The Food in our Future: Where Will We Find Ethics?

Food and agricultural systems are in large part driven by technology. Together with public policy, the kinds of technologies that are induced into, or chosen by actors in, food systems, dictates their structure and activities. The ″Big Story″ or ideology which underlies research, development and adoption of technologies provides the justification for choices we make about the future of the food system. A combination of productionism -more is better, and ″feed the world″- is what governs, and seems to be what will govern Western food systems. Important ethical questions include whether more is better and whether we will feed the world with our technology and policy. But a parallel question is how will we include critical consideration of the continued legitimacy of our Big Story? This system, after all, has worked well for the past century.