Eleanor Boyle
VFR: Eleanor, tell us about yourself and why you decided to write your informative and engaging new book, Mobilize Food! Wartime Inspiration for Environmental Victory Today.
Eleanor Boyle: Thanks so much, for the honour of being in Vancouver Food Runners’ newsletter. I want to start by reaching out to everyone who's reading this and say thank you for being part of the food movement, this international community of people who care about food as a human right, about compassionate diets, and about policy to minimize the waste of precious food. You're part of an epic enterprise.
Big questions about food have long haunted me. Why are there (hundreds of) millions of hungry people in the world when there’s plenty of food? Why do our societies encourage industrial agriculture when it creates so many greenhouse gases? Why do we fail to treat food as the precious resource and gift that it is? These questions kept me up at night until some years ago, then I learned about Britain’s wartime ‘Ministry of Food’— the efforts of citizens and government there to re-make agriculture, supply chains, and diets in hopes that everyone could be fed during the chaos of World War II.
I was fascinated, partly because I have family ties to England, from where my maternal grandparents emigrated to Canada to escape poverty and give their children a better life. But the wartime food story itself, of a collective effort by millions of people, was deeply touching to me and set me on this research journey.
VFR: With the Second World War looming, Britain radically changed its approach to food on all fronts, from production to consumption to retail, and the government was largely steering this process. Please share about what happened.
EB: In the late 1930s, Europe was on edge. Only a few years after World War I, then a severe Depression, another conflict seemed inevitable. Preparations were needed, and in Britain that would include food security. Most of the country's food was being imported, on ships that would be targeted by Nazi submarines. The country had to localize its production as much as possible and ensure that everyone valued and conserved food.
The government of the day was Conservative and was not prone to assuming responsibility in sectors like food that were in private hands. But officials also knew that military conflict could wreck food systems – and that you can't win a war if your people are hungry. So, they took a practical approach rather than an ideological approach and made plans to manage the food system. They hired a seasoned administrator to be a Minister of Food, 'Lord Woolton,' a warm and well-liked individual who enjoyed mingling with citizens at outdoor food huts (forerunners of food trucks!) and personally addressed people on the radio to urge them to fight the war on “the home front.”
Laws were enacted and programs implemented to plow up pastures and create more arable farmland, decrease livestock numbers, and grow as much food as possible directly for people. Price controls were implemented so everyone could buy basic meal items. Citizens were urged to dig up their backyards and neighbourhood parks to grow carrots, greens, potatoes and more. Everyone was implored not to waste a single morsel. And a systematic rationing program was put into place to make sure everyone would get their fair share of scarce foods like butter, bacon, sugar, and eventually, even their beloved tea. At first, programs like rationing had skeptics and critics, but within months, most citizens told pollsters that they supported rationing, as they recognized that it made sure everyone got enough to eat.
Some of the programs were not just voluntary, they were mandatory. Wasting food was illegal, and some people were fined for throwing away perfectly good leftovers or meal supplies. Rationing was also mandatory. It had to apply across the population, so that everyone would share the sacrifice and know that the system was fair.
Mandatory measures can be a hard sell today because many of us have internalized the neo-liberal idea that we should do ‘whatever we want’ without regard for others. Terms like ‘personal freedom’ get used carelessly, and responsibility gets sidelined. But to develop fair and just food systems, we’ll need to consider others as well as ourselves. Personally, I would welcome a national fair-shares rationing program to ensure that our consumption is sustainable, as I’ve written about in the Globe and Mail.
VFR: Before the War, only half the population of Britain was eating adequately in both calories and nutrients, but the changes during and after the War had positive outcomes for population health and society. What happened?
EB: Even now, I get chills thinking about the results for the domestic population. Imperfect as the wartime food programs were, they made sure that virtually everyone, almost 50 million citizens in Britain, got enough to eat during six long and miserable years of war. There were no gourmet treats; lots of people would have liked another helping; and most meals were lacking in the edible fats, sugars, and spices that we take for granted. Nothing fancy, but adequate in calories and nutrients. I find that so touching. Today we need to ask: When there's plenty of food in the world, including in our jurisdictions, why is this so difficult to implement?
Post-war health data also surprised many experts, who had predicted that fewer calories, less meat, fewer eggs, and less familiar foods would make people sick. Instead, heart disease declined, as did diabetes and other chronic diseases. Maternal and child health also improved. A major factor was that people were eating more vegetables, less animal-source foods, and less processed meal items. With children eating less sugar than they had pre-war, even the incidence of dental cavities declined.
I said the enterprise was imperfect. Mistakes were made. Manual workers complained that their food allocations were insufficient (so the government set up extra workers' canteens). Some anti-social individuals ran black markets for food. It was a messy human project with little precedent. The worst and by far the most tragic incident was that partway through the war, there was a drought in India, which was then a colony of Britain. People in Bengal were starving. But despite the unfolding tragedy, for many reasons – some logistical but including covert racism and an unspoken hierarchy of entitlement – Britain refused to export food there and contributed to a famine in which millions died.
It’s a reminder to us today that social justice needs to be absolutely fundamental in our food solutions.
VFR: We’re now facing a climate crisis. What are some of the key lessons we can learn from Britain’s approach to food during the Second World War?
EB: Because food as we do it today creates significant problems for climate, it can also create solutions. Food systems create at least one-quarter of anthropogenic greenhouse gasses (GHG) – much of it linked to intensive livestock production and excessive meat consumption. Activists everywhere, including readers of this newsletter, know we need to localize production, honour Indigenous food sovereignty, ensure that animal agriculture is appropriate to local ecosystems, and correct systemic food loss and waste. This historical case study should give us hope that food systems – and other fossil-fuel-based sectors – can change.
VFR: As humans, we waste food on a grand scale (over 58% of all the food produced in Canada is wasted or lost, according to Second Harvest). What are some of the implications of wasting so much food?
EB: Large-scale food wastage is sad and unnecessary, as Food Runners know. The implications are that more people go hungry, and that the resources that went into producing that (wasted) food — plus the greenhouse gases emitted in the process — were for nothing. Compounding that, decomposing food emits more methane, a powerful GHG. So, let’s do more about it. We can waste less food in our own lives, by shopping carefully and using every bit. We can urge policymakers to act.
VFR: You mention that big policy shifts that need to happen, especially when it comes to reducing food waste. What are some of these shifts? And why do we need a Ministry of Food in Canada?
EB: Yes, we need a Ministry of Food, which would look at the big picture, with all of food's intersecting issues from agricultural sustainability to more plant-based diets to local food control. Today’s climate and justice solutions will not be as top-down as the programs from 75 years ago. Today’s leaders are emerging, and will emerge, from diverse grassroots communities and from civil society. But we also need government involvement, and a Ministry of Food would be an excellent step.
VFR: What surprised you the most during your research for this book?
EB: The justice piece of the puzzle. The wartime food programs helped narrow the inequality gap in Britain. Obviously, inequality continued to exist, but the fact that basic food became widely accessible meant that even the lowest-income families were no longer struggling simply to put meals on the table. According to some historians, the food programs played a role in shifting the nation's politics. Citizens came to see that they could have a society in which, with the help of government programs, they could take care of each other. After the war, grateful as British voters were to Prime Minister Winston Churchill for prosecuting the war so determinedly, they declined to re-elect him and instead elected a Labour government that would lay strong groundwork for a modern welfare state. The nation was poised to become a more caring society.
VFR: Eleanor, where can people go to access 'Mobilize Food!' to learn more about these critical topics?
EB: 'Mobilize Food!' is available to order, including from sites listed on my website.
It is becoming available at bookstores. Please ask at your favourite outlet, which will encourage them to carry it!
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