Food for Thought

EarthQuaker Issue 99

Editorial Committee’s Note: Published in 2022, George Monbiot’s “Regenesis” looks at the contribution of current food production to environmental damage and the Sixth Extinction. It explores new theories and practices being harnessed that might make food production and consumption sustainable. The previous issue of EarthQuaker included a review of the book by Kathryn May.

Regenesis gives us 84 pages of references and research citations to browse. The decades of research which underpin the emergent Precision Fermentation Field has, quite literally, mushroomed. Climate change impacts harvests globally: from flooded Bangladeshi rice paddies, to the tripling of staple foodstuffs when the rainy season fails in central East Africa, to fields of moulding, unripe wheat in Wales. All is further exacerbated by conflicts in regions which supply vast quantities of oil, wheat, dates, and olives to both European and African markets. The issue of food security and the environmental damage inflicted by globalised food chains is everywhere we look. So are the secondary impacts, not least mass migrations, malnutrition as a fact of life for hundreds of millions worldwide, and biodiversity and soil loss at a desperate rate.

While many urge not to lose hope, to exercise ‘active hope’, to avoid collapsing into hopeless inertia, I prefer to look for possibility. For the things we can do that open, in some small way, into the “ocean of light and love” of George Fox’s oft-cited Ministry. So, I take joy and courage from seeing friends plugging away against the odds and achieving their goals of a village preschool for 60+ malnourished youngsters in rural Rwanda with a ‘home farm’ providing dignified work for the parents while serving up two home-grown, hot meals a day for the children. And the Sahel permaculture cooperative which has achieved food and water sustainability for the 80 families living there in five years (rather than the projected 15) and created a cooler microclimate and a popular following while they are at it!

The field of Precision Fermentation is ‘hotting up’ as its capacity to generate ‘clean’ protein, edible oils and ‘bio-identical dairy’ for human and animal consumption is recognised and brought to market. Be it derived from the already familiar Quorn kind of cultured mycelium and algae, or from food industry or agricultural by-products, as the rather dystopian ‘lab-grown meat/fish’ or the miraculous sounding ‘protein from thin air’ described in Regenesis, are Quakers now willing to bring a warmer and more open curiosity to the exponential development of this novel contribution to a less destructive, more sustainable food chain? As Monbiot concludes, no combination of organic/regenerative/no-dig/rewilded agriculture can produce enough calories for everyone. Can we draw on our Testimonies and bring adventurous and prophetic discernment to ways in which our Quaker community, both locally and collectively, could actively engage with this contemporary and highly relevant component of Climate Change mitigation and adaptation? Discuss…

 Ruth Jones
Ditchling LQM, Sussex West AM