food

Bananas, wine and the collapse of complex societies

Photo by Alistair Smailes on Unsplash

With the current fighting in Ukraine, and sanctions on Russia, some nations are facing the real possibility of food shortages next year. Ukraine is an agricultural powerhouse, which produces a high percentage of some global crops, in particular wheat. Of course, there have been global shortages throughout the pandemic. The rising price of gas -before the invasion of Ukraine- had already created series social and economic issues from Brazil to Europe. Still, no commodity may be as fundamental as food.

The Guardian has a wonderful article, “Our Food System isn’t ready for the climate crisis,” which looks at how global societies have become increasingly reliant on a declining number of crops. In turn, there has been a dramatic reduction in the genetic diversity of the crops that we do use. Plant varieties may be selected less for their ability to evade disease than their ability to be shipped large distance without rotting. As a result, our entire food web has become less resilient at the same time that we face the greatest challenge in modern history, the dramatic impact of climate change.

There are some scholars who suggest that one of the factors that led to the Bronze Age collapse around 1172 BC (and the end of an earlier period of globalization) was the loss of tin supply routes from Afghanistan, which made it difficult to produce bronze. As we’ve seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, if China enters lockdown, car manufacturers in Germany can’t get their chips. As the Financial Times reported in a recent podcast, the world has a critical shortage of some key metals.

One of my favorite books is Joseph Tainter’s, the Collapse of Complex Societies. The work combines both archaeology and a systems perspective to look at how civilizations collapse. Tainter’s argument is that societies tend to become increasingly complex in order to address problems, but that with time this complexity often carries increasing costs while delivering marginal returns. When the costs of complexity begin to exceed its advantages, societies can suddenly become simpler, less hierarchical, more rural and smaller. In other words, they collapse.

I think many people have been aware for a long time how vulnerable aspects of modern society are to all kinds of shocks. But the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a fascination with the supply underpinnings of our global economy. The podcast “Ship happens” has become an unexpected hit, which is unusual for a podcast that focuses on logistical issues and the global supply chain. But I think that if there was just one global area to focus on it should be food, even more than energy. You can work remotely, dress more warmly, or take a bus to reduce your energy consumption. But it’s hard for most urban dwellers to produce much of their own food.

When I moved into my new apartment in Portland this year there was a bottle of wine waiting for me on the counter. It was a 2020 pinot noir from an Oregon winery. While I appreciated the gift, it was almost undrinkable because forest fires in California and Oregon that year had given the grapes a powerfully smoky taste. Whites or a pinot blanc were unaffected, because they lose their skins during the wine making process. But red wines that year tasted like smoke. Besides the impact of fires, the climate in Oregon is changing, which will impact wineries throughout the state. Last fall I spent six weeks in Portugal, which has a long history growing wine in a warmer and dryer climate, using grape varietals that have emerged over the course of more than two millennia. Why don’t wine producers in Oregon adopt these varieties? There are a plethora of options, which would be well-suited to future climate scenarios in the state. But they take time to grow, so that if we are going to experiment with this option, these varieties need to planted now. Ten years ago would have been better, and twenty years ago even better yet.

To the best of my knowledge, only one vintner in Oregon is experimenting with Portuguese, Spanish, Italian or Greek varietals. I think that Abacela may be the leader in the industry (many thanks to Stephen Frenkel for this information). Brazil has made real advances in wine production in the last thirty years, but you would never know it outside the country itself. Wine snobs would probably not even try wine produced in the tropics. Instead, with wine, bananas, avocados and potatoes, we usually still rely on the same old options that we did a generation or two ago. But climate change is coming. If the pandemic and Ukrainian invasion rock our current supply chains, what will happen when global warming seriously impacts food production? We need to rethink which crops we rely on, which varietals we use, and how we supply food on a global level.

References

Lakhani, Nina, Alvin Chang, Rita Liu, and Andrew Witherspoon. “Our Food System Isn’t Ready for the Climate Crisis.” The Guardian. April 14, 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/food/ng-interactive/2022/apr/14/climate-crisis-food-systems-not-ready-biodiversity.

Tainter. (1988). The collapse of complex societies. Cambridge University Press.

Research and parenting in Haiti: a podcast interview

I recently interviewed Prof. Marylynn Steckley about her experience researching food in Haiti for my podcast Dispatch 7. One experience that she talked about was being a mother in the field, and what it was like to give birth, to deal with inequality, and to address race while raising children. She also discussed how she had to deal emotionally with the fact that not only was she getting sick, but also her family was. I’ve long thought that one of the topics that we often avoid in International and Global Studies is personal health. If you go into the field in a relatively poor country for an extended period you are going to get sick. But graduate students are seldom warned of this, much less prepared for it, either practically or emotionally. Personally, I think that every graduate student leaving for a developing country should listen to the stories of someone like Dr. Steckley.

Marylynn’s son Jwasiys in Haiti

Although Marylynn works at Carleton University in Canada now, she was also my colleague for a year at Portland State University in the United States. During that year students flocked to her classes, in part because she had the ability to discuss complex and difficult issues with honesty and passion. In the interview she talked about her experience teaching a class on “Global Craft,” as an online course in experiential learning. In the course she brought together crafts people from around the world to talk about their expertise. Of course, most students at a public institution cannot pay many thousands of dollars for a carefully curated program abroad. As we also discuss in the podcast, some students have children, or disabilities, that limit their ability to travel abroad. But students can have an international experience that is still meaningful by learning from people in other countries. By the end of the interview I was envious that I hadn’t been able to take part in the class. Except for the Finnish showers. Hard no.

Marlynn’s daughter, Solette, with her friends Sarina and Fredjina

Want to hear more episodes from my podcast? You can find it here. The most popular episodes are Rosa David’s thoughts on how to apply to graduate school, Kim Brown’s discussion of tea, and Grace Dillon’s discussion of Indigenous Futurism. If you are interested in international careers, you might want to listen to this episode. Finally, for my Lusophone friends, you might like this Portuguese language episode.

Shawn Smallman

Chocolate in an age of COVID

Photo by Nathana Rebouças on Unsplash

I want to thank Prof. Kim Brown for this guest post:

Can a person be too interested in chocolate?  I think not.  We can see all dimensions of issues in international and global studies through the omniscient chocolate bar.  This time of the pandemic once again reveals the fragile nature of the lives of cocoa producers, their product, and consumers. This post explores what has happened to cocoa and chocolate during the past 14 months. 

While major multinational companies such as Cargill, Mars, Wrigley, Kraft, and Callebaut continue to publicly endorse responsible sourcing and long term planning for sustainability, they are not always able to achieve their goals.  The pandemic has made these goals particularly unattainable. Even as members of the confectionery industry remain committed to key goals –vanquishing child labor and land deforestation, providing better attention to the needs of women farmers and guaranteeing a living wage to farmers– the past 13  months have seen few achievements in these areas. Nevertheless smaller projects have seen success. For example, Barry Callebaut has provided support to African Startup Seekewa. Divine Chocolate has underwritten literacy programs in Ghana.

Product prices have fallen and the two countries producing 60% of the world’s chocolate –Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire– face not only falling prices but a surplus of cocoa brought on by COVID in the past 14 months. Initiatives to ensure farmers receive a living wage remain in place.  Plans are good but implementation is not always successful. A key example in this area is the Living Income Differential levied in the amount of $400 per ton proposed in both countries. It is designed to offset current low global prices. In central American producing areas such as Guatemala and Honduras, small farmers have struggled to get their products to market. 

For those interested in more information about chocolate, I would encourage you to consider subscribing to Confectionary News. While this is an official newsletter of the industry, it curates a wide range of information on everything chocolate from industry reports to NGO reports.  One of particular interest at this moment might be the Easter Scorecard from Be Slavery Free. This annual report in infographic form profiles how well roughly 20 chocolate producers are doing in areas from Fair Trade to child labor, to deforestation and providing a living income to farmers. It is also possible to work through global websites that detail statistics, trends, and follow the cost of COVID..  They include The International Cocoa Organization (ICCO), Confectionery News profiled above, and The Cocoa Initiative.

If you prefer podcasts and Twitter, Oliver Nieberg who has a number of rich podcasts about the industry has now moved to Lumina Intelligence and directs the Sustainable Food and Drink podcast. There are also powerful films including the 2012 film Shady Chocolate Business

On the supply chain end of things, niche marketing and futures predictions have given small chocolatiers a run for their money over the past 13 months. In spite of this, we see trends such as less plastic packaging, more biodegradable packaging especially on the part of the larger companies, and an increase in various types of vegan chocolate.  Companies such as Nestle have introduced a chocolate bar with no added sugar, only cocoa fruit and pulp. It is the Incoa chocolate bar, currently only available in France and the Netherlands. Other companies are infusing new ingredients from ancient sources such as baobab powder.  

Those of us working from home seem to have discovered more and more chocolate to buy but as we return to the workforce outside our homes it remains to be seen what we will do. In any case, keeping track of the chocolate bars around us is a very appropriate activity for consumers, researchers, and activists. 

Kim Brown, Portland State University

Photo by Pablo Merchán Montes on Unsplash

Food and Identity in Taiwan: a podcast episode

I’ve just posted a new podcast episode on Dispatch 7, global trends on all seven continents. In this episode I talked with my former Honor’s student, Cassidy Pfau, about her field research on food and identity in Taiwan. In particular, Cassidy talked about night markets, Indigenous cuisine, and the history of Taiwan’s food culture. Cassidy’s Honor’s thesis on this topic has been downloaded from the PSU library nearly 3,000 times now, so I think that this is a topic that attracts a lot of interest. You can listen to this episode here.

Shawn Smallman

Coffee in Nepal- A podcast interview with Andrew Russo

The latest episode of my podcast, Dispatch 7, will be a must-listen for coffee fans. In this week’s episode I interviewed Portland State University graduate student Andrew Russo about his experience as a coffee broker. We talked about how he came to enter the business, wrote a coffee tasting guide, and even worked to help a coffee estate in Nepal that was damaged by the 2015 earthquake. We also talked about his interest in the area of disaster management, and how he traveled with a class to study how Japan responded to the 2011 earthquake.

Shawn Smallman

Pass the Olive Oil, Please

I want to thank Caitlyn Ark for this wonderful blog post, which she wrote based on her experience doing a study-abroad class this summer.

Pass the Olive Oil, Please
The Healthy Diet of a Social Mediterranean, Caitlyn Ark

As I was leaning off the side of our very large, but only slightly crowded, ferry, I watched the gentle crashing of the startlingly wine blue waters below me. Wine deep, wine rich, I thought to myself, which something that the Ancient Greeks, who sailed these same waters, originally coined, intertwining food with the natural landscapes from which they come from.[1] The day was warm, but the kind of warm that drifted down from the bright Mediterranean sun to eventually settle on my shoulders like a soft shawl. I found myself at the bow of our boat, searching for the small nip of the wind to kick up my hair and offer a slight reprieve from the warm air. The Mediterranean is an oligotrophic sea, meaning it is very low in nutrients, so I was surprised to note that I could see schools of small fish darting around socially near the top of the water, playing a marine version of follow-the-leader. …

Diet and Global Health

What is the single most important factor in shaping global health in the developed world? Interestingly, it does not appear to be access to the most technologically sophisticated medical technology. In the chapter on health in our textbook, I start by saying: “Chile, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Guadalupe, Hong Kong, Israel, Malta, Martinique, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates are a diverse set of nations and territories. Yet they all have one fact in common: their citizens live longer than those of the United States, as do the citizens of many developed countries (Smallman and Brown, 2015, p. 236). Lee Miller and Weilu have an article titled “These are the World’s healthiest nations” in Bloomberg (February 24, 2019) which looks at global health statistics. The methodology looked at a number of factors -not only life expectancy- to rank countries. The top five countries were Spain, Italy, Iceland, Japan and Switzerland. There are many such rankings, and each one has methodological questions or choices. But all such national rankings of health can leave you questioning what you think you know, particularly about the role of diet in health. …

Climate Change and the Middle East

Image of Yemen from the CIA World Factbook, Yemen.
Image of Yemen from the CIA World Factbook, Yemen.

I’ve blogged before regarding the argument that a disastrous drought helped to feed the conflict in Syria. It’s worth revisiting the topic, however, based on a report edited by Caitlin Werrel and Francesco Femia at the Center for Climate and Security.The report, “Climate Change and the Arab Spring,” was published in February 2013, and makes the argument that climate change was a key factor in the Arab Spring, although that is not to say that it caused the uprisings. The essays in the collection clarify the truly global factors that underpinned this event, from declining wheat production in China, which undermined food security in the Middle East, to the “transcendent challenges” created by climate change globally.

The link between drought and warfare is not new. This linkage, for example, may help explain the collapse of classical Mayan civilization in the 9th century in the Yucatan peninsula and Central America. The Mayan city-states faced both an epic drought, and -based on the archaeological record- widespread warfare perhaps beginning around 800 AD (Michael Coe, The Maya, 162-163, Jared Diamond, Collapse, 172-174). The historical connection between drought and conflict is a deep one. …

The Cultured Chef: an International Cookbook for Kids

"Close Up Asian Cuisine" by rakratchada torsap at freedigitalphotos.net
“Close Up Asian Cuisine” by rakratchada torsap at freedigitalphotos.net

Nicholas Beatty and Coleen McIntyre have created a beautiful, well-researched and fun cookbook, which uses food to introduce children to other cultures. While it may see strange to review a cookbook for kids on an International and Global Studies blog for adults, most cookbooks don’t begin with the heading “How to become a global citizen,” or a list of “5 ways to become more globally aware.” Every section is organized around a world region, with recipes and information from a few countries. For example, the section on Hawaii describes how to make Musubi riceballs (which entails a discussion of Hawaii’s multicultural history), contains a kids’ activity to make a Lei, and tells about a Polynesian myth.The section on Mexico describes Day of the Dead bread, and discusses the artwork of Frida Kahlo and Jose Guadelupe Posada. Because one of the key goals of the book is to introduce children to global cultures, the work has unexpected sections such as “Musical Instruments of the World.” I liked that indigenous peoples also were included in the work, from the Yup’ik Inuit to the Maori. …

Chocolate Tasting: A Class Activity

This quarter I am teaching the “Introduction to International Studies” class, and this week we were talking about food. I always find that students enjoy this week, in part because crops form part of clear commodity chains so that every student can see the connection between themselves and food producers globally. I’ve also adopted a classroom assignment developed by my friend, Kim Brown, which is quite popular- the chocolate tasting. Later in the class I lectured on bioterrorism and cacao in Brazil, which I’ve also covered in an earlier post here. I also showed Robert Beckford’s clever documentary video on rice, chocolate and gold production, which available for free online. The food unit follows a section on development theories. Beckford’s film was engaging for students, but he also tied events in Africa to IMF/World Bank policies, as well as the global trading system, which makes it a good fit for the class. But before I arrived at the core content of the class, I first did the chocolate tasting.

Picture by Suat Eman at freedigitalphotos.net

I went to my local New Seasons market, where I purchased raw cacao beans. After some taste testing, my daughters gave me the strong advice not to give this to students without some honey to sweeten it. The food court gave me some latex gloves to break up chocolate bars. And World Market had a wide selection of chocolate bars with different levels of cacao. I broke up the chocolate into small blocks on paper towels and called up the class up by rows. We started with the cacao beans. Students were a little hesitant to bite them because the outer shell looks so hard. I explained that these beans were from Ecuador or Peru, the original homeland of cacao, and were used as money in ancient MesoAmerica. After tasting the cacao beans (a few student genuinely liked them, but they weren’t very popular), students then moved to chocolate which had chiles. The ancient Aztecs drank a mix of chiles and chocolate, which was reserved for the elites. It must have been popular- traces of chocolate have been found on the inside of pottery containers found in the U.S. Southwest, where it doubtless was brought on foot. After that the students were able to sample chocolate with different levels of cacao (or cocoa- the term is spelled both ways). The 70% cacao level seemed most popular, while everyone thought the 90% was too bitter (although I favor that with single malt scotch). The class had fun, and nobody took too much chocolate. Many students would break even the small amount of chocolate that I had put out in half. There was a lot of laughter as people watched their friends’ faces as they ate the cacao beans.

I deliberately chose dark chocolate, so that students who were lactose intolerant could take part. But I also warned the students that almost all the chocolate bars said that they were processed in a facility that also handled “milk, nuts and wheat.” If you can have someone help you break up the chocolate (thank you to my amazing graduate assistant) it makes the preparation much easier. …

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