What You Eat // #64

A look into our food systems

The Curious Cat is a journey where I aim to reconnect with my inner-child and explore my curiosity. I pinpoint themes & topics I’ve been interested in within the last 7 days, ask myself questions about them and then write about them. I hope you find value within this issue and have a fantastic day doing what you love.

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Do you know what you eat? Do you know where it comes from? Do you know how it was made? Do you know what impact it’s going to have on you? Or more importantly, do you know the impact it will have on the greater planet?

I haven’t the foggiest clue. Feeding the 8 billion people on this planet inevitably produces negative externalities - especially when you factor in the staggering increase in the global population. Just 100 years ago, the world population stood shy of 2 billion people; now we’re at 8. Miraculously, it took +200,000 years for the human population to reach 1 billion people. It took us just 12 years to grow from 7 billion to 8 billion people.

So today, the aim is to learn a bit more about (1) how our food is produced (2) the implications of our food production systems; with a strong focus on monoculture farming.

How our food is produced

Since the dawn of the industrial revolution, monoculture farming has been the dominant mechanism for producing foods. It’s a system where only one food is grown in a particular area. Think of vast rice fields, endless wheat meadows or closer to home in Spain, infinite olive tree plantations. Acres of land are scrapped, brought to pure dirt, and then rejuvenated by growing one singular food in a highly controlled environment.

Why do food producers across the entire planet opt for monoculture farming? There are two standout reasons:

• Economies of scale → Monoculture farming leads to labour efficiency as machines can sow and harvest large amounts of a single crop and quickly. Ultimately, it maximises output for a particular crop.

• Simplified Management → Growing a single crop makes the management of the farm simpler. Farmers can focus on the specific needs of one type of crop, rather than having to learn the growth patterns and nutritional needs of multiple crops.

But we have learnt of the dire consequences of monoculture farming the hard way. What are they you ask?

• Loss of biodiversity → Monoculture plantations directly replace and destroy natural ecosystems which serve as the habitat for animals. We’re seeing this unfold in the Amazon where 1/5 of the rainforest has already been destroyed (x10 the size of the UK). Not only that, growing a single crop limits the variety of insects, birds, and other animals that a piece of land can support.

• Soil degradation → Growing the same crop in the same place for many years in a row gradually depletes the soil of certain nutrients. Over time, the soil becomes less fertile and less productive. Moreso when you cut down all the natural vegetation and deprive the soil of the symbiotic nutrients it has fed off for millions of years.

• Increased vulnerability to pests and diseases → A field full of identical plants is an ideal breeding ground for pests. Once a pest finds a suitable host in a monoculture system, it’s free to spread rapidly as there are no barriers to its movement and reproduction. The same applies to diseases. To combat these issues, farmers often rely on heavy use of pesticides and fungicides. However, these chemicals can contribute to environmental contamination and result in toxic foods.

We should factor in how most foods nowadays are modified from their natural state. Not only do we plague our foods with unnatural additives to make them more tasty, digestible, cheap and addictive, but we also genetically modify their entire composition. Below I have left two photos of bananas. One depicts what a banana naturally looks like; while the other shows what you are most probably used to eating. Notice how the seeds have been evicted, the mushy banana is now smoother and the unpleasant green texture has been rebranded to a more uplifting yellow colour? I haven’t asked them, but I wonder how the monkeys of Indonesia (where I’m currently living) have dealt with this transition they were obligated to accept.

So to conclude: monoculture farming dominates the current landscape of food production. We further modify these highly selected foods with additives like sugar, artificial sweeteners and MSG. And if that wasn’t enough, we genetically transform foods, giving birth to virtually new foods.

Implications of our food production systems

We’ve lost 70% of the wildlife on this planet in the last 50 years. Read that again. 70%. In 50 years!

The primary cause for these atrocities is habitat destruction; mainly for agricultural purposes. We invade greenfield sites and engage in mass deforestation to grow foods like rice, maize, and sugarcane on monoculture farms. Interestingly, only 55% of crops that we grow go to people; with the remaining 45% allocated to industrial use cases and to feeding other animals.

In the blink of an eye, our planet transformed from an oasis of biodiversity into a global buffet dominated by a handful of crops, leaving us teetering on the edge of an agricultural precipice. We invaded nature, imposed our systems, poisoned the land with our synthetic fertilisers and repelled the re-emergence of biodiversity. Welcome to the mesmerizing world of monoculture farming.

Natural phenomena like the Amazon and coral reefs maintain our ecosystems. Yet here we are clearcutting hectares every day and destroying coral reefs with bottom trawling (dragging fishing nuts across coral reefs). The Amazon Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef stand as two of the planet's most extensive carbon absorbers. They are often described as the "world's lungs" because of their crucial role in taking in dirty CO2. However, our actions are severely inhibiting their ability to carry out that vital role. While 50% of the Great Barrier Reef has been bleached and deemed “dead” since 2017, the Amazon rainforest is very close to becoming a net contributor to carbon emissions. We are effectively weakening the Earth's immune system while simultaneously polluting it. A double whammy.

But what about ourselves? How do the incumbent food production systems impact me?

Remember earlier when I mentioned how companies re-design our foods to make them more tasty, digestible, cheap and addictive? Well these things might sound great, but “no todo lo que brilla es oro” as we say in Spain (not all that shines is gold). We, consumers, are at the mercy of these profit-seeking decisions. We are the ones putting sugars, addictive additives and cancerous foods into our bodies. Not only are we plaguing our planet, we are plaguing ourselves.

Within ‘BigFood’ there is a nefarious term coined ‘Green Washing.’ Green Washing is the process of BigFood companies like Whole Foods, Tesco and Mercadona marketing their foods as environmentally friendly, clean and nutritious, but in reality, they are far from that. The term “organic” is often labelled on products, and sure, some ingredients are indeed organic, but more often than not, the organic ingredients only constitute a small per cent of all ingredients. Same with “locally grown.” Just because something is made locally, doesn't mean it is environmentally sustainable. To avoid falling bait to ‘Green Washing,’ we should keep our eyes peeled for 3rd party certifications and officially recognised rating systems.

However, despite my criticisms, the incumbent food production systems are perhaps inevitable. We’re still learning how to feed the many billions of humans that reside on our planet. We don’t know how to mass produce food in a sustainable manner and we are still experimenting with ways to achieve the immense demand we have put on our food supply chains and natural resources.

One industry that is growing in momentum is lab-made food. Here you can scientifically design the composition of foods, removing what you don’t want and jacking up the prevalence of selected foods. But remember, it is not the person consuming the food that produces it, but a for-profit company; and our incentives are not aligned. We want to stay healthy, while they want to make money. Thanks to sauve marketing, our passivity and a lack of education, the food producers seem to have won (hence why circa 70% of Brits, Americans and Spaniards are overweight). There’s an argument to be made that corporations have hijacked the natural food market and selling bio-engineered food that remains very much in an experimental phase. Yes there is promise, but as we experienced with monoculture farming, the implications of lab-made food remain unknown until the moment they hit; which will likely be too late.

Another path we could walk down is the widespread adoption of backyard farming. As opposed to outsourcing our food demands to Big Food, we take responsibility for ourselves and grow as much of our food as possible. It can include anything from a few plant pots on a balcony to a full vegetable garden or a small flock of backyard chickens. If space is an issue, you can grow vertically, or rent a small local allotment.

Plus, backyard farming aligns with the principles of a circular economy, which seeks to keep resources in use for as long as possible, extract the maximum value from them while in use, then recover and regenerate materials at the end of each service life. Using organic waste as a fertiliser and rainwater harvesting to feed your crops are examples of these.

This avenue particularly appeals to me as it aligns with Confucianist philosophy that emphasises personal ethics, moral values and taking responsibility for one’s-self. I find it sad that I was never taught primal things like how to forage food, how to purify water, how to build things and how to grow my own food. Through writing this today, it is more obvious than ever that I must acquire this knowledge.

As I did in issue #63 last week, I’ll close this piece with a quote I have re-created.

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“to make an impact, don’t look outwards, but inwards. To heal the world, heal yourself.”

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