Kimberley Veness - Lets Eat: Sustainable Food for a Hungry Planet

Workers picked these beans in the morning, and customers will pick them up in the afternoon. SOL KAUFFMAN

Imagine youre walking down a gravel road in the Canadian prairies. Canola (a crop that is processed into canola oil and used worldwide in cooking) grows on both sides of the road, covering the land in a bright yellow blanket as far as the eye can see. Its beautiful, but it comes at a price. Agriculture has come a long way from the postcard picture of a cozy farmhouse, a red barn and fields planted with a variety of crops. Few of our foods originate from farms like these. Most of the berries, fruit, veggies and grains we eat come from monoculturessingle crops grown on large areas of land. Growing just one crop makes harvest and pest management much easier for farmers who grow on a large scale.

FARMING FACT: Did you know that digging your hands into a garden bed has been scientifically proven to increase happiness? Gardeners touch and breathe in a soil bacterium called Mycobacterium vaccae, which stimulates the feel-good sensors in the brain.

Before the Industrial Revolution, when machines started to replace human labor, farmers relied on planting and harvesting with the aid of horses or oxen, and sometimes help from family members and neighbors. School even let out earlier in the afternoon around harvest time so children could lend a hand. Prior to 1834, when the first reaper (a machine for cutting down grain)hit the market, grain crops were harvested by hand with a sickle (a handheld tool with a curved blade), and it could take weeks for one farmer to harvest his field of grain, even with extra help. Now, almost two hundred years later, it takes only hours. The first combine (grain-harvesting machine) was created in 1835 and came into use in the United States around 1900, and its successors can seed fields, add fertilizer and pesticides, and harvest crops with unparalleled efficiency. But does speed and efficiency produce the best possible food, and how has speeding up food production changed what we know about what we eat?

Farmers harvesting by hand. LC-DIG-MATPC-14346/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

When I was a child, I used to think the thirty-minute drive that separated my town from the nearest city meant the two places were completely unconnected. I learned later that the entire Earth is one giant ecosystem connected by wind and water. The chemical fertilizers and pesticides sprayed on huge monoculture farms accumulate in clouds and fall elsewhere in rain. They run off fields into streams and contaminate waterways and plants and animalsthe same ones we may harvest or hunt. These chemicals can take a long time to break down in the environment, accumulating in our bodies and in the atmosphere. Agricultural emissions alone add more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than all of the planes, trains and motor vehicles in the world combined. That McDonalds burger-and-fries combo you may enjoy once a week could be worse for Earths air quality than the exhaust from your parents car on the drive to buy your burger.

OUR DAILY MEAT

Before machines, farmers used plows to break up the soil on their fields. Horses had to be specially trained for the job, and it was slow, exhausting work.