The Breaking Time

Where's my shiny future digestive tract?

The Economist came out with an excellent report recently on the rising cost of food. To make a long story short, it's a complex problem with factors ranging from biofuels to increased meat and vegetable consumption.

One of the most striking elements of this was this piece on waste:

Unlike in rich countries, much of the waste in poor ones is a matter of money, not behaviour. Grain is often heaped on the ground and covered with a sheet: no wonder the rats get at it. Losses could be reduced by building new silos and better roads and providing more refrigeration, but those things are expensive. The African Development Bank is financing a seven-year programme to reduce waste by 3% a year. Given the scale of the losses, says Divine Njie of the FAO, who worked on the scheme, “we were surprised at how modest the targets were.” But 3% a year adds up to a 20% reduction in waste over seven years, a good start.

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Rich countries waste about the same amount of food as poor ones, up to half of what is produced, but in quite different ways. Studies in America and Britain find that a quarter of food from shops goes straight into the rubbish bin or is thrown away by shops and restaurants. Top of the list come salads, about half of which are chucked away. A third of all bread, a quarter of fruit and a fifth of vegetables—all are thrown out uneaten. In America this amounted to 43m tonnes of food in 1997; in Britain to 4m tonnes in 2006.

Shortly after, I recalled a design proposal, via bldg blog, to deal with increased food demand by augmenting the human digestive system.

The contradiction of the two is impossible to ignore. People have asked, at various points, about why I call myself a tech skeptic. This is why.

While technology is a necessary element for tackling any number of today's ills, here's a perfect example of tech-fetishism run amok. Take a very real problem (needed food goes to waste, fueling shortages) with deep causes and try to solve it with something technologically advanced, even if more efficient — but less shiny — solutions are within reach.

Actually, much of the developing world's food problems aren't due to a lack of new technology, but a lack of things available for decades in the developed world that need wider accessibility. African farmers don't need to be able to eat goddamn trees, they need adequate ways to store and transport their food. More well-fed countries could reduce waste by a combination of cultural and legal changes. Those will take major efforts, and that's where the attention should be focused.

But, while they come with difficulties, none of those require rewiring the human digestive tract, impressive a feat as that might be. In fact, that rather flashy "solution" is a hell of a lot less efficient than those mentioned above. It's one example of how over-reliance on technological solutions can obscure better options.

A little autarky can be a good thing

Out of France comes a report that, as farms increasingly flee cities and their surrounding areas, metropoli like Paris and Milan might struggle to feed themselves:

Paris used to be a city of food artisans and its suburbs a melange of lush market gardens thanks to the Seine's alluvia. The globalization of the food system symbolized by, among other things, the international wholesale market of Rungis built outside Paris in the late '60s, brought in standardized products at a much lower price. Add to that real estate speculation and the absence of proper agricultural land management and soon farms were pushed farther and farther from the city and converted to better-yielding crops. 

Beyond the loss of patrimony, the disconnect from food production puts the capital in a precarious food security situation. With a food system relying on unsustainable oil-fed transportation, not only Paris but also most cities throughout the world are at risk. If the transport system were to fail, food would run out on supermarket shelves within a few days. 

Keep in mind that the writer isn't talking about a notorious sprawl like Los Angeles, but far denser European cities. 

The majority of humanity now lives in urban areas, a trend that probably won't cease anytime soon. While cities can be more sustainable than their detractors suggest, vulnerabilities like this leave them open to disaster or civil unrest.

Meanwhile, nations around the world practically quaked as China's rare earth embargo promised to deprive materials needed for the electronics societies have become increasingly dependent on.

Autarky — self-sufficiency, in short — has a bad reputation in economics, and rightly so. It is impossible for a society to be completely self-sufficient in any sort of complex economy. The attendant attempts to cut off trade entirely are usually the province of dictators and extremely stagnant societies. However, both of the above cases demonstrate that in targeted areas, autarky is a necessary balance in an increasingly interconnected world.

Remedying these vulnerabilities aren't impossible. Rare earth mines in more locations or writing policy in a way that preserves urban farmland (as Japan has done, with some success) are both relatively inexpensive moves that save a lot of trouble in the long run, without requiring economic cloistering.

Advanced technology and global trade networks are an important part of an evolving world. But the idea that the resources and connections they depend upon are inexhaustible or invulnerable is ludicrous. Preventing collapses depends as much on preparation as innovation.

A lesson from boiled peanuts

The intruding dish

Growing up, I barely knew what boiled peanuts were. While not unheard of in the sliver of northeastern North Carolina where I was born and raised, they were extremely uncommon. We ate plenty of peanuts, but they were usually salted or whole (which are delicious). I think I may have seen boiled peanuts twice in the entire 18 years before I departed for college.

Last weekend, I traveled back to my home area. On a long drive down to the beach, I saw an unfamiliar site: signs reading BOILED PEANUTS were at every gas station and plenty of restaurants.

You see, while not really a fixture of local cuisine, when Yankees and people from elsewhere visit the Southern Coast, they expect boiled peanuts. So, because there's money to be made, boiled peanuts rapidly spring up everywhere.

In 20 years, they won't just be something sold to tourists, but will have become a fixture of local cuisine. Odds are, a bit after that, few people will ever remember it was otherwise, and many will proudly swear that it has always been thus.

Why am I rambling about this? Because this a very minor example of a process that goes on all the time, everywhere, and often with more important things than cuisine. In fashion, politics, culture, music, religion and every other field we set our mind to, something new and alien comes in, often for mundane reasons.

If the circumstances are right, it takes root, and becomes an accepted part of how we live our lives. If it lasts long enough, people even start rewriting the past to fit it in. What was once a handy invention, an irrational dislike, an easy compromise or an improvised solution becomes a ferociously defended tradition, and few people remember —or, importantly, want to remember— why it came there in the first place. It is more comforting to believe that some things around us have always been there, because that assures us that whatever else happens, they always will be.

So yes, peanuts. Get some whole, break them open, and eat what's inside. Good night.