate of Westvleteren is months long. On Ebay a six-pack goes for $120 and a single bottle can go for $50.

In July my dad and I drove to the monastery. When we got there, we found out that it was closed to all visitors. The cafeteria across the street, though, was crowded: it’s the only place in the world where you can get Westvleteren on tap. We ordered a beer and fought for some seats on the terrace. Surrounded by fields of hops, we each took a sip. I closed my eyes and shivered. “Impossible golden rays of glory shining a beacon of light on my bleak and bitter existence,” reads an excerpt from my drunkenly scribbled field notes. I couldn’t fathom how those hops growing in front of me and the yeast – a fungus that lives, unseen, in the air around us – could produce this godly flavour.

The bitter aftertaste of hops sparked a desire to know more about these monks. How do they make such good beer? Why do they choose their way of life? I admired their values and strict communal lifestyle; if their order wasn’t a thousand years old I’d call them radical and innovative. I wanted to learn from their way of life, which seemed a lot more sustainable than my own. I vowed, then and there, to visit all seven of the Trappist breweries.

By the end of it, I came home with a journal full of notes to myself like “contrast pastoral scenery with heavy dose of hoppy/holy incineration” and “aftertaste ravages my mouth and leaves me in total submission.” But I also brought back a bag full of beer bottles from across Belgium, including one of Westvleteren 12 (a surprise gift for my mom).

I was already drunk when I swerved into the parking lot of the Chimay monastery. I got off my bike and locked it, opened the huge wooden doors, and wandered inside. There was a welcome booth but no one sitting behind it. I strolled further and discovered an open door to the courtyard.

I wasn’t prepared for the tranquility I found there. Monasteries are built as microcosms: a rectangle facing inwards, with only one or two doors to the outside world. Otherwise, the church, bedrooms, guestrooms, library, kitchen, and dining rooms all face a serene courtyard with well-trimmed hedges, a fountain, and a handful of 200-year-old trees.

I left the garden and entered a hallway. A monk with a huge smile swept past me in a white and black habit. He was large, balding, and had a long white beard. After some hesitation I chased after him, and found him sitting at the welcome desk. He was the kind of monk that you want to meet: jolly, outgoing, funny, and completely forgiving. If he wasn’t wearing a habit he could have been an innkeeper. He told me his name is Eduard and asked me where I come from. Gent, I told him. “Ho, well, then we were practically neighbours!” he exclaimed. Turns out he had lived in Westvleteren for 30 years before coming to Chimay nine years ago.

I asked Eduard why people become monks. He explained to me that Cistercian monks are in search of a good life and they find this by serving God in the simplest way possible. They value poverty, stability, community, and respect for others. Eduard said that the path to being a monk starts with silence: first you try to exude it and then you are silence in itself. Another rule is that of hospitality; Cistercians welcome any traveller who needs a place to stay. Eduard offered that I stay at the monastery but I politely declined: my mom was expecting me for supper.

But what’s so special about Trappist beers like Chimay and Westvleteren?
First of all, it’s the simple fact that monks have control in the brewing process. When many Belgian breweries – Maredsous, Duvel, and Grimbergen, for example – started labelling their product as “Trappist,” the seven Cistercian breweries decided to intervene to protect their brand. Now, a beer can only be called “Trappist” if it’s brewed on the grounds of a monastery of the Cistercian order, administered by monks, with all the profits either supporting the monks’ livelihood or being given to a good cause. Any beer that takes after the style of Trappist beer is now called abbey beer.

Jean-François Gravel, co-founder of the Mile End brewpub Dieu du Ciel, says the abbey style had a lot to do with necessity. “[Monks] didn’t make beer as a business but to sustain their needs. They would basically sell extra beer to bring money to the abbey but not to make the maximum amount of money…instead of trying to make a wide variety of beer they made basically the same beer but at three different strengths.” Those “strengths” are known as blonde, dubbel, and tripel. As Watts says, the yeast also makes a difference. Trappist beers like Orval are bewildering because of the very unique strain of yeast they’re fermented with.

As a result, Trappist beer has been very influential for the modern American beer movement. “They sort of laid down the groundwork of the ethos of craft-brewery,” says Watts (who is also a former Daily editor).  “People look towards the Belgians because the Belgians were like the first extreme brewers. Nobody made beer that was more than six percent.” While German beer was already standardized through a “purity law” by the 16th century, Belgian beer is characterized by its use of ingredients like coriander, orange peels, and cherries. “Until the brewing revolution of the last thirty years,” explains Watts, “the Belgians were the most outlandish.”

This revolution is in full swing throughout North America. Montreal itself has brewpubs like Dieu du Ciel, Reservoir, Benelux, Les 3 Brasseurs, and Brutopia. Local breweries have become more popular; Unibroue, for example, is sold in every depanneur in Montreal. And Belgian beer is well-loved because it embodies today’s craft beer philosophy: the value of local production and creativity.

It’s not an accident that monasteries started brewing beer. “A thousand years ago,” says Watts, “you didn’t drink the water. Because the water may or not kill you, the beer, because it’s boiled, is fine to drink, and [because of the yeast] it keeps longer. Not to mention it gets you drunk.” Beer was regarded as a service to the community in the age before water treatment plants.

I came to understand the scientific aspect of Trappist beer when I visited La Trappe, the only trappist brewery in the Netherlands. After drinking two pints I worked up the courage to approach five workers eating their lunch by the bar. They were all dressed in red Oompa Loompa overalls. After chatting with them for a while I mentioned that I’d never actually seen a brewery from the inside. One of them piped up.

“Now, why don’t you let Hendrik show you around? It’s cheaper than the guided tour, and he can finish his lunch later, right Hendrik?” Hendrik, clearly the newbie of the group, suffered his punishment with grace.

“Good idea. Let’s go right now, so no one sees us. We’re not allowed to do this, you know.”

And so I was led through a maze of kettles, assembly lines, and oiled machinery. I thought of the opening scene of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. The beer was kicking in. The tour became a blur of polished metal, with me bumping my head on several pipes and giggling at gigantic vats of churning hops. Honestly I don’t remember much. An impression I won’t forget is how clean everything was. This came to me as a surprise because beer-making seems like it would be a messy process, with all the malt and hops bubbling around and fermenting. My acquaintance with Montreal breweries didn’t help this impression: McAuslan and Molson are, from the outside, grimy and decrepit. But no, a smell of bleach pervaded La Trappe.

Go to any microbrewery in Montreal – say, Dieu du Ciel – and you’ll see from the huge pressurized kettles that brewing is a science. “At the beginning,” says Gravel, a trained microbiologist, “when I quit the science and research field people didn’t really understand why I opened a bar and brewed beer, they don’t always understand that I’m doing science. It’s just applied microbiology.” Dieu du Ciel’s “Rigor Mortis” is modelled on Abbey beer, and their name (not to mention the interior design of the brewpub), is a tip of the hat to the religious character of beer. Trappist beer is a surviving example of the compatibility of religion and science.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, we live in a fast-paced world. Judging from the precarious state of our food and water systems, the depletion of fisheries, and the increase of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, this pace is unsustainable. Full disclosure: I study environment and philosophy, and I think that we need a radically different way of life if we’re to sustain ourselves.

Christianity, the West’s oldest institution, doesn’t seem like the most logical place to start looking for solutions. But after visiting those seven Trappist monasteries, I realized there are at least two reasons why we should look at monastic life: it’s a model of sustainability and it teaches us the importance of traditions.

One summer day, I set out on a two-day bike trip to visit three Trappist monasteries – Westmalle, Achelse Kluis, and La Trappe. The idea itself was attractive: it’s like a holy trinity of beer.

When I stopped by Westmalle, I wasn’t allowed to enter the monastery. That was reserved for guests, labourers, and monks. It was annoying that the monks place their own priorities – to serve God – first.

But monasteries aren’t the solipsistic islands that we make them out to be. Westmalle itself keeps livestock, raiseds chickens, grows corn and vegetables, hiredslocal workers and invites the nearby village for mass every day. Abbeys are community centres, providing jobs to the economically under-priviliged, local produce and meat for the nearby villages, and excellent stewardship of their land, all the while being a not-for-profit organization that doesn’t ask for grants or subsidies and has a comparatively small footprint on the local and global environment. At a monastery, costs are managed efficiently, the monks take whatever they need to support their own existence, and the rest goes to community projects and humanitarian organizations. It’s a way of life that should be studied, researched, and copied. How have the Benedictine vows influenced the long-term stability of monasteries? Can we incorporate the monastic financial strategy into that of community centres? How can the design of monasteries be incorporated into plans for the design of future cities? The opportunities are endless.

After a 120-kilometre bike ride with the pit-stop at Westmalle I rang the doorbell of Achelse Kluis with trembling hungry fingers. A monk received me and told me that I could have a place to stay and, fortunately, dinner was just about to be served. In disbelief (who would’ve thought it would be so easy?) I sat down at a dinner table surrounded by two dozen other guests. After a modest meal – eaten in silence – of bread, peanut butter, and milk, we all cleared the tables and did the dishes together. The bell rang for mass, and we made our way to the church. By 8 p.m. I was nestled in my comfortable bed reading the New Testament. The next morning I woke up just in time for second mass and ate breakfast before starting out for the third monastery on my itinerary, La Trappe.

Brief as my experience with monastic life was, it was clear to me that, my atheism notwithstanding, it’s a very desirable way of life. A monk at Rochefort told me that because of the continuous solitude, you at first recoil from who you are, but with time you learn to know yourself. Becoming a Cistercian monk requires training and practice. Rather than the “guilty conscience” normally associated with Catholicism, the Benedictine vow is one of love and the desire to live virtuously.

Biking away from Achelse Kluis I decided that we will need to establish new norms, traditions, and cultural “vows” if we want to change our way of life. We’ve heard over and over again from our oldest texts (Plato, the Upanishads, Dao De Jing, and so on) that living well takes practice and training. Why haven’t we taken note? The environmental crisis is a crisis of tradition: we need to create new ones to sustain ourselves. Monks spend years unlearning society’s ills and perfecting the good life. Living sustainably isn’t easy: it takes practice and we need to teach each other how.

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