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Feeding People Is Easy: but We Have to Re-Think the World from first Principles

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Feeding People Is Easy: but We Have to Re-Think the World from first Principles Public Health Nutrition: 8(6A), 716–723 DOI: 10.1079/PHN2005770 Feeding people is easy: but we have to re-think the world from first principles Colin Tudge*‡ Centre of Philosophy, London School of Economics, London, UK Abstract Objective: Agriculture designed to make best use of landscape and to be maximally sustainable would also provide food of the highest nutritional and gastronomic standards, and would inevitably employ a great many people. Thus it would solve the world’s food problems, and its principal social problem, at a stroke. But agriculture in practice is designed for a quite different purpose – to generate wealth, in the cause of ‘economic growth’. The pressing need is not for more science and technology, but to recognise the true cause of the problems and to re-think priorities. Conclusion: We could all be well fed. Indeed, everyone in the world who is ever likely to be born could be fed to the highest standards of gastronomy as well as of nutrition until humanity itself comes to an end. We already have most of the necessary technique – perhaps all that is needed. We could always do with more excellent Keywords science but we need not depend, as we are often told from on high, on the next Agrarian economy technological fix. The methods that can provide excellent food would also create a Consumerism beautiful environment, with plenty of scope for other creatures, and agreeable and Cooking stable agrarian economies with satisfying jobs for all. Enlightened Agriculture Employment In reality, in absolute contrast, we have created a world in which almost a billion are Environment chronically undernourished; another billion are horribly overnourished, so that Gastronomy obesity and diabetes are epidemic, and rising; a billion live on less than two dollars a Global market day; and a billion live in urban slums – a figure set to increase and probably at least to Good husbandry double over the next half century; while other species are disappearing so fast that Neo-liberalism biologists speak of mass extinction. Sustainability Discussion that people actually like to eat and which (traditionally) people build their societies around. In short, gastronomic What might we be doing? excellence is essential too. All this raises three obvious questions. First, what might It seems now to be widely accepted that these three we be doing, that would provide good food and requirements – good husbandry, sound nutrition and employment, in an agreeable world? Secondly, why great gastronomy – are in mutual opposition. Farm aren’t we doing it? Thirdly, how do we dig ourselves out of policy seems to reflect the belief that if we are kind to the hole – how do we get from where we are to where we animals then we cannot produce enough meat and eggs need to be? These questions are addressed here. and milk – which is supposed to justify the factory farm. Get food right – the production, the eating – and It reflects the notion, too, that to produce staple crops everything else can fall into place. There are no guarantees efficiently (notably cereals) then we must create that it will – but at least the foundations will be there. Get monocultures of the varieties that yield most heavily, food wrong, and all other endeavours are irretrievably horizon to horizon – even though this is obviously bad compromised. for wildlife and annihilates rural societies. Getting food right means three things. First it means It is also taken to be self-evident that people at large good farming – good ‘husbandry’ that is productive and ‘demand’ more and more meat and milk and dairy efficient, is kind to animals, looks after the environment, produce and so – ostensibly in the cause of satisfying this and creates fine rural societies. Secondly, it means alleged demand – modern farmers world-wide are urged providing food, in sufficient amounts, that is safe and to produce more and more. Yet it has been clear since the nutritious – meeting the basic task of keeping body and 1970 s that too much meat (with its saturated fat) is bad for soul together. Thirdly, it means providing food of the kind us. Modern farming is assumed to be good farming (scientists, politicians and corporates like to believe that ‡Correspondence address: The Lodge, Binsey, Oxford OX2 0NG, UK. they are making things better) and so it seems to follow *Corresponding author: Email [email protected] q The Author 2005 Feeding people is easy 717 If we get food right, everything else we need to do can fall into place. Getting food right means good farming – productive and efficient husbandry that is kind to animals, looks after the environment, and creates fine rural societies. It means providing sufficient safe and nutritious food. It means providing food that people like to eat and which (traditionally) people built their societies around. In short, gastronomic excellence is essential too. So how do we get from where we are now, to where we need to be? that good farming (as defined in consumerist terms) is also that the most sustainable diet is not vegan, and is not incompatible with sound nutrition. dedicated to lentils (excellent though pulses are). The At the same time, in absolute contrast, nutritionists most sustainable diets of all would contain a high commonly equate ‘healthy eating’ with austerity, epitom- proportion of plants, and a low proportion of animals, ised (or perhaps caricatured) by the lentil bake. Great and are extremely heterogeneous. cooking is conflated with haute cuisine, and haute cuisine All this is precisely what modern nutritionists advocate: is taken to be unhealthy: at best, ‘naughty but nice’. high in fibre and micronutrients; most of the energy from carbohydrate; modest protein; low saturated fat; a variety of unsaturated fats. Furthermore, this is what good Husbandry, nutrition and gastronomy go together cooking is about. Except in the highest latitudes and in Yet the truth is the absolute opposite to what people in deserts, where it is hard or impossible to grow crops, all high places and authors of earnest tracts seem to believe. the great cuisines of the world are high in staples (cereals, In truth, there is an absolute one-to-one correspondence pulses, tubers); make maximal use of whatever fruits and between good husbandry, sound nutrition and great vegetables are on hand; are sparing in their use of meat gastronomy. The logic is irreducibly simple, and I reckon (used as garnish, stock or for the occasional feast); and are is incontrovertible, despite the best efforts of govern- as various as can be conceived. ments, corporations and experts of all kinds to argue When France was at the height of its reputation as the otherwise. Thus: Wild landscapes and ecosystems are world’s centre of gastronomy, half the diet among the rich extraordinarily variable but all march to the same logistic as well as the poor was bread – but it was very good bread. drum. At the base of all of them are plants, which In Italy, equally great gastronomically, pasta (as well as invariably outweigh the animals that feed upon them by at bread) was at the core. No cuisine surpasses those of India least 10 to 1 (in practice nearer to 100 to 1) – for plants are or China. Both are heavily based in rice or various breads – the ‘autotrophs’, that feed themselves by photosynthesis- and both, too, as you discover by going there, serve ing and drawing raw nutrients from the ground. If farming enormous quantities of local leaves. Traditional Turkish is to be sustainable, then whatever form it takes it must cooks make wondrous feasts from cracked wheat, mint, conform to the logistics of biology: a huge output of olive oil, broad beans, walnuts, pistachios and almonds, plants; a much smaller output of livestock. Furthermore, to honey, and whatever beast (typically a goat) that happens take best advantage of the caprices of landscape and to have died recently. (I exaggerate, but not much.) climate, and to minimise risk of infection (it is intrinsically Haute cuisine can be a nonsense: a gratuitous display of dangerous to keep too many creatures of the same kind all wealth (and cream and cognac). But in essence and at its together), it generally pays to keep the farming as mixed as best, haute cuisine merely reflects traditional cooking. I possible: a wide variety of animals and plants. don’t believe it is superior: the very best meals I have had Human beings, as omnivores, are able to eat either have been traditional qua traditional, prepared in far-flung plants or animals: and in general we thrive best with a kitchens. Neither should we be too hard on northern balance between the two. Also – as demonstrated by our cuisines. The Lancashire hot-pot, the traditional Scottish need for an ever-growing catalogue of vitamins, minerals herrings with oatmeal (and haggis and neeps), the Polish and ‘nutraceuticals’ – we benefit from maximum variety. bigos and even the German Eisbein mit Sauerkraut und Our omnivory makes us intrinsically economical, and is Kartoffeln, with mustard, are fine cooking, and great surely one cause of our evolutionary success. If we take nutrition, and entirely and absolutely reflect what the local the concept of sustainability seriously, then we should be landscape (and sometimes seascape) most easily produces. content to eat the things that sustainable farming produces – the same variety of foods that sustainable farms would produce, in the proportions that it produces The suppression of traditional cooking them. Any other course reduces overall biological Indeed, when we tease out all its consequences, we see efficiency, and hence reduces sustainability. It follows that the greatest tragedy in the modern world is the 718 C Tudge Box 1 – The road to darkness globalised free market is simply the latest fashionable The inexorable pressure of game theory algorithm, potentially as pernicious as any.
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