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Interview with Professor Satoshi Ikeda
June 2023
Who is Satoshi Ikeda?
I am Professor Satoshi Ikeda, recently retired tenured professor from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University, and one of the founding board members of Concordia Food Coalition. I have been involved in many ecological and food projects in Montreal and at Concordia as I am passionate about grassroots movements.
The CFC was created ten years ago to fight against the existing food system at Concordia that was managed by Chartwells, a multinational corporation serving food for diverse clients including prisons, military, senior care facilities, and education institutions.
The quality of food was deplorable at Hingston Hall where students were forced to purchase expensive meal plans. Food venders on both SGW and Loyola campuses were controlled by the same problematic company, and the only choice of ready-to-eat meals for students was the industrial food that was unhealthy for humans with huge ecological costs such as land, water, and air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
The People’s Potato was the only choice of healthy vegan food on campus, but they only were able to offer free meals only during lunch time. The primary objectives of CFC when it was founded was to challenge the corporate food monopoly on campus and offer healthy and affordable alternatives.
What are some examples of impacting food projects on campus?
In the following ten years CFC supported diverse initiatives, some successful and others not. The effort to compete against corporations for the new contract in 2014 failed because the Concordia administration eliminated the possibility of a bid by the CFC-organized consortium of Montreal meal providers.
One shining success during the early years of the CFC was Hive Café. This student-owned and student-run solidarity cooperative provides healthy meals and beverages while offering living-wage jobs to Concordia students. Shortly after, other food initiatives joined them and became the fixtures at Concordia that finally offered healthy food and knowledge about food production and access issues. Some of these projects include the Concordia Farmers Market and the Loyola Hive Free Lunch Program. Campus Potager was a project to produce organic food on SGW campus, and it provided vegetables to Hive Café and in the market. Season Jars offered workshops to improve student food life such as fermentation, pickling, canning, and ethnic vegan cooking. These CFC student projects had achievements that made campus food life richer and healthier and left a positive impact on student life, even though some concluded.
How can we envision the future of CFC?
The Concordia Food Coalition started as a promoter of food justice on campus against the corporate monopoly. Solidarity co-operatives that are community-owned and -operated with truly democratic governance are the answer to economic injustice in the capitalist system. Promoting free lunch programs and free food baskets challenges food insecurity and shares knowledge on healthy food and local food production has advanced food sovereignty.
How does the CFC relate to Global Climate Change and Food Access?
The CFC will continue to challenge corporate food monopoly and promote healthy and affordable alternatives. In addition, the CFC can lead the Concordia community to prepare for global climate change with diverse forms of disruptions and disasters.
Global climate change is a new layer of injustice against the people in the Global South and in Indigenous communities. This layer was added by colonialism, post-colonial economic injustice, exploitation under neoliberal globalization, and oppression against the people of color, Indigenous peoples, and marginalized and excluded people with no or low income.
We already see massive climate refugees from the Global South seeking survival in the Global North. There will be more violent weather events like ice storms, snowstorms, hurricanes, tornados, floods, drought, locust epidemics, unseasonal frost, and hailstorms. Strong winds will rip off topsoil and devastate farming infrastructure. These events will cause food shortage and inflation, and eventual famine if people depend on industrial farming and mass-produced food.
What are your hopes for the future of the Concordia Food Coalition and the Montreal food network?
The viable strategy is to promote local-organic food production with farmers cooperatives like Ferme Coopérative Tourne-Sol and Coop les Jardins de la Résistance. Hyper-local urban farming co-operative like Coop CultivAction also shows a possible direction and proof of concept for campus auto-production that is educational.
It is necessary to grow more food in the city to improve food autonomy. These actions are both mitigating (reduce carbon emission by rejecting industrial farming and long distant transportation) and adapting (prepare for climate disasters). By refusing industrial food controlled by the corporations, these actions are in solidarity with the food justice and sovereignty movement in the Global South and in the Indigenous communities. Learning from pre-industrial and Indigenous food ways gives inspiration for food possibilities like polyculture and food forests.
It is my hope that CFC supports and promotes initiatives that help the community survive and thrive under global climate crises.
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