Christopher D. Cook Interviewed

Interview by Ken Setter

Click Here to Read Ken Setter's Review of Diet for a Dead Planet

KS. As I read books such as Diet for a Dead Planet I find it difficult to discount greed as a basic motivator of human actions. Would you care to address the role of greed in our globalized world?

Clearly, there are instances of greed for maximum individual profit, but I think the more important consideration is the highly rational -- if often destructive -- workings of corporate capitalism. Firms competing for maximum profit, market share and shareholder return quite logically seek to trim costs and intensify productivity, often at the expense of consumer health and the environment, not to mention workers. These corporate "savings" create tremendous economic and social costs borne by the public. Individual greed is a dangerous motivator, but I think we need to understand and address the underlying system.

KS. Since 9/11 we have witnessed an increasing willingness on the part of America to voluntarily sacrifice some freedoms in the hope of security. How do you see the Patriot Act and simular legislation effecting our ability to effect meaningful social change?

After the tragic loss of human life, the most profound victim of September 11 has been our political culture, the whole set of assumptions that drive increasingly draconian politicking and lawmaking. Civil Liberties are being sacrificed, American and Iraqi lives discarded, for a disastrous war that has nothing to do with "defending freedom" here or there. Our political discourse has shriveled, and with just a few exceptions in Congress, there are no courageous voices challenging this prevailing bipartisan militarism. We need strong voices, and a real opposition party, to articulate values of genuine diplomacy, international economic justice, and sustainability.

KS. Considering that Iraq was once a significant market for America's farm products, such as wheat, rice, soybeans and chicken products with sales in the billions of dollars, couple this with food items on the supermarket shelf have, on average, travelled over 1,400 miles; requiring 100 billion gallons of oil a year, or put another way that's 400 gallons of oil to feed each American. How important do you consider the above scenario of market loss and the necessity of ensuring a reliable oil supply, to George W Bush's decision to take America and a few other nations to war in Iraq?

While I don't think the Bush administration invaded Iraq with agribusiness much in mind, clearly the U.S. food industry is a significant part of our gas-guzzling society. We should not be invading other countries to secure a "reliable oil supply," we need instead to be dramatically scaling down fossil fuel use. Think of all the fossil fuel, all the oil, that's been used just to sustain this war effort. We're using unsustainable amounts of petroleum for an industrial food system that simultaneously fattens our waistlines and agribusiness profits, through overproduction, supersizing, and aggressive marketing.

KS. Through a system of corporate welfare, export dumping, food aid programs, farm subsidies, and USAID, food is now an integral part of America's foreign policy yet more then h alf the world lives on less than $2 a day while the rest are battling obesity. What concrete measures can we take to reverse this situation?

Food, like oil and other resources, has long been used as a geopolitical weapon. American taxpayers pay $25 billion a year to large-scale industrial agriculture, financing cheap exports that help the country's trade balance while often destabilizing farmers in poor countries, who cannot compete with this flood of cheap American food. Instead of funding cheap exports that hurt farmers abroad, and that often end up worsening poverty and hunger, farm subsidies should be used to encourage ecologically sustainable production of healthy, fresh foods. Subsidies should promote organic, smaller-scale production, more marketing of local foods and less long-distance transport. We will always have exports and trade, which can be healthy if done right. We need policies to restore balance, and more vigorous antitrust efforts to diminish corporate power over the food chain.

KS. When writing do you have a method of ‘keeping all the strands together' that you can share with us?

I try to create a type of evolving roadmap of issues and questions that drive my research and reporting. It's helpful, but we also need to follow the research where it takes us. Often I'll refer back to my initial questions, bounce my research off of that, see what sticks and what doesn't. I think it's important to keep the reporting open and dynamic, but also to develop a scope or frame, a universe within which the facts reside.

KS. With our world facing such major problems, as outlined in Diet for a Dead Planet, many people place hope in technology. Do you see technology as a solution or a problem in our current predicament?

Potentially either or both. Technology can be wondrous and beneficial, or exploitative and destructive -- it depends on who controls it, and to what ends.

KS. After writing Diet for a Dead Planet , are you now, more or less, optimistic in our ability to rehabilitate our planet?

Again, a little bit of both. The facts, and many of the trends, are very disturbing. Corporations are gaining more and more economic and regulatory control over what we eat and how it is made. Industrial agriculture, I found, is remarkably destructive and exploitative of natural resources and labor. Our whole supply of seemingly cheap food rests on a system that treats workers as disposable chattel. I examine much of this in the book. What makes me hopeful, however, is the rising concern and awareness about where our food comes from. Consumers are getting educated and looking for sustainable alternatives. And movements like community food security and sustainable agriculture and slow foods are creating those alternatives. So there's hope.

KS. Considering all of the above is there anything you would care to add?

Thank you. One more thing I'd like to add, which I talk about more in the book, has to do with big-picture thinking. We need to connect the dots and understand the whole food system, not just isolated issues. And while I'm excited about changes in individual consumption, I'm convinced we will only get a truly sustainable food system if there are strong movements and real policy change. There needs to be a serious discussion about economic and ecological priorities. Taxpayers fork over billions of dollars to large-scale agribusiness that uses polluting, unhealthful pesticides, and that creates fattening processed foods that have fed an epidemic of obesity and overweight. Those dollars could, over time, be shifted to fund different priorities, such as sustainable food production, smaller scale agriculture, local organic foods. The ideas and alternatives are there, it's a matter of changing the economic priorities and encouraging political will. Thanks for the chance to share my findings and thoughts.

For more, my web site is: www.dietforadeadplanet.com