Globally, increasingly unpredictable weather patterns are disrupting the usual seasonal harvests, leading to exponential price hikes of the most basic staple foodstuffs (beans, lentils, sweet potatoes, maize, rice) on rural markets and driving subsistence farmers into starvation or migration. And falling rain now contains contaminants including microplastic particles.
British farms have traditionally been inherited by first-born sons while the other children had to join mercantile and urban populations who cannot so readily feed themselves. In subsistence economies, land can only be subdivided through a few generations before becoming too little to sustain family life. We can convert our lawns and roadside verges into productive kitchen gardens which helps to retrieve a sense of our connection and dependence on the living world both above and below ground. But is it enough and can we act quickly enough to offset the impacts of a disrupted climate on our food chain, let alone to remediate the damage our current food supply has been wreaking worldwide? How can we support subsistence communities to avoid becoming climate refugees and continue to live in their communities and cultures, taking care of their piece of the planet?
It was with this Concern that an informal “Future Food” group formed at Ditchling and Haywards Heath Local Meeting, to open into these questions and to learn more about the burgeoning precision fermentation technologies for producing protein. We have seen that by using a range of core substrates including fungi, algae and food industry and agricultural organic residues, many different kinds of protein rich produce can be produced through precision fermentation processes. They combine traditional fermented food recipes with sophisticated food science, cutting edge microbiology, culinary arts and other innovations to produce tasty, healthy and affordable, nutritious, protein-rich foods while freeing up water and land for nature restoration, biodiversity recovery and regenerative agricultures.
In part we are considering our friends and colleagues in rural East Africa and the Sahel whose traditional ways of life are being increasingly impacted by weather and temperature changes. We are also holding in mind the importance of local community food resilience in this country where the majority of our nutrition is now imported. By bringing Quaker testimonies to bear, we are asking how this technology can benefit the poorest families and help mitigate against malnutrition globally by providing both affordable and sustainable sources of climate resilient, nutritious, clean protein.
While the Nestle, Mondelez and Unilever behemoths are investing heavily in this technology, can we Quakers bring our testimonies to bear on the evolution of the field? By representing simplicity, integrity, equality, community, peace, and stewardship of the Earth and speaking boldly about reparations, can Quaker “nudges” contribute towards the development of local and cooperative scale applications which nurture climate resilience rather than stock market profit? We can only hope to do so by “being in the room” and taking part in the discussions around this emergent technology.
Ruth Jones