We live in a world driven by technology. It dominates our lives today at a pace unknown in the history of humankind. We decry our loss of freedom to the demands of the technological world. Yet few of us would rejoice at living off the grid and joining the hunter-gather world. Two books project diametrically opposed perspectives on the future of technology on life as we know it. Eating to Extinction paints a doomsday scenario as our modern lifestyle threatens indigenous cultures and food diversity.

What Technology Wants suggests that the benefits of technology to society outweigh its detriments. Are we doomed or do we need to learn to deal with technological advancement? In this post and the next I delve into the future of food diversity, why it is important, and what are the costs associated with protecting indigenous cultures.

Eating to Extinction is a call to action. The book’s subtitle, The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them, states its mission. As a child I loved exploring world geography. The book took my mind on a trip to 34 sites around the globe, enriching my sense of variation in diverse cultures and food habits. Each site was paired with a threatened food and the people trying to save it. My tour started in Tanzania to learn about Hazda honey and ended up in Venezuela highlighting Crillo cacao. Closer to home I visited Sapelo Island featuring the Geechee red pea and learned about bison meat from the Great Plains. The virtual tour brought back pleasant memories of a real-life academic retreat on Sapelo and growing up in a small town on the Canadian plains.

The importance of biodiversity is the major theme in Eating to Extinction. Modern technology encroaches on diversity in many ways. Homogenization of our dietary patterns squeezes out all but the preferred species of plants and animals we rely on for food. The book’s author, Dan Saladino, introduces us to the eight centers of diversity on the planet from which 20% of the world’s flora evolved. For example, India is the source of all citrus fruits we eat today, wheat and barley come from the Fertile Crescent, and corn originated in Central America. Evolution over thousands of years led to the crops we rely on today. As we become more dependent on crop monocultures, the role of seed banks becomes more critical. Norman Borlaug and his Green Revolution helped feed starving populations, but it led to greater dependence on fewer varieties.

Hunter gatherers provide food to their communities in certain locations but not in sufficient quantities. Urbanization and its seizure of fertile land decreases both farming and foraging. Indigenous cultures shrink under the pressures from land encroachment and an inability to feed its people with traditional crops. Climate change, plant disease, and lack of transfer of cultural knowledge from one generation to the next threaten diversity of food sources.

Agriculture is the way we feed ourselves today. Disease currently threatens many of the crops we value most. The Cavendish banana is a prime example. To save the banana for future generations we will need to either adopt GMOs or move away from this monoculture to a wider range of varieties. Meat eating became more common when we switched from hunting to farming. Eating meat changed our human physiology. Bison formed the North American ecosystem. Hunting decimated the bison whose remnants were saved by interbreeding with cattle. The global meat industry requires uniformity. There are no seedbanks available for chicken or other farm animals. We rely on devoted farmers to keep alternatives viable.

Traditional processed foods are also disappearing. Indigenous cultures seek ways to preserve foods. Wild yeasts provide the means to ferment lambic beer. Rather than relying on preferred selections of tea cultivars, residents of Xishuangbanna, China, forage wild Pu-Erh tea in the local ancient forest. They never taste the same tea twice in their lifetime. Sounds exotic, but does the concept fit into our fast-paced modern lifestyle? Caffeine is the world’s favorite drug. We are eating to extinction exquisite treats such as baklava-like pastries in Syria, quizha cake in Nablus, and Crillo cacao from Venezuela.      

Take home lesson. Eating to Extinction is a warning to modern civilization. Our culinary habits threaten the diversity of our food supply. Many traditional food-preservation techniques are not suited to scale processing. As the use of pesticides increase the number of varieties of food-producing plants decrease. Standardization of food products and global distribution decrease diversity of food sources. Economics and convenience overpower culture and ecology. Not to worry, we can find Pur-Eh tea and Crillo chocolate to satisfy our palates at amazon.com. Does the availability of these items online make or counter Saladino’s point?

And yet, we all benefit from technology at some point. Even the Unabomber rode his bike to town to rent a car so he could travel to the grocery store to supplement the vegetables he grew in his garden. Is there a middle way to preserve food diversity and hold on to our precious technology? Or is it too late to make meaningful change? Meet me back here next week for an alternate view.  

Coming soon: Can technology increase food diversity around the world?