AT A CONTRIBUTING EDITORS' MEETING
we surfaced "food" as a topic The Witness would do well to cover. We laughed about filling the pages of the magazine with favorite recipes for church potlucks, complete with tuna hot dish, or how to make a politically correct stew. But when we began to unpack the topic, it was clearly not light and frivolous. We could look at the politics of food, eating disorders, dietary laws, global anti-hunger work, what it means to eat seasonally and locally, labor issues, agribusiness, the food service industry.

Clearly, food is a juicy topic: What we did not know at that meeting last February is that a whole movement is currently coalescing around the topic of food, that may well revitalize Left politics. The Community Food Security Coalition is a young coalition--four years old, with many of its members in their 20s and 30s--with the simple mission of assuring a sustainable supply of healthy food. But this simple mission gets into every single justice issue there can be as one begins to unpack what a sustainable supply of healthy food is.

START WITH THE FACT THAT WE ALL NEED FOOD TO LIVE
and it's clear that food is not a topic just about poverty--as much anti-hunger work is--but one that cuts across economic divisions. Inside of this is the question of access to food. How "food secure" are we?

Do we have a reliable, non-emergency supply of food? From here we move to the question of the basic food groups we should have to be healthy and vigorous. Are our children, in particular, receiving proper nourishment? Are we eating whole foods or highly processed, high-fat, high-salt foods? Inside the issue of nutrition is the question of what went into the production of the food. Is the food organic? Or is it grown with the benefit of chemicals or genetic engineering and how is it processed?

FOLLOW THE QUESTION
of how the food we eat is produced and we get to the overall environmental impact of various agricultural practices--organic vs. "conventional" agriculture, small low-impact farms vs. large, "efficientÓ factory farms. And embedded in this is the economic impact of farming practices: When small hog farmers are put out of business by large agribusinesses that can underprice their product, whole communities and cultures are disrupted.

And here's where the conversation about food loops back on itself: Are we ruining the environment and losing diversified agricultural knowledge so that eventually we will not be able to produce food at all? Food is an organizing topic that can bring together environmental, anti-hunger, community economic development, health, agriculture concerns--basically everyone who has begun to smell a rat in the way things are working. And it's clearly something in which we all have a stake.

Food security is embedded in the Christian tradition, starting with the creation stories in Genesis in which we are given "every green plant for food" (Gen. 1:30) in affirmation that there is an abundance of what we need to survive. We hold onto the vision of new heavens and new earth at the end of Isaiah that includes food for all, not exploited laborers producing food for others while they starve themselves. And we dwell in the truth of Emmaus that we most know the risen Christ when we bless, break and eat bread at table together.

Anne E. Cox

The illustration, Winter vegetables, is by Mary Azarian.

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