Envisaging Alaska’s food future
April 22nd, 2009 by Philip Loring
As much as we might hope otherwise, we here in the Interior will not, at least anytime soon, be growing all of our food. I report this finding following a truly excellent presentation given last month by soon-to-be-Dr. Alison Meadow, of the UAF Anthropology Department. Alison has put together some truly cutting edge research on the Fairbanks North Star Borough food system, part of which estimates that it would take just under 30,000 acres of new crop land to meet the caloric requirements of our population on a diet of just potatoes, closer to 80,000 acres to provide a more realistic, nutritionally-sound, and far less boring menu. There is indeed sufficient arable land available, but the complete social, economic, and ecological transformations that would be necessary to realize such a thing are almost too radical to imagine. Whatever the future of our food system will look like, Alison reminds us, it will only come about through frank and open discussion and debate. After all, these radical dreams that many of us have for the future of food are as steeped in world view and ideas about morality as are the notions of food preference and entitlement that drive so many others to eat foods that are not sustainable, and nourish neither their bodies nor their souls.
Fortunately, this is a discussion that many of us are already engaged in, at the community garden, the farmers’ markets, and community events held at one of our many small-scale farms. Also fortunate, is that the design of our food future need not be as drastic as the scenarios Alison explores. We are blessed to live in a place quite rich in supply of foods that do not require us to break ground or save seed. Our rivers and wetlands offer all manner of fish and waterfowl, our coasts bring walrus, whale, and access to one of the world’s most productive fisheries, and we often need not look any further than our back yards to find a moose, grouse, rabbit, or bear. But here too, in the cornucopia of Alaska’s wild foods, are questions that we need to ask ourselves and each other, values that need to be explored and debated a community.
Hunting and fishing in Alaska are burdened with a number of contentious issues, each reflecting many different vested interests and points of view. Hunting and fishing seasons and quotas, the ‘rural preference,’ subsistence versus sport, predator control, and national and international debates about conservation of wildlife habitat or the interests of oil and natural gas development, are just a few of the more obvious examples of the many social and political issues that ensnare Alaska’s wildlife. One can only imagine how much more complex and tangled these issues might become if a larger proportion of urban residents were to rely on these wild food resources as anything more than a supplementary food source. It wasn’t too long ago that this was the case for places like Fairbanks, with wild meats regularly sold at market, but issues of food shortages and over-harvest (among other things) brought that practice to an abrupt end.
For many, the idea of re-opening wild game to a local food market is an option that is just not on the table. I would argue that if we are able to soften the hard lines long enough to develop innovative, sustainable ways for wild game to be re-integrated into our food system, our bodies, minds, families and communities will all be the better for it. These foods are of the highest nutritional quality, rich in such protective factors as vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, Iron, and omega-3 fatty acids. And the hunting and fishing lifestyle can also connect us in myriad physical and cultural ways to the land, to wildlife, and to each other, as it has for Alaska Natives for millennia, much in the same way that the community garden or CSA does for some of us today. And talk about your local food! Wild fish and game do not need to be shipped in from Seattle, they don’t contain genetic material patented by Monsanto, and they store really nicely right there on the landscape. Of course such a change would also require something from us, in particular a commitment to taking better care of Alaska’s lands than we have for the last century. A great many of Alaska’s wild foods are now contaminated, and by our own hands, from sources like unmonitored solid waste landfills, abandoned military equipment, and irresponsible mining practices.
Still, wild fish and game can no more become our sole source of food than can potatoes. In all likelihood the future of our food system will exist somewhere between the ‘local’ and ‘global’ extremes that have become propaganda for this modern war of the food cultures, with food security found in a diversity of sources—some local and some imported, some grown and some caught, some purchased and some traded for. Nevertheless, as we plan forward we need to recognize that every food system has its foundation. In this respect, to quote Dr. Craig Gerlach of the UAF anthropology department, the moose, fish, and marine mammals of Alaska may be like the corn, beans, and squash that continue to serve as a foundation in the lives of Native people in Mexico, Central, and South America—cultural and economic cornerstones without which a healthful Alaska is impossible.
