Post 5: On being a tree planter

For some time, I began describing my job as tree planting. People who know me as a recently retired sociology professor think this is my new hobby. Not really. I am a metaphorical tree planter.

I love poetry, where sometimes words can be as powerful as pages or chapters of information. I would occasionally share Nazim Hikmet’s poem, “On Living,” with my students. It is long, and these lines from his poem may explain why I desire to be a tree planter:
Living is no laughing matter:
	you must live with great seriousness
		like a squirrel, for example—
   I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
		I mean living must be your whole occupation.
Living is no laughing matter:
	you must take it seriously,
	so much so and to such a degree
   that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,
                                            your back to the wall,
   or else in a laboratory
	in your white coat and safety glasses,
	you can die for people—
   even for people whose faces you’ve never seen,
   even though you know living
	is the most real, the most beautiful thing.
I mean, you must take living so seriously
   that even at seventy, for example, you’ll plant olive trees—
   and not for your children, either,
   but because although you fear death you don’t believe it,
   because living, I mean, weighs heavier.

In my old country, where people used to have shorter lives, immortality meant planting trees. Olive trees, especially, could last for centuries, even millennia. Knowing that others could enjoy the fruits of that tree and find comfort under the shade of the tree you planted was immortality. You may listen to Genco Erkal’s recitation of Nazim Hikmet’s poem “On Living” as part of Fazil Say’s Nazim Oratorio.

My trees were my students. Even if I could reach one student per term to change their perspective on the world, it was more than one per year. However, as a food justice activist, I realized that establishing structures or organizations was even more significant for making collective differences.

I contributed to establishing at least three organizations that are still active in Canada. I want to share my reminiscences about the events that led to the foundation of the Centre for Studies in Food Security at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson), Food Secure Canada, and the Canadian Association for Food Studies. I do not deserve much credit for the resilience of these organizations, though. Like most tree planters, my task was limited to planting, but I was lucky to have many caring and nurturing friends who turned those trees into a forest.

The Centre for Studies in Food Security was founded between 1994 and 1995, depending on your definition of the starting point at Ryerson Polytechnic University (recently named Toronto Metropolitan University). We will celebrate its 30^th anniversary in 2025. The CSFS identified its objectives as promoting food security through research, dissemination, education, community action, and professional practice.

Starting with two people, the centre soon gained the energy of other colleagues and students. CSFS aimed for an interdisciplinary and systemic approach to studying the causes, consequences, and solutions to food security by paying attention to social justice, environmental sustainability, health, and socio-cultural aspects. What we identified as the 5As of food security included five pillars: availability, access, adequacy, acceptability, and agency. We also aimed to contribute to dialogue among civil society organizations, universities, and governments through various events. The International Conference on Sustainable Urban Food Systems we hosted in 1997 allowed us to extend our contacts. For Hunger-proof Cities: Sustainable Urban Food Systems was an outcome of this conference.

We hosted the Working Together Conference in 2001 to discuss civil society’s contributions to food security. At the end of the conference, we agreed to establish a listserv called Food Democracy. With the support of regional organizers, the network hosted other conferences in Winnipeg (2004), Waterloo (2005) and Vancouver (2006). We agreed to unite in Winnipeg around Zero Hunger, a sustainable food system, and healthy and safe foods as the objectives of our network. In Waterloo, we announced the foundation of a new organization, Food Secure Canada, a pan-Canadian alliance of organizations and individuals working together to advance food security. I became the Chair of the Steering Committee until our next meeting in Vancouver with the US-based Community Food Security Coalition. In 2006, we elected Cathleen Kneen, a long-time food security activist from the BC-Food Security Coalition, as the new Chair of the steering committee.

Food Secure Canada continues as an alliance of organizations and individuals all across Canada working together to advance food security and food sovereignty, and I recently rejoined its board. Acting as a forum for diverse voices, FSC encourages conversation on challenges around food issues, advocates for policy improvements, and strengthens communities' capacity towards a future where everyone everywhere has access to good, healthful food, which honours our relationships to the earth and each other.

While chairing Food Secure Canada, we applied for a Community-University Research Partnership (CURA) grant with a group of academic and community-based researchers. In March of 2005, we learned that our application was not successful. We hosted a meeting in April 2005 to decide whether we should re-apply. At that meeting, we decided to establish an organization that would bring community and university-based researchers interested in research responding to the community's needs. Canadian Association for Food Studies (CAFS) came out of that meeting. I was elected as the first President of CAFS and served till 2008. CAFS is now a Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences member and has its journal, Canadian Food Studies.

I will share more detailed information about my observations during the formation of these organizations in future columns. For now, you probably understand why I consider myself a tree planter. I shared some of my observations in a 2008 article I co-authored with Rod MacRae, Ellen Desjardins, and Wayne Roberts in Getting Civil About Food: The Interactions between Civil Society and the State to Advance Sustainable Food Systems in Canada in the Journal of Hunger and Nutrition Education.

I want to remind my friends of the story of the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC), which FSC held its meeting in 2006. At that time, we saw a joint event with CFSC as an opportunity. They had been in action since 1994 in the US and had much better resources and a network of member organizations. We were their fledgling new cousin in the North. Sadly, the mighty CSFC ended in 2012 quietly. It is hard to find any news stories or articles on the internet. Two books, one by Andy Fisher, who was the director of CFSC for 17 years from 1994 on, Big Hunger: The Unholy Alliance between Corporate America and Anti-hunger Groups and from Mark Winne, Stand Together or Starve Alone: Unity and Chaos in the US Food Movement (Praeger Press 2018) would make good starting points.

In my future columns, I will explore the limitations of civil society input in food security. For now, I can say that I still believe in the role of civil society organizations as political networks for communicating the demands and concerns of the voiceless, vulnerable, and powerless groups regarding food—democracy, justice, security, and sovereignty. Advocacy is a political task and vital for any democratic society.

However, neo-liberal reforms set limitations on the advocacy role of not-for-profit organizations and dumped the burden of care and service delivery on them. Food banks are one of the best examples of this frontline community service. Community organizations are required to deliver what is supposed to be delivered by the state. Relying on volunteer labour, or labour of underpaid and overworked personnel, constantly seeking funding, civil society organizations are running from project to project. They end up following the agenda of their funders, burdened by their rules to demonstrate societal impact and overwhelmed with the amount of work, most of which would involve funding applications, report preparation, and evaluation schemes. Differences among members in terms of political objectives, such as anti-hunger, community food security or food sovereignty, concerns with organizational diversity and representation, and underfunding, create challenges for internal cohesion. In the end, many civil society organizations die either because of a lack of resources or implode because of internal tensions.