Food: An essential ingredient to addressing climate and health issues
Recognizing structural interdependencies between different sectors, food provides an opportunity to catalyze systemic change and solve multiple 21st-century grand challenges.
Photo by Gabriel Jimenez / Unsplash
Indonesia is currently confronted with some pretty complex societal challenges. From the farmers who lost their crops to the long periods of drought in 2019 to Indigenous peoples mourning the loss of their mighty tropical forests, and from the families attending to loved ones suffering from stroke, cardiovascular diseases, or diabetes, to children experiencing irreversible developmental outcomes due to stunted growth, these challenges share one common denominator that is crucial for understanding the enablers and barriers to achieving the United Nations’ 2015 Sustainable Development Goals: food.
Food as the driving force of societal progress (and regress)
Indonesia, stretching over a 5,000-kilometer distance along the equator, is home to dense tropical rainforests and the largest number of active volcanoes. Such geographical advantages have provided the archipelago of over 17,000 islands with among the most adequate rainfall and fertile soils for cultivation, in which its ancestors, the Polynesians, established civilization.
Throughout the centuries, the kingdoms of Srivijaya, Mataram, Singhasari, Kediri, and Majapahit were among the monarchies responsible for the development of the Indonesian archipelago, particularly in trade and agriculture. Through Srivijaya, the Indonesian archipelago became the famous spice islands conquered by the Europeans. Through Mataram, Java solidified into small kingdoms producing huge quantities of rice to support its large population and export via trade. Through Majapahit, the Indonesian archipelago was guided under one rule of what would become Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation.
This historical significance of trade and agriculture in Indonesia is key to understanding our identity as a nation and putting food in the right context.
Food has always been at the center of our society since as early as 2,500 BCE, not only for sustenance but also for claiming geopolitical power. Food had been used as edible currency, endorsed the Industrial Revolution, stimulated the origin of exotic colonial products, altered human settlements and transport infrastructure, and reoriented subsistence farming of diversified food crops towards commercial production of monoculture cash crops. Today, the explosion of the retail sector and transnational ultra-processed foods (UPFs) has made food more readily available for many here in Indonesia and worldwide, regardless of type, season, or country of origin.
Our food systems have, in fact, successfully progressed and synchronized with decades of population growth and fed billions, both domestically and abroad (albeit not all).
Food interacts with wider political, social, economic, ecological, and cultural systems, and produces crisis, transformation, and transition ever since permanent human settlements were born ~12,000 years ago.
However, the myopic vision of “progress” throughout history comes at an unaccounted catastrophic cost to our identity and ecology, of which Indonesia is now paying the price.
For example, the enforcement of the Cultivation System (Sistem Tanam Paksa or directly translates to ‘Forced Cultivation System’) in 1830 Java marked the transition from subsistence farming to ‘an exclusive production of a single crop species in a field that is increasingly oriented towards intensification and yield maximization’ for export commodities, such coffee, tea, and sugar. The 1960s Green Revolution initialized into the ‘Mass Guidance’ (Bimbingan Masal or BIMAS) policy opened the door to the use of imported agrochemicals and improved hybrid rice seed variety and further exacerbated the colonial alteration of Indonesian food culture and ecology. Our ill-fated dependency on rice continued expanding through the Mega Rice Project in the mid-1990s and more recently the national “Food Estate” program, which floundered and resulted in hectares of abandoned lands and widespread destruction of carbon-rich peatlands across the archipelago, as well as poor food self-sufficiency.
The remaining impact of past food policies remains today. On the production side, current Indonesian agrifood production practices claim a third of its land area, resulting in 230 kha of primary forest lost to agriculture (more specifically to palm oil production intended for cash crops), 40% of mangroves lost to aquaculture, and 58% of the national greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, down the consumption side, 184 million people (68% of the population) remain unable to afford a nutritionally balanced diet while roughly 23 to 48 million tonnes of food concurrently end up in landfill each year (44% being rice). This shows a misalignment between Indonesian food policies, climate plans, and nutrition targets.
Food can fix it
History has shown that food interacts with wider political, social, economic, ecological, and cultural systems, and each of these sub-systems influences the direction in which food systems maneuver. By definition, food systems encompass everything from food production (including the ecological systems that underlie it) to the processing, packaging, transport, distribution, retail, and consumption of foods, with many critical outcomes vital to sustainable development.
Since the fall of ancient Indonesian monarchies centuries ago, our food system has been unable to support human health, environmental well-being, and equitable jobs. Contrary to popular opinion, I argue that such societal challenges around food do not stem from the reductionist misconception of “food insecurity”; rather, from the disconnect with our identity as an agricultural-based society with rich biodiversity and natural resources, and unique local food systems.
Past projects of the Cultivation System, the Green Revolution, the Mega Rice Project, and the “Food Estate” Program are a testament to this as each reveals that, while transitions toward novel practices are possible when high political will and power are present, a sustainable transformation requires additional effort that involves co-learning and shared leadership and proper impact assessments. This is particularly true when considering the diversified ecoregions across Indonesia, which share some key features, but are embedded in different traditions, preferences, cultures, economic structures, and ecologies of locations.
Another lesson learned from the aforementioned projects relates to the development of food policies. Directed mainly by external drivers and commercial interests (eg, high demand for exotic cash crops in Europe under the Dutch colony, inevitable foreign food aid policy of PL480, 66 million USD or Rp 1 trillion rice farming plan for food estate plantations), food policies in Indonesia have yet to explore the role of science and research to lead the direction toward transformation. Not only do science and research generate the basic inputs for sociopolitical, institutional, and technological innovations, they also help identify targets and evaluate actions to catalyze, support, and accelerate transformation.
In the context of food, this may be through quantitative or qualitative analysis or food systems modeling that are co-created by experts, policymakers, and communities.
In hindsight, food policies in Indonesia were mainly driven by market hegemonies and commercial interests rather than the interests of society and the environment.
The way forward
Many argue that rewiring our food systems is difficult because of its complexity and ambiguity in the what, where, and how, as well as its perks and pitfalls. Yet, food has been instrumental in producing crisis, transformation, and transition ever since permanent human settlements were born ~12,000 years ago.
If we could transition to coal from firewood, charcoal, animals, and human muscle power, why does transitioning toward more sustainable food systems seem unattainable? If we could screw the political economy of food one way toward monoculture production and obesogenic environments, why can’t we screw it back the other way?
Food can be a starting point for recognizing structural interdependencies between different sectors and facilitating systemic change. It’s time we quit hiding behind the ‘complexity’ wall and instead factor in ‘urgency’ to the equation to leverage the power of food to amplify its positive impact on climate and health.
References:
Alta, A., Auliya, R. and Fauzi, A.N. (2023) Policy Barriers to a Healthier Diet The Case of Trade and Agriculture. Jakarta: Center for Indonesian Policy Studies.
Bappenas (2021) Food Loss and Waste in Indonesia: Supporting the Implementation of Circular Economy and Low Carbon Development. Ministry of National Development Planning.
Crippa, M. et al. (2021) ‘Food Systems are responsible for a third of global anthropogenic GHG emissions’, Nature Food, 2(3), pp. 198–209. doi:10.1038/s43016-021-00225-9.
Curry-Machado, J. and Bosma, U. (2012) ‘Two islands, one commodity: Cuba, Java, and the Global Sugar Trade (1790-1930)’, New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, 86(3–4), pp. 237–262. doi:10.1163/13822373-90002415.
Dell, M. and Olken, B.A. (2019) ‘The development effects of the extractive colonial economy: The Dutch Cultivation System in Java’, The Review of Economic Studies, 87(1), pp. 164–203. doi:10.1093/restud/rdz017.
Geertz, C. (1963) Agricultural involution: The process of ecological change in Indonesia. Berkeley: Published for the Association of Asian Studies by University of California Press.
Martin, K. and Sauerborn, J. (2015) Agroecology. Dordrecht: Springer.
Murdiyarso, D. et al. (2015) ‘The potential of Indonesian mangrove forests for Global Climate Change Mitigation’, Nature Climate Change, 5(12), pp. 1089–1092. doi:10.1038/nclimate2734.
