Food for the Mind: Terra Madre Reflections on the World that Feeds Us

Five more Food Talks released as part of the program of Terra Madre 2020.

Food for the mind and visions for the future.

Don Ciotti: “To address food and agricultural politics is, at last, to address politics for all, to protect the common good.”

Larissa Bombardi: “The area of Brazil being used to cultivate soy is bigger than Germany. And more than 90% of this soy is transgenic. The majority of this soy is exported, mostly to the EU and China.”

Food for the mind: Food Talks with Bombardi, Myint, Benavides, Frazee, and Don Ciotti

Five more Food Talks to reflect on some of the most urgent issues facing the food system: profiles of all our contributors here.

LARISSA MIES BOMBARDI – SOY AND POISON, FROM FIELD TO FORK

With the globalization of the economy, the real value of food has been undermined, i.e., its value as both nutrition and culture. It’s been transformed into agro-energy, a commodity, a currency for international exchange. This has already happened in countries like Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Paraguay, Uruguay, where a vast swathe of land is now dedicated to the production of commodity crops.

Today in Brazil there is an area of land greater than Germany which is used exclusively to grow soy. The impact is enormous: this monoculture requires a large number of pesticides, and it’s no coincidence that Brazil is the largest consumer of pesticides in the world, accounting for a fifth of the world total. The cultivation of soy in Brazil is a result of global meat consumption and contributes to the devastation of the Amazon rainforest.