Maine Community Food Council Summit Opening 11/20/15 Clinton,ME

I have bad news friends.
Our food system is broken.
    •    In the U.S., chronic diet-related diseases cost $500 billion annually
    •    Agriculture is the main source of water pollution in America.
    •    Over the past 10 years, only one U.S. state has seen a greater increase in very low food security than Maine.
These data points only skim the surface.
Our food system isn’t only broken for those who eat.
It’s broken for the sacred souls who grow our food.
It’s broken for workers throughout the food chain
who make and bring us our food
It’s broken for us all
And here, today I am ministering to a congregation - you - 
that for the most part, knows this sermon.
Most of you invested a lot of time and traveled great distances through wind and pouring rain to be here out of a desire to heal the food system.
Still, I’ll remind you again. Our food system is broken.
It is my belief and my unrepentant prejudice that the original sin of our food system is hunger.
In this land of plenty,
–if we’re being honest–ours is a land of privilege, flamboyant excess and waste,
that we allow one person, whether they be able-bodied, child or elder
to go without adequate, nutritious food
implicates us all in a vast criminal conspiracy
We can choose different priorities and
organize our communities in ways so that everyone
knows the care and nurturance of wholesome food
but our imagination fails us and a fear of scarcity rules us.
I’ll say it again: Our food system is broken.
“Why does he keep repeating that?”
To remind myself that we are the chosen few.
We have been called.
We are the ones riding the front of the wave that could crash at any moment and toss us into unwelcoming waters,
while the majority of our comrades enjoy their Pringles and Frosted Flakes,
with the assurance that Coca Cola
“opens happiness”
“adds life”
“is the real thing.”
Without the help of Chef Boyardee and Aunt Jemima we aren’t making nearly enough food for ourselves. It’s hard research to do, but I’ve heard estimates ranging between 8-15% as the quantity we are able to feed ourselves in Maine.
So if that bridge between Portsmouth and Kittery crumbled or got blown up or the price of fossil fuel factored in what it truly costs us to use it
there would be a lot of desperate scrambling
–perhaps much less food waste–
and a whole lot more people intimately familiar with food insecurity
I attended a meeting with a political candidate recently,
and tossed off that assumption we share
“Our food system is broken”
like it is common knowledge.
The conversation tried to move across the table but he turned right back to me and asked,
“How is our food system broken?”
I nearly choked on my Holy Donut,
startled by his sincerity more than anything,
and not even sure where to begin.
That fellow is going to be my mayor in a few weeks
And he is a pretty smart guy.
That tells me we have a huge public awareness campaign to organize.
And I hear the refrain
“But I barely have enough time to tend to my current job description.”
“Our food system is broken” and sometimes I want to cry, not for myself, but for shame about the mess we are leaving our children and grandchildren.
I want to shout, but not condescend, to the people who don’t have the knowledge and information we have.
Because with a little awareness comes great responsibility and for those of you who aren’t covering your ears and going “La la la la”
I’m sorry for forcing you onto this raft that is drifting toward the falls of an inevitable food system transformation.
It’s up to us what happens as the raft disappears into the mist.
I’d feel worse if I was telling you some news you did not know
“Our food system is broken”
and I look out at you, my friends, and feel great strength.
Young and old
Women and men
Middle class… and upper middle class
White and … white
And despite gaping holes in this group’s diversity which will be critical to fix if we are to truly solve hunger
We complement each other.
We can complete each other.
Let’s be careful about complimenting each other too much and invite new eyes and voices to our tables who bring us the blessing of discomfort and the gift of dissent.
I am confident that starting where we live, shoulder to shoulder with our families, friends and neighbors not only can we begin,
we have begun to heal our food system.
There is amazing work happening in our communities, in our state, in our region.
Let me correct that: You are doing amazing work in your community, in our state
that is impacting the region and the Nation.
Today, dearly beloved, we have gathered to push harder and farther than we have been
    •    in restoring our shared food system,
    •    in reconnecting to our sources of vitality,
    •    in making ourselves and our communities whole.
Let us not take this blessed day for granted but embrace its possibilities, leaving it all on the field as that cliché goes,
not a field of sport or battle, however,
but a field where we plant the seeds that will grow
into the best future we can imagine for ourselves and
can be harvested again with joy by those who follow us.

​Spoken by Jim Hanna