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vancouver author eleanor boyle looks to wwii for tips on managing food insecurity

the war saw people growing more food, wasting less, and sharing to ensure that everyone had something to eat.

by robin roberts

sep 7 2022
read time 6 minute read
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there could be enough food for everyone
eleanor boyle shares with healthing her research on food insecurity in canada. credit: julie doro photography
before climate chaos devastated farms, before pandemic panic buying emptied store shelves, before the war in ukraine disrupted food systems and before inflation squeezed our budgets, today’s generations rarely contemplated serious threats to food security. that was the stuff of history books, mostly framed in stories about the great depression and great wars, particularly world war ii.

but there are valuable lessons in those wartime stories that we can apply to today’s challenges, lessons that could even help us steer clear of catastrophe. writer robin roberts talked to vancouver author and educator eleanor boyle about what she learned through her research for her latest book, mobilize food! wartime inspiration for environmental victory today , why it’s not inevitable that people line up at food banks and how beneficial it would be if canada had a ministry of food.

what “mobilized” you to write this book?

for years i had been obsessed with food issues, wondering why we have so much food in the world and yet, people are still lined up at food banks. and why does agriculture create so many greenhouse gases? when i was in london, i saw a sign [advertising a] museum exhibit called the ministry of food, which was a government department set up during world war ii to make sure everybody would get fed. i found that they really turned their food systems around, and thought maybe we can too.

how can we do that?

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we think people won’t change and systems can’t change because they’re entrenched and complicated. but given the right circumstances, systems can change and people can start acting and eating differently in fairly short order.
i became optimistic, [thinking] maybe it’s not inevitable that our grocery stores are full of processed foods or that people line up at food banks, since there’s plenty of food in the world. given the right circumstances, reasons and specific strategies, people can change.

how did the u.k. food systems change?

[leaders at the time] did not want to take over the food system or interfere in markets. but war was on the horizon, and they realized that leaving all the food systems in the hands of private enterprise wasn’t going to meet needs. so they decreased imports, because ships bringing in food would be threatened; they incentivized farmers to plow up marginal pastures and grow food for people; they encouraged everybody to grow some of their own, to [make] more simple meals, and to take only their fair share of the foods that were going to be scarce.
eleanor boyle’s book “mobilize food! wartime inspiration for environmental victory today” makes a case for canada creating a ministry of food. supplied
eleanor boyle’s book “mobilize food! wartime inspiration for environmental victory today” makes a case for canada creating a ministry of food. supplied

how do we turn our somewhat entitled attitudes around to accomplish that?

i think humans do have a deep cooperative tendency. polls have shown canadians want to do something, they’re trying to drive less, trying to eat less meat, [but wondering] is that enough? we need visionary leadership to tell us the specific things we need to do to be a good neighbour and a good citizen.
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i think it would help to have a ministry of food. we have a ministry of agriculture but its job is to increase output. i don’t want to oversimplify, they do a lot of complicated stuff, but there’s plenty of food in canada. we export half of what we produce, while each month, a million canadians stand at food bank lineups.
just cranking out more food is not going to do it. i think a segment of the food system should be a public food system, and it doesn’t have to interfere with private enterprise. some countries pay farmers to produce large amounts of healthy foods and sell them for really inexpensive amounts. it makes healthy food available to everyone. it’s not free so there’s still some dignity involved.

do you advocate for community gardens, living off the land?

i would never say that people should go back to living off the land. most of us live in cities, [and] we are not food producers, we’re consumers. we can grow a bit of food on our balconies or in our backyards, and that’s great. it gives us fresh food, and it makes us empathize more with farmers because we realize how much work it is. it’s a good way of connecting with the land, especially if you have kids, but it’s not going to feed us.
during the war, the government realized how important it was that people were growing some of their own vegetables so they passed laws that said all public parks are fair game. you can walk across the street and dig up the tennis court. but it was also to bring everybody into this grand enterprise that was winning the war and feeding themselves.

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governments [also] enabled, through legislation, neighbours to buddy up and have a pig club. they would buy a pig, keep it in someone’s backyard, and all the neighbours would help feed it and at the end share the meat.

isn’t this inching perilously close to communism?

these guys in world war ii were the furthest thing from communist. they were upper-class conservatives. they were doing this not for ideological reasons, but for practical reasons, and it worked — everybody got fed. we already have in canada, for example, numerous sectors of our society and economy that are managed by government — schools, libraries, transportation, health — and none of us would say that’s communist. there are some things that private enterprise does really well and there are other things that government does better.

you write that rationing during the war made britons healthier. how so?

there were a number of reasons that britons got healthier but rationing contributed to it — sugar, processed foods were all limited because they’re very resource intensive. kids couldn’t get ice cream so they ate a wartime treat which was a carrot on a stick. they had fewer cavities. they were eating meat, but not on a daily basis. so less meat, way more vegetables, nobody overeating but getting enough. there was no food being wasted.

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diabetes went down. tb was still a scourge at that time and it went way down. women were still dying in childbirth and a lot of that improved, and many more kids lived beyond the age of five. some would say there are other reasons, including not driving as much because there wasn’t enough fuel so everybody walked more and that’s another reason they got healthier. that’s true, but the food programs were a huge part of it.
rationing isn’t about somebody wagging their finger and saying you can’t have any more bacon. it means that everybody got that much bacon, that much butter, that much sugar, including the poorest of the poor.

how else can we mobilize food?

meat produces the most greenhouse gases by any measure. we have to reconsider factory farming; feed is trucked in which is costly, too much manure is put into the ecosystem. maybe we could benefit from a meat tax, but that would probably get opposition from meat producers.

what role can teachers and parents play?

adults should allay some of this climate anxiety, we should be more optimistic, positive. teach kids to become involved in an easy way. be good role models. do less activity that produces greenhouse gases, walk to the store instead of driving. we all have busy lives and it can be a challenge, but small steps can make a difference.

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robin roberts is a vancouver-based writer.
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