A human being is primarily a bag for putting food into…

George Orwell, ”The Road to Wigan Pier”

Happy New Year, farm fam!

At the stroke of midnight on December 31, 2023, a whole New Year was laid out before us all. A whole new canvas on which to write our future appeared. What are you going to do in this bright new expanse?

One of the things we’ve resolved to do is pay even greater attention to where our food comes from; and to pay more attention to what is actually in the foods we eat.

This isn’t something new for us. Christine has avoided gluten for years. We’ve raised our own eggs and chickens, free of antibiotics and synthetic chemical inputs, for a couple of years now. The beef we buy is both humanely and naturally raised right across the lane from our homestead. And the vegetables and herbs grown in our gardens are chemical free; raised solely with organic inputs and compost made right here on our land.

But, we’re still a long way from being completely independent from the grocer. And honestly, on our limited acreage we cannot realistically hope to be so. While we may not need eggs, chicken, or beef, there are still many staples that we must purchase for use on the homestead.

And while we put a lot of thought and care into what we put into our gardens and animals on the homestead, we’ve learned that we have to watch carefully what we purchase at the grocer and elsewhere. Unfortunately the level of care we exercise simply cannot be expected by profit driven grocers or other food purveyors. It’s surprising what finds its way into our food when we’re not paying attention.

Sometimes it is as if we are Orwell’s “bag for putting food into,” without thought to the quality or quantity of that food input. But here is some food for thought, or at least what’s been on our minds lately when it comes to food. I may even throw in a prediction or two for the future of our food supply here in the US.

We want to avoid GMOs (genetically modified organisms) wherever possible on our homestead. This sounds easy, but it really is not. More and more GMOs find their way into our foods everyday. And since more and more people are jumping on the No-GMO bandwagon, it isn’t always referred to as “GMO.” We’re starting to see “Contains A Bioengineered Food Ingredient” and other such language finding its way onto our food labels.

To be fair, I find GMO or bioengineered food to be a mixed bag. On one hand, you’ve got a rapidly ballooning world population that will eventually exceed the natural carrying capacity of the planet (if it hasn’t already). Hence you need to be able to create more food than the natural, conventional order allows. On the other hand though, humanity shows time and time again that we’re never quite as smart as we think we are. I worry that genetically modified food may have detrimental side effects and unintended consequences that we’ve yet to realize. After all, Mother Nature always wins.

Although given the choice between GMOs or the lab grown, bacterial protein goo suggested by George Monbiot in Regenesis: Saving the World without Devouring the Planet, I think I’d choose GMOs. The proposed Solein protein still grosses me out. I’ll always and forever liken it to Soylent Green from 1973. (More about this here.)

Speaking of protein, what about insect protein finding its way into our food? Surprisingly, this grosses me out less than the previous two options. Over 2 billion people worldwide eat insects as part of their diet. This isn’t “accidentally swallowing a spider in your sleep,” bug-eating either… We’re talking intentionally eating bugs as a part of the daily diet. Of those folks eating insects, over 80 percent live in the southern hemisphere.

But I bet we see insect protein finding its way into more and more of our foods within the next decade. In fact, I’m willing to bet we’ll see it a lot sooner than that too. My gut says maybe 2025, or 2026.

Why?

Well, Tyson foods, one of the largest food manufactures in North America, is really interested in insect protein. So interested, in fact, that they acquired a minority interest in the Netherlands-based company Protix in late-2023. Additionally, Tyson is partnering with Protix to bring the insect ingredient maker to the US. Here, Tyson’s animal waste will be fed to black soldier flies, which will, in turn, produce soldier fly larva to be fed to pets, poultry, and fish.

Don’t worry though. These insect ingredients aren’t going into human food… yet.

Tyson’s chief financial officer, John R. Tyson, himself has said of the merger, “Today, we’re focused on more of [an] ingredient application with insect protein than we are a consumer application.”

But notice he doesn’t leave out the idea of human consumption, or a consumer application. In fact, Tyson’s own website states that this strategic acquisition is to expand the use of insect ingredient proteins for the future sustainability of the global food system.

SPRINGDALE, Ark. – Oct. 17, 2023 – Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE: TSN), one of the world’s largest food companies, has reached an agreement for a two-fold investment with Protix, the leading global insect ingredients company. The strategic investment will support the growth of the emerging insect ingredient industry and expand the use of insect ingredient solutions to create more efficient sustainable proteins and lipids for use in the global food system. The agreement combines Tyson Foods’ global scale, experience and network with Protix’s technology and market leadership to meet current market demand and scale production of insect ingredients.

(Full press release here.)

I’m sorry, but I read that as we’re getting bugs in our food within the next 5- to 10-years. My money is on 2026, but maybe they’ll get authorization pushed through even faster. After all, Tyson has a lot of money.

And, again, I’m maybe somewhat less opposed to eating bugs than I am to GMOs and lab grown bacterial goo. That last one almost makes me want to be a vegetarian.

Almost, but not quite.

And that leads into the last area we’ve taken note of as we wrapped up 2023.

In recent years there has been a lot of hype and emphasis directed towards the need for mankind to transition to a plant based diet. Documentaries such as Kiss the Ground, The Game Changers, Cowspiracy, and Eating Our Way to Extinction all profess in one manner or another that if we just transition to a plant based diet we can cure nearly all of the world’s food and environmental woes.

We find we can agree with a lot of what these documentaries put forward. We wholly agree that our current industrial food system is broken and damaging to the environment. We absolutely agree that we need more plant based foods in both our daily meals and in the world food system overall. We cannot argue with the fact that the northern hemisphere eats an incredibly disproportionate amount of protein in the forms of beef, poultry, and fish when compared to the rest of the world; nor that the US is even more disproportionately consuming these proteins than any other country. And we cannot disagree that there are disproportionate rates of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity among these higher protein consumers.

But we cannot agree that a plant based diet is the right answer. A magic bullet to fix the world.

Modern, industrialized farming along with concentrated animal feeding operations, centralization of processing facilities, and the massive need for fossil fuel inputs for transportation of food in the current system is wreaking a nightmare across the landscape and environment. But that can be countered with small scale, decentralized, and efficient community and regionally scaled agriculture. Local and sustainable food that doesn’t have to travel thousands of miles before it gets to your plate. We can raise and eat meat, we just need to do it correctly again.

And we’re humans. Humans are omnivores. We are meant to eat both vegetables and meat. And the combination of vegetables and meat is what enables us to live as we were meant to on this earth.

But we do have our proportions all out of wack.

I won’t lie, I loved the dinner pictured below. But honestly, it is not balanced. Nowhere near where it should be. There should be far more fresh fruit and vegetables on the plate. Starches, carbohydrates, and dairy are all completely absent – although often far to heavy in comparison to the veggies. The meat portions are nearly 4x what would have been found on a dinner plate a century ago.

Whether it was the Food Pyramid of the late 70s and 80s, or the My Healthy Plate of the 2000s, we know what our proportions should look like. But that’s not what we eat. It’s certainly not what we order when eating out. We’re too high on the proportions of proteins, starches, and carbs. We’re too low on the proportions of fruits and vegetables.

We’re driving the industrialized production and manufacture of food with our food choices. And that, is what we should all be thinking more about.

We know it certainly is on our minds going into 2024.

We’re thinking a whole lot about food. Real food, and a real love of food. Foods that were grown and raised; locally and humanely. Not foods that were manufactured.

We’re all about food freedom and food choice. We encourage everyone to join us in thinking more about the food we eat. After all, “food conscious” sounds so much better than Orwell’s, “… a bag for putting food into.”

Take care, Farm Fam!