Geodebates

The Geography Behind the Supermarket Shelves
(or what we eat, how it's changing and so what?)

Recent news headlines related to my work:

• Cows aren't cannibals!
• Intensive farming methods 'risk to health'
• The future of genetic engineering
• Famine continues in the Sudan
• 1000's still malnourished in China
• Starvation on a planet of plenty

What connects these very different headlines? They are all about food. I am interested in food production and distribution; what people eat and how its produced; how much they eat, and how and why their diets are changing. Is this geography?

Yes, this theme is geographical because the diets of people in different parts of the world are CONNECTED and they are CHANGING very rapidly. Our diets change (just ask someone of 50 how what they eat now differs from what they used to eat -that's HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY !). Like most geographers I like to MAP these changes and then INTERPRET their CAUSES and IMPLICATIONS. I'm most interested in the implications of changes in food production and distribution (what we eat, how it's produced and where it comes from) for EQUALITY and SUSTAINABILITY.

EQUITY issues are central because changes in global food systems benefit some people more than others. This is associated with the traditional geography of food consumption- there are drastic geographical contrasts in food consumption between and within countries. The second issue concerns SUSTAINABILITY, how sustainable are our food production systems and what are their environmental impacts?