Towards a Cross-Cultural Simplifying Model for Food Systems - Executive Summary

1Two key conceptual challenges
As an introduction to this summary, we first point out two of the primary cognitive/conceptual challenges that have emerged over the course of the research. Each of these constitutes a considerable obstacle to effective public engagement on food system issues, as well as to public education on these issues.

Sustainability per se is a conceptual “black box” – the closest commonly available understanding is “Gradual Degradation.”

There is no evidence that the concept of (un)sustainability – in any of the senses used by experts – is clear or familiar to most French people. Despite years of discussion of this word (“durable”) and idea in the media, it has not entered people’s minds – presumably in part because of the lack of a specific effort to talk about it in ways that people can understand and recognize as important.
As a result, most people fill in the “black box” of (un)sustainability with a model that can be called Gradual Degradation. An early finding of this round of research was that relative to U.S. citizens, French people are more aware of and concerned about the overall degradation of the environment caused by industry and other facets of modern life. Gradual Degradation is a powerful model that correctly captures several aspects of the problem of (un)sustainability, including depletion of resources, pollution of the environment, and loss of traditional practices.
On the other hand, the Gradual Degradation model has two important negative consequences:

  • It makes it very difficult to keep people focused on the topic of (un)sustainability in the expert sense – i.e. the idea that certain practices cannot be continued because their effects are impossible to tolerate, and can lead to “collapse” of various kinds. (Importantly, the expert sense of (un)sustainability refers to a qualitative change while the Gradual Degradation model involves something more like a quantitative diminution of air quality, the diversity of wildlife, the beauty of the landscape, etc.)

  • The familiarity and dominance of this model makes it very difficult for relevant information to sound new

Conceptual invisibility of the food system

The food system itself is a clear object of concern for experts and advocates because it has in recent decades become, on the one hand more capable of producing negative impacts, and on the other hand less controlled in important respects – a dangerous combination.
While ordinary people in France seem to have more awareness of the existence of a food system beyond their plate than many Americans, it is nonetheless not easy for them to conceptualize this system. As a result, it is difficult for them to keep the issue of a food system in mind as well as to assimilate new information about it.

Towards a cross-cultural simplifying model for food systems
Previous U.S. simplifying model research demonstrated that people’s thinking about food systems and (un)sustainability can be greatly improved if two key missing terms are added to the conversation.

Underlying Structure

The Gradual Degradation model essentially leaves out any notion of hidden but key underlying structures, such as a life-supporting ecosystem. In cognitive terms, people’s default perspective is analogous to that of a child in his/her room: the room inevitably gets messy/dirty but can always be cleaned/neatened.
What is missing from the child’s perspective is the homeowner’s understanding that while the sight of a few termites might seem trivial, it has potentially very serious implications for the integrity of the house itself. The difference between the two is, in cognitive terms, that the homeowner has a notion of an underlying if invisible structure that supports the house.
U.S. research showed that the following cognitive model was helpful in deepening people’s thinking about (un)sustainability:

Systems Sustainability

Life depends on a complex (worldwide) ecological system, where some parts depend on others. Our current food production methods are unsustainable in the sense that they are putting the stability of the system as a whole at risk.

Food Production System

Similarly, people’s default thinking about food production does not include a clear vision of the food system, a clear understanding that the system has changed qualitatively as well as quantitatively in the last decades, or a productive sense that we are losing (or have lost) control over the impacts of methods of food production.
U.S. research showed that the following cognitive model was helpful in increasing the conceptual visibility of the food production system:

Radical Intensification
Radical and recent changes in our methods of food production are creating unprecedented problems and a situation that is not just incrementally worse, but qualitatively more threatening than before.

Taken together, the U.S. research identified a core story that helps people think more deeply about food systems, and that can be grasped relatively quickly:

Our methods of producing food now have the power to threaten life systems that are vital to our wellbeing.

In the U.S. context, this (two-part) proposition effectively provides a conceptual “middle term” that is typically missing from people’s thinking about sustainability. The central research question going into the French research was whether this same approach could be effective in the French context.

Central Finding
The French research demonstrated that variants of the same two propositions that were effective in the U.S. context do help the French public reason more deeply and productively about food systems.
The best ways we found of conveying the two key ideas of Systems Sustainability and Radical Intensification in the French context were as follows:

Systems Sustainability
The notion of a Physical Structure, most familiarly understood in metaphorical terms as a building, provides conceptual substance to the otherwise empty notion of “Sustainability.” Words that helped convey this notion included, for example, fondations, bases and murs porteurs.

Radical Intensification

Similarly, the idea of Escalation (of technology, and particularly weapons) allowed people to grasp the notion of “Radical Intensification” of our methods of food production. Words that helped convey this notion included escalade and intensification.

On the other hand, while the notion of loss of control, and changing methods (i.e. the “Runaway Food System”) proved effective as a central message for U.S. citizens, the recent research suggests that for French speakers (or perhaps Europeans), the notion of “physical structure” is more basic and/or critical to improving overall understanding. The following is an example of an explanation that focused on this idea and achieved favorable results in the French context:

Pour comprendre ce que c’est que l’alimentation durable, d’abord il faut voir que la vie sur terre est comme un grand batîment qui dépend de ses fondations, les murs porteurs, etc. L’eau non-polluée, la terre fertile, les écosystèmes locaux qui fonctionnent bien sont des exemples de ces fondations et murs porteurs. L’alimentation durable veut dire un système de production qui n’affaiblit pas ces fondations et murs porteurs. Par contre, les méthodes industrielles d’agriculture et de pèche d’aujourd’hui ne sont pas durables parce qu’elles affaiblissent les fondations et les murs porteurs.

An important implication of this finding is that the notion of (un)sustainability, rather than of “(changing) methods of food production” might well provide a more effective basis for a cross-cultural conversation. This hypothesis will require another round of testing in the U.S. context.

1Towards a Cross-Cultural Simplifying Model for Food Systems: Findings from French TalkBack Research, Axel Aubrun, Joseph E. Grady, Cultural Logic LLC. Oct 2006. Commissioned by the King Baudouin Foundation

Note that while French research subjects were generally responsive to similar explanations to those that were effective in the U.S., the process of teaching these to French lay people proved significantly more challenging than in the U.S. context, for a variety of reasons (see Research Approach and Appendix 3).

Note once again that the paragraphs used in TalkBack testing are not intended as text that is ready for use in other contexts. As paragraphs, they are carefully adapted to the conversational context of TalkBack testing, where they must quickly introduce the topic, establish credibility, and explain a concept without the benefit of any further elaboration or discussion.

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