Title: Agroecology Is the How-To of Food Sovereignty

Summary:

Charles Levkoe, food systems researcher at Lakehead University, makes the case that agroecology is not simply a set of farming techniques but the practical expression of food sovereignty — the means by which communities assert democratic control over how food is grown, harvested, and governed. Drawing on his background as an agroecological farmer, nonprofit practitioner, and academic, Levkoe argues that isolating any single dimension of the food system — whether soil science, policy, or indigenous knowledge — guarantees worse outcomes than thinking through their interconnection. The conversation challenges listeners to move beyond individual consumer choices and reckon with the structural, historical, and political forces that shape what kind of food system is even possible.

Show notes:

Charles Levkoe is a food systems researcher at Lakehead University whose path runs through agroecological farming in Nova Scotia, frontline community food work at The Stop Community Food Centre in Toronto, and years of activist scholarship aimed at understanding food as a lens onto power, economics, and social justice. The central argument of this episode is one Levkoe traces back to the gatherings of peasant and farming movements worldwide: that food sovereignty — the democratic control of food systems by the people who produce and harvest food — needs agroecology as its operational counterpart. Agroecology, in his framing, is the how-to of food sovereignty, and the two concepts only make full sense when held together.

Levkoe unpacks agroecology through three interlocking pillars. The first is rigorous science and research — not a retreat from modern knowledge about soil microbes or climate, but a commitment to using that knowledge ethically. The second, and equally weighted, is experiential and traditional knowledge: the accumulated wisdom of farmers, harvesters, and indigenous communities that gets systematically sidelined when technical standards become the only legitimate voice in the room. He draws a pointed contrast with the history of organic certification, arguing that what began as a social movement grounded in values was gradually flattened into a checklist of inputs and prohibitions — a cautionary tale about what is lost when systems thinking gives way to narrow standardisation. The third pillar is movement-building and governance: the recognition that local practise cannot transform food systems without also changing the policy environments at provincial, national, and international scales.

A significant thread running through the conversation is the relationship between indigenous knowledge and the future of Canadian agriculture. Levkoe is careful to speak from his own position — a second-generation Canadian, non-indigenous, and relatively new to Northern Ontario — rather than to speak for indigenous communities. But he names the tension directly: Canada's agricultural sector is demographically ageing, and First Nations communities across the country are comparatively young, land-connected, and holders of deep ecological knowledge that mainstream food systems research continues to undervalue. He argues that any honest reckoning with the food system's future has to confront the colonial history that shaped whose knowledge counts, whose land relationships are recognised, and who gets to define what sustainable agriculture actually looks like in a given place and climate.

Listeners will come away with a sharper vocabulary for thinking about food systems — and a provocation to use it. Levkoe's insistence that food is an entry point into conversations about capitalism, settler colonialism, and ecological crisis is not rhetorical; it is methodological. For Canada's agri-food sector, where policy silos, competing jurisdictions, and an increasingly concentrated supply chain are real and pressing problems, his systems-level thinking offers both a critique and a direction. This episode is essential listening for anyone who wants to understand not just what a better food system might look like, but where the leverage points for building one actually are.

Topics: Agroecology, Food Sovereignty, Indigenous Knowledge, Organic Farming, Food Systems Policy, Settler Colonialism, Community Food Work, Systems Thinking

Hi, I'm Jesse Hirsch.

Welcome to the Future Herd.

Not only is food where the action is, food is where the whole system confesses,

where the secrets come out onto the table.

That's the thread running through this conversation with Charles Leko.

We begin with the future, but Charles immediately brings us back to the

past, to the histories, theories, movements, and lived practises

that explain how we arrived at the food system we currently have.

And from there, the conversation opens up, agroecology, soil,

indigenous knowledge, colonialism, urban and rural interdependence.

School, food, food policy, councils, and the culture of convenience

all become part of the same larger question, what would it mean to

understand food as a living system?

Charles challenges the narrow version of food literacy that asks

people what they should buy, what they should eat, or how they should

behave as individual consumers.

He asked us to look instead at the structures that shape those choices,

the policies that work against each other, the land relationships we've

inherited, and the people whose knowledge is too often ignored.

This is a conversation about food, but it's also a conversation about power,

memory, education, and imagination.

It's about why the food system works the way it does, who it works for,

and how it might build something more, just more ecological and more alive.

Now, this is the second of what I'm calling a trilogy

in Canadian food Studies.

The first was a couple of episodes ago with Alyssa over end.

This is the second with Charles Lev Co.

And stay tuned for the third, a conversation with Elaine Power.

But for now, let's join Charles.

Charles, welcome to the Future Herd.

Hi.

Great, thanks, Jesse.

It's, uh, it's great to be here.

Now, I love to start, uh, every episode with, uh, what

I'm calling my Rorschach test, uh, which is really meant to evoke

a, a kind of intuitive response.

does the future mean to you?

What does the future mean to me?

Well, um, I, I guess I would have to start by just saying, I think it's hard to think

about the future without also thinking about the past and where we've been.

I think, you know, I, I, you know, as a, as a teacher, uh, I, I spend a lot

of my, my time with students trying to bring in some of the historical

and, you know, context of like why we are where we are, um, whether that's

theoretical and some of the thinkers that have like, got us to this place.

Um, but I think even more important, maybe as important as the theory is the practise

and, you know, why people do what they do.

So, you know, it's, it's one thing to say, oh, you know, Karl Marx was

an old white man who is irrelevant.

But it's another thing to look at, you know, the kind of history of

economics, for example, uh, that got us to this place that we are to be

able to kind of even dream and imagine of what the future can look like.

And, you know, I, I, I, I do, I mean, and not to, not to jump too deep into

it right away, but I, I do sometimes worry that with a lot of, um, as we move

away from like the long form article or, or, or, or really, or books or

even lectures, you know, we kind of get into these choppy ideas of, of what

things look like and what we want them to look like without actually spending

time, uh, trying to understand again, what, where, why we are, where we are.

So again, so maybe just to, again, to directly answer your question, when I

think about the future, um, I, I, I, you know, I do, I do have a lot of,

um, uh, I, I, I, I, I hesitate maybe saying hope, but you know, like optimism

of the, of the will maybe to, to, to really, you know, believe that, you

know, we, we collectively can do better.

And, you know, I think there's lots of examples that I like to point to and, you

know, really draw, and I'm sure we'll talk about that today of, of some of those,

some of those really amazing initiatives that are kind of, you know, run, created

for people by people, uh, and collective.

So I, you know, I see the future.

I, I think about the future as, as, um, something I, some place I want to

be, I wanna live in that, you know, is, is more maybe equitable and just, and

sustainable, you know, in all of those terms, we can break down and talk about

what they actually mean, but, um, you know, better, better for people, better

for all people, um, around the world and, and the non, non-people as well

on the, the non-human elements as well, because we're all deeply interconnected.

I.

Well, and living systems is part of the domain, uh,

of AgriFood and not just humans, uh, as part of those living systems.

And of course, as I was researching our, our conversation and looking

at, you know, at least the list that I had of your published articles,

uh, on the one hand there was lots of stuff I want to get into today.

So I, I will certainly do my best to get to the stuff I'm interested in.

I, I did see that you have this kind of a big picture view, kind of system

level critique that kind of suggests to me that as a researcher you could

have gone into any discipline and had fun, you know, uh, a, uh, causing

shit and, and, and bringing up, uh, uncomfortable arguments and, and insights.

So I guess, you know, my first question to get into the kind of

lore and origin story is why food?

You know, and I

Mm-hmm.

it strikes me that as, as a radical, as someone who's a critic,

there's a lot of ways you could have came at it, food really seems to

resonate with you in terms of a, a, a, an avenue to make sense of society.

But to your point, to think of an alternative society,

a more equitable society.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And I think that that is absolutely a good place to start.

Um, I often, I often get pigeonholed.

I think a lot of people who study food and agriculture get pigeonholed

into a very narrow place because people think about, oh, you're, you,

you do nutrition, you do, you know, you do soil, you do all these things.

And I think, you know, while yes, we do that, like, and I'm not just

speaking of myself, but those of us who kind of study food systems as

systems, um, of course, you know, I, I often tell people I actually, I, I,

you know, I often give lectures or, you know, do workshops and people and

by saying, well, what should I eat?

Can you just tell me what to eat?

And my answer typically is, I don't care what you eat.

I like, I actually don't care.

You should eat whatever your culture, your, your belly is

telling you is good to eat.

But I mean, really, you know, I study.

And I'm interested in everything as you kind of note everything around food.

And you know, for me, I come to this work as, I would I always say

an activist, um, a practitioner.

I worked in the nonprofit sector for many, many years, uh, including

with an organisation called The Stop Community Food Centre, which is now

mushroomed into a, uh, national, uh, a network of, of community food centres.

Um, I, I, I was a farmer, an agroecological farmer for many years

out in Nova Scotia, um, and, and did farming work all, all over the,

well, different parts of the country.

Um, and you know, I, I think for me getting into food, I, I, I kind of

tripped over it when I started my, my, some of my academic work by actually

meeting people similar to myself who, you know, were kind of using food

as a bit of a, a tool or a vision, a lens to understand the social, the

political, the economic world around us.

And you know, I always say like, I, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm interested and I have

a, you know, as you know, I have a lot of interests, but sometimes when I try

to stand up and talk about, you know, some big, you know, big hard issues,

like, I dunno, set settler colonialism or capitalism or racism, you know, I

mean, there's always people who like, know exactly and get excited about that.

There's a lot of people who their eyes glaze over and things go over

their heads and they're just like, I don't even know what those words mean.

And I think for me, talking about food is like, is a, is in agriculture is

a really invaluable entry point for people because I can stand, you can

stand up in a room in front of hundreds of people and say, who here eats?

And everyone shoots their hand up and everyone has an opinion.

Everyone thinks about this, everyone's trying to read about it,

they're trying to understand things.

So it's a, it's, it's just such a valuable entry point to be talking

about big, complicated, I mean, complex, messy issues, um, but also

the interconnection of those issues.

And I'm, you know, again, we'll talk more about that today, but the, I

think the interconnection is key.

I, I am, and I, and I'll keep emphasising this probably throughout

our conversation, but I, I, I think one of the biggest challenges in this work

is when we start to look at things in isolation, um, from, from other aspects.

So we say, oh, this is just about, I mean, the big picture, this is about

humans or just about the environment, or just about the non-human entities.

I mean, or, or we talk about it's just about policy or

it's just about agriculture.

It's just about harvesting, whatever.

I mean, any, any time we isolate things, I think we actually create

much more complicated problems.

And the only way to think about this is, is, is the interconnection through

the, what I, you know, we talk about the systems lens, but for me, I, you know, my,

my, my background, my, both my academic training, but also my prac, my practical

training, uh, has kind of really.

Kind of led to a point where I do food and like food is what connects

a lot of what I do and food systems.

But you know, I, I'm, I'm not a nutritionist, I'm not a dietitian,

I'm not a soil scientist.

I'm a generalist, you know, so I, I'm interested in all that stuff and I'm

reading about it, but I think it's, it's, it's, again, it's that interconnection,

it's that connection between things, between people, between ideas, that,

again, going back to we started help us understand kind of where we've

come from, but also where we're going.

And part of, part of what I'm trying to do with this podcast

is build a, a knowledge base and, and try to really map out a lot of the

concepts and even the vocabulary in our kind of contemporary food systems.

A and you're the first guest on the show to throw out the word

agroecology whi, which is a phrase I'm particularly fond of.

Uh, so I'd love for you to unpack it, especially in light of what

you just said in terms of the interconnection of all the different

Mm-hmm.

that kind of come back to food and how we think of food.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So that's, yeah, there's a lot of different ways to come at this,

but let me just, let me actually come at it on a personal level.

Um, when I was farming out in Nova Scotia, um, we had an organic farm.

We were certified for a while.

We, you know, we did, we did, we did the, did the thing, the things

where you have to document everything and you have a certifier company.

Um, and even here in Northern Ontario where I'm talking to you

now, you know, there's, there's real, there's not many organic farms.

There are a few.

Um, and it's always been, I think in my experience, it's always

been a bit of a contentious issue.

You know, in many ways I do support organic, I think

is a really valuable thing.

But it's complicated in the sense that, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot

of good history written on, on the kind of politics of organics, and especially

in the US when the organic law came into place, um, and some of the shifts that,

that, that happened from moving from what I would call a movement, a social

movement of people who truly believed in values and, and, and ideas around,

around farming to what became a bit of a technical kind of list of things you

can't do and things you have to record.

And, you know, and of course when we scale things, you know, there's

this need to, um, to standardise.

Because, you know, what you don't want is, you know, somebody, you know,

calling themselves organic, where actually, you know, they're dumping

tonnes of pesticides in the land and they're, you know, doing all kinds of

things that we, that aren't organic.

But, you know, if there's no standard, how do we, how do we tell?

So, you know, there is now obviously a, an international set of standards.

You know, US has a set of standards.

Canada has a set of standards.

But with those standards come all kinds of, like, and this goes back

to my point about when we start to kind of like isolate things and say,

well, we do this and can't do this, then we create more challenges.

I think what happened is people started to recognise that, um, you know, different,

different, different places required different kinds of farming practises.

And of course.

You know, farming in an ethical and sustainable way is not in a, I guess

a socially just way, is not just about not using this and using that.

It's also about how you treat the land and how you treat the animals and how you

relate to the land, those relationships.

So anyways, for, so for me, we, you know, when I think about ology, I

think about it is a much more kind of process-based approach to farming.

And I would actually expand that to all to, to, to lots of ways that

we, what we often call food getting.

So harvesting a fish of, of, of, of things.

You, you, you know, uh, plants and, uh, you know, animals,

um, but also also growing.

So, you know, so there's that approach to agroecology that we

can think about it as more of an ethical, um, practise of, of systems.

Now that's, that's coming at it from a, a personal perspective.

I'll just say a quick word about the kind of broader approach to

agroecology and how it's used.

Um, agroecology is a concept that has been, uh, is being used by,

by peasant communities and farming communities around the world.

Um, uh, it's been, you know, the way my understanding of it comes from some of

the world, uh, the, the, the gatherings of the, um, the lanni gatherings where

farmers and peasants have come together.

Uh, there was just a, just one that happened very recently,

just in fall last year.

Um, and one, one of the things that these gatherings have done is kind of talked

about both what is food sovereignty, um, which just a point of note is, is,

is the idea of, you know, uh, you know, healthy, sustainable, um, you know,

environmentally sustainable and, and just food systems, but really talking

about control, uh, of food systems by the people who produce and harvest our food.

And agroecology, uh, was also described at those gatherings as the

kind of how to of food sovereignty.

So these, so I think it's important to talk about food

sovereignty and ology together.

So agroecology in a nutshell is really about the, the, the

practise of food sovereignty.

It has three kind of pillars.

The way I think about it.

It has, um, the pillar of, uh, the science and research.

So this isn't about going back to some historical system where we

didn't know a lot about soil microbes and, and, and, and, and you know,

how, how the cloud climate works.

But it's really about, it is about the science and the research, but

it's also as important as that.

And parallel to that is the farmer or, or grower or harvester

knowledge and experience.

So the experiential knowledge.

So saying, yes, science is important, but experience is also important.

And often experience gets.

Push to the side, especially when you talk about indigenous experience, indigenous

knowledge, ecological, traditional ecological knowledge or farmer knowledge.

When farmers are being told to do something and they're saying, well,

that doesn't make sense because that's, you know, we're seeing the

soil, we're seeing the climate.

Um, so it's about the, the research, but also the, the experience.

And the third pillar, which I think is also as important is, is, is I, I would

think of it as like the movement, um, of, of, of people, the, the policies,

the governance, the trying to engage with systems in a way that we wanna

create, create, enabling environments for these kinds of things to happen.

So it's one thing to say, well, we have all the knowledge, uh, from a

research and a experience perspective to have socially just, and, and

ecologically sustainable food systems.

But if the policy environment, if the governance structures don't support

that, then, you know, we're kind of banging our heads against the wall,

which we are, many of us anyways.

But, you know, to say that, you know, the goal of, when we talk about

radical social change or radical environmental change, you know, that

doesn't happen in our local communities.

It doesn't happen only in our local communities.

It doesn't happen only in our region.

It has to happen at kind of a, at multiple scales with the, at the, at

the provincial scale, at the, at the national scale, the international scale.

And there's lots of examples where that happens.

But ultimately just to, sorry, wrap this up.

Your, these are big questions you're asking.

Um, but I think with agroecology, again, it is that it gives us a

bit of a direction and a, and a way to think about some of these big,

how to make these bigger changes.

And again, uh, these don't come from me, these come from, you know, the way that

like growers and harvesters have, have been thinking and talking about this,

again, going back to like the theory about this, but also the practise and, and, and

people have been working on these issues.

So I think agroecology is a really important way to think about food systems,

um, that goes beyond, just simply do this, don't do this, but it brings a set of,

of ethics and values and, and, and that history, uh, to this, to these questions.

Uh, and you know, to your point about the, the questions I'm

throwing at you, one of the things we try to do here on the future

Herd is not just invite the best and brightest such as yourself, but create

questions that really try to challenge and push your ideas and thinking.

I say that because I would love to hear you kind of elaborate on the indigenous

angle, uh, either in terms of the, the research or activism that you're doing,

uh, either around us as a society, valuing indigenous knowledge when

it comes to agriculture or literally empowering indigenous communities when

it comes to their own food production.

And, and I I say this because in a past episode, we kind of talked about

what I think is a really interesting idea that you have, on the one hand,

the ageing demographics of Canadian agriculture, the idea that so many

farmers are old and are really getting close to wanting to move on.

And yet you have First Nations communities across the country, which

are really young potentially have a whole lot of, uh, labour and expertise.

Uh, again, the, there were, I, I'm drawing very loose connections

between two different phenomena.

that as a general intro, I would love to hear your thoughts or your work, uh,

uh, around indigenous agriculture and First Nations farming, uh, across Canada.

Yeah.

I also a really, really important issue, and I, I always, when I talk about these

issues, I just need to preface my co my, my comments, but, but with a few things.

One is that I am not indigenous.

I am a second generation Canadian.

My family came, uh, came as, uh, uh, you know, fleeing violence

of their own to this place.

And, um, uh, you know, and I'm, I'm also, I, so I grew up in Toronto.

I'm new to Northern Ontario, relatively.

I've been here about a decade.

Um, and you know, I, I think it's really, and it's important to say that because

I think, uh, you know, it's important that indigenous people and all, all

communities get to speak for themselves.

You know, I never would want to speak for an indigenous community.

Um, and, you know, being up here the last 10 years, one of the most wonderful

things about being in this place is I have been exposed to and become very connected

to many indigenous, urban, indigenous communities, many first nations.

And I'm just, I feel like, I mean, the beauty of being an academic is you get to

learn probably way more than you teach.

I mean, whether people admit that or not, that's, that's the best part about it.

So I have been, you know, kind of, you, you think, you always think

you know lots, and then all of a sudden you come somewhere and

you meet new people and they're teaching you all kinds of new things.

And, you know, there is so much knowledge and history and wisdom, uh, to, from

communities up here who have been in this place for, you know, since time

immemorial, they, they've been here, and they, and that, that, that, that

there's that oral knowledge and oral traditions, uh, and experience that,

that, that, that, that I've been kind of learning some of it, some of it,

um, you know, so that, that's, I mean, that's, that's one thing to preface.

The other thing to preface, which is also partly an answer to the question is,

you know, there's a really complicated and problematic history, uh, in this, in

this place about, uh, the way indigenous people have, uh, been treated and how

they're, how, how, you know, the, the, the, basically the situation they're in.

And that is, you know, that is the reality of colonialism and now settler colonialism

where, you know, indigenous people since, you know, early contact, um, indigenous

people have been pushed off their land.

Um, land has been stolen.

Um, I think there's very, there's extremely compelling evidence that

there's been a genocide in this country.

There still is an ongoing cultural genocide of indigenous people.

Um, you know, and that comes not only from the separation from land, but

also from language, from family and all of that, you know, and, and more is,

is the knowledge and the experience.

So, um.

So, you know, that, and that has kind of led to a place where these

rich histories of agriculture in some communities, like ADE communities,

um, of, of, of, um, of, of gathering, of, of, of harvesting, uh, especially

up here in the, um, in the anishnabe communities where I live, um, that that

rich and really textured knowledge and experience has been dramatically dis

not just disrupted and well disrupted.

They'll say very deliberately disrupted.

And that's what I mean, you know, when we talk about genocide,

this isn't just a, a consequence.

This is, I think, very much a part of, um, the, the fabric of, of how colonialism

works and how it's still working here.

So, I mean, that, that said, um, you know, the, the impacts of all these food systems

problems are extremely disproportionate for indigenous people, whether it's,

you know, food security, food insecurity rates that are, you know, three, four

times higher for indigenous communities.

You know, we see First Nations even in this area where, um, you know, food

insecurity can be up to a hundred percent, you know, where, and we, you know, a lot

of them don't have potable drinking water.

And these are not, again, these are not accidents.

This is their direct result of people being pushed onto, onto reserves that

isn't always their traditional territory, uh, Indian act rules that don't allow

people to fish and, and, and, and, and grow food and kind of share that and,

and sell it or whatever they need, whatever they want to do with it.

Um, but also the pollution of waterways and soils and the toxicity.

So anyways, I mean, all of this, I, I, I don't wanna harp on the, the negative,

but I think again, as we started, when you asked me about the future, we have

to understand where we are to talk about.

So it's, you can't, I I think it's not, you can't just talk about, you

know, the put the potentials and the proba, the po prospects of indigenous

agriculture or, or, or food systems without kind of naming these realities,

because this is, you know, it's easy to look up and say, Hey, there's so much

land, and why aren't people farming?

They're hungry.

Like, there's, there's a lot of reasons for that.

And this is part of what I'm just kind of touching on here a little bit.

And that said, there are some, you know, a lot of my work up here, I'm,

I do community-based research, meaning that I don't necess, I don't sit in an

office and come up with ideas on my own.

I work with people, I work with communities, and I take direction

from them and the kind of research that needs to be done.

So, um, a lot of the work that I've been doing since I came up to Northern

Ontario is working with First Nations and trying to understand, um, their, their

experiences, their knowledge, their, their interests, what they want, and

working to support them in getting there.

So, um, you know, and I, I mentioned before, the honest ADE community

in Northwestern Ontario is not, uh, traditionally a farming community.

They have, they do garden.

Uh, there, there are, there is lots of history of growing, but they're not,

you know, not in the, any, in, in the kind of large scale farming the way,

you know, UDE has have done with corn.

And, you know, some of these, some of these be, you know,

some of these beautiful, um.

Like what I would call agroecology for agroecological forms of farming.

Um, but you know, that said, uh, there's, there's a lot of interest, you know, and

I think, you know, food systems for an in, from indigenous perspective, agriculture

is not just about growing things in a kind of, in the, um, what I would call colonial

farming structure, kind of British farming model or French farming model where we're

kind of growing, you know, single crops in, in large, on large tracts of land.

But there is this integration of different ways of food getting, whether that's,

again, harvesting, uh, and keeping and all, but in, and the relationship

there is taking care of forests, taking care of land to make sure that there

is, there's lots of stuff available.

Um, yes, some gardening.

Um, you know, and, and we've been working with some of the communities

around things like doing fish emulsion or, you know, working

with, um, you know, different crops.

We're, you know, we're doing a project right now with, we have a lot of First

Nations involved with where we're trying to, uh, it's a form of seed breeding

called land, race seed, um, breeding where we're actually, you know, planting,

we're doing watermelon, uh, and squash, but we're kind of planting intercropping

together, different varieties and allowing the plants to kind of do their thing.

So we're not isolating the way most seeds are produced.

We're actually allowing those seeds to, to inter interbreed, and

we're choosing the best ones in partnership with all these communities.

And, you know, they tell us what they like and the ones they like, we regrow and we

plant again, and we're actually having a lot of the communities grow out some of

these seeds as well, and then send back the ones that they like and mixing them

into the batch and doing that all over.

So we're in our third year, that project.

Um, and, you know, again, but, but again, it, it's this, it's this way of kind of

trying to learn from these histories, trying to, you know, take advantage of

the, of, of what people want to do and, and doing things with, with communities.

So it, so it's not just about kind of, you know, we're gonna grow our perfect

seeds and send it over to them, but it's about this engagement because again, the

learning, I think that comes from that, that work is, uh, is really valuable.

And, and as a result, you know, I mean, we've done, we've had some incredible

events where we're, where we, we will, you know, have, you know, we'll, we'll

bring up some indigenous chefs and they'll, you know, work with them.

So we've had things like some amazing, like salads and berries and, you know,

even animals we with, with beaver and moose and, um, and different ways of

cooking things, um, to really, you know, represent not just the delicious

foods of the area, but again, that, that relationship to the land, which is so

key to all of this, the relationship to each other, which is again, so key.

Um, so, um, that's, you know, again, I think that that, that that relationship

relation based agriculture, we can call.

And again, I think that's all part of Agricul as we described it, as I

described it, um, as a way to really let communities take, take advantage of, uh,

and take leadership in that, in that work.

And again, I should also mention, uh, Mann, uh, wild Rice.

I mean, that's, that's another, that's a native, that's a crop

that has been grown here forever.

And we, we do have a project, we're working with communities.

Um, you know, there's a lot of flooding that's happened, a lot of

pollution where communities haven't been able to, to grow that Mann.

Um, and, you know, we're trying to work with them now to, to, to both document

history, but also think about ways forward and, and, and, uh, support, uh,

these communities in kind of growing and practising , uh, you know, learning from

elders who still have that knowledge.

Um, so we've actually had a few gatherings where we're, um, again,

the communities are doing the work.

We're just there to kind of be the backbone and support some of this.

Um, but it's a good, you know, Mann is just a perfect example of,

of a really important crop that has both environmental, spiritual,

like spiritual ceremonial, identity based kind of relations to it.

And it's, so, it's, you know, and it's, and it kind of manifests all

of what I just talked about, terms of the problematic history, but

also the potential going forward.

And, you know, listeners of of the podcast sort of recognise

that I have, uh, certain biases and, and one of those biases certainly

is with regards to technology.

And I've always seen agroecology as kind of a high tech approach to

agriculture that begins, uh, uh, in the kind of wisdom as it were, of

not just indigenous knowledge, but of agricultural practises as a whole.

And community research strikes me as kind of high tech as well, uh, uh,

even though it is ancient in terms of how it's been practised, but it

is kind of an advanced methodology and it is interesting to hear kind of

the results that you're able to get.

I I, because you're allowing the community to lead the kind of, uh, to

lead the inquiry, to lead the direction.

curious, especially given, you know, your background in Toronto, but even now,

the nature of how Northwestern Ontario works, you get the benefit of like urban

and rural contrast or juxtaposition?

it, it strikes me that community research is not urban or rural.

It's both.

And I'm curious if that affords you kind of different insights into how,

you know, the, the way the nuances in our food system, the differences that

manifest that are often lost on city folk or conversely lost on rural folk

'cause it's an either or, whereas in your case, I suspect it's a, it's a both and.

Mm-hmm.

These are, yeah, you're asking these big, these are all very big

que These are great questions.

These are big questions that I've been thinking a lot about in different

ways, and you're kind of, you're.

Poking at all.

The good, the good bits that I, I, I have, I've been kind of wrestling with.

But let me say this 'cause I, I, you know, in limited time, um, I think, you

know, one of the things, I mean we, yes, there are, when we talk about rural,

urban, there are definitely designations and what's an urban and what's a

rural, but I think, you know, we really also have to think of these things.

Obviously these are all socially constructed, you know, ideas

and they're all relative.

Right?

I was in a meeting, uh, one of my, when I first got here within

the first year, I remember, or I was sitting in a meeting with, uh,

several indigenous and settler people.

And this guy from a Northern First Nation, so you may know North Northwest Ontario.

There's, there's a bunch of, several road access First Nations, but also

many, uh, fly-in First Nations.

And someone was coming in from a fly-in First Nation and they just

said, we were sitting around, we're doing a, a sort opening circle.

And he said, he said, I remember he said something like, um, I, when I come to

Thunder Bay, it's just, it is the busiest.

Like there's so much traffic and it's like, I just, like, I've, I can't get

my head on because there's too so big.

And, and then it came to me and I, I was kind of laughing.

I said, you know, I just came up from Toronto and I'll tell

you I have, I, there's Thunder Bay is, there's no traffic.

It's so quiet.

It's so, you know, and, but it's just like, it was a great example of

this kind of like this clash of like both paradigms and life experiences

and how we see things, right?

And you know, of course, like Thunder Bay is, you know, where we are about

750 kilometres from, from everything.

Um, any other bigger town, Minneapolis is the closest city to us, um, which is

about five hour, five hours south of us.

Um, but you know, when you think of also places like Thunder Bay

versus, versus Toronto, I mean, you know, thunder Bay is the big city

and Toronto is the, the bigger city.

But you know, even, so again, it's relative to those places, but I think

it's, it's, it's important, it's valuable to think about that relationality

in respect to food because, um, you know, in many cases it is the, it

is the, the, it is the, the rural places that support the urban places.

And you, you need those places.

Um, you know, Toronto has some of the top class a, some of the most

class A soil or had in the country, which is quickly being depleted.

Um, I remember when we, when I was growing, I used to run community

gardens in Toronto and um, worked on a bunch of farms down there and it,

you know, there it is some of the best farmland in, in, in, in, in the country.

Um, you know, and, and it's, and, and, and when we lose that, obviously we rely

more on the, the, the, the, the, the rural communities to, to, to bring our food in.

Um, with.

Up here, you know, we're seeing a lot of, I mean, there are a lot of urban farms.

There's a lot of farms on the periphery of Thunder Bay, um,

in and across Northwest Ontario.

But, you know, the, we, the soil is very different.

It's, you know, we're on, we're rock.

It's a lot of clay.

Um, so what people can grow, how they can grow can be quite different.

But again, I guess the, the point I wanna get to is that relationship between

these places is, um, is really telling.

Because when you're in Thunder Bay, you know, it's really a five minute

drive to get outta the city, to be in some of those beautiful places where

there are wild blueberries and, you know, there's, there is, you know,

people are, are, are growing, uh, in, in those regions and we rely a lot,

um, on those, on those relationships.

So people can, and people can see those connections quite directly.

Um, so they have a, in some ways a much better sense of that.

You know, one of the other realities that, that kind of speaks to this

is, um, there, there's, there's a bridge that comes across GaN.

Um, and when that bridge gets closed, it's, there's, there's no road to get to

Thunder Bay unless you go through the us.

So, you know, that that has had a big impact too, on the way I think people

think about food and when the pandemic hit and, you know, things were limited.

And, you know, that bridge does get closed down sometimes, both because of repair

and also I think some really wonderful protests that have happened a few

times by, uh, the First Nations in that region, uh, to really make a point of how

important that, that, that that area is.

Um, but again, I think that people in Thunder base see how

kind of, um, vulnerable we can be in terms of not having access

to food that can be shipped in.

Um, we actually just recently, as part of one of my projects with, uh, the

Food Action Network of Northwestern Ontario created a emergency food

plan, which is doing exactly this.

It's thinking about, you know, what happens when we get cut off?

What happens when, you know, there is an emergency, whether it's potential

war, uh, war implications of war, or, uh, or, or, or a pandemic or,

you know, lots of weather events.

And so anyway, so I, I think that that thinking about those relationships

to, to the, to the land around us and the places, both in terms of importing

food, but also where food is being grown, uh, is, is, is maybe more present

for folks in, in, in the region here.

Um, but I, I, again, I go back to where I started and say it is relative because,

you know, we, I mean people in Thunder Bay, like it is this the big city here.

You know, people really see it as a, as a big unruly city.

Even if, you know, the same way many people in Thunder Bay see

Toronto as a big unruly city.

Um, but those, I think those thinking about those relationships in, in

respect to land and access to food, um, I, I, you know, again, I, I think

to the short answer to your question is from my perspective, maybe there

is more of that kind of, people see it here in Thunder Bay, but I

think in like it is relative, right?

In terms of the way people, um, interact with their food systems, right?

Well, and, and let me throw another challenging question at you, uh,

partly inspired by an anecdote you've sort of alluded to there in terms of,

you know, Toronto at one point having the best soil, uh, in the country.

it strikes me that certainly within the agricultural sector, and I think

within some, uh, of the, for lack of a better phrase, intelligentsia, there

is a growing awareness of, of soil, uh, of the, the value that soil, uh,

plays in our life on this planet.

The importance of biodiversity within that soil, the idea that not all soil is equal.

Again, here, you and I were having this conversation and we sort of both

understand that, you know, politically, economically, technologically, but then

as I was listening to you, I thought, you know, but the voting, the, the

general voting populace doesn't, right?

The people who think about land use policies in Toronto don't.

Right to, to what extent, and, and again, I, I'm babbling here.

You could figure out how to answer this however you wish.

To what extent do we need to be raising soil literacy, for lack

of a better phrase, uh, does soil need to be politicised?

Do we need to help, you know, uh, people who see themselves as politically

conscious or politically literate?

Do we need to be educating them about the centrality of soil in our lives, or

am I just nerding out when I identify someone else who's also into soil all.

Yeah, no, for sure.

I, I totally, I like, I, I, I'm, I'm on, I'm on that page with you.

I, you know, I have a, a, a friend who's a, uh, does, uh, agroecological

beef, uh, and, you know, he raises cows and he often says to me like,

I don't grow beef, I grow grass.

That's what, you know, and, and really everything else just kind

of happens because if you grow good grass, you know, your, the animals

are gonna eat well, and they're gonna be well fed, and they're gonna

take, they're gonna be taken care of.

And, you know, I could, to your point, I could say, you don't grow.

You're not agra, you don't grow grass.

You actually grow soil and the soil does everything else.

And, you know, it's, it's, it's, there's, it's a lot of truth.

Like, I think when you, when you, you know, I mean, we can, we can talk about

like the value of good soil, and you can literally go places and pick up

the soil and someone who knows what they're looking for, even if you're

not a bi, I, I'm not a biologist, but you know, I can pick, I can go to my

backyard and dig ahead of soil and look at and go, oh, that looks like good.

So it's dark, it's rich.

There's things moving in it, like all these, all these good, good things, right?

And I think it, you know, I maybe the way I would answer your question or respond to

your comment, um, beyond saying I agree, is, you know, going back to that where

I started around why I do food, right?

Like, am I, like, do I study food?

Like I could just as easily say, oh, I'm a soil system.

Researcher or practitioner, like, that's what I do.

Because I think, you know, when we start to think about the, the way

that, whether it's soil or grass or, or food, you know, connect things.

Um, and, and you know, because to have healthy soil, if you, you know, all,

I think I would say almost all farmers know this, or if you dump a lot of

chemicals into your soil, you know, even if you're doing it because they're, you

know, you're, you need to increase this and it's gonna increase your yield.

I mean, you know that it's not good for the soil over the long term.

So, you know, soil is living and, you know, just like a person, you know,

yes, we need medicine, but if you dump tonnes of medicine into us and just

keep doing it and don't think about the other aspects of what we're eating and

our energy, like our exercise and, you know, our social relationships, you know,

it's not good for us and we know that.

So, uh, you know, I think your, your comment about soil is a good one.

In, in, in that, in, in, you know, to have good soil, we need good climate.

We need good, um, we need to take care of the land.

We need to have a good relationship with the land.

Um, you know, all of these things could come, come together.

So, you know, you can't fix soil by just adding one thing or doing

one thing or taking one thing out, but, you know, we, you need to look

at it from a systems perspective.

So in that sense, yeah, we need better soil literacy.

We need, we need better food literacy.

I mean, I don't know if people, if I was in a, in a, in a talking to a group

of people who were all into like soil, sure, I, you know, I would love to

have a long conversation about all the different elements that, that would make

a good, make soil healthy and productive.

Um, but it's probably the same conversation I would

have about food, right?

In that we're talking about all the different pieces and the need to

think about those pieces together.

Um, you know, be beyond just, you know, one, one simple, quick solution.

And as an educator, or equivalently as someone who I suspect

believes in public education, how, how do we increase food literacy?

Like, uh, you hear a lot of kind of fetching in, in the agricultural

sector about how people don't know where their food comes from and,

you know, a desire for people to know where their food comes from.

And, and granted there's a politics to all of that, which is why I I, I

think it often doesn't actually happen.

But if you were given near infinite resources, how would you approach

that issue of food literacy and, and broader public education, whether

around soil as a, you know, particular keystone of it all, or just the general

premise that people in cities should know where their food comes from,

if, if only so they can participate more directly in that food system.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And again, again, to answer that question, I think I probably,

probably, a lot of my answers do this.

I, I think we have to think about.

What are the challenges already we're facing with things like food, with

food literacy, and what does that mean?

So, I mean, just very briefly, I think, you know, when we think about

food literacy, I often think about it as, and I see it as being quite

narrow and quite limited, and often just supporting the status quo.

So, you know, just, you know, as an example, things like,

you know, individualism, right?

We always talk, we talk to people literally like, oh,

I'm gonna the grocery store.

What should I buy?

What should I eat?

What should I do?

And, you know, my answer is often like, I don't, I don't care.

Like, do whatever you want, you know, because really, I mean, I

do care of course, be too flippant about that, but you know, I mean,

that's not the point, right?

Because I think when we, when we individualise things so much, you know,

we kind of lose the bigger picture of why things are the way they are.

Right?

Um, you know, I think there's a real challenge in food literacy with

like this idea of healthism, right?

Like this kind of reductionist approach to, you know, what's good tea, what's

not good tea, and what has this nutrient new that nutrient, I mean that's science.

And this goes again, back to agroecology.

The science is huge.

It's so val, we have to know.

It's like we've, you know, we're living longer, mostly we're healthier mostly,

I mean, and, and it, and it's great.

But you know, when we medicalize everything, you know, we also create,

at the same time, we can create a lot of stigma around like, oh, you eat

that, uh, you know, that's not so good.

And a lot of people are making choices not only what they

like, but what they can afford.

So, you know, that that's a huge issue.

I think we're also, you know, I would, again, the isms we're also an

anthropomorphizing, or anthropomorphism, if that's even a word, um, of, of,

you know, really kind of making this all about us and humans and

not proect to the soil conversation.

You know, soil is a living thing.

And if we're only thinking about soil, what we need from our perspective, you

know, what's the problem with dumping tents of nitrogen into soil and, you know,

kill, like, you know, killing all the living things, but how are most of 'em?

But having, you know, tall corn that we can, you know, we can, we can

sell and make a lot of money from.

So it's those ki I think those are the kinds of challenges we face

when we, when we don't think about these bigger pictures and we don't

think about the interconnections.

So, you know, when we think, when I think about food literacy, you know, I think

we need to disrupt many, in many cases, those that dominant food literacy and,

and really think about a food literacy that is, is critical and kind of can

do that work, that hard work of, of kind of looking what's where we, where

we are and what's happened and what the challenges are, but also, um, you

know, looking, looking forward to, to different ways of, of, of thinking about.

Um, uh, around, around food.

So, you know, I mean, I, I, I, I believe very strongly in food literacy.

It's been many ways it maybe defines what I do.

Um, and, um, you know, thinking about, um, how we can have a more of a kind

of coming back to where we started systems way of thinking about things.

So the interconnections, um, really rooted in ideas of justice, in sustainability,

in kind of valuing the human and the more than human world and seeing again,

those interconnections in that work.

So, um, and of course not saying, you know, I'm, I'm a I'm an academic, I

have a PhD, so I have all the answers.

I think far from that, it's, it's about working with, you know, farmers and

harvesters, you know, fishers grow, you know, uh, first Nations, you know,

indigenous people who, who have different ways of thinking about this stuff.

And I think that is the kind of food literacy that I would promote.

So, you know, even, you know, again, I would never, as I said

before, I would never want to speak for any of those people.

Like, I don't have that experience, but I can learn from them.

I can bring that in.

I mean, I love, the reason I I, we write, we do podcasts is because we

wanna share these ideas and not as being the ideas or the right ideas, but

about contributing to a conversation.

Because, you know, one of the things I maybe should have said at the

beginning, you know, we always talk about how broken the food system

is, and I would say, I don't think the food system's broken at all.

I think it's doing exactly what it was designed to do, and it's, you know, it's

the, so as a result, I think we need to be na like recognising that the limitations,

the challenges, but also pushing back.

And that's where I think food literacy is really about, again, bringing

all these different ways of knowing together and not believing there's one

right way or there's one wrong way.

In many ways, you know, science and traditional knowledge kind

of don't always fit together.

You know, I just, a quick little echo.

I'm doing some work on glyphosate right now.

In first, a lot of the First Nations are very concerned about glyphosate

spraying because it's been, it's used ubiquitously by forestry companies and

the Ministry of Transportation, and it's, and it's, they spray it all over the

place to take weeds down, um, up here.

And a lot of First Nations are concerned about what that's doing

to fish, wildlife, uh, plants.

And they, there's lots of experiential evidence that this is a problem.

Um, so again, the point is here you have this kind of clash where the science

is saying, no, you can drink the stuff.

Uh, and then the First Nations are saying, uh, it's, you know, we're, we're opening

our moose, and there's like weird things in them that was never there before,

before the spraying started to happen.

So by documenting these things and by telling these stories through

what I would call food literacy a critical food literacy, we can,

i, we can identify that like these things, like, they're, like multiple

things can be true at the same time.

And, and that means that we have to wrestle with these things as opposed to

simply, I think it's much easier and maybe much lazier to go, this is good, this

is bad, this is right, this is wrong.

But, you know, when it comes to food and we, when it comes to systems thinking,

we're, we're, we're identifying these, these multiple truths and, and these

and on, on lots of important ways of knowing, but not necessarily favouring

one over the other and saying, th you know, this is what we're gonna

believe and the rest is not true.

So, you know, by documenting some of this, this traditional knowledge

around glyphosate where people living and working on the land or seeing

things, we can present a a perspective.

We've written a little bit about this, uh, recently.

Um, we can present this, this experience and this perspective, this knowledge,

um, as a way to contribute to the conversation because we have to

have conversations about this stuff.

Um, so I think a critical food literacy, that's what it needs to do

and that's how I would hope, that's how I think about my work and I would

hope others would do do the same.

'cause I'm excited to learn from them, even if I don't agree with them.

And I'm the same.

I, I'm an avid learner and, and I learn from everyone.

I mean, I often seek out people who think differently than me to reinforce

my learning and, and, and get a greater sense of the subject matter.

And part of the mandate that I was able to obtain for this podcast was when I

sort of asserted that the AgriFood system needs to be listening to dissidents

and critics and, you know, people who normally they would try to ignore.

And I said that partly 'cause I had been at so many conferences where

I would hear them use the word activist in a very dehumanising way

as if the activists were the other.

They were the people who by sheer definition of being

activist, we can ignore them.

And obviously I don't agree with that.

And part of what I'm trying to achieve in this podcast is to build is thorough a

knowledge base of our systems is possible.

I mean, for example, uh, a guest I have coming up in a couple of weeks

is John Barlow, who is a conservative member of Parliament from Alberta

and is the shadow minister of agriculture for the Conservative Party.

So I, I am clearly trying to get as diverse perspectives as possible.

And I say this, Charles, 'cause we're at the policy part of every

episode and you've been knocking all of my questions out of the park.

Your performance today is absolutely fantastic and entertaining.

and, and you've had a very consistent kind of through line, which is that

these are about systems and systems touch all sorts of aspects of society.

So like, you know, if you wanna go narrow with the policy question,

by all means, but I am trying to hope that you go big picture here.

But again, you know, I've seized power, I've got the Prime Minister's

office, you know, doing what I want.

And we're like, Charles, come in.

Uh, let's talk policy here.

Uh, what do we gotta do?

Ah, yeah.

Okay.

So I'm gonna get on my list of policy demands.

Um, it's, it's a, it's a tricky, it's a tricky question for me, and I will, I

will answer it, but it's a tricky question because, and again, it maybe this is

part of that through line is policy.

Unfortunately, we, like, we, we make policy in silos, in isolation.

That's the way policy works.

And I, I, I don't think, you know, even the most loving person who

loves the policies is a policymaker.

I think they would, they would be the first to identify that, you know,

the way government is divided, you know, think, let's think about food.

We have a mini who, what, what ministries affect food, you know, is it environment?

Is it climate change?

Is it climate, uh, sorry, environment, is it education?

Is it, uh, agriculture?

Is it, uh, health, I mean, you know, et cetera.

Et it's all of them, right?

Not, there's probably no ministry that doesn't touch food.

And I think that in and of itself, so when we make, you know, there's

been lots of talk in this country of like, oh, we need a ministry.

We should, we have a ministry of food.

Do we need a minister of food?

We need a round table on food.

And, you know, I think from a policy perspective, it's complicated, uh, to,

to do that and to think about how to engage policy and how to, how to think

about it when we want to be careful.

And I, I think this is where my weakness as an academic, because I

can talk, you know, till I'm blue as I am right now, blue in the face

around like systems and connections.

And, but then when it comes down to it, well, what does that mean

for like the Ministry of Health?

I'm like, well, I don't know.

How do you make health policy without making agricultural policy?

How do you, and in many ways those ministries, I think it's, you know, not

controversial to say they're actually working in opposition to each other.

You know, you have a ministry of agriculture, AgriFood Canada that,

you know, their mandate is to more stuff and more sales and more exports.

Like that is the, that is the mandate of most agricultural departments.

And then you have Health Canada who's saying, eat more, eat more fruit,

eat more vegetables, eat healthier.

And we're not growing that stuff.

We're trying, we're producing more qua commodity crops, right?

So we have these ministries that are kind of in, in, in conflict

with each other in a way.

And so, so from a policy perspective, I often look at, well,

who's doing the work of thinking about policy in a connected way?

And you know, I I, I think one of the places I look to

that, I think there's a lot of.

Again, I'm hesitant to use the word hope, but a lot of maybe optimism I have is,

is around food policy councils and food policy councils are, you know, not new.

They've been around since the eighties, but, uh, you know,

they're really increasing.

And, you know, I'm, I'm actually the chair of the board for our food Policy Council

up here in northern, in, in, in the, in the northern northwestern Ontario region.

And there's, you know, many that I work with on a regular basis.

And what a food policy council is, is it's a place where people of from different

sectors, perspectives, experiences, can come together, sit at a table and

talk about food systems issues so that, you know, unlike, uh, you know, an

environmental organisation where you're trying to bring all the environmentalists

together or, you know, a social justice, uh, you know, a, um, I don't know, a,

uh, a justice organisation where we're trying to bring the activists together.

You know, you're really, I think, a food policy council.

We want all of those people.

And we actually, in our food policy council, and many do this, have a roster

where they say, well, we want make sure we have someone from farming, someone

from business, someone from, you know, education, you know, et cetera, health.

Um, so having those people sit together is a really important way,

I think, and valuable way to kinda have these kinds of conversations.

So, you know, anyways, that said, I mean, some of the issues that I've

been, you know, really excited about lately, um, is, um, school food.

School food is a great example actually of one of these kind

of systems issues, right?

It's not, it's not just one thing.

And, you know, there has been a lot of civil society work, uh, the, the

Coalition on Healthy School food, um, which has been active for, for many

years and has been really, I think is, is a, again, a really amazing model of,

again, a network of people that came together and have worked together to,

you know, despite their differences, despite the different perspectives

they come from, have this goal of a universal school food programme in Canada.

And, you know, it wasn't only because of their work, but as a result of

much of their work in, uh, 2024, the government of Canada announced our

school food policy and our school national school food programme.

Um, there's still some work to do to get that in place, but it's a great example

of, of a pol of a policy shift, you know, for a long time, Canada, well still,

where Canada's the, one of the, one of the only, uh, developed countries or

majority world minority world countries that, um, that, that, that doesn't have

a national school food programme to feed kids, uh, to make sure that every

kid, regardless of income, uh, you know, class is gonna have access to, to, to,

to good food in their, in their schools.

And the school is a great place for that because they all go to school.

So, you know, anyway, so there's, without saying too much about that, I think that's

a really fantastic, um, policy advance.

You know, another one I've been thinking about a lot is basic

income, uh, universal income, which is another one that you know, is.

Is, is an opportunity I think, within the food system.

And actually I've actually written a little bit about this with, with

others, um, of what it would look like, what the, what basic income

could look like in farming, in fisheries, uh, for food security.

And, you know, again, we think of farmers who are, um, the way farming works.

You know, often farmers don't get paid for a lot of what

they do, um, as you well know.

And, you know, I think, you know, a basic income could not that it's a, it's a,

it's a silver bullet solution to anything, but it's, it's one of a tiered kind of

way of thinking about, um, essentially addressing some of those, sort of, those

deep inequalities within Canadian society.

Anyways.

I mean, I, you know, I'm not gonna give you my laundry list of policy things,

but I would say things like sick pay for work for food workers, um, you know,

uh, making sure that, you know, social security, we have better social security.

Um, you know, I mean, there's, there's lots of things that, you know, yeah.

you are doing what you said you wouldn't do and that

you said, you know, I, I, it's like

I,

Awards.

I only have a few people to think, and then you pull out the long list.

But what I like about the interview methodology I employ

is by throwing out that policy question open-ended at the end.

It is interesting to me, the kind of policies that people keep mentioning

and the school lunches is, is one that, that keeps hitting home.

And to your point, it is kind of shocking that that low hanging fruit is not already

operationalized across the country.

we are, uh, running out of time here on our first, uh, uh, uh, conversation.

But I, I have to ask the second last question, uh, which I offer to guests,

although in your case, I, I do have to frame it with, and we are running out

of time, so don't go too nuts here, Charles, is there anything that you

think we should touch upon that we haven't touched upon that you would

like to bring up before we conclude?

in a short amount of time.

That's a, I I I, I, I'm hesitant to, to really get into

that, get into that answer.

'cause there's lots we haven't touched on that I, I'd love to talk about.

Um, but I, I think, you know, maybe just

worry.

going back, yeah, yeah.

I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail, but, you know, one of the things

I've been thinking a lot about.

I know we're not gonna have time to get into this, but when we talk

about these kind of, this, this exactly where we started, like

how do we get to where we are?

I think, you know, there's a lot of issues that we often don't talk

about in food, in food work because it's just not considered food work.

'cause it doesn't deal with the nutrients and stuff.

But, you know, I think we have to talk about economics, uh,

capitalism and how we, you know, how we kind of got to this place.

'cause food plays a really interesting role in that, right?

In terms of, you know, for a long time and even when, you know, in the 15

hundreds, like when, you know, we're kind of thinking about, you know, where do

farmers fit in this, in this move in, in this, in, in, in, in the state system.

And there's a lot of good debate on that.

And, you know, I think that's, that's an issue that I think is always interesting.

I think we talked a bit about colonialism, but I think we can't think of the

food system without thinking about, you know, land and colonialism and

settler colonialism conflict is a big one that we didn't really talk about.

But you know, we're talking like the Iran and the straight of Mout is

everywhere in the news and the price of fertiliser and the price of food.

I mean, we've talked about Ukraine for a while.

Um, so there's those impacts on the global system.

I mean, issues of, you know, uh, Gaza, you know, and the what that, what

conflict does to people and the kind of like food security rates and, you

know, famines that have been ha caused.

Um, you know, and, and, and, and, and maybe the last one that, you know, we

didn't really talk about, but I think is really important is, maybe this is more

of a cultural piece, but like the, just the way of the convenience has shaped our

food system so deeply in that, you know, it, you know, I think Raj Patel, once I

listened to something he said where he said, um, our food, like we, we, our food

system isn't being shaped for us, but we're being shaped for our food system.

You know?

Um, and you think about even things like you talked about, I remember you talked

about like cars and like, you know, I remember like when I was a kid, like

cars didn't have drink holders, right?

That just wasn't a thing.

And now you would be hard pressed to find a car without a drink hold, like

without two drink holders or four, there's ones on the door, you know?

So this is, I, because people are eating in their cars.

They're not sitting and eating anymore, right?

I mean, the, the drive-throughs, I mean, drive-throughs were like an

anomaly, you know, 50 years ago, not even, it didn't even exist, you know,

it was like, but now, you know, I mean, they're basically building, you know,

every time a Tim Hortons goes up, they have to put in a new streetlight for

the drive-through and they have to do.

So, you know, it's like that issue of convenience I think is

really an interesting one to think about and how like, our culture

has shaped our food system.

So anyway, again, I've said I wasn't gonna go into these things, but like,

I just think there's a lot of these drivers of our modern food system that

we kind of just push aside because we're like, oh, we're not talking about that.

We're talking about agriculture, we're talking about soil,

we're talking about nutrients.

But it's again, like all these bigger picture pieces that help us understand

where we are, why we're here,

Well, and to your

and how to do something about it.

Oh, absolutely.

And, and to your point, I'd love to have a conversation on kind of the

curse of convenience and the opportunity of participatory design it comes to

thinking about how our food systems work.

And, and I say this, you know, we're closing, so I I ain't open no new threads.

No, please don't mistake my rambling here for invitations.

But in a recent episode we had, uh, with Alyssa Overin, I kinda asked her the

question, you know, is calling for public owned grocery stores aiming too low?

Like, should we be thinking beyond the grocery store as a cultural

construct of distributing food?

I highlight that as a future, future herd conversation for curious

listeners, uh, uh, to tune in.

But the last question I, I throw to our guests, Charles, and again, I,

I'm asking for restraint on your part.

uh, this is the shoutout part of the show.

Who, who are the leaders that you look up to that you think we

should pay, be paying attention to?

I mean, Raj Patel was one you sort of leaked, uh, but who are the other

people that you think we should be, uh, uh, following or, or at least,

uh, uh, getting a sense of how they're contributing to the larger discourse?

You're, you're, I'm, I'm restraining myself not to speak

to your grocery store question, but I'll just say yes to your, I'll

just say yes to everything you said.

We do need to be thinking, uh, beyond grocery stores.

Um, but I won't go there.

Um, yeah, it's a great question about the who.

And actually, you know, I, I'm gonna restrain myself, but there's

two, I think there's two groups.

There's multiple pe multiple groups.

But, you know, I think I started actually by saying this, I'll say it again.

I worry that in the age of, in our, in our modern age, we forget, and maybe this

is a, a, a product of all generations.

I think we often lose a lot of our, what I would call elders,

uh, in the small e um, you know, people in, in our movements, right?

People who have really like, done things, you know, in a very unique and

different way that like, they're just kind of old white people and most of 'em

aren't even white, but, you know, older people that we just kind of push aside.

And, you know, I think there's a, there's a, there's a generation before

me and maybe, you know, kind of, I'm in a bit of a sandwich, but that really

started to talk about food as a system.

And, um, I think those people are so important to kind of hear from and learn

from because they're getting older.

Some of them are not alive anymore, and they just come at this from such a.

What maybe isn't so unique now, but they were really like unique in their moment.

And I'm actually doing a small project so I can, you know, I can send links

and stuff to, uh, we're doing a, a book where we're, we've interviewed about 29

of these people, uh, who, and, and we're doing, uh, we have video interviews,

but then we also doing some writing.

But I'll just name a couple, like people like Mustafa coach, who was a

professor at, uh, at TMU in Toronto.

Um, a wonderful woman, Don Morrison out in who's, uh, uh, indigenous

out in, out in the BC area.

Um, uh, Dan Longboat, uh, at, at Guelph, uh, in, in the Peterborough area.

Sorry, uh, well, Peterborough area.

Um, rod McCray, who was like pioneer in ol, I didn't say pioneer,

uh, really novel I'll say in his, in his work on food policy.

Uh, and, you know, and, and you know, basically said, I

don't wanna publish anymore.

I want to just share my knowledge and created this

incredibly interactive website.

Um, Wayne Roberts who, who just passed recently, uh, who was really like, thought

about food policy councils and was kind of the grandfather of that, that work.

Um, anyways, I I, I'm not gonna go on, but like, I could, like, I think

there's a lot of these people who have such knowledge and wisdom, uh, and to

understand again, where we are now, just very briefly, I think there's a

lot of young people, um, who are also equally as important to hear from.

Um, and I don't know that a lot of them would necessarily feel comfortable

doing a, an hour long podcast because they're, they're still, they're young

and they're learning and they haven't, they're not always as, um, they're

not able to articulate, but they are brilliant and they're, you know, I,

I see some of them in my classes.

I work with some of them in the communities.

I, I, I'm in First Nations and, and non and, and settler communities,

but I see them around the world.

I read them, I listen to them.

Um, but I think, again, like it goes back to exactly this

thread that's taking us through.

It's not just about the, the, the people who have all these,

this historical knowledge.

It's about the people who understand this current reality.

That's why youth are so brilliant, because they understand today so

differently than you do or I do, because I just don't interact in those worlds.

I don't, I don't have a thousand, I don't have social media accounts

that I, you know, am on all the time.

So, you know, for good or bad, like, I just don't understand it.

So I think like the, who is, you know, without going again into a laundry

list, it's again, some of these people who have that historical knowledge,

have that wisdom, but also these young people who are seeing things

in a very new and different way.

And again, there's a, there's often a paradigm clash there.

And I think that's the exciting part is to get those conversations, to have,

that's what we're trying to do with this, this project of interviewing

people and sharing the knowledge.

But, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's infinite.

The, the, the people we could talk to or the similar to the people you could talk

to and the knowledge that's out there.

Right on.

And I mean, this has been a, a tour to force.

Uh, thank you so much, uh, uh, for taking the time, uh, to have this conversation.

And a, as we've been talking, I've been kind of fantasising about, you

know, what I hope the future herd kind of becomes, which on the one hand is

a place to make these connections.

On the other hand, uh, is, uh, potentially the kind of learning resource that

allows these types of young people, uh, certainly young people who do not have

the privilege of being your student 'cause Wow, that would be pretty cool.

Uh, but still, nonetheless, to be able to access and connect and then

start following rabbit holes around some of the research areas and the

communities that you're active in.

But I am hoping Charles, that uh, you'll continue to be a part of the future herd.

'cause clearly this was only part one in an epic ongoing conversation.

'cause I feel I'm only just scratching the surface of some of the radical

ideas and concepts that you're working through as part of your research.

Mm-hmm.

Well, and thank you so much for, I mean, having me speak with

you and for all the work here.

I think your podcast is phenomenal.

And you know, I think, again, like there's, there's few places where we

can actually have these kinds of really complicated, messy conversations.

'cause often people want the 32nd soundbite, and you just from talking

to me, you know, you're not gonna get the 32nd soundbite because it's,

everything is kind of interconnected.

You have to like, takes me a while to answer a question because I feel like I

need to kind of give a bit of history and go, but, you know, to make space for that.

And especially like within the food space.

Um, and you've done, you're doing that really well and I think it's

really valuable to, to just make space for that and, you know,

bring some of that together.

So thank you.

A and part of my agenda I is to build upon it, right?

You know, standing on the shoulders of giant.

So if anything, that's why I want to have you back so we can start

circling back to some of these topics and making the connections.

'cause every interview I do influences the next interview in terms of my

understanding, and I'm trying to reflect that in the knowledge that we build.

So that's where your radical perspective is invaluable in terms

of, uh, uh, being able to map out those kinds of systemic connections

that I think a lot of people miss.

Uh uh So thank you Charles.

This has been fantastic.

Great.

Next time we can talk about my book on Radical Food Geography,

which really gets at this, uh, get this question of the radical part.

I'm really interested in that idea.

So another time though.

Right on.

What I loved about this chat with Charles is that he refuses to make food simple.

Even though on some levels food is quite simple.

Food is often reduced to individual choices, what we buy, what we eat, what

we can afford, what we should know.

But Charles keeps bringing us back to the larger system.

Food is shaped by history, it's shaped by policy, it's shaped by land, labour,

colonialism, education, culture, and the stories we inherit about what is possible.

And that is also why this conversation feels like a beginning.

Charles reminds us that the future of food cannot be built by novelty alone.

It depends on remembering the elders, organisers, scholars, growers, and

community leaders who helped us understand food as a system in the first place.

It also depends on listening to young people who experience the

present differently and who can see pressures and possibilities

that older institutions often miss.

Some of the most important knowledge in the food system does not

arrive as a slogan or a soundbite.

It arrives through relationships, through practise, through long conversations,

and through the difficult work of making connections across difference.

And that is part of what the future herd is trying to do.

Perhaps futile, a place where those connections can be made visible.

A place where the knowledge that does not disappear after the conversation

ends a place where ideas can build on each other and where the people shaping

the future of food can find one another.

And, and that's where, I'll be honest, I have no idea how long

this podcast is gonna last.

My, my goal is not just to talk to the leaders in the sector, but to

talk to people like Charles, who quite frankly, the sector ignores the sector,

alienates the sector dehumanises.

I mean, one of the things that I've found most disturbing about doing this

podcast is the way in which some of our guests really dehumanise their

opponents, marginalise them, call them, you know, activists or antis

or whatever it is they need to do to ignore and dismiss legitimate dissent.

And I ain't got no time for that shit.

So, you know, this episode, really, if anything, is a challenge.

It's a challenge to the industry to listen to people like Charles

who's listening to other people.

And that creates the kind of value chain that our industry requires.

If for whatever reason, uh, the industry refuses to listen, to acknowledge, to

hear the kind of conversations that Alyssa, Charles and Elaine offer,

then quite frankly, they can go fuck themselves, uh, because I think

food is more important than that.

So my thanks to Charles for joining us and reminding us that food is never just food.

It's a way of seeing the whole system.

And if we don't start talking about that system, if we don't

expand the voices who are part of that system, then what the fuck?

Why are we doing this in the first place?

All right.

Talk to you guys soon.