Twelfth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

The largest and by far the dominant food system in the United States is found in the upper-Midwest and most prominently in the state of Iowa. In this essay, I detail data and evidence that this system is self-destructive and a major contributor to climate change and environmental injustice. From the basic data and evidence, I move on to address some of the reasons why the system is strongly supported by the political/economic and social ecology. The center of this analysis is what I call “the landscape bias” which centers and determines the way the social world sees the landscape of industrial agriculture as fecund, wholesome, and normative. Evidence is gathered from the analysis of commercial landscape paintings. The human ecology is limited by the landscape bias (and the related conceptual scheme) and so there is profound difficulty in envisioning alternative normative landscapes. This bias connects to political-social-economic slogans that “Iowa Feeds the World.”