Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food

Preface

PREFACE Food is important. In fact, nothing is more basic. Food is the first of the essentials of life, our biggest industry, our greatest export, and our most frequently indulged pleasure. Food means creativity and diversity. As a species, humans are omnivorous; we have tried to eat virtually everything on the globe, and our ability to turn a remarkable array of raw substances into cooked dishes, meals, and feasts is evidence of astounding versatility , adaptability, and aesthetic ingenuity. Food is also the object of considerable concern and dread. What we eat and how we eat it together may constitute the single most important cause of disease and death. As psychologist Paul Rozin puts it, “Food is fundamental, fun, frightening, and far-reaching.”1 Probably nothing is more frightening or far-reaching than the prospect of running out of food. “A hungry stomach will not allow its owner to forget it, whatever his cares and sorrows,” Homer wrote almost three thousand years ago. Even in good times, we are not allowed to forget our deeply rooted heritage of food insecurity. “When thou hast enough,” Ecclesiasticus warned circa 180 b.c., “remember the time of hunger.”2 Designed to take advantage of any surplus, our bodies store up fat for the next famine—hence the current obesity crisis—and our prophets warn us against complacency. Given the mounting environmental concerns about population growth, global warming, soil erosion, water scarcity, agrochemical pollution, energy shortages, diminishing returns from fertilizers , and so on, it does seems justified to wonder whether the current banv i i quet is over.Will our grandchildren’s grandchildren enjoy the dietary abundance that most of us take for granted? And how on earth will we feed a rapidly growing, urbanized population in the Third World? As policy analysts debate possible scenarios, starkly different forecasts and proposals emerge. Some futurists predict unprecedented affluence and convenience—a world of “smart” technologies providing a cornucopia of nutritious, tasty, and interesting foods. Others worry about global shortages, famine, and ecological degradation. Some are confident that the current way of producing and distributing food will take care of the future. Others see the status quo as a sure route to disaster. While many in government, academia, and industry look to new tools—especially genetic engineering—to feed us tomorrow without any modification of our modern high-consumption values, others propose low-tech alternatives organized around smaller scale, localized food systems dependent on a return to more traditional appreciation of limits. Students in my university courses on the food system and on the future always want to know how I think it’ll all turn out. I usually duck that question, for as a historian, and thus mindful of life’s quirks and uncertainties , I am uncomfortable making predictions. What I can do, however , is illuminate the discussion by tracing its historical evolution. Given our historical amnesia, it is all too easy to forget what has already been predicted. My research has found that little in the latest forecasts is really new. Western culture has maintained a long-standing romantic fascination with extravagant technology alongside a rich tradition of skepticism and alarm. For example, in the current controversy over genetic engineering, some scenarios resemble the feverish extrapolations offered in response to earlier proposals to streamline the conversion of solar energy to food through synthetic chemistry, irradiation, and yeast cultivation . Similarly, the debate over whether bioengineering is compatible with agrarian ideals sounds quite a bit like earlier arguments over the use of hybrids, tractors, and chemical pesticides. In this study I look at the way the future of food has been conceptualized and represented over the past two hundred years. When the economist /parson Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) published his Essay on the Principle of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society (1798) in response to the “speculations” of the French mathematician the Marquis de Condorcet (1743–94) and the English radical William Godwin (1756–1836), he crystallized a three-way debate about the future of the food system. In How Many People Can the Earth Support? V I I I / P R E F A C E (1995), demographer Joel Cohen articulates the same enduring positions on the question of how we might feed the future: (1) bake a bigger pie, (2) put fewer forks on the table, or (3) teach everyone better table manners .3 Seeing no...