In my previous article I discussed if global dietary recommendations really makes sense from a number of perspectives. I ended with some thoughts that we should shape the discussion on diets from the production perspective and not from a consumption perspective and that we need to look at the human food system with an ecological perspective. There are, of course, also social, economic and cultural perspectives that can be relevant, after all humans are extremely social and hasvecreated a set of layers between them and the fundamental biology and ecology. Nevertheless we are still biological organisms working in ecological contexts.
My point of departure is that humans and human societies and their food-agro-ecosystems need to follow some basic principles of ecosystems in order to be sustainable in the long run. For sure, we manipulate and change ecosystems to increase what we can extract from them, but that is also an ecological function and not unique for humans even if the scale of our manipulations is outstanding.
There are many ways to define and analyze ecosystems and I don’t claim a great expertise in the field (if any reader wishes to correct me, please go ahead!), but here we go:
An ecosystem consists of an assemblage of species which interact with each other in many ways. Some features of ecosystems are the interdependence and connectedness of the elements, the cycling of resources, the flow of energy as well as redundancy and diversity. Ecosystems have emergent properties, functions that you can’t understand or predict by studying the parts (the species, the assemblage of species, climate, bedrock, sunlight etc.) of the system. While one can speak about a certain balance in ecosystems it is a mistake to see them as static, change is always there, either through external factors or internal dynamics.
(Almost?) No ecosystem is ”closed”, meaning that it doesn’t interact with other ecosystems. Ecosystems interacts with other ecosystems through global processes of wind, rainfall, migratory animals etc. Compounds emitted from the Amazon rainforest impacts the climate in Europe and erosion upstream the Nile is the basis of fertile flood plains in Egypt. The global circulation of carbon dioxide together with sunlight, i.e. the photosynthesis, constitute a major building block for ecosystems and they are both ”external”. Many small ecosystems are part of a larger ecosystem. E.g tide pools are part of coastal ecosystems, an old tree is an ecosystem that is part of a forest ecosystem (Edward O. Wilson called them ”micro wilderness”), the human gut is an ecosystem embedded in the human body which is an ecosystem embedded in the food and agriculture ecosystem.
One essential feature of ecosystems is the circulation of carbon-rich materials (energy) and essential nutrients in a way that what is waste for one organism is food for another one and what is production for one organism, e.g. growth of a plant, is consumption for another one, e.g. a grazing animal. All of these processes are underpinned by energy flows. We can call this the metabolism of the system. In order to even qualify as an ecosystem it has to have most of its processes embedded within itself or through a regular exchange with an larger ecosystem such as in the case of a single-tree ecosystem, tide pools or the human body. When applying that perspective to the human society, I believe it is apparent that most humans will have to be rooted in the local ecology for the bulk of their basic metabolic needs, i.e. food.**
In the same way as ecosystems increase their ”productivity” (if the conditions are conducive) by having more connections and more functions, the same applies to farming. This is also the reason for why productivity in farming in North West Europe increased substantially when farmers abandoned the grain-dominated two field system and gradually introduced wider crop rotations and a more diverse production.
Diversity should be a cornerstone in the food system. Photo: my own carrots, Gunnar Rundgren
I think you get the train of thought I am pursuing here. In order to establish a truly ecological civilization we need to root it in the local flows and adapt ourselves to both the conditions and carrying capacity of that place. In order to be long-term sustainable, human societies and economies need to operate according to the same principles as ecosystems. I welcome any constructive criticism, expansion or improvement of this hypothesis.*
Human societies and economies need to operate according to the same principles as ecosystems.
If we try to see our food system as an ecosystem, it seems apparent to me that we should apply the following (not exhaustive) principles:
- Short local chains for the bulk of the biomass and water we need. This implies that most of the food that is consumed comes from the vicinity and that most of the food waste, including the human waste, should be recycled to the land.
- Diversity in the connections and flows between humans and the living world as well as diversity and multifunctionality within the agri-food system.
- The number and kinds of livestock should be regulated by the carrying capacity of the land and how they fit into the agro-eco-system.
A global ecosystem?
One could argue that the modern civilization is one global ecosystem and, in that way, avoids the limitations that my hypothesis has brought down on humanity. Clearly, this global system has been made possible with fossil fuels, freeing humans from the limits of local flows of renewable energy, primarily in the shape of biomass. In my view, you can and should consider, and analyze, the current human civilization as a global ecosystem, but it isn’t a sustainable ecosystem as it is based on erosion of its resource base as well as being far too big and having constant unidirectional flows of materials within the system, which creates imbalances, of all kinds. Global trade in food, and the global food system is based on single crop plantation style farming or livestock factories controlled by a small number of market actors. Commodity production, even on a local scale, drives farmers into specialization and mechanization and the larger the market, the stronger the pressure is to follow that line. The link between industrialization, specialization and the size of the market was observed already by Adam Smith in his example with a pin factory which is the start of The Wealth of Nations.
What to eat then?
Coming back to the starting point of this article, and the subject of my three previous articles: the food eaten should, largely, correspond to what can be produced in the regions where people live. This means that there will be a huge variety in diets accross the planet, in a similar way as it was all through human history. The share of certain crops and the balance between animals and plants will vary considerably. Modern knowledge and technologies can still make some improvement in those traditional diets and how they are produced, as it always did. Trade can play a role, both for necessities and for luxuries (dependent on the level of economic development and limited by resources) as it also did for a long period of time. But it will not be the fundament of a global food system as there will not be any ”global food system”.
There will also not be any global healthy or climate smart diet. Most other diets that are promoted as superior from one or the other perspectives, be it vegan, carnivore, paleo or LCHF, are also not grounded in the realities of the agro-ecosystem. Being a fruitarian in Sweden can never be sustainable. And even if you believe that grass-fed beef should be the backbone of your diet, very few local food systems could feed current populations with grass-fed beef. The, nowadays quite common, rejection of starchy food might have some merit from a health perspective (personally, I am not so convinced about that) but nevertheless, is simply not feasible in almost any circumstances. It can, of course, be feasible for an individual, but not for the population at large. Grains and tubers are called staple food for a reason and it is almost impossible to feed current populations without those.
Many object to a local food vision with the argument that you can’t feed the half of the human population living in cities following those principles. To some extent they are correct. Congregation in larger units has a very long history and there are clearly some advantages with that for reaching a critical mass and a level of specialization for the development of culture, science and industry. Megacities of a million and more, however, are just possible as a result of huge resource flows and huge inequalities in wealth and power. There is nothing desirable or sustainable about such places, and there are diminishing returns and increasing bads with increasing size. (One could of course also argue that this is still good and that we should be willing to accept the ”cost”- after all there would be no Colosseum in Rome if there had been equality in the world.) Feeding smaller cities will still be possible. Now as before, cities established along rivers and coasts will have an advantage as transportation costs are much lower.
Some might believe that I advocate Pol Pot style forced ruralization, but that is not the case. Urbanization has been very rapid, but there is nothing irreversible in that. There are plenty of cities and regions that have undergone dramatic shifts in economy and population the last couple of hundred years in the development of the current fossil driven global capitalist economy. Clearly, there will be shifts of the same magnitude when leaving that behind. Even without such a shift, the EU predicts that half of its cities will shrink, as a result of structural changes and decreasing population.
The socio-ecology
There is an interplay between the agri-food system, the energy systems and the capitalist market economy. By and large, it is the fossil fuel system that has enabled the emergence of a global food system and allowed humans to break the chains of the local ecological conditions (often referred to as the organic economy). When 75 percent or more of the population work in farming, the food system is more or less local by definition. The mechanization of farming allowed for a disconnect between where food were produced and where it was consumed. Mechanization of farming was thus a prerequisite for large scale industrialization and urbanization. Development of fossil-fueled transportation was also a prerequisite for urbanization and allowed linking farmers to distant markets. Fertilizers, in particular nitrogen fertilizers, are also made from fossil fuels and they are ”necessary” when nutrient cycling breaks down. All of these processes are mediated by markets. The development of the market as the main source of wealth and power is the bedrock of capitalism. Therefore, the rise of the market economy and capitalism are also essential parts of the emergence of the global food system. All five, the market, capitalism, mechanization, transportation and chemical fertilizers are feeding into each other and constitute pillars for the modern industrial civilization.
Therefore, one can’t separate the question for how an ecological food system can look like from a purely ecological perspective from the socio-economic aspects of it. There are many more things to say about that, but I think the starting point is that those involved in the management of ecosystems should, largely, be in charge and control the resources. Decentralized management will lead to more diversity, innovation and evolution. This is against both centrally planned economies and global market capitalism. More about that…later.
*One could argue that ”my hypothesis” is nothing new and that it has been part of ecological economics, biophysical economics, socio-ecology, agro-ecology and other lines of thought for a long time, at least implicitly.
**In some cases, humans adopted a pattern of migration in a similar way as wild animals so societies moved with their livestock, followed game or rain, in order to find feed and food. You can discuss this as a movement of certain species between ecosystems. It is notable that such societies could rarely develop into lasting empires because they could neither support capital accumulation nor high population densities (yes I am aware of that the Mongol Empire was the largest ever, but it didn’t last and it incorporated sedentary cultures which quite rapidly assimilated the Mongols). In other cases, the catch of migratory birds, animals or fish would provide a uni-directional stream of energy and nutrients into human societies, but by and large such systems were exceptions and they were never as dependent on these flows as a modern city is.
Teaser image credit: Author supplied.