Thursday, May 14, 2009

give us this day our daily bread

Give this day our daily bread. . . . I thought about that phrase expressing our daily dependence on faith in God who puts bread on our table as I listened to this provocative TED talk on the way to work today. . . . Ms. Fresco challenges our quaint notions about localization and idealism about returning to small organic farming . . . definitely made me think . . . . hope it does you, too. . .


6 comments:

Travis Thompson said...

Very interesting. I often feel like globalization can be such a catch 22. As technology makes it possible for such great power in production and distribution, it also makes it easy for certain people to become marginalized. I think this talk did a great job of breaking that down.

I found the image of the speaker handing out pieces of bread to be very powerful. Clearly food is so significant to the human experience. No wonder Jesus so regularly centered his ministry around it.

Brian Wong said...

Speaking of bread, TED has another great talk on the subject by Peter Reinhart, a "master breakmaker, teacher, author, and theologian." He makes an interesting theological implication about the creation of bread.

Tim Blair said...

I'm sorry, the answer to world hunger is not more white bread. This is an entirely simplistic view that dangerously influenced influencers at TED. There is much more wrong with our food supply than increasing agricultural science. For example: our overconsumption of food in the U.S. and other developed countries and our fixation on beef and other meats that consume entirely too much grain per calorie gained are issues much more significant than how science can affect food production.

If we in the U.S. would stop looking at food as a "pleasure" and looked at it as sustenance, if we ate enough food to be healthy and no more, we would have much more of our supply to send to developing countries. This doesn't even touch on the issues of how agricultural science and synthetic soil additives and pesticides are causing many of our health issues today.

Nope, this is one TED talk that gets a thumbs down from me.

Tim

Jason and Anna said...

We finally were able to download your sermons! Yay! We have a sweet little church here but it´s nice to be fed in your own native tongue! Just wanted you to know we hear you loud and clear down here in Chile!!! Thanks for the preachin´!
-Anna (and Jason)!!!!

Tim said...

Anna & Jason,

Great to hear from you guys. We miss you. Neat that you are "tuning in" way down in Chile... blows my mind.

When are you coming home? Hope you're having a terrific time. Bless you guys! Tim

Steve Rein said...

I'll give a hesitant "thumb's up" to Franco on this one. She makes a good point that it is immoral to use resources unwisely but she has a rather reactionary take on the ideas of Alice Walker, Michael Pollan and the like.

Simply put, as an economist, she should both point out the lunacy of asking all people worldwide to grow their own food and the lunacy to pretend that corporate farming, tax breaks for corn and soy production (but not broccoli) and an overreliance on oil in food production are good long-term strategies.

Let's take milk, for example. If oil prices rise considerably, it is curious that milk prices rise about as much as gas prices. Why? Because milk tends to be produced far from where it is consumed.

I know the point of her talk is to shock some sense into the folks who would, unthinkingly, believe that local food is good ... universally, but she went too far in her unrealistic celebration of corporate food.

An additional article on this interesting topic: The Price of Cheap Food.