Issue 41: Feeding Children During the Global Quest to Feed Machines
Kwame Richardson FRSA
Social entrepreneur and lawyer focused on the future of food at Multitude Advisors, part of Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub
Dear Agripreneur Community,
Welcome to the 41st installment of the Agripreneur.info newsletter, where we provide a monthly round-up of content specifically curated for social entrepreneurs at the intersection of agriculture and technology.
I have a parasocial relationship with the author and intellectual, Richard Wright, though he was born during the Second Industrial Revolution in the early 20th century. We both shared the experience of having to support our mothers from adolescence to adulthood after the “man of the house” left our home. Another connection is the starvation that ensued after the desertion, not just for food but for knowledge as well.
Wright states that “[h]unger stole upon me so slowly that at first I was not aware of what hunger really meant. Hunger had always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at me gauntly. The hunger I had known before this had been no grim, hostile stranger; it had been a normal hunger that had made me beg constantly for bread, and when I ate a crust or two I was satisfied. But this new hunger baffled me, scared me, made me angry and insistent…I would grow dizzy and my vision would dim. I became less active in my play, and for the first time in my life I had to pause and think of what was happening to me.”
As we enter the Fourth Industrial Revolution, childhood malnutrition is a still a global issue though we have had a Green Revolution that provided us with the ability to produce and distribute nutritious food to all. Interestingly, with so many assertions of spirituality around the world, it’s a wonder if the God of Abraham, The Buddha, or Confucius would accept this distribution of food—regardless of any conflict.
Since its inception, Multitude’s sustainable impact goal has been to feed children (or more generally, we adopted UN SDG #2-Zero Hunger). We start our journey in meeting this goal through this writing where we will use Issue 35’s framework to explore designing systems to end childhood malnourishment through examining the stories and science of providing nutritious food to children—as well as engineering and designing systems that distributes nutritious food in the hands of the global youth in this Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Photo by Kelly on Pexels
Here are the top voices that inspired us this month:
Perception: Art & Science
Art: How has a child’s experience evolved where society was prompted to focus on their nutrition?
[Y]ou can’t start to create programs to feed children until you see them as children, different from adults. And the emergence of the idea of childhood being a separate stage of life is tied to a particular point in history: the industrial revolution…[B]efore, kids would have worked alongside their parents and siblings on the farm or in the family trade. After the industrial revolution and urbanization, things are different. A family doesn’t work together. Jobs in these new factories are often dangerous. At first, kids were working in factories, but it was increasingly clear that they weren’t exactly suited to it. —Cynthia Graber & Nicola Twilley, Hosts of Gastropod podcast
Cynthia Graber & Nicola Twilley, Lunch Gets Schooled (encore), Gastropod (podcast), 21 September 2022, 54 minutes.
So one thing to keep in mind is that at the turn of the 20th century, even well into the 20th century, the idea of sort of age-appropriate foods or children’s foods is a relatively new one, and not a particularly widespread one. So it was pretty common for children to eat and drink the same kinds of things that adults did. Which meant that plenty of children drank things like coffee and tea. Many drank beer and children smoked often…So physicians and nurses who are working in schools start to actually document just how unhealthy so many kids seem to be. There was a sort of assumption that well, they’re young, you know, they’re sort of at the prime of their life, they should generally be healthy. And that turned out not to be the case. —Andrew Ruis, Historian at University of Wisconsin-Madison
Cynthia Graber & Nicola Twilley, Lunch Gets Schooled (encore), Gastropod (podcast), 21 September 2022, 54 minutes.
Science: What are the present food solutions that have been developed to solve the issue of childhood malnutrition?
The best?treatment for childhood malnutrition might seem obvious: more, and more nutritious, food. And the standard approach is indeed just that. Over the years, formulae for ready-to-use supplementary food (rusf)—bars and packets of paste intended for moderate cases and made from rice, lentils, sugar, soya oil and milk powder—and similar therapeutic food (rutf), a nut-based treatment for more severe instances, have been developed. These work. [However], a new mixture for the treatment of malnutrition [is being developed]. Besides providing nutrients, this formulation also enhances gut health. That brings benefits to the malnourished, which the conventional approach does not.
Malnutrition can be treated by encouraging the right gut bacteria, The Economist, 28 September 2022.
Photo by Himal Amarasinghe on Pexels
Production: Engineering and Design
Engineering: Which system can be implemented to provide nutritious food to children?
School meal programmes are among the largest and most effective social safety nets for school-aged children. They not only keep children, particularly girls, in school, but help improve learning outcomes by providing better and more nutritious diets. They also support local economies, create jobs and livelihoods in communities, and ultimately help break the links between hunger, an unsustainable food system and the learning crisis. —World Food Programme
A Generation at Risk: Nearly Half of Global Food Crisis Hungry Are Children, African Business, 16 September 2022.
Design: What insights into the next generation of children will help enhance their food experience?
I think first and foremost, food is a way of connections and connecting. Connecting with themselves, so inner development, as well as connecting with each other. They're looking for food that enables the diversity of experiences. So, it's their primary way of connecting with the world beyond their prime first families, especially when they leave home, go to college, start school, start jobs…They're the same age as Google. So, Google was formed in 1998. They don't know a world without digital and digital enables more connections. So, they can see instantly what's happening around the world. I would say in some ways they're more connected to people their age around the world than perhaps their own first families that they grew up with. —June Jo Lee, Resident Food Ethnographer at Google
Dani Nierenberg, Kim Severson and June Jo Lee on Gen Z Food Trends, ****Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg (by Food Tank) (podcast), 15 September 2022, 1 hour, 10 minutes.
Youth can bring a lot to our work. They can bring creativity, energy, and vision on what should be our priorities and building the future of food. With the right level of resources, with a stronger participation of women consumers and youth. With a bold vision and effective partnerships, I'm confident we will be able to write a new chapter in the book of the Future of Food. —Dr Andy Zynga, CEO of EIT Food
Matt Eastland, The Future of Food: Skills for the future,?The Food Fight (podcast), 21 September 2022, 19 minutes.
Other Reference:
Wright, Richard. Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth. New York, Harper & Row, 1966
Thank you for taking the time to read our newsletter and we wish everyone a pleasant month.
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Warm regards
领英推荐
Kwame Richardson
Founder
Multitude Advisors Ltd
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Professor at Cornell University
2 年Great work Kwame! So wonderful to see you doing this work with these priorities. Be well.