The chapter The future of food by Warren Belasco's book "food, the key concepts" is about our current standpoint in our society regarding industrialized farming and its problems associated with it along with two solutions (or views) by the author. The chapter starts off by mentioning that conservationists have been worried for a long time about the limits of our technology and the earth's carrying capacity. Our agricultural activity has nonetheless increased faster than expected and has resulted in being a catalyst on an incredible amounts of problems such as malnutrition, pollution, decrease of potable water, global warming, destruction of ecosystems ect. Even if our population levels off, our economic growth may still endanger our world's resources, since for example, rich people consume a much bigger share world's resources for food, transportation, leisure and housing. Another good point by the author is the fact that the future is invented in the present, it is thus the outgrow of current decisions. The author provides two solutions for the problems coming from industrialized farming, the technological fix and the anthropological fix. The first one assumes that the human inventiveness to profit-seeking free enterprises, will beat the odds and nutrition will continue to spread. It keeps the demand for convenience and achieves this through corporate research and development. The anthropological fix goes a different way. It would change people's value, comfort, and convenience in order to meet the challenges of feeding the future.
I found this reading to be a very nice conclusion to our class about food. It went in extensive details about our current problems and was very rich in facts and anecdotes. This author, in comparison to other authors such as Pollan, actually provided very thorough solutions. While his ideas about fixing our problems through technology might seem adequate, I do not believe it will help solve the bigger picture. Even though we continuously keep using new technology to solve problems, it seems like we always end up creating new one which can end up being even more problematic. The use of fertilizers, to increase food yield, is harming our environment by increasing the pH of nearby water and is deteriorating the wildlife. I believe that we should not play around with nature to such extent because as the author mentions, everything is connected. I have to say that the second solution would probably be the most effective, however, it would be very hard to put in place. This solution requires our advanced country to basically go back in time and give up some of the luxuries that we currently enjoy. For example, we would stop eating pineapples since it takes a lot of energy for it to travel to us and emits a lot of CO2. I feel like the government would have to lead to way in order to see changes like these take place.
Questions:
Can we convince society to live with less than it currently has?
I think you're right in saying that technology is not going to be the answer but that it will be difficult to convince people to give up "luxury" type products such as pineapple. If people really feel threatened then I think we might be able to convince society to live with less than it currently has, but it would still be very difficult.
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