Eric-Holt Gimenez was my guest this past Thursday, and before we began our interview we shared a moment of appreciation for Frances Lappe, whose royalties from Diet for a Small Planet actually funded the humble beginnings of Food First. 

Eric Holt-Giménez, who has been the Executive Director of Food First since 2006, is also the editor and co-author of many great books that center around the social, environmental and political issues within our good food movement. In Gimenez’s most recent book, he explains how capitalism is the real driver of our global food system. He offers us up a well-informed perspective that the commodification of food has actually bolstered capitalism by its perpetuation of structural racism, classism and patriarchy. 

Gimenez states that, along with the ever-evolving foodscape of dine-ins and dine-outs, the food movement itself has been changing. Ultimately, he and I both agree that we’ve come to the end of the line in our food system; that we need to change things, especially to remediate problems in public health and the environment. However, most importantly, Gimenez says that change in the food system cannot happen in isolation from capitalism. 

But what leverage do we have? Again, we both agree, now is the time to be fearless; now is the time to overcome our obstacles with Love and Transparency. “Dismantling racism, classism, sexism is not extra work, it is the work!” he says about action taking place in the good food movement. Furthermore, the issues we’re faced with are not technical issues, but rather political issues. 

May we end our 2018 year and begin our 2019 year, focusing on the communities not only currently impacted by negative food system, but also the communities that have been most historically impacted, because within those are individuals who cannot escape their karma. For many of us, we must try to do more than just vote with our fork, which is only responding through consumer demand, but we need to think of those who don’t have that privilege to eat as it aligns with their beliefs.