The modern food system has entangled the planet in a web of complex journeys.

Attempting to understand the complexity of food commodification and trading for a shift to simpler, more localised regenerative systems, beneficial for all.

The Food: Bigger Than The Plate exhibition at the V&A Museum in 2019, showcased what they called “current experiments” in the food system. With works both speculative and commerical, the exhibit addressed what us as viewers — as consumers — think we know (knew), and what additional education was required to understand the challenges of the food supply chain.

This is part three in a four-part series Rethinking Waste that considers the four exhibit sections: Composting, Farming, Trading and Eating. This post considers alternatives to a commodified food trading system that would allow instead for local food design, for traceability and for more informed purchasing.

“The modern food system has entangled the planet in a web of complex journeys, transactions, relationships and processes. Yet most of this vast, all-encompassing system is invisible to the average human. Hiding in plain sight, in our everyday activities of shopping, cooking, eating and disposing, this system is one with which we interact daily, maybe even hourly. But most of us cannot in good faith say that we really understand how it works.” — words from the FOOD: Bigger Than The Plate exhibition book (page 72).

Find the previous stories here: part one and part two.

Trading.

A quote in an interview with Brewster Kneen of Share International, ‘From Land To Mouth’ (1994), says:

“Food is a commodity, a way of making money. Feeding people is simply a by-product of the system’.

And this feels like it stands true today when land is used moreso for growing crops to turn into bioplastic or animal fodder than it is to actually feed people. Especially when we take into account the ecological and social effects that industrial farming has on its own, food production is not sustainable — it’s simply economical. It would be interesting to see an update of this exhibition now, post-Covid 19 pandemic and Brexit.

By understanding the supply chains that bring our food, recognising the folk/animals/plants/resources involved, and turning attention to the advertising that makes food a commodity rather than a need, we can begin to register how our citizen voices can make systemic change. As seen in the previous post on a shift to farming methods, so too do we need a shift in the way we trade — this is why I believe an update following two major global events would further the insight.

Local food?design.

Designing food and trading in a way that serves the local economy and cultural needs is not only supporting preservation of wisdom and skills, but reducing waste and improving resilience. Such projects include:

? Company Drinks, as mentioned above

? sulsolsal Cerveja de Abacaxi pineapple beer

? Raw milk vending machines across Europe for direct-to-consumer sales

Plus all of the byproduct materials I highlighted in part 1 of this article, including Vegea grape leather, Ecovative mushroom interiors, and Kaffeform’s coffee ground waste cups.

One way to make hyperlocally-designed food that can be doctored to suit another’s locale is by ensuring open source information and instructions. In this way there is the sharing of local wisdom, yet with inspiration to look at ingredients in one’s own environment; this enables local trade from local knowledge, but on a global scale.

Cube Cola

Cube-Cola is one such operation (originating in 2003 out of Cube Cinema in Bristol, UK) that is resisting the secrecy of well-known branded products and the proprietary knowledge that comes with it, into one that is open source and fun. Their cola recipe was reverse engineered from analysing Coca Cola over a two-year period, and is now sold as a concentrate to such makers as Company Drinks above — or to individuals. You can access the open source Cube-Cola recipe for free, or purchase the concentrate.

Traceability.

Jaffa Orange wrappers

Fruit was traditionally wrapped in printed tissue paper to protect the fruit from mould during transportation, and was utilised as a way to essentially brand a country. As shown by the photo below of exhibition information placards, the retaining of these wrappers gives a glimpse into how nations brand their product. They are also an artefact of the current state of refrigeration required, or of breeding and pesticide use, because tissues would only now be present for a luxury organic and fresh product.

Provenance

Provenance is a technology software company that transforms supply chain data from all sorts of industries into credible shopper-facing communications. Their framework covers all of the phrases you come across with sustainability and ethical credentials, but use an “Integrity Council” as the third party so businesses aren’t judging their own actions.

You’d expect it to be highlighting blockchain technology, but this word is nowhere to be found. While in 2019 when the exhibition was on Provenance was new and intriguing, with QR codes that gave you insight into each element of the product, these days it feels like more lip service, with the platform being a place to create content for communications rather than the actual supply chain monitoring itself. Though there are verified checks that can give customer assurance, it isn’t really removing any of the confusion or improving supply chain ethics, because data is still manually updated? It’s unclear, and this doesn’t feel like traceability or transparency.

Understanding science.

Edible Geography/Gastropod

The Edible Geography blog and associated Gastropod podcast from Nicola Twilley highlights the history of food, from food packaging to food waste to food misconceptions, through the lens of science. The blog is now not really updated but there is an archive, while the podcast is fresh every two weeks. I don’t know now why in particular this was highlighted at the FOOD exhibition, but I made a note on it so it must have had some impact.

Selfmade

The Selfmade project, from scientist Christina Agapakis and scent expert Sissel Tolaas, challenges attitudes towards bacteria by creating a ‘microbial portrait’ of the donor; bacteria is taken from people’s ears, toes and armpits and used in the creation of cheese. The ones shown at this exhibition were remade in London by Helene Steiner with the help of the biotech startup lab Open Cell.

Black Pudding Market

With science comes the need to question ethics. One such project does that, and in fact could not be produced in full for the V&A exhibition due to legalities. John O’Shea’s Black Pudding Market questions if vegetarians would eat black pudding if it came from a live animal rather than a dead one (it wouldn’t for me, the texture and smell would be enough to put me off). O’Shea’s research led him into the legal grey areas to explore the purpose of animals in our food supply chains; rather than being hosts, could there be a symbiosis in this commodity? Frankly I can’t see the benefit, and don’t really understand at what point we’d be taking blood from a live pig anyway?

Shipping.

“In developing countries food tends to be lost at the front of the food chain, rather than at the end. Poor infrastructure — lack of refrigeration, transportation, storage, food-processing plants and communications — equates to a loss of 630 million tonnes, almost the same as in the developed world.” — ‘Rewilding’ by Isabella Tree (page 134).

Growerame

Due to an imbalance between imports and exports, every year 26.1 million shipping container loads travel from China, but only 12.9m loads travel back to China — meaning that half of the containers going back to Asia are empty.

Innovation Design Engineering graduate Philippe Hohlfeld stumbled upon this fact after eating a banana and wondering where it came from, so he decided to map out all of the world’s shipping routes. The solution was to house a vertical farm within the empty shipping containers so that there was an efficient use for the journey. Back in 2016 when Hohlfeld had developed this concept, it relied on the designer doing the unloading and harvesting of the farms himself once they reached their destination — it’s uncertain if he managed to sell his crops to retailers in the Chinese food market as a luxury item.

Banana Story

Johanna Seelemann and Bj?rn Steinar Blumenstein developed the Banana Story project to expose the banana’s hidden journey. Banana Made-In Label is an illustrated label that shows the journey a banana takes, while Banana Passport is a tongue-in-cheek artefact of that journey, perhaps that the banana hands over to its eater. They follow the journey of a banana from Ecuador to Iceland: 12,534 km in 30 days on a cargo ship, passing through 33 different pairs of hands.

The next article will consider Eating, an act of consumption where there is no away, and systems are not equipped in industrialised society to create circular loops. Until these designers attempted to make it so. ? Follow and select the ?? to receive published articles in your feed.

Originally published in a longer format via my website — www.stephaniesteele.co.uk — on September 20th, 2022.

Stephanie Steele is the founder of Steele Studio, a space that educates everyday folk on the interconnectedness of our food, fibre and fashion systems through community courses and workshops. As an organic food grower and textiles sustainability specialist, she otherwise writes about art, textiles, plants, running and systems design.

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