Fulbright panelists say fewer farmers sour food outlook

Fewer people are producing food while cities grow in size, an international panel of scholars said Thursday at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

“I worry that there’s just not enough aspiring young farmers, and it comes back to my firmly held belief that food needs to have value in our culture and society,” said Curt Rom, a horticulture professor at UA, during a discussion on food security presented by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board and the UA’s J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.

Rom, an alumnus of the renowned Fulbright scholars program, shared his views alongside other food experts.

“People are not cultivating anymore,” said Erick de la Barrera, a fellow in the Fulbright Regional Network for Applied Research program, also known as the Fulbright NEXUS program. De la Barrera, an expert in how crops adapt to the environment, spoke though an online connection from Mexico, where he is based.

He said his concerns about food security also have to do with “food justice,” with the urban poor lacking access to food.

“The question for them is not what to eat, but whether to eat,” he said.

Early on panelists defined the term food security, with Rom describing it as both having a food supply and having access to that supply.

“It is just the key to a good life, really, is having food security,” said Kay Goss, a former associate director of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency who also worked for former President Bill Clinton during his time as governor of Arkansas.

Kabo Segokgo, a Fulbright scholar from Botswana now studying at UA, said her home country also has more people moving to cities at the expense of farm production.

“Twenty or so years back, it would be easy to actually convince the younger generation the importance of farming,” said Segokgo, who taught food and nutrition to youth from ages 16 to 21 in Botswana.

Mark Alexander, a Fulbright board member, moderated the discussion, asking panelists questions submitted from the audience of about 100 people in UA’s Hillside Auditorium.

Alexander posed a question asking about genetically modified organisms, the term used to describe the plants or meat products with modified DNA.

Rom said while there are concerns about “negative, unintended consequences of the technology,” he would not “demonize the technology.” When it comes to sustainability, “we have to look at all potential solutions,” Rom said.

The panel also discussed concerns about people choosing foods low in nutrition.

“We’ve got a lot of Western influence,” Segokgo said about food choices made in Botswana, with people now preferring fast food and convenience foods.

“Every time we eat, we vote,” Rom said. “So, if we want to change the amount of acres of corn, we don’t change that necessarily by policy or convincing farmers to grow something else. What we want to do is change what we eat.”

Fulbright board members — each appointed by the U.S. president — hosted the panel discussion while at UA to hold a quarterly meeting. The Fulbright scholarship program began with legislation authored in 1945 by UA graduate J. William Fulbright, a U.S. senator who represented Arkansas for 30 years.

“It was so deeply important for us to come here where it all began,” said Tom Healy, a New York writer and poet who serves as chairman of the scholarship board, in remarks before the panel discussion.

The board last met at UA in 1996, said Hoyt Purvis, a journalism professor and former chairman of the board, in remarks praising the Fulbright program and UA’s Fulbright College as “dedicated and committed to advancing knowledge among peoples and nations.”

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