Dijous, mercat a Granollers poesia a l'escola

Encàrrec per a la presentació de l'Estratègia per a l'Alimentació Saludable i Sostenible 2030 al Saló de Cent el 28/11/2022. Poema basat en 'Common Ground', escrit en anglès per al Milan Urban Food Policy Pact Forum.

Manté l'estructura en capítols: - Capítol 1: 'Anomalia', obrint el focus per tenir perspectiva històrica - Capítol 2: 'Paràsits', canvi climàtic i pèrdua d'ecosistemes - Capítol 3: 'El mercat es regularà sol', crítica àcida a les multinacionals dels ultraprocessats - Capítol 4: 'Contes de fades', reivindicació del paper de la pagesia - Capítol 5: 'Una carta demanant perdó', pobresa alimentària - Capítol 6: 'Nodrint camí', crida a l'acció en el context de l'acte

Adriana Bertran Anía

Chapter 1: the Garden of Eden

If we took the whole of human History 
up until this very moment
and compressed it
into 24 hours, one day,
we would have discovered agriculture
at 11
pm.
The industrial revolution would have taken place
1 minute ago, at 11:59 pm.



Our mode of life
is a historical anomaly.


If the Biblical God condemned Adam and Eve to farming
(<<by the sweat of your brow you shall eat your bread>>),
then
was the garden of Eden the long era of hunter-gatherers?

Chapter 2: Parasites

Ever wished for a world without insects, after an ant attack on your kitchen or that mosquito bite on your tiny toe? 
I have.

Yet in a world without insects, 
us humans would die in months. 

The tiny monsters are the life-spreading pollinators, 
as well as a ubiquitous compost-making squad. 

Insects also 
feed the birds. 

40% of bird species are in decline,
tail-spinning into loss.

Fish 
have existed for 480,000,000 years.
Long before we came along.
Yet in the last 40 years
we have slashed marine populations
in half.

We are pushing the meteorite. And the meteorite is industrial agriculture.

And I wish in exchange for cheap, unhealthy food we were just losing beauty, or companionship, or diversity, or meaning when we lose a species or two. 
The problem is
when we started building our own decks of cards to gamble with,
we forgot the cards were building a giant, complex house
we stand in,
yet not fully comprehend.
Our house is a house of cards.
Invisible threads binding all species together
and us with all species.
Every card
we remove
makes other cards follow suit.
And, man, are we removing cards fast!
3 species every hour.
Covid just another of… how many?
sets of cards crumbling over our heads,
because we keep disrupting a balance
we don’t understand.

We scream blindly yet we
can’t speak the Earth’s language yet.
My generation is wondering
whether to have children at all.
My teenage students are terrified
about whether they’ll get to grow old.

Will we ever learn, Mother,
to listen to your rhythms;
our lives beating too fast
for us to hear your whisper?

At the end of the human story,
Hercules discovers he is still
mortal.
We are not Gods.
We are not Gods. 
We omnivorous mammals.
We don’t produce the food. The machines don’t produce the food.
The Earth does.
We have hijacked and twisted our own 
umbilical cord
as if we weren’t connected to it.
We still live in the Mother: the atmosphere
we breathe from, layers of a womb
protecting us.

What big-headed parasite
can claim to be separate 
from its victim and source of food?

Chapter 3: Fairies

Supermarkets
are effectively supplied
every day
by an army
of magical fairies.

All the farms in the world are like Old McDonald’s: 
with a moo-moo here 
and a cluck-cluck there
Ee i ee i o!

Yeah. 
I mean, why let the ugly side of food 
pro-duc-tion
pro-cess-ing
trans-por-ta-tion...
get in the way of
	                           consumption?
Ssssh.
Let the consumer believe
it is all done by fairies.
Yes...
Fairies grow your food
and don’t need  social security.


The back kitchen our food comes from
is not rurality any more —
it’s poverty.

The ‘fairies’ are not 
invited to the table
they provided for.

A living wage is too much freedom
when the work being offered
is only fit for a slave.

Chapter 4: “the Market Will Take Care of Itself”

Recipe for maximum profit:
- low cost ingredients
 from industrial farming,
- long shelf life for convenience & long-distance transport

- craving-inducing additives
 (make it addicktive)
- evade responsibility (and taxes, where possible)
- aggressive marketing!

Thank you. We truly are a success.
Global sales of ultraprocessed foods 
have risen 43.7% in the last 13 years.

I see a bright future
of insulin-dependent children
against a backdrop of desertified land
that used to be
a monocrop.

If you factored everything in, like the environment and stuff, the true cost of a burger would be $200. And we’re paying $0.10!
Talk about a good deal, huh.
Meanwhile, 1 in every 5 euros spent on the Spanish public health system
is for treating food-related illnesses.
I bet the taxpayers are delighted at having to pay
to clear our mess.

Chapter 5: the Apology Letter

Last month
a twelve-year-old 
this tall,
a student of mine,
had to write an apology letter
to a girl
whose breakfast he had stolen 
for the third time.

‘Where’s your breakfast?’, I ask.
He’s gone into the habit of eating his mid-morning snack
way before the break.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, at the subsidized school canteen, he loots the bread.

I call in his mum,
she’s very punctual
very composed
until I bring up
the food issue.
She breaks down 
in tears of undeserved shame
confesses 
even eggs are outside her price range
mother and teenage son share a room:
she
is poor.

And I wonder who
should write an apology letter
to whom.

Chapter 6: Common Ground

In the playground, as a kid,
when the rough boys kicked the heavy ball high
I used to believe if I closed my eyes
hard enough
the ball would not hit me.

But of course it did.
It so painful to look at the facts
with open eyes:
how deep the global cut is bleeding,
how bad the infection inside it can be;
the future holding its breath
but we must dare to see.

Well-informed hope
is not for the faint of heart.
So here we are.

May we be strong enough
to face the facts,
embrace the facts;
may our eyes and hearts
be open as they are hit.
Here we are.

At the end of the Barcelona Forum,
10 days away from Glasgow,
here we are.
Helping the wound crack
to let the light shine.
It’s always darkest before dawn.
And that’s why
there’s so much work to be done.

Dear brave cities challenging the past
to write a different future:
in this room 
or online,
together, 
we are standing
over fertile
common ground.