Saving food

When the federal government rolled out our first-ever Food Policy for Canada two years ago, one of the primary objectives was to address a troubling reality: there are such vast quantities of farm produce on the market that much of it goes to waste, and yet some people do not have enough.

This is a global phenomenon. The world is awash in food, but in places plagued by war and political corruption, supply channels are cut off, either accidentally or strategically. And even in affluent, peaceful nations such as ours – even within hollering distance of highly productive agricultural land – there are parents who cannot consistently put nutritious meals on the table for their kids.

They are two separate problems, but food insecurity and food waste are both distribution problems. In other words, they are social problems – although some people are inclined to seek technological solutions.

You’ve probably seen the statistics on food waste. The feds say it adds up to more than 11 million tonnes every year in this country – a loss valued at almost $50 billion. There are various ways one could do the math, but any way you slice it, it’s obscene – and particularly stomach-turning, no doubt, for producers. After all, food is energy – not just kilojoules, and the associated environmental impacts, but also the mental exertion and care that go into farming.

BEHAVIOUR

A considerable portion of our food waste occurs in the household – averaging 79 kilograms per person annually. This is the part that should be easiest to get a handle on, because it’s essentially behavioural, rather than systemic. It comes down to how we eat, on a day-to-day basis. That includes our shopping habits and also our cooking habits. There’s a lot of over-zealous provisioning, and not enough meal prep, so food gets left in the fridge too long. And many of us are overly squeamish about paring off the nasty bits; it didn’t cost much, so we toss the whole thing. Then there’s the whole problem of leftovers.

Apparently many people are too time-stressed to plan and execute dinner every night. Either by choice or by necessity, they have erratic schedules. This was the marketing hook for “meal kits,” which exploded in popularity a few years ago. Part of the idea was that there would be no food waste, because the box delivered to your door would contain only and exactly what was needed to prepare the meals you had selected from the online ordering platform. It strikes me as crazy. Imagine opening the fridge and grabbing a carrot to munch on, and being told, “Don’t touch that – it’s for Wednesday night’s recipe!”

Most of us prefer to maintain a bit of a buffer in our household food supply, but this requires being attentive to inventory, to avoid letting stuff spoil. Making good use of what is at hand also requires some creativity. While a recipe book might give you helpful ideas, sometimes you have to go off-script. This kind of culinary improv is a skill we should be teaching our kids.

Meal kits, on the other hand, teach them that home cooking should be like choosing food from a restaurant menu; you are afforded the luxury of eating whatever tickles your fancy, with no regard for the availability of ingredients. As a subscriber to a delivery program, you are not expected to concern yourself with the source of that farm produce, though you can be assured that it will be aesthetically flawless (which is actually part of our food waste problem). This service is provided at a significant cost, inserting one more middleman into the food supply chain.

A community-supported agriculture (CSA) subscription has the opposite effect. It offers the consumer a direct link with the producer. What it provides for the farmer, in addition to some pre-season working capital, is the flexibility to market a wide range of produce. There may be some bumper crops, and some near-flops. CSA customers accept a degree of variability, and farmers tend to ere on the side of generosity. Many will provide recipes, too. (“Sorry about all the beans – try this soup!”) You’re less likely to waste food if you know the person who grew it. If it’s more than you need, you might preserve some, or share it with someone who would appreciate it.

EXCESS

When fresh food is marketed on a larger scale, through a more complex supply chain, balancing supply and demand is virtually impossible. And since no one wants to plan for scarcity, the system is scaled to produce excess. What do we do with the surplus? It has to spill over into different markets.

Under our national Food Policy, the search for solutions includes the Food Waste Reduction Challenge. It sounds a bit like a TV reality show, and that’s exactly the idea – to get entrepreneurs and researchers whipped into a problem-solving frenzy. Contestants can submit business models aimed at preventing or diverting food waste, or “novel technologies” that extend the life of food or transform food waste into something useful. A total of $20 million in prize money will be doled out during the next three years. (This program is delivered through Impact Canada, which is the behaviour modification division of the federal government. You can look it up.)

I’m sure some good ideas will be put into practice. It seems that much waste could be prevented if we had more local food processing facilities. With the tsunami of cheap imported produce that has hit our market over the past generation, we have lost a lot of processing capacity, and it’s hard to know how best to build it back. To improve the situation, freezing and canning plants need to be adaptable, to make use of what is available, and they need to produce foodstuffs that consumers will buy. I have a nostalgic fondness for mushy peas because I spent some time in the U.K. many years ago, but that’s not a very good sales pitch. Chunky salsa or chutney might be more promising, if production and regulatory structures will allow some variability of ingredients.

Apparently some surplus or off-grade produce is being rendered into protein powders – which are now marketed not just to elite bodybuilders, but to anyone with a blender. To me this is only slightly more appealing than being on an IV drip, but I guess it’s not surprising that even the chewing of one’s food can now be outsourced. In any case, the key question to be asked is whether value-added processing will actually deliver value to local farmers. If the business model is based on produce being acquired for next to nothing, we might be better off feeding it to livestock.

ENSILED

Whether it is to be accomplished through innovation or just better cooperation, saving and distributing food is a fundamental challenge for humanity – and it has ever been thus. Recent archaeological work in Jordan has revealed granaries dating from 11,000 years ago, containing identifiable remnants of barley and an early type wheat.

The ability to store grain was a civilizational milestone, aiding in the accumulation of wealth, the practice of commodity speculation, the establishment of substantial permanent settlements, and the exertion of political power.

The term “silo” originated from the Greek siros, referring to a pit for holding corn or grain. Pit storage was common in many arid regions, but in North America, above-ground silos became the norm. Along rail lines in the Prairies, grain elevators (comprising silos and handling equipment) were often emblazoned with the name of the town, standing as a proud symbol of the community’s agricultural productivity. In port cities like Halifax and Saint John, grain elevators were more representative of the prosperity that came with trade, and Canada’s global status as a breadbasket nation.

On farms, meanwhile, silos became popular for the production and storage of fermented green fodder – silage – as feed for cattle. Cylindrical designs were adopted because they could best withstand the considerable internal pressure on the walls, and also because they avoided the problem of “corner spoilage.” The first ones were built with wooden staves and hoops, like a big barrel. Pre-formed concrete staves later became more common.

The silo became a familiar feature on the rural skyline, and an emblem of agricultural boosterism. In 1916, Hoard’s Dairyman published a poem by W. Livingston Larned titled “The Signal of the Silo,” which concluded, “The herd is plump as butter – and if folks have cause to thank, / It’s because each farmer’s silo is a sort o’ savings bank.” Progressive farmers continued to erect silos throughout the middle decades of the 20th century. (Surely many of them recognized the grim irony when a new kind of silo proliferated during the Cold War, as nuclear missiles became the currency of geopolitical power.)

About 30 years ago – during a period when farm consolidation was leading to the abandonment of many of these towers – the word “silo” became a disparaging term for an isolated and inflexible area of jurisdiction or expertise, especially in bureaucracies. The metaphor is kind of hackneyed now, but it may still be instructive, in our effort to balance food supplies. We must hope bureaucrats understand that the abundance of food does not mean we have a surplus of farms and farmers. We actually need more of both, but diversified and decentralized. DL