Future food

 

 “Technology can help deliver cleaner, greener delicious food. Whether consumers want it is another question.

"TELL ME WHAT kind of food you eat, and I will tell you what kind of man you are," wrote Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, a French lawyer and epicure, in the early 19th century. The epigram opens "The Physiology of Taste," one of those delightfully dilatory, observational works at which his age excelled.

The food that most people eat--especially in rich countries, but increasingly in poor- and middle-income ones, too--reveals them to be inhabitants of a highly globalised economy, spectacularly rich in choices. Peruse the shelves of a rich-world supermarket and you will find salmon from Norway, prawns from Vietnam, mangoes from India, strawberries from Turkey, cured meats from Italy and cheeses from France. Meat, a luxury for most people through much of history, is available in such affordable abundance that, in the rich world, most who do not eat it regularly forgo it as a matter of choice, not necessity. Much of it is laced with chemical additives that reduce spoilage, enhance flavour or serve some other need on the part of the producer.

Such a diet has only become possible in a very particular world, one in which a large proportion of the planet's surface is given over to farms and pasture, food production is energy-intensive, pesticides abundant, intercontinental shipping cheap and food processing an advanced industrial undertaking. It is only possible, that is to say, at a time when human desires, and the economies built around them, rank among the planet-shaping forces of nature: a period that has come to be known as the Anthropocene.

The Anthropocene diet that the world's well-off inhabitants enjoy would amaze all previous generations. But like most remarkable modernities, it is not without its costs. Meat is cheap because it is produced with great cruelty. Billions of animals spend brief, miserable and often pain-racked lives crammed together in airless sheds. They are ripped from their mothers; pumped with drugs; castrated without anaesthetic; eviscerated while alive; or all of the above.

Picking berries and lettuce is backbreaking labour; the people who do it often lack health insurance, job protections and a living wage. Many of the world's fisheries run on slave labour. Depleted soils are chemically tarted up into a fecund semblance of health with nutrients straight from the factory. Fertiliser and animal-waste runoff create algal blooms that strip the oxygen from ever more, ever larger dead zones in littoral seas. Few human activities emit more greenhouse gases than raising animals--particularly cattle, for which ranchers cut down vast swathes of forest. The processing that serves to make food cheap, tasty and addictive strips out nutrients while adding fats, sugars and salt.

It would be easy to conclude, per Brillat-Savarin's maxim, that the Anthropocene diet's consumers are cruel to animals and indifferent to both their planet's future and their own--because the Anthropocene diet is all of those things. That would be far too harsh. Taking a moral inventory of every food's inputs is a lot to ask of, say, a mother on a tight budget, on her way home from work, who just wants a dinner that makes her children happy. That does not mean she does not care, or would not prefer a system that does better by her family and the world.

Many have begun to alter their dining choices to help bring about such a system. The amount of meat eaten in the world is growing, but less so in richer countries than poorer ones. The share of people who identify as vegetarian, vegan or "flexitarian"--meaning their diet is centred on plants but that they do not entirely eschew the eating of animals--is rising. In Britain, the number of vegans more than quadrupled from 2014 to 2019.

In America, sales of organic food--which people take to be better both for themselves and for the environment--rose from $13.3bn in 2005 to $56.4bn in 2020; Europe saw a similar rise. Restaurant menus often name the farms that supply their food, giving diners a greater sense of connection to what they are eating. The word "locavore", coined in 2005, was an American dictionary's "word of the year" by 2007.

There is a performative aspect to much of this. People want what they eat to say good things about them--both to others and to themselves. This is neither an ignoble desire nor a new one. The dietary restrictions set down in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, as the late Hayim Halevy Donin, a rabbi, explained in his book "To Be a Jew", offer "a good example of how Judaism raises even the most mundane acts...into a religious experience." Eating, common to all people, becomes an act of Jewish self-definition.

Flexitarian, locavorous and organic eating are not religious. But they make a moral statement: the belief that participating in the hyper-rationalised, hyper-calorific, hyper-processed industrial first-world food system is wrong. What they do not in themselves provide is a way to set that system right, in part because they do not properly assess its flaws. The raising of organic food, for example, typically requires more land than other methods, and can often produce greater greenhouse-gas emissions. A personal devotion to the legume over the nugget or the aubergine over the burger may save you from direct complicity in the suffering of chicken and cow; but it does not stop the suffering.

But what if the system itself could be changed? What if people who shared the distaste for today's food system could encourage the building, seed by seed and cell by cell, of ways to provide a delicious, healthy, diverse array of foods with markedly less cruelty and environmental damage?

Anthroprotein and other food groups

This report will survey an array of technologies being touted as ways of transforming the world's food-production system not by doing old forms of agriculture in a less cruel and more sustainable way, but by doing things that have never been done before.

Heretofore niche proteins, such as insects and seaweeds, are being explored not just for their gourmet potential--which is higher than most might believe--but also as ways to refashion food chains. Yeasts are being programmed to grow proteins that make a soy-protein patty cook and bleed in the way a minced cow does. Inland saline aquaculture promises to provide fresh seafood to people thousands of miles from an ocean. Crops are being grown in soil-free shipping containers just blocks from the city dwellers who will eventually eat them, rather than half a world away. Cells taken from a living animal in a simple biopsy are being used to grow meat in bioreactors, providing familiar sources of protein without the need for slaughter or industrial-scale farming and the cruelty and health hazards those things entail.

Immense hurdles remain. It is one thing to grow a hamburger in a tank, another to get people to eat it, and a third to provide competitively priced tankburgers by the billion. Growing vegetables in skyscrapers might be environmentally beneficial, but field-based agriculture remains much cheaper. Practical and necessary improvements to today's farms, such as regenerative farming techniques, could be sidelined in favour of incoherent and unsustainable Utopian neophilia that offers niche feel-good foods for a few, but little if anything for the many--or for the suffering animals. Some technologies which currently seem beneficial will turn out to incur unforeseen costs and harms, just as cheap meat has.

Yet there is something undeniably inspiring about this attempt to turn Brillat-Savarin on his head: deciding first what sort of person you want to be, and what sort of planetary settlement you want to embody, and then changing the world so that the kind of food it provides for you to eat fits that self-conception.

The movement has a recognisable, hard-to-resist ferment: a hype-heady nose and feel redolent of the terroir in which California raises its new technology. One starry-eyed Californian faux-meat scientist enthuses that the field feels like working in Silicon Valley in the 1970s: optimistic, dynamic and buzzy.” [1]

 1. "The new Anthropocene diet; Future food." The Economist, 2 Oct. 2021, p. 0.4(US).

Miesto ūkininkavimas

 „GERIAUSI bazilikai pasaulyje auginami mažame kaimelyje Ligūrijos pakrantėje, į vakarus nuo Genujos. Subtilus bazilikas, paruoštas brandos pike, po tinkamo saulėtų dienų ir vidutinio klimato naktų skaičiaus, puikiai tinka pesto, kuriuo Ligūrija garsėja.

Deja, daug daugiau žmonių naudoja šviežius bazilikus, nei gyvena per atstumą nuo Genujos. Ir net Ligūrijos pakrantėje gamta ne visada užtikrina puikų orą. Tačiau artimą apytikslį vaizdą-traškus ir atpažįstamai pipiriškas su tinkamu anyžiumi, o galbūt jis nėra pakankamai gyvybingas, kad Genujos virtuvės šefas šokinėtų iš džiaugsmo, bet geriau, nei vargani daiktai prekybos centruose parduodamuose plastikiniuose maišeliuose. Šių bazilikų auginimui nadojami konteineriai automobilių stovėjimo aikštelės gale, Bruklino šiaurėje, tik už kvartalo nuo sinagogos ir už kampo nuo degalinės.

Šiuose konteineriuose yra vertikalus ūkis-ūkis, kuriame pasėliai auga vienas ant kito, o ne vienas šalia kito, kaip tai daroma lauke, todėl auga daug tankiau. Ūkio savininkas „Square Roots“ čia augina šviežias žoleles ir per 24 valandas po derliaus nuėmimo jas išveža 100 mažmenininkų Niujorke, naudodamas elektrinius triračius be išmetamųjų dujų. Bendrovė turi didesnį objektą Grand Rapids mieste, Mičigano valstijoje, ir siekia tolesnės plėtros.

Ne visi vertikalūs ūkiai yra maži. Visoje šalyje pietų San Fransiske įmonė „Plenty“ valdo 8100 kvadratinių metrų (dviejų akrų) vertikalų ūkį, kuris, kaip teigia, augina tiek pat produkcijos, kiek įprastas ūkis, viršijantis 300 kartų didesnį dydį. Planuojami masyvūs vertikalūs ūkiai JAE ir Šveicarijoje. Kinija planuoja pastatyti visą Šanchajaus kaimynystę aplink vertikalųjį ūkininkavimą.

Dauguma vertikalių ūkių turi keletą savybių. Vienas iš jų yra dirvožemio nenaudojimas. Jų sukrautos eilės pasėlių auginamos aeroponiškai, o tai reiškia, kad šaknys yra maitinamos daug maistinių medžiagų turinčiu rūku arba hidroponiniu būdu, o tai reiškia, kad šaknys yra vandeniniame, daug maistinių medžiagų turinčiame tirpale arba inde, kuriame tirpalas nuolat teka per jas.

Tai leidžia daug mažiau vandens, nei paprastai naudojama, atlikti daug daugiau darbo. Joks dirvožemis nereiškia tikslios kontrolės, kokio lygio maistines medžiagas gauna visos šaknys. Jis taip pat naikina piktžoles ir padeda išvengti mikrobų, vabzdžių ir kitų pasėlius naikinančių kenkėjų, kurių daugeliui gyvavimo ciklo reikia dirvožemio. Nėra dirvožemio taip pat reiškia, kad trąšos nepatenka į vandens kelius; vertikalūs ūkiai yra linkę perdirbti daiktus, o ne juos išmesti. Kai kuriose yra akvaponinės ekosistemos, kuriose derinama akvakultūra ir sodininkystė: augalai maitina žuvis, žuvys - augalus.

Saulės taip pat nėra. Šviesa sklinda iš šviesos diodų juostų, išdėstytų taip, kad visi tankiai supakuoti lapai būtų optimaliai apšviesti. Problema ta, kad šviesos diodai ir juos maitinanti elektra kainuoja pinigus. Vertikalių ūkių šalininkai pastebi, kad šviesos diodų kaina mažėja, o šviesos kiekis, kurį jie sukuria per kilovatvalandę, auga; vadinamasis Haitzo įstatymas sako, kad LED apšvietimo sistemų efektyvumas kiekvieną dešimtmetį pagerėja 20 kartų. Nepaisant to, apšvietimo ir temperatūros valdymo energijos sąnaudos išlieka didelės.

 

Laikui bėgant viskas pagerės, o ne tik Haitzo įstatymo dėka. Vertikaliuose ūkiuose sunaudojama beveik tik elektros energija, kuri tampa ekologiškesnė, nes tinklai įgauna daugiau atsinaujinančių energijos išteklių, ir pigesnė, nes atsinaujinantys pajėgumai atleidžia elektros tiekėjus nuo degalų sąnaudų. Vertikalūs ūkiai taip pat gali suplanuoti savo „dienas“ ir „naktis“, kad atitiktų laiką, kai elektra yra pigesnė, ir šiek tiek sumažinti paklausą, jei tinklui to reikia-paslaugų tinklai vis labiau už tai mokės.

Tačiau viena didžiausių dovanų yra kontrolė. Tiesiogiai tiekiant šviesą, temperatūrą ir maistines medžiagas, galima optimizuoti augimo sąlygas. Ir auginami augalai yra kruopščiai atrinkti, o šiandien daugumą jų sudaro greitai auganti, lengva, didelės maržos, produkcija. Aukštos kokybės žolelės ir lapiniai žalumynai gali būti garantuoti bet kuriuo metų laiku ir iš vietinio šaltinio.

Kitas produktas gali būti uogos. Uogų auginimas naudoja daug pesticidų ir priklauso nuo veislių, kurios gali toleruoti gabenimą dideliais atstumais. Dėl to iš laukinių liepos vynmedžių nuskintos saldžios, gėlėtos, ugniagesių mašinos raudonumo uogos nepanašios į niekuo neišsiskiriančius rausvus golfo kamuoliukus, sukrautus lapkričio lentynose. Kontroliuodami šviesą, temperatūrą ir maistines medžiagas, vertikalieji ūkiai ištisus metus visame mieste gali parduoti šviežiai nuskintų vasariškų sulčių. Pagalvokite apie tai, kaip apie „Teslaberry“: aukščiausios kokybės produktą, naudingą aplinkai (nenaudojant pesticidų), kuris sukuria technologiją ir prekės ženklą.

Kontrolei reikia duomenų. Vertikalūs ūkiai gali sekti tai, kas vyksta, taip, kaip negali lauko ūkininkavimas, kad ir koks didelis būtų jo tikslumas. Kuo didesnis ūkis, tuo daugiau informacijos jis turi ir bent jau teoriškai jis tampa geresnis ir efektyvesnis. Anya Rosen, valdanti „Square Roots“ Bruklino ūkį, aiškina, kad vertikalusis ūkininkavimas „iš tikrųjų nėra gamta. Tai priešingai.  Iš esmės tai yra didelis robotas, kuris augina augalus viduje “.

Tai savaime gali neatrodyti apetitiškai. Tačiau kalbant apie sveikatos, natūralumo, grynumo ir aplinkos autentiškumo kvartetą, vertikalieji ūkiai yra gana gerai. Technologija aplink gamyklą atrodo mažiau atbaidanti, nei technologija gamykloje. Ūkio, kuriame augalai sukrauti kaip serveriai, klinikinis ryškumas nėra natūralus; bet jis turi tam tikrą grynumą. Uždara aplinka nekenkia didesnei aplinkai lauke (nebent jos aistringas energijos troškimas būtų maitinamas iškastiniu kuru).

Matydami šiuos pranašumus, į misiją orientuoti investuotojai, nepaisant jų energijos sąnaudų, pila pinigus į vertikalios žemdirbystės įmones-„Plenty“ per šešis finansavimo etapus surinko 541 mln. ūkis sename pramoniniame pastate Niuarke. Tačiau vėlgi jie tai daro prieš pelningumą.

Daugeliui aplinkosaugininkų tai yra šalutinis reiškinys. Kur kas svarbiau, kad tikrasis ūkininkavimas mažiau terštų aplinką. Vertikalusis ūkininkavimas galėtų būti sėkmingas, kaip verslas, nedarant daug dėl planetos. Tai gali likti niša miesto turtingiesiems. Tačiau vertikalūs ūkiai gali turėti įtakos aplinkosaugininkams ir kitiems. Skirtingai nuo augalinės mėsos alternatyvų, jie skatina žmones galvoti apie tai, kaip gaminamas maistas, o ne tik apie jo skonį. Jų leidžiami eksperimentai gali lemti didesnį efektyvumą ir aukštesnę kokybę arba abu.

Vertikalus ūkininkavimas iš karto nepakeis pasaulio žemės ūkio praktikos. Daugelis investuotojų neteisingai įvertins, kada pradėti ir kurias įmones palaikyti. Ir net jei kai kurie investuotojai tai padarys dideliais, jų įmonės artimiausiu ir vidutinės trukmės laikotarpiu daugiausia rūpinsis miesto gyventojais, kurie gali sau leisti gerai pavalgyti.

Turtingesniam ir labiau urbanizuotam pasauliui tai yra geras verslas, ir tai gali būti naudinga ir aplinkai, jei tik pakraštyje. Tačiau viskas galėtų eiti toliau. Ūkininkavimas turi ilgą istoriją, kai iš tikrųjų pakeičia žemę energija. XX amžiuje traktoriai ir kitos mašinos, dirbtinės trąšos ir pesticidai iškastinį kurą pavertė žemės ūkio produktyvumu, panaudodami naftoje sukauptą energiją, kad augintų daugiau maisto tame pačiame žemės plote, o kartais ir mažesniame.

XXI amžiaus viduryje ir pabaigoje dirbtinis apšvietimas ir patalpų klimato kontrolė, visi maitinami pigia, švaria elektra, galėtų tęsti šią tendenciją. Ši galimybė nereiškia, kad vertikalios žemės ūkio investicijos atsipirks per trumpą laiką. Tačiau kaip XX amžiaus ūkininkavimas būtų buvęs neatpažįstamas XIX amžiaus ūkininkui, taip XXI amžiaus ūkiai galiausiai gali aplenkti šiandieninį produktyvumą, ekologiškumą ir aukštį “. [1]

 1. "Green castles in the sky; Urban farming." The Economist, 2 Oct. 2021, p. 0.11(US).

Urban farming

 

 “Vertical farms are stacking up well.

THE BEST basil in the world is grown in a small village on the Ligurian coast just west of Genoa. Picked at the height of ripeness, after just the right number of sunny days and temperate nights, the delicate basil is perfect in the pesto for which Liguria is justly famed.

Unfortunately, many more people use fresh basil than live within driving distance of Genoa. And even on the Ligurian coast, nature does not always provide perfect weather. But a close approximation--crisp and recognisably peppery with the right anise undernotes, perhaps not quite vibrant enough to make a Genoese chef do cartwheels, but better than the limp stuff in plastic sachets sold in supermarkets--can be found in a few shipping containers at the back of a car park in north Brooklyn, just down the block from a synagogue and around the corner from a petrol station.

Those containers house a vertical farm--a farm in which crops grow on top of each other, rather than just next to each other, as they do in a field, allowing growth at far higher density. Square Roots, the farm's owner, grows fresh herbs here, delivering them to 100 retailers in New York within 24 hours of harvest using emission-free electric tricycles. The company has a larger facility in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and ambitions for further expansion.

Not all vertical farms are small. Across the country in South San Francisco, a firm called Plenty runs an 8,100-square-metre (two-acre) vertical farm that, it claims, grows as much produce as a normal farm over 300 times its size. Plans are under way for massive vertical farms in the UAE and Switzerland. China plans to build an entire neighbourhood in Shanghai around vertical farming.

Most vertical farms share a few attributes. One is a lack of soil. Their stacked rows of crops are grown aeroponically, meaning the roots are fed with a nutrient-rich mist, or hydroponically, meaning the roots either sit in an aqueous, nutrient-rich solution or in a container in which the solution constantly flows over them.

This lets a lot less water than is usually used do a lot more work. No soil means precise control over what level of nutrients all the roots receive. It also eliminates weeds and helps keep down microbes, insects and other crop-devouring pests, many of which need soil for some of their life cycles. No soil also means no fertiliser runoff into waterways; vertical farms tend to recycle things, not dispose of them. Some contain aquaponic ecosystems in which aquaculture and horticulture combine: the plants feed the fish, the fish fertilise the plants.

Sunshine is absent, too. Light comes from strips of LEDs arranged so that all the dense-packed leaves are optimally illuminated. The problem with this is that LEDs and the electricity which powers them cost money. Proponents of vertical farms note that the cost of LEDs is dropping and the amount of light they generate per kilowatt hour is climbing; what is known as Haitz's law says that the efficiency of LED lighting systems improves by a factor of 20 every decade. Even so, energy costs for lighting and temperature control remain high.

In time, things will improve, and not just thanks to Haitz's law. The energy used in vertical farms is almost all electricity, which is becoming both greener, as grids take on more renewable capacity, and cheaper, as that renewable capacity relieves electricity suppliers of fuel costs. Vertical farms can also time their "days" and "nights" to match times when power is cheaper, and drop demand a bit if the grid needs it--a service grids will increasingly pay for.

That is one example of their greatest gift: control. With light, temperature and nutrients all delivered directly, the conditions for growth can be optimised. And the crops raised are carefully chosen, with fast-growing, light, high-margin produce comprising most of them today. High-quality herbs and leafy greens can be guaranteed at all seasons and from a local source.

Berries may be next. Farming berries uses a lot of pesticides and depends on varieties that can tolerate being shipped long distances. As a result the sweet, floral, fire-engine-red berry picked from a wild July vine is nothing like the insipid pinkish golf-balls stacked on November shelves. Through their control of light, temperature and nutrients vertical farms can have fresh-picked summer-succulent punnets on sale throughout a city all year round. Think of it as the Teslaberry: a superior product with environmental benefits (no pesticide use) that establishes a technology and a brand.

Control needs data. Vertical farms can keep track of what is going on in a way field farming, however high its precision, cannot. The bigger a farm gets, the more information it has, and at least theoretically, the better and more efficient it becomes. Anya Rosen, who manages Square Roots's Brooklyn farm, explains that vertical farming "is not really nature. It's the opposite of that. It's basically a big robot that grows plants inside."

That may not, in itself, sound appetising. But when it comes to the authenticity quartet of health, naturalness, purity and the environment, vertical farms stack up pretty well. Technology around a plant seems less off-putting than technology within a plant. The clinical brightness of a farm in which plants are stacked like servers is not natural; but it has a certain purity. A sealed environment is one not harming the greater environment outside (unless its voracious appetite for energy is fed with fossil fuels).

Seeing these advantages, mission-driven investors are pouring money into vertical-farming companies despite their energy costs--Plenty has raised $541m over six funding rounds, while a SPAC may soon take AeroFarms, a New Jersey-based firm with an immense vertical farm in an old industrial building in Newark, public. Again, though, they are doing so in advance of profitability.

To many environmentalists, this is a sideshow. Making real farming less of a stress on the environment is far more important. And vertical farming could be successful as a business without doing much for the planet. It could remain a niche for the urban rich. But vertical farms could have impacts environmentalists and others would value. Unlike plant-based meat alternatives they encourage people to think about how food is produced, rather than just what it tastes like. The experimentation they allow could lead to greater efficiency and higher quality, or both.

Vertical farming will not immediately transform the world's agricultural practices. Plenty of investors will misjudge when to jump in and which firms to back. And even if some investors make it big, their companies will, in the near and medium term, mostly cater to city dwellers who can afford to eat well.

For a world getting richer and more urbanised, that is a good business to be in, and it may be good for the environment, too, if only at the margins. But things could go further. Farming has a long history of, in effect, trading land for energy. Throughout the 20th century tractors and other machinery, artificial fertilisers and pesticides all turned fossil fuels into agricultural productivity, using the energy stored in oil to grow more food on the same amount of land and sometimes less.

In the mid-to-late 21st century artificial lighting and indoor climate control, all powered by cheap, clean electricity, could continue the trend. That possibility does not mean vertical farming investment will pay off in the short term. But just as 20th-century farming would have been unrecognisable to the 19th century farmer, so 21st-century farms may, eventually, outgrow today's in productivity, in environmental friendliness--and in height.” [1]

 1. "Green castles in the sky; Urban farming." The Economist, 2 Oct. 2021, p. 0.11(US).