{"id":1678,"date":"2016-11-15T13:51:07","date_gmt":"2016-11-15T13:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.porticomagazine.ca\/?p=1678"},"modified":"2020-10-28T14:40:27","modified_gmt":"2020-10-28T18:40:27","slug":"feast-or-famine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/porticomagazine.ca\/2016\/11\/feast-or-famine\/","title":{"rendered":"Feast or famine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Evan Fraser has a plan to fix our fragile food system<\/h2>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

By Andrew Vowles<\/em>
\nPhotography by Dean Palmer<\/em><\/p>\n

Evan Fraser\u2019s career epiphany came one afternoon in the early 1990s while he was weeding a strawberry patch. That day, during a summer spent working on his grandfather\u2019s fruit farm near Welland, Ont., Fraser was thinking about next steps beyond his university anthropology studies, including the possibility of taking over the farm. Then his step-grandmother drove up in her air-conditioned Lincoln Town Car and lowered the window to say hi.<\/p>\n

Until her 50s, Kay Fraser had stayed at home to run the farm along with Evan\u2019s grandfather, Frank, a graduate of the University of Guelph\u2019s Ontario Agricultural College. Feeling restive, she decided to take the advice of one of her sons to become a stockbroker. \u201cThat unleashed a formidable force,\u201d says Fraser. Starting with a few well-off acquaintances, Kay built a clientele and a new lifestyle for herself. \u201cShe almost certainly earned more in commissions that afternoon than I made all summer on the farm,\u201d says Fraser, laughing in his Hutt Building office, which displays black and white family photos on the farm. \u201cNot only that, her commission was paying my wage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead of farming, he opted for grad school \u2014 better to write and talk about farming, he thought. \u201cI\u2019ve got food in my genes, both from a consumer and a producer perspective,\u201d says Fraser, whose father is an animal welfare scientist and mother is a U of G graduate who has run a bed and breakfast.<\/p>\n

That decision ultimately landed Fraser at U of G in 2010 to take up a new Canada Research Chair in Global Human Security. Geography professor John Smithers was department chair when Fraser arrived. Sporting a neck scarf and looking \u201clike a cross between the Tasmanian Devil and Grover on Sesame Street<\/em>,\u201d says Smithers, the new guy \u201cblew into the building with a bundle of energy and enthusiasm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today Fraser is a bit more measured, but only just. Wearing a heavy checked shirt, jeans and running shoes, Fraser, a youthful-looking 43, might be taken for one of his own grad students, with all the energy of a twenty-something. \u201cHe\u2019s very enthusiastic and optimistic,\u201d says Dave Hobson, a technology transfer manager in U of G\u2019s Catalyst Centre and Fraser\u2019s weekly jogging buddy. \u201cHe\u2019s not motivated by material things and money. We had a meeting two days ago with three people in suits, and Evan shows up in a T-shirt and khaki green slacks.\u201d<\/p>\n

In public talks about our collective food future, Fraser paces the stage and delivers his points with the impassioned cadences of an evangelical TED talker. He lays out his view of the food crisis in a crisp, punchy style whose folksy language doesn\u2019t detract from the seriousness of his message. \u201cThere is a mismatch between what we produce and what we know we should be producing, and if we are to nutritiously feed the future, there needs to be a realignment in terms of the world\u2019s agricultural systems,\u201d he tells the audience at this fall\u2019s annual president\u2019s dinner.<\/p>\n

Says Smithers, \u201cHe really does have an appreciation that food is a basic human need that we can\u2019t take for granted. The things he\u2019s interested in are part of the campus DNA \u2014 not just food but justice and development elements. Justice and equity map onto the food legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

That message reflects what Fraser has learned since that day in the strawberry patch. He studied anthropology at the University of Toronto (U of T) before completing grad degrees in forestry and environmental studies at U of T and the University of British Columbia. After his PhD in 2002, he worked in a policy institute with former MP Lloyd Axworthy. A year later, he headed to the United Kingdom for a position at the University of Leeds, which was launching a new school of sustainability.<\/p>\n

\"screen-shot-2016-11-07-at-11-48-14-am\"<\/a>By the time he returned to Canada, Fraser had published numerous academic papers and book chapters. He\u2019d also begun attracting mainstream attention for his more popular writing. He arrived in Guelph in the midst of media interviews about his new book, co-authored with journalist Andrew Rimas, called Empires of Food: Feast, Famine and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations. <\/em>The book explores how mismanaged agro-ecosystems have contributed to hunger and other issues that led to unrest and conflict in parts of the world, including the 1930s American dust bowl and the Irish potato famine.<\/p>\n

That lesson has repeated itself more recently, says Fraser. The 1990s Rwandan genocide was preceded by periods of drought or environmental degradation that spurred migration into already crowded urban areas. Similarly, he says, a drought in Russia cut off Kremlin wheat exports to the Middle East in 2010, which helped spark the 2011 Arab Spring. \u201cSome of the big arcs of history are precipitated when food systems are not sustainable,\u201d he says, adding that population growth and climate change often expose other political and economic problems, making civic unrest and international conflict much more likely.<\/p>\n

At U of G, he set about developing a food security research, teaching and outreach program to address what he says is one of the world\u2019s greatest challenges: how to sustainably and equitably feed the projected human population on Earth by mid-century. The Feeding Nine Billion project is intended to provide sound information on food systems and food security.<\/p>\n

Kelly Hodgins, MA \u201915, is project coordinator of Feeding Nine Billion. She came to U of G in 2013 to study the role of businesses in food security and was taken by Fraser\u2019s friendly demeanour \u2014 a first impression that was only strengthened when he invited his grad students for Thanksgiving at his home. \u201cThis food prof is actually cooking food and bringing people together around food,\u201d she recalls. \u201cHe\u2019s walking the walk.\u201d Other grad students have looked at food waste, local and global food systems, climate change and urban migration, and urban agriculture. Fraser says he likes to mentor students with activist leanings and prefers not to micromanage, calling his supervisory style \u201cbenign neglect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two years ago, Fraser and Hodgins launched the Feeding Nine Billion challenge, a two-day contest that sees student teams from a handful of universities designing ideas for improving food security. This year\u2019s event held in early September brought together more than 40 University of Guelph undergrads from across campus. Feeding Nine Billion has teamed up with U of G\u2019s transdisciplinary “Ideas Congress” course run by Profs. Dan Gillis, School of Computer Science, and Shoshanah Jacobs, Department of Integrative Biology. The class is intended to help students develop their food security ideas, and to connect them with related initiatives both on and off campus. \u201cThe idea is to impart skills and confidence for students to make a difference in the world,\u201d says Hodgins. \u201cWe\u2019re engaging students in social innovation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Widening their audience, the Feeding Nine Billion team has made an animated YouTube series on the global food crisis, which has been viewed more than 280,000 times, and has been used as a teaching aid in university and high school classrooms. Fraser continues to write extensively about food in articles that have appeared in The Globe and Mail<\/em>, The Guardian<\/em>, The Walrus<\/em>, Foreign Affairs<\/em> and CNN<\/em>. In 2014, he published a graphic novel, called #Foodcrisis<\/em>, whose imaginary apocalyptic narrative shares Fraser\u2019s five-part prescription for staving off a global food disaster: improved food distribution, sustainable higher farm production, support of local food, environmental protection and public engagement.<\/p>\n

\"quote\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Fraser says food security is an intergenerational issue \u2014 one whose solution will lie largely with today\u2019s younger audience, including his three children ages 6, 11 and 13. It\u2019s tomorrow\u2019s producers and consumers that he has in mind when publishing a graphic novel or airing those YouTube videos. \u201cI\u2019m worried that many North Americans assume that everything is okay with our food system,\u201d he says. \u201cThe food crisis of 2008 to 2011 suggests otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n

This summer, Fraser was named director of the University of Guelph Food Institute, a portal that connects Guelph food researchers with Canadian and international partners to improve food systems, and to raise Canada\u2019s profile in the global food economy. Earlier this fall, he took on another challenge when he became scientific director of a seven-year, $77-million project called Food From Thought (FFT), involving more than 100 U of G researchers and many more partners in Canada and abroad. Fraser says Food From Thought is a huge boost for team members and the entire campus of what\u2019s billed as Canada\u2019s food university. \u201cThis has created opportunities to do big things,\u201d says Fraser. \u201cThere\u2019s huge momentum.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s perfect fodder for someone described by friends and coworkers as a big-picture thinker and an investigator driven as much by curiosity as by conviction. He\u2019s accompanied U of G ecologists Kevin McCann and Neil Rooney to Cambodia to look at small-scale fishing and farming, and he spent 10 days with population medicine professor Cate Dewey, \u201cbouncing around in the back of a beat-up Land Rover in rural Rwanda\u201d to see rice-growing projects run by the World Bank and small-scale farming by HIV-positive women in remote mountain villages.<\/p>\n

Those experiences \u2014 and their lessons about the social nuances of sustainable production \u2014 play into Fraser\u2019s own research studies of the social and environmental effects of food price volatility and ways to reduce waste in global food systems. We need 21st century technology to solve this century\u2019s challenges, says Fraser, but we need to be mindful of potential consequences. Those technologies could accelerate the decline of rural communities and leave farmers disenfranchised, both here and abroad. \u201cWhat does a self-driving, GPS-guided tractor do for a farmer in Malawi?\u201d asks Fraser, who also plans to study data ownership and privacy issues in agri-food systems along with U of G engineers and computer scientists.<\/p>\n

Fraser figures he\u2019s making change in wider ways than he could have done back on his grandfather\u2019s fruit farm. It\u2019s his global view on food security that in turn lures tomorrow\u2019s potential change-makers to work with him. Referring to his grad students, he says young researchers are equally drawn to U of G by its combination of rigorous academics and a chance to contribute to real-world change.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to strive to explore the full complexity of these issues,\u201d says Fraser. \u201cThere\u2019s no simple populist answer about food and sustainability. I\u2019m determined to try to explore these issues in a way that\u2019s accessible and relevant.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

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