Food Follows Function (Why we eat what we eat)

I’ve kept these early posts focused on issues that many people can relate to, rather than going into systems theory, complexity, chaos and more. Second-order effects touch the common things we consume, not just the esoteric. 

Second-order effects are everywhere — even in the choice of what we eat. But who chooses the choices? Some varieties of crops cannot easily be shipped far or produced for large markets. Other varieties are at risk of shocks and therefore put their focused producers and consumers at risk. 

There seems to be a preferred direction to the methods of producing food. A trend that grew with farming technology and regional and global trade is the production of crops at scale (to serve a large base of buyers) and with efficiency (to deal with a larger base of competitors driving down price). Scale and efficiency are needed especially when food is shipped long distances to reach its consumers. While consumers benefit from lower food prices, the variety of the foods available also changes, dependent on scale and efficiency. That direction has consequences.

What are crops? They are the transformation of sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into digestible energy in the form of fruits and vegetables. Those crops require labor to cultivate and harvest them, require demand for their continued production, and ultimately require transportation to deliver them to consumers.

By a few measures, the situation has improved over the years. In 1900, US households spent on average 43% of their income on food. By 2003, US households spent just 13% to feed themselves. Globally, famines and starvation are much less common. Where famine does occur, it is now more commonly a distribution problem than a production problem.

And related to cost, over the last century, more efficient production (more tractors and fewer horses) meant a drop in the number of people who work in food production. The percentage population engaged in farming decreased dramatically over the last 100 years. In 1900, over a third of Americans worked on farms. By 2000, only around 2% did. Fewer people were needed, the average farm size grew, and food production increased. (Note that over that time people in food services remained pretty flat as a percentage — it takes a similar number of people to cook and serve food as before).

While we look at food in this post, the question of who chooses our choices extends far and into many domains (see the discussion of a cerulean sweater in the movies). Let’s look at some of those choices. Why do we eat the foods that we eat?

Bananas

Until recently, fresh foods that came from distant places were rare.

Then, in the last century, fresh food transported large distances rather quickly grew to be common, though with some limitations. The following 1894 article just couldn’t see how quickly things would change: “Our neighbors of northern Europe are relatively so far removed from fruit-growing regions that their winter supply of fresh fruit seems likely to remain limited and costly, however great their willingness to buy.” Related to that, it was only 200 years ago that ice was first shipped internationally for food preservation (and that took a while to catch on).

This 1946 account, even more bizarre to modern readers, of author Evelyn Waugh eating the three bananas the post-war British government distributed to his children, offers a glimpse of how the banana was once rare outside its areas of cultivation: “[A]nd before the anguished eyes of his children, he poured on cream, which was almost unprocurable, and sugar, which was heavily rationed, and ate all three.”

There are around 1,000 banana varieties. Yet, the Cavendish banana is the most exported today. In general, bananas are commercially propagated asexually — by tissue cultures, suckers, and rhizomes — rather than through planting seeds. That means that commercial banana plants of the same variety are often parts of the same mother plant. In some banana varieties, such as the common Cavendish, the seeds are so rare and small that it is easy to miss that they are there at all. In fact, for many varieties of banana, long-term human cultivation means that the plants are now dependent on humans for their growth.

There are efficiencies to raising single banana varieties at scale (similar care, harvesting methods, ripening etc). But those efficiencies also mean greater risk. New diseases can wipe out entire farms. Also, the changed reality of more global travel means that what may have remained a local disease in the past can now spread around the world.

It’s happened with bananas before. The Gros Michel banana that dominated in the US until the 1960s was largely wiped out as an export fruit. The cause was a type of fusarium wilt (from a fungus), also called “Panama disease” because of where the disease was first identified.

The gap opened by the Gros Michel’s susceptibility to Panama disease led to the Cavendish banana’s popularity — a wave of popularity (due to immunity) that the variety has ridden for 50 years. Now that Panama disease has mutated it affects Cavendish bananas as well. (There has however been some success at genetic modification for Panama disease resistance in the Cavendish.)

Bananas’ determining input: labor (harvest efficiency), transportation (ability to keep unripened until reaching market), and disease shocks to production. 

Avocados

There are hundreds of avocado varieties. But today, the Hass avocado dominates in the US. Why would this be? Better flavor? More nutrition? Cheaper? Easier to grow closer to this market?

The Hass avocado didn’t win on flavor, nutrition, price, or location. It won as farmers started to ship avocados long distances to reach markets, especially markets in which the avocado was not well known.

The Hass avocado travels well. Its skin is thick (less likely to bruise) and dark (less likely to show the bruises it does have).

The other avocados commonly seen — Fuerte, Bacon, Reed — have less of those qualities. In fact, the Bacon avocado is among those whose skin is so delicate that you don’t need to peel the fruit at all. Just eat the skin along with the flesh. Perhaps better for consumers who live close to source or who can pay more for careful transportation, but not for mass distribution. Hass wins there.

Avocados’ determining input: transportation. The difficulty of transporting the delicate fruit meant that thicker and darker skins win at scale.

Strawberries

Economic forces change what crops are planted and picked. This 1995 article notes: “The strawberry is one of the most labor-intensive row crops. It is risky and expensive to grow, but it can yield more revenue per acre than virtually any other crop except marijuana.”

Strawberries are easily damaged by mold, rain, and bruising. Only so much can be done for that, if the berries are grown outdoors. For fresh strawberries, not frozen or otherwise processed fruit, fragility forces some decisions.

Some changes are invisible to the consumer, such as growing strawberries indoors on raised table tops to make them easier to pick and care for. (Otherwise, strawberry picking in rocky fields tends to be painful.) Other changes are more noticeable. Labor shortages explain why the strawberries you eat have gotten bigger — it’s labor saving to favor larger berry varieties. Less picking per pound or pint. When’s the last time you saw miniature Alpine strawberries for sale?

Strawberries’ determining input: labor. If consumers buy strawberries by the pound or pint (weight or volume) and labor is relatively expensive to handle delicate fruit, then larger fruit win.

Potatoes

There are thousands of varieties, from the common Clearwater Russet used by McDonald’s to the rare La Bonnotte, grown only on a French island in the Atlantic (and the most expensive potato in the world).

Potatoes also have an association with starvation, such as the Great famine caused by potato blight in Ireland. But potato blight was found throughout the US and Europe, so why did it hit Ireland the hardest?

Some of the answer relates to Ireland’s moist climate, which helped the blight grow and spread. But another part of the answer was from the systemic risk in Irish food production. As more Irish were pushed off the land by English colonization, they were left with fewer, and poorer places to grow their crops.

What grew well on the remaining farmable areas? Potatoes. By the mid-1800s much of Ireland’s food source had converted to potatoes and of a single strain, the Irish Lumper. This potato gained popularity the century before since it was best suited to Ireland’s moist climate, could grow in nutrient-poor soils, and was calorie dense. Like the Gros Michel banana above, dependence on one variety of plant exposes a population to systemic risk. As the blight grew over the late 1840s and early 1850s and with few other food options, one million people died from famine and another million emigrated. The famine caused by potato blight had a major impact on creating the Irish diaspora.

Potatoes’ determining input: demand. Single variety production is better suited to a specific environment. That also increases risk of a large sudden shock due to disease.

Conclusion

  • Who chooses the choices? Many of the crops you eat are determined by what scales efficiently and ships well, not what is tastiest or healthiest. Though not discussed above, some of those choices impact health later on.
  • Sometimes size is favored not for consumer attraction, but for cost reasons.
  • Dependence on single crop varieties increases efficiency, but leaves exposure to a shock when things break down. It may be impossible to choose otherwise, even knowing the risk of shock.
  • These conclusions apply in other areas, not related to food.