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September 4–6 fast materials
Food sovereignty — from food crisis to food justice
Your neighborhood and all over the world
Download and print this document. 
Children and Fasting | Slow Down — and Fast
Fasting options
The typical fast would begin after a simple meal Friday evening, refrain from food Saturday and break the fast with Communion or a communal meal on Sunday.
Those who are not fasting from food can choose to eat simple meals, skip a meal or design a fast that fits their circumstances.
Fasting from food should be avoided by those with health-related conditions, such as diabetes, heart problems and pregnancy. Anyone with questions about their health condition should consult with their doctor before beginning. Those fasting should read the guidelines in “Fasting 101.”
Friday evening
Preparing and Focusing
The 2008 Global Food Crisis woke us up to a stark reality
One billion children, men and women on this beautiful, abundant planet are hungry. This is a hunger that is debilitating and often fatal, because from these ranks 25,000 people die of hunger-related diseases every day. Download a chart illustrating this hunger.
Our food system is terribly broken. While giant industrial-style farms grow, millions of farmers are leaving failed farms as agribusiness "privatizes and despoils our water, soil and biodiversity. Policies such as the U.S. Farm Bill and the North American Free Trade Agreement have, in large part, brought us to this place." This human-shaped system is cruel and immoral, especially considering that food production has outpaced population growth for decades. It is a tragedy because the economic practices and public policies that lead to starvation could be changed to ensure that all are able to feed themselves.
We are Christians and, while tempted, we will not throw up our hands in denial or despair. We in the global north, in the United States, in communities protected from the harsh realities of widespread poverty and the violence it breeds, are led by Jesus Christ to accompany the stranger, the widow, the hungry and the poor. We follow Christ to the doorstep of suffering, and we must be open to the voices and the solutions of the victims.
Around the world, farmers, indigenous peoples, farm workers, fisherfolk, environmentalists and citizens are calling for a new food system based on food sovereignty. Food sovereignty switches the tables so producers and consumers are in control rather than giant agri-food companies. The goal is healthy, culturally appropriate and sustainably-produced food for all people. These fast materials will explore what food sovereignty is and how we might get there.
After a year of monthly fasts, now we are asked to take the next steps to accompany those who are most affected, those whose lives depend on turning things around. In September and October, we will explore how to do this and begin, keeping in mind that "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." (Lao-Tzu). And there is good news. Food sovereignty is already budding up in the United States and in so many places around the world. You are invited to be part of the watering, weeding and blooming!
Learn More
Fork in the Road
The world is at a fork in the road. Naturally we are anxious because so many lives are at stake. One path continues toward the dominant farming of the global food system — single crop agriculture using hybrid seeds and chemical pesticides and fertilizers. This was the basis of the Green Revolution, which has been a mixed blessing, and it is the path of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), supported by the Gates Foundation and others. Even proponents will admit that when optimal irrigation and weather conditions are absent, productivity suffers. With peak oil and rising fuel prices, the fresh water crisis and climate disruption, this may be a dead end, especially for rural Africans who comprise the majority of the population.
The other fork leads toward agroecological farming that combines the best of traditional organic and sustainable techniques with field-based, scientific plant breeding and other appropriate technologies. Recent research is confirming the value of this approach.
In study after study, the message about agriculture is: Sustainable farming is the way to go. To feed the world we need to support diverse, local, family farms that work with nature. Scientific evidence is telling us that we need much more investment in truly sustainable growing methods, locally based knowledge, women farmers and farmer organizations, land access and local markets. The science of sustainable agriculture is called agroecology, which joins modern scientific methods with local farming knowledge to build diverse and productive systems without relying on expensive seeds and chemicals.
In 2008, a major international study found that agroecology, not genetically modified (GM) seeds, shows more immediate promise for ending hunger. The groundbreaking International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development (known as the IAASTD), sponsored by the World Bank and five United Nations agencies, calls for a transformation of the world’s food and farming systems. It was conducted by more than 400 scientists and development experts from more than 80 countries, and its results have been endorsed by 58 countries.
The Environmental Food Crisis, a recent report by the U.N. Environment Program, further confirms IAASTD findings. It predicts further food crises due to environmental collapse and recommends strong support for sustainable agriculture on small family farms. A 2007 study by the University of Michigan, comparing data from almost 100 studies of conventional and sustainable agriculture, concluded that a worldwide switch to organics could actually increase global food production by as much as 50 percent — enough to feed a population of 9 billion people without any additional land. And this research is not new: a 2003 peer-reviewed analysis of 208 projects (with almost 9 million farmers) in more than 50 developing countries found a 93 percent increase in food production when farmers switched to sustainable methods.
Learn more about food sovereignty and agroecology and sustainable agriculture in the Food Crisis Resource Center.
Agroecology produces more food where it is needed most
Get a taste of one agroecological approach and the successes and high adoption rates it is achieving in Kenya. Push-pull is the technology and it gets a little technical, but you may be one of those people who like that! Download a packet on the push-pull approach.
Get the full paper, "The Quiet Revolution" (access with free registration).
Friday evening prayer
Open me, O God, as I begin this time of fasting.
Open me to your Holy Spirit.
Open me to my sisters and brothers.
Open me to your children in Brazil.
Open me to your creation.
Open me to myself.
Open me that this might be a time
of drawing closer to you
of reflecting on how I live
of remembering the impact I make on your world
of realizing anew my relations with others
of renewing my efforts to follow Jesus.
Open me, O God.
Amen.
Saturday: fasting and integrating
Saturday Waking Prayer
Grant, O Lord, that with your love,
I may be big enough to reach the world;
And small enough to be one with you.
— Mother Teresa
Breakfast-time prayer
God, let us never forget that you are with us always.
Help us to remember that you shine through your people,
And that if we need to see your face,
All we must do is look into the eyes of another.
May we see you
In our next-door neighbor
And in the face of a Haitian farmer
In the people squashed against us in the crowded bus
And in the face of those who speed by in their expensive cars
In the weary shoppers elbowing their way towards the counter
And in the face of a child starving
In the doctor who treats people in a local clinic
And in the face of a young girl dying of AIDS
In the playful children kicking dust
And in the faces of their mothers watching.
O God, our Companion,
Let us never forget that you are with us everywhere.
— Jubilee USA Network, adapted
Lunchtime prayer
Blessing of the Stew Pot
Blessed be the Creator and all creative hands which plant and harvest, pack and haul and hand over sustenance — blessed be carrot and cow, potato and mushroom, tomato and bean, parsley and peas, onion and thyme, garlic and bay leaf, pepper and water, marjoram and oil and blessed be fire — and blessed be the enjoyment of nose and eye and blessed be color — and blessed be the Creator for the miracle of red potato, for the miracle of green bean, for the miracle of fawn mushrooms, and blessed be God for the miracle of earth: Ancestors, grass, bird, deer and all gone, wild creatures whose bodies become carrots, peas and wild flowers, who give sustenance to human hands, whose agile dance of music nourishes the ear and soul of the dog resting under the stove and the woman working over the stove and the geese out the open window strolling in the back yard. And blessed be God for all, all, all.
— Alla Renee Bozarth, Episcopal priest
Suppertime prayer
God of eternal justice and endless mercy,
we confess our sins of action and complicity,
sins that have oppressed our sisters and brothers,
compromised our witness to the gospel,
and endangered the earth you made.
We have found profit and pleasure in economic injustice.
We are consumed by selfishness and captivated by greed.
We have plundered the resources of nature,
failing to be responsible caretakers for your creation.
We have fractured your church and abandoned your mission.
Forgive us, gracious God.
Restore in us a vision of abundant life for all,
and a longing for the promise of your peaceable realm.
Amen.
—David Gambrell
A Prayer of Confession based on the Accra Confession
Evening prayer time
We dare to imagine a world where hunger has no
chance to show its face.
We dare to dream of a world where war and terror are
afraid to leave their mark.
We long to believe in a world of hope unchained and
lives unfettered.
We dare to share in the creation of a world where your
people break free.
Dare we open our minds to difference?
Dare we open our lives to change?
Your kingdom come, O God.
Your will be done.
Amen.
— Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, U.K.
Bible Study
Being a creature means you eat:
Reading Genesis One in the 21st century
By Ellen F. Davis, Duke Divinity School, Revised July 13, 2009
Being a creature means you eat for a living; it is that simple. As the Bible understands it, one of the major differences between God and ourselves is that we need to eat, and God doesn’t. “If I were hungry, I wouldn’t tell you,” God comments acidly in one Psalm (50). And the essential corollary is that God, who does not eat, provides food for all the creatures, who do. The very first chapter of Genesis establishes that emphatically, when God makes the Dry Land ready for life on the Fifth Day. Up until that point, the description of each divine act is spare: “‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” But the narrator suddenly becomes verbose in describing terrestrial food sources, with grains “setting seed heads” and fruit trees setting “fruit with the seed inside them” (vv. 11-12). This is a precise, botanically correct description of the remarkable variety of edible plants native to the Middle East, the region that is the cradle not only of the Bible but also of dry-land agriculture.
Although I spend most of my time reading the Bible, for years I read right past this detailed attention to the food supply in the first chapter. A quick review of the commentaries reveals that my fellow biblical scholars do more or less the same. I now realize that this general cluelessness about food sources among modern “expert” readers of the Bible points to a deep and worrisome difference between our cultural mindset and the culture that all the biblical writers represent. The difference comes down to this: for them, eating and agriculture have to do with God, and for us they do not. We might think carefully about what food we buy, from the standpoint of health or personal taste, but it is unlikely that many of us consider this to be a genuinely religious matter. We might bless the food on our plates, but rarely does that provoke any serious thought about the mystery that underlies it. Yet for the biblical writers, God’s provision of food is a key mystery and a core theological concern; it is at the heart of our relationship with God and all that God has made. That is why the first chapter of the Bible gives more attention to food provision than to any other aspect of creation.
So Scripture stands against us, in our ignorance about the theological significance of eating. The weight of history is also against us: the vast majority of cultures and individuals who have preceded us on the planet, up until the last three generations perhaps, have been intensely aware that getting food from field to table is the most important religious act we perform. Every day, taking our sustenance from the earth and from the bodies of other animals, we enter deeply into the mystery of creation. Eating is practical theology, or it should be: daily it gives us the opportunity to honor God with our bodies. Our never-failing hunger is a steady reminder to acknowledge God as the Giver of every good gift. When we ask our heavenly Father for an egg, we do not get a stone (Luke 11:12, cf. v. 2).
Genesis 1 is a theological statement about food, and at the same time it is an ecological statement. Eating is practical ecology, the most important ecological act we perform. For this is the way we humans most regularly enter into the delicate complex of interactions among living creatures, exchanging the energy that keeps us alive for a time, consuming until in the end we are consumed. That, too, is what it means to be a creature: we are “dust to dust,” eating until we ourselves become part of the fertile soil that yields more food for God’s creatures.
In that respect we are no different from the other creatures, yet in another way we have a special status among them, for we are charged to “exercise dominion.” That charge is suspect to many ecologically sensitive people, both in the church and outside it, since it has been invoked as a license for the exercise of human power in wantonly destructive ways. However, the key Hebrew verb (radah) suggests not only power but also skill; a better translation might be that we are charged to exercise “skilled mastery among the creatures.” And our best clue to what that might mean comes immediately after the charge is given, when in the very next verse God says, “Look, I have provided food for every creature: for humans, fruit trees and grains; and green plants for all animals and birds and creeping critters.”
The Bible conveys much of its meaning by simple juxtaposition. So what is the connection between the divine charge for us to exercise skilled mastery, and God’s announcement that there is food enough for all? Maybe this: as the creature made in the divine image, humans are meant to act in ways that perpetuate the original abundance for all creatures. To use contemporary language, the integrity of the food chains may well be the litmus test of whether or not we are fit to exercise special power and responsibility among the creatures.
Significantly, Genesis 1 leaves open the question of our fitness to exercise mastery. Note that in the creation story, virtually every divine commandment is followed directly by a notice of fulfillment: “‘Let there be light’ … and there was light ... ‘Let there be a firmament’ … and it was so” — and so on. But no such notice follows the charge for humans to exercise skilled mastery; we are never told “And it was so.” So we readers are left in a position — maybe with an obligation — to render judgment on ourselves. If indeed our dominion has something to do with maintaining the food chains, then we might well render a negative judgment, living as we do in the sixth great age of species extinction, when food chains and the natural systems they sustain have been disrupted worldwide. Knowing that this latest tidal wave of extinctions is driven largely by human activity, we might conclude that we have failed badly in the exercise of skilled dominion to which we are called. Viewed in that light, our failure to exercise a proper dominion seems to be the one gap in the completion of God’s design for the world, and it is the gap that threatens to undo all the rest.
It may surprise us — though probably it would not surprise the biblical writers — to hear that very much of our failure has to do with the seemingly innocent and certainly necessary practice of food production. The “waving fields of grain,” in our land and others around the world, are the source of catastrophic erosion rates; in the last 60 years or so, half the topsoil of Iowa has gone south. The chemicals we put on our fields have made it unsafe to drink the water in some rural communities and produced hundreds or thousands of dead zones in our oceans. Modern industrial agriculture may poison the water, but it also consumes water in vast quantities: great rivers such as the Colorado have been drained to the point that in some seasons they no longer reach their mouths. Forests on this continent and around the world have been razed for cropland, much of it for animal feed. Our dominant agricultural practices are thus a major driver of global warming and species loss. Maybe half our plant and animal species will disappear within the next century.
God’s creatures are dying, in numbers incalculable, because for the better part of a century, our industrial culture has permitted us to eat ignorantly and dangerously. We have been eating against the laws of the biosphere. To put that in theological language, we are eating against the design of creation. Our situation is completely unprecedented, yet paradoxically, we may gain the best insight into its full dimensions by reading this ancient text. The first human sin, as Genesis tells it, is an eating violation; God sets a limit — the humans may take food from any tree except one — and they override that limit. The Eden story underscores the point made already in the creation account: the way we get our food lies at the heart of our relationship with God; therefore eating against the design of creation is the first step in turning away from God.
In eating against God’s express command, Eve and Adam are refusing to be creatures — a refusal, as far as we know, of which humans are uniquely capable. Can a muskrat refuse to be the muskrat-creature she is? But we can in a real sense refuse to be human, and in the past century, largely through the catastrophic agricultural practices of industrial culture, we have done so to an extent that the earth can no longer bear.
We read our situation by the light of Scripture because it is bad but not yet hopeless; we read it thus in order to lay hold of realistic hope. As we have seen, Genesis begins with the hopeful charge that we humans might by God’s grace take note of the biological integrity of the world and preserve it by our actions. That view of the human role in the world is reinforced by another radically ecological view of creation, at nearly the opposite end of the Bible: the Letter to the Colossians calls us to stand firm in “the gospel that was preached to every creature (ktisis) under heaven” (Col. 1:23). Consider the scope of that vision of the gospel — preached in the hearing, not of homo sapiens only, but of monkeys and hardwood forests, of mighty rivers and earthworms and microbes. The gospel of Jesus Christ, the One in whom and through whom and for whom all things were created, is preached to and for every one of us.
The consequence for us is that we can hear the whole truth of the gospel only in the full company of creatures. We can hear the gospel truth only if we listen to it as creatures, among other creatures. But as Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says, the art of being creatures is now nearly a lost art. And if we have forgotten how to be creatures, then how can we begin to learn again, so that our ears may be opened to the truth and the realistic hope of the gospel?
Being a creature means eating within the limits that God has set in the design of creation. And so the most hopeful task for us is to learn all over again how to eat, within the limits of our fertile, yet fragile and compromised, planet. The genuinely hopeful news is that better choices about eating are becoming more widely available to us, better choices than many of us have had in a lifetime. On a local scale, there are community gardens and increasingly, church gardens. There are urban gardens in formerly derelict lots, often providing skills training for youth and nutritious food for the poor. There are farmers’ markets and membership farms — both ways of supporting farmers who treat their land not as an industrial site but as a home for people and other living things. On a national scale, there is work on a 50-year farm bill that directly addresses erosion, toxic pollution, and the destruction of rural communities.
All these are no more than partial solutions. Creating a global food economy that is adequate for the long term will not be accomplished by any quick or easy fix. Awakening from our long slumber about our destructive ways of eating is frightening, for we are awakening to widespread damage and serious danger. But the good news is that we now have opportunities to eat in response to the gospel that was preached to every creature under heaven. A fuller response may be as close to us as our next meal; it should be as routine as filling our dinner plates. It must become so, in order that our grandchildren and their children may live in a lovely fertile world, and no less urgently, that God may be glorified in our eating.
Ellen F. Davis is a professor of Bible and Practical Theology at Duke Divinity School and author of Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible. Ellen is interested in theological interpretation of the Old Testament, with particular concern for Christian preaching. Her current work focuses also on developing an exegetically based response to the ecological crisis. A lay Episcopalian, she has been involved in Jewish-Christian dialogue for more than 30 years. Her previous teaching appointments were at Union Theological Seminary (New York City), Yale Divinity School, and the Virginia Theological Seminary. Ellen has an A.B. from the University of California at Berkeley. Theo., Oxford University, an M.Div. from Church Divinity School of the Pacific and a Ph.D. from Yale.
Learn More: Food Sovereignty
Interview with Ben Burkett
Chair of the National Family Farm Coalition
Civil Rights, Market Cooperatives, Buying Networks
 Ken Meter: Building A Local Food Economy (6 min.)
(Part 1 of 3) All you need to know about building you local foodshed.
Cameroon — Battle for Food Sovereignty (8 min.)
Cameroonian farmers face an influx of frozen chicken scandal and embezzlement.
Backyard Agriculture (5:33 min.)
Two women start a thriving business building backyard mini-farms for homeowners.
Food Network: Community Supported Agriculture (4 min.)
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) offers urban areas fresh, cost efficient, environmentally friendly food and members have a stake in the harvest.
A New Family Farmer (4:46 min.)
Personal account of a young new farmer on his journey to establishing a farming business.
Food Sovereignty in Same, Mali & Food Sovereignty in Kendall, Wisconsin
Download two vignettes from the Food Sovereignty brochure from National Family Farm Coalition and Grassroots International.
Download the complete brochure.
Soberanía Alimentaria — El brochure en español
Sunday: breaking the fast and responding
It's important to break a fast carefully. Eating too much too soon will overload your digestive system, causing uncomfortable and disruptive reactions.
Sunday Waking Prayer
God of my going out and my coming back, I thank you for the gift of this day. As I contemplate eating later today, remind me of my sisters and brothers who have no choice about what to eat or even whether to eat. Help me reflect on all the choices I make and the impact those choices have on others. I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Breakfast-time prayer
This is the day that you have made, gracious God. I rejoice and give you thanks for the miracle of life experienced anew. As Jesus blessed many with the five loaves and the two fishes, may I too, know your blessing as I break my fast. May I experience afresh your peace in my spirit, your love in my heart, and your justice guiding my life that I may work for a world in which your gifts are shared so that everyone has enough and all your children are fed. Grant me the strength and courage to follow Jesus and work for that day.
Break the Fast with Holy Communion
A majority of Presbyterian congregations have Communion on the first Sunday of each month, but some do not. If your congregation doesn’t celebrate the Eucharist on the first weekend of the month, you could break the fast with a breakfast or a lunch before or after worship. Alternately, another time of the month can be chosen to do the fast.
Worship Materials
Bringing it home
The following responses are steps towards solutions. They are ways we can engage in our food system and learn ways of working toward the deeper changes needed. Consider choosing one or two to do during the month as part of your faith practice.
Personal responses
Communal responses
- Recruit someone from your congregation to help you get a farmers’ market going in your church’s parking lot, which can also be a drop-off for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) boxes. Or take the first steps to starting a community garden on a sunny plot on church grounds.
- If your community is already working to build a local food economy, enlist a few others from your congregation to help out. Are the farming skills of refugees being incorporated? Are their efforts to give low-income households access to affordable local food? Ensure that it is a just local food economy.
- Identify parents in your congregation who are involved in their children’s school to help get more local food into the cafeteria. Join with the 2,000-plus schools with such programs. Find great resources on National Farm to School.
- Congregations can get involved in World Food Day and participate in the 2009 teleconference on the global food crisis.
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