Back in 2002 I wrote the Little Food Book, which was published by Alastair Sawday. It was a succinct coverage of the key issues about food, health and society. It still stands up well today. I also wrote an (unpublished) forecast of what the world would be like by 2012 as a result of the world catching up with the insights in my book. It makes interesting reading as we are still getting there, but the horizon seems a bit closer than it was.
You can get a secondhand copy for under £3 (including delivery) here.
Dateline New York 2012 - The United Nations World Food and Health Organisation (WFHO) has published its State of the World Report.
Key data: The world’s population has, as predicted, reached a plateau at 10 billion. Life expectancy in all the world’s nations continues to rise, with a global average of 80 years. Levels of heart disease, cancer, obesity and diabetes are all in steep decline, ensuring that the quality of life for the aged is greatly improved. Infant and childhood mortality has plummeted to the lowest levels in recorded history. The ongoing programme of converting hospitals into luxury apartments continues, with 7000 hospitals converted to other uses in the year 2011. The number of the world’s citizens employed in agriculture continues to increase, along with the proportion who are part-time agriculturalists. Farm sizes continue to reduce. Grain reserves now stand at 400 days. Starvation has gone the way of smallpox – totally eradicated. Land retirement continues as meat consumption worldwide falls to an average 6 kgs per person per year. GNP per person continues to rise as the reduction of military capacity continues, transferring investment into money-saving, planet-saving technologies. Emigration from Europe and North America continues to infuse Africa, Asia and Latin America with the capital and skills from returning immigrants, reinvesting in their places of origin. The world’s economy continues to thrive since the Global Trade Justice Agreement of 2005 that led to the abolition of all US, EU and Japanese agricultural subsidies and protectionism following the Cairns Group Ultimatum of 2004. McDonald’s recently announced that its sales of organic vegeburgers now outstrip beefburger sales by 6 to one, with wholewheat buns now representing more than half of all buns sold. Monsanto, whose genomics seed division has continued to come up with naturally bred landrace seed varieties tailored to the precise soil and climate requirements of the world’s regions, announced record profits. A company spokesperson announced: “The diversification and empowerment of small farmers that followed the Trade Justice Agreement has provided us with rich rewards. Our Small Farmers Seed Saving Programme has enriched our genomic data base while rewarding farmers who select ideal traits from their crops.”
Fantasy? Not a bit of it. Nothing in the above optimistic scenario should stretch the credulity of anyone who’s read this little book. We are not faced with immutable forces that lead us to starvation, obesity, disease and environmental degradation. We have the technologies - in agriculture, preventive medicine, food processing and energy production – to realise the above scenario.
We suffer a distorted system where powerful forces coerce and cajole governments to work against the public interests. Nobody really gains much from it. None of us ever really asked for the system we got – it has been sold as delivering the greatest goods, but in practice it demands ever-increasing subsidy and brings, as a product of its systems, obesity, new more virulent bacterial diseases, increasing dependence on chemical fungicides, insecticides and herbicides as well as a cocktail of antibiotics, genetically engineered hormones, drugs and adulterants in our food and environment.
We need a new kind of accounting that counts all the costs. Cheaper hamburgers and sugary foods may make a few pennies more profit for the shareholders in a chemical, pharmaceutical or fast food company, but who’s counting the cost in heart disease and diabetes? Nowhere on the national account are the negative costs counted - the heartache of the bereaved, loss of earning power, amputation, blindness and agonising pain aren’t calculated on the debit side of the ledger. If they were, we’d be in a very different situation with food.
Is cheap food worth the ill-health that is its concomitant? Is it worth the environmental destruction? The excessive use of fossil fuels? The risk of global warming and increasingly violent weather and flooding? Do we really want our children to enter puberty in hormonal turmoil, brought on by consumption of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in unpredictable interactions with the hormone imbalances inherent in obesity?
Is it fair to the children? They didn’t ask to be hooked on junk foods and additives before they were old enough to learn about nutrition. The inevitable result in the longer run will be evolutionary degeneration. Surely this wasn’t part of the deal? I don’t remember seeing ads that said: “Eat junk food and your grandchildren and great grandchildren may well be at risk of a wide range of degenerative and congenital conditions that are a direct consequence of your ill-informed food choices.”
But it’s happened, Inexorable, focused pressure on governments around the world has brought us to a situation where the richest 20% of the world’s population suffer chronic obesity disease and the poorest 20% starve. The middle 60% aren’t doing that well, either, with the exception of a rapidly-growing minority who engage in ‘joined up thinking’ about food, diet and farming. If you do the sums properly, i.e. from the perspective of a nation or society, eating unsubsidised organically grown wholesome food free of artificial additives and in a proportion that favours grains, pulses and vegetables over meat and dairy products and sugar is the answer.
