Food Foolish #5: Some Lessons from the Field at Thanksgiving

Thanks to Gettysburg College and the Gettysburg Foundation
for hosting an evening of Food Foolish discussion.

Since we published Food Foolish in July 2015, my co-author John Mandyck and I have been on a variety of calls, Webex’s and in-person lectures to talk about the issues of food waste and climate change.  John has been especially busy, so if you have an interest in these topics, you should be sure to connect with him on Twitter (@JohnMandyck).  (And I'm on Twitter here.)

As I meet with folks, I get asked a lot of questions that, frankly, I can’t answer.  So I've been studying up on everything from food security, ugly fruits and vegetables, drought, precision farming and composting, to agroecology, urban gardens, food banks and even so-called Frankenfish.  I have found Twitter to be especially helpful in channeling the daily flood of material being generated.  Food + Tech Connect in particular is a terrific feed for entrepreneurial news, and the Guardian in London seems to have the broadest coverage of food and climate change news.

Now, as the season of food (and thanks) is upon us here in the States, I thought I might share just a few of my many lessons from the field.

Getting Mom to Waste Less.  Let’s begin with the very nice woman in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, who asked me how she should deal with her mother, who refuses to eat the dark meat from the turkey.  I am still formulating my answer, which might require as much Dr. Phil as Michael Pollan.  (My own dear mother hated parsnips, though it never came to a crisis stage.)  

It’s worth noting, however, that Americans toss out 204 million pounds of turkey annually, worth nearly $300 million and containing about 105 billion gallons of embedded water.  In fact, if we start counting embedded water on our Thanksgiving plate, we’ll find that a can of cranberry sauce has 1,559 gallons, a gallon of apple cider nearly 1,500, and a bowl of mashed potatoes some 2,528 gallons.

So, as I think about how to motivate Mom, let's all plan and shop wisely.  And once the big event is over, work on those leftovers.  I discovered in my travels that many folks now plan “Leftover Parties” on the Friday after Thanksgiving to insure that they reduce things down to the carcass.  This, along with the budding “Meatless Mondays” movement, are small signs that there is a fundamental change in the way Americans are thinking about their food.  (See “The War on Big Food” from Fortune here.) 

Ages Matter: The New Anthropocene

What Ages do we live in?

It seems like a silly question, but think of it this way:  How many people can you name who lived between 500 AD and 1000 AD?  Yes, Charlemagne; everybody gets Charlemagne. 

Joan of Arc?  Sorry; off by 400 years. 

Venerable Bede?  Well yes, but now you’re Googling.

There were maybe 200 million human beings alive in 500 AD and 300 million alive in 1000 AD.  If we figure on a good 30-year life span, that means several billion were born and died across those 500 years. 

This period is traditionally called the Dark Ages.  It’s a half-a-millennium stretch in which most of us can remember the name of exactly two people who lived--and on one we had to cheat.  This was not mankind's happiest era.

Ages matter.

Treasures of Innovation at the Smithsonian

We had the opportunity last weekend to visit the Smithsonian's current exhibit on innovation and enterprise.  What a treat!   Below are just some of the items on display.

This is the 1837 prototype receiver for Samuel B. Morse's telegraph.  By sending electric pulses, Morse was able to record a message as a wavy line on a strip of paper.  Morse was an excellent artist, so it's no surprise the frame is an artist's canvas stretcher.

A Thin Slice of the Industrial Revolution: The Rowley Village Forge Site

I've made it my hobby these last few years to visit historic sites related to the Industrial Revolution in New England.  Some of the locations I've written about on this blog include the Saugus Iron Works, Slater Mill, Mount Hope Finishing Company, Ames Shovel Collection, the entrepreneurs buried at Mount Auburn here and here, Lowell mills, and homage to the steam age at the Waltham Watch Company and the Yankee Steam-Up. With a perfect Columbus Day weekend upon us, it seemed like a good time to organize yet another great Industrial Revolution adventure--but this one only about 2.5 miles from home.

Lockwood Forest is a conservation area of 100 acres which abuts Fish Brook, a tributary of the Ipswich River, and some 2,000 additional acres of conversation land in my hometown of Boxford.  There are miles of trails and, depending on the season, hikers and horses or snow-shoe-ers and x-country skiers.  This weekend the horse-and-riders were out and about.

In 1670, local entrepreneurs constructed the Bromingum Iron Forge on Fish Brook.  Better known as the Rowley Village Forge, it was run by Henry Leonard, a skilled English ironworker who also played an important role at the ironworks in Braintree, and at the the Saugus Iron Works.

Here's the trail in to the forge site.

Food Foolish Files #4: Can AgTech Really Save the World?

Earlier this week, a Silicon Valley investor wrote an excellent article entitled “The Next Food Frontier: How AgTech Can Save the World.”  (See here.)

In it, he discussed some of the problems facing Big Agriculture in America.  For example, corn farmers in Iowa are feeling the effects of increased costs for seeds, fertilizer and herbicides.  Environmental costs are also growing, especially greenhouse gas emissions.

 

The solution, we’re told, lies in low cost sensors, improved computational capabilities and advanced machine learning techniques.  “The advancements,” the author wrote, “are enabling farming to be run as efficiently as a Silicon Valley tech company—with precision, data-driven decisions and automation.”

Some of you may have gulped hard thinking the standard of excellence for efficiency is a “Silicon Valley tech company,” but we get the point.  Efficiency can and should be improved on corn farms in Iowa.  Precision farming is one good solution.

Others problems the article noted are a decrease in yields, and improving options for more health conscious Americans.  Solutions include genetically engineered microbes for improving seeds and soil, computational biology, tissue engineering, and automation.  From this we can create things like biofabricated meats to replace traditional, often inefficient animal-based proteins.

Again, all promising and cool ideas.  (Though when it comes to cutting into a big slab of biofabricated beef—you first.)

“Technology is the answer,” the author concludes.