Olann's World in 2050 : Food

Olann is the 2 year old son of Jane, a good friend of mine.  Jane, by her own admission, is an “eco-dummy.”  While I would like to define what an eco-dummy is, I’ll do that another time. Right now, I want to tell my friend about the world her son is likely to live in when he is 38 in 2050, especially the food he'll be familiar with.

The Earth speaks to most contemporary western humans through the availability and cost of everyday products.  So, any person walking into a Price Chopper, Kruger, Aldi, Food Lion, Wegmans, or any other common supermarket anywhere in the United States has the probability of finding well-stacked tables of fruits and vegetables from all over the world any time of year, and market aisles with routinely well-stocked shelves of packaged rice, pet food, candy, cereal, soda, coffee, pasta, etc.

Earth, however, is in the throes of a catastrophe it has never known before. Olann is growing up in the Anthropocene Age (The Age of Man). For the first time in Earth’s history, one of its own species is the cause of catastrophic transformations having a profound and irreversible impact on life all over the globe.

Change of this scale is best comprehended by scientists and other educated citizens who study and know the big picture.  The average Jose and Julie American, working responsibly to manage a life in the increasingly shrunken middle class, comprehend the impact of global warming/climate change only in the mundane realities of their every day lives—like when they go shopping.

Let me introduce Olann in 2050:  He’s 38 years old, married to Amita (of Hindu heritage), also 38; they have two children: Ena, 8, and Caspar, 7.  Both Olann and Amita graduated from a technical college in South Carolina, but now they live outside Houston, Texas where Olann works in middle management at the People H2O desalination plant, and Amita works as an engineering assistant at a biotech company near where Galveston, Texas used to be. (Galveston will be long buried by the rising sea level.) Amita commutes via aquatrain.

Olann and Amita live in a seapod community unit.  These are common along the Gulf Coast and the Atlantic side of Florida. Olann’s and Amita’s decision to move into one suit what others of their education and income level will do.

Gulf Coast Sea Pod Community

Fundamental aspects of Olann’s and his family’s life together with regards to food, clothing, water, animals, outdoor and cultural activities, social realities will be significantly different from what their parents knew as normal in 2014.  But perhaps food is the most fundamental.

How about a cup of coffee? There is a good chance by the time Olann is old enough to want to try coffee in about 2030 when he is 18, he will do so only with his friends on a very special occasion, such as a senior class trip to Washington, D.C. where coffee will be found at specialty cafes.  A regular-sized cup of nothing particularly fancy will cost the better part of four hours work at minimum wage pay or about $60.

Cup o' Joe: $60

By 2050, coffee won’t exactly be extinct, but its traditional growing areas in South and Central America and West Africa will have shrunk considerably due to temperature extremes, inundating rains, insect infestation, and ‘coffee rust,’ a fungus currently destroying Arabica coffee crops all over the world. The coffee plantations that survive will have moved north to eastern Texas and southern France where the climate will be more suitable for production, but not on the scale Olann’s parents know in 2014.  In other words, no Starbuck’s on every corner or even in every city.

So, Olann, Amita and others of their generation are not likely to be coffee drinkers; and although the South Asia tea industry is suffering impacts similar to the coffee industry—extreme droughts, followed by inundating rains and insect infestations, caused by increased global temperatures and released in some measure by the melting of the tundra—tea plantations are likely to survive as producers adapt harvesting (with the help of new agricultural technology and storage facilities) to transformed seasonal rhythms. 

So, if Olann and his wife wish to share a few moments of peace together over a cup of tea they should be able to afford to do it.  However, if Olann and his friends have grown up with a can or bottle of soda almost a constant prop in their hands, there is no question the cola industry will be around in 2050. That sugar-caffeine infusion will still be ubiquitous.

Chocolate, however, is a very different story. 70% of the cocoa we currently use for chocolate comes from West Africa, which, even at a projected moderate global temperature increase of 2 to 2.5 degrees Celsius, is already becoming too hot for cocoa production.  Chocolate manufacturers, such as Hershey’s, saw this coming some years ago when they began to replace cocoa butter with vegetable oil in some of their products and re-label them as “chocolate candy,” indicating a chemical concoction of flavoring only.

By 2050 chocolate, real chocolate will be a luxury item, affordable only by the rich-beyond-comprehension elites.  So, real chocolate may be a story Olann can tell his children, one of those “when I was your age” stories: “When I was your age, we had baskets of chocolate at Easter time . . . the Easter Bunny delivered all the chocolate eggs any kid could want. . . and they were made of reeeeeal chocolate, not colored vegetable oil.  They were so rich with cocoa butter, we were happy when they melted on our hands, so we could lick our fingers dry.”

Peanut Butter, Bananas, Cereal, and other common staples Olann grew up with will have continued to grow increasingly expensive, so much so that, when he and Amita do grocery shopping, those purchases will be rare and precious due to limited availability and cost.

The world’s peanut crops require 20”-40” of rain within a narrow time frame.  If there is too little rain, the crop is dry; too much at the wrong time, peanuts develop a toxic mold (1).  Climate change is compromising peanut production everywhere, so what can be produced in 2050 will be considerably less, and consequently, more costly.

Bananas may not even be around, but if they are, they will be rare and precious due to the soil fungi and insects that are currently ravaging banana plantations throughout South and Central America, as well as the change in climate temperatures, causing unfavorable growing conditions over the long run.

Cereals made from rice, wheat, and corn will be more expensive even in 2030 when Olann is headed to college, and even more expensive by 2050 due to on-going climate changes in precipitation and temperature, which some projections indicate will raise the cost of a box of Rice Krispies from $3.98 (in 2014) to as much as $12.00 (in 2050).  

Apples and other common fruits like peaches, plums, pears, and apricots (“stone fruits”) will be smaller and taste different from what they like taste today.  Olann will have grown up through the transition period, and so, will have witnessed the plethora times with pyramids of stacked apples in supermarkets and roadside stands around Halloween, and otherwise with availability throughout the year.

However, as a result of warming climate and shorter winters, which alter fruit trees’ blooming window, Olann and Amita will have seen apple and fruit stocks diminish, while Ena and Caspar will know apples, peaches and other stone fruits as expensive treats with a taste much different from what their parents grew up with.

Fortunately, Olann may have the opportunity to learn how to grow food in college if he and his suite mates plant and tend their designated garden plot at the campus community garden site.  To save some dining hall costs, they can eat the fruits of their collective effort and sell any excess to splurge on pizza. (No question pizza will still be around though a crust made with traditional wheat flour is likely to have become a costly special order.)

When they are married, Olann and Amita may very well keep a garden at home--either inside their living unit or as part of a community plot.  And Amita can grow hydroponic vegetables as this methodology will be common.

If Olann and Amita are wise, as soon as they move into what will be their home for some time to come, in addition to growing some of their own food, they are likely to join one of the local food collectives.  Scattered thinly in the early years of Olann's life, food collectives, including underground black markets, will have burgeoned as virtual economic necessities due to changes in global food transportation and availability, in addition to the increased cost of imported products.   

Assuming the world is still “lovin’ it”—McDonald’s is likely to have the McMealworm sandwich (with a marketable name, of course) on its dollar menu.  If not mealworm, then chapuline (Mexican grasshopper) or perhaps the McCricket sandwich will appeal to the hungering masses and still provide a fast food treat for Amita and the kids on a Saturday afternoon while Olann is away, visiting his elderly parents.

Some kinds of bugs and insects, processed for human consumption, will be common worldwide.  Scanning the shelves of their local Whole Foods store, Olann and his wife will be able to choose from protein-rich flour made from a variety of insects—much more affordable than the wheat flour they grew up with. 

Mexican Grasshoppers

Or perhaps they will fancy a package of boiled and sun-dried Mopane caterpillars, which they will know is a fantastic source of iron and other vital nutrients.  But Ena and Caspar will really love fried or steamed termites and won’t even know they are an excellent source of protein and omega-9.  Perhaps Olann will favor some African palm-weevils for a barbeque because they are like a rib-eye, but with a crunch. Roasted stink bugs (as a side dish) might easily be a standard favorite.

If humankind is still eating chickens and growing them up in massively packed factory farms, the chickens will need to be bald because having feathers exacerbates the effect of a globally warmer climate. Not being able to survive long enough to grow big enough for market slaughter, the chickens will die too young and small. Geneticists are working now on altering chicken DNA so they stop having feathers and can continue to grow for the sake of McNuggets and Buffalo Wings.

Olann will be aware of this because he will have grown up through the transition period, and BigAg chicken producers will have spun perfectly rational stories about the featherless chicken-change so as not to threaten KFC and other chicken company profits.

Americans, for the most part, don’t think of jellyfish as a food source, but it is likely raw and processed jellyfish will be commonly available for consumption as a result of three factors: increased human populations, decreased food availability globally, and exploding jellyfish populations.

The world’s oceans are already indicating a progression towards catastrophic acidification, which will increasingly alter the behavior of fish, causing many populations to go extinct, some to simply diminish as they migrate to different ocean ecosystems, other populations to explode.  Jellyfish populations are already exploding. 

In the Gulf of Mexico, where Olann and his family will live, sea nettle jellyfish, moon jellyfish, Australian jellyfish, and many other types are already moving into the warm acid waters and will have conquered the Gulf’s marine eco-system when Olann was still in college (2032). 

Moon Jellyfish

No more shrimp, no more oysters, no more crustaceans of any kind for two primary reasons: acid water dissolves shells, and jellyfish eat shellfish. Jellyfish also consume phytoplankton in such quantities other fish are starved out. The seas off shores around the world will be a throbbing blob of jellyfish much of the year, but at least some species of jellyfish will be harvested for food and other products.

When Henry David Thoreau published Walden in 1854, the world’s human population reached 1 billion. The world population is projected to be at 9.6 billion by 2050.  Olann, Amita, Ena, Caspar and other young American families with modest incomes are not likely to starve. Billions of other people will be starving though, so a plethora of insects and jellyfish is a gift for the hungering masses.

Food for Olann in 2050 will not be his grandfather's food.

1.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/05/climate-change-foods_n_4892164.html

Who Are the Real Invasives?

Zebra Mussels?  Kudzu?  Mute Swans?  Or Us?

The definition of what an “invasive species” is depends on context and point-of-view.  From the species’ point of view, of course, circumstances, competition and survival are vital factors.  Therefore, whatever kettle of soup, so to speak, you find yourself in, you need to figure out what’s available to keep you going and to stave off anything else looking for the same thing you need. 

Let’s say I’m a zebra mussel and, through completely accidental good fortune, my fellow Dreissena polymorpha and I land on the foreign shore of a large fresh water lake where we set up shop.  We are filter feeders, which means, after we open our shells, we siphon in water, extract algae (mostly), then filter the water out.  We are celebrated around inland lakes as natural water cleansing agents, which allow deeper penetration of sunlight, which permits water fauna growth at greater depths.  In other words, within reason, we help a system’s eco-system.  If there are too many of us, though, we tend to be pigs (nothing against pigs) about the algae filtering and take too much, depriving other algae-dependent species, like, well, most fish from securing what they need for survival.

Partly because of this, Canadian and American humans in the Great Lakes’ area are out to get us.  For one thing, our females can lay over one million eggs in a season, so with no known natural predators, we can eventually take over an entire maritime eco-system, literally smothering other lake life by the sheer magnitude of our numbers—and we do have a habit of doing this.  We also love getting into pipes, water treatment plants and other facilities where, again, because there are so many of us, we clog everything up and cost taxpayers and consumers in the U.S. and Canada billions of dollars every year. 

So, humans call us “invasive” because, although we are originally from Eastern Europe and managed to immigrate to Western Europe around 300 years ago, in the 1980s we immigrated to North America via ocean liner ballast water, and arrived not far from the Motor City (and some other places). It didn’t take us long, barely two decades, to clog the Great Lakes.  We aren’t liked where we are right now . . . much like kudzu.

Ah, kudzu!  Although I’ve never heard of Walt Whitman: I hail myself!  How could naive Euro-Americans have known what they were letting into their Reconstruction South when they put me on display as an ornamental bush at the New Orleans Exposition in 1883? They call me “The vine that ate the South” (1).  We should change "ate" to "eats" because I’m still chomping away, so to speak: we kudzu plants grow out of control, and in the process, suffocate any and all plant growth unfortunate to be under us.  Needless to say, this rampant habit of ours does not benefit biodiversity in eco-systems.

The funny thing is, in northern China, Japan and Korea, where we are from originally, we thrived well and did not pose any galloping threats.  Why?  Because the climate is temperate, so we lost our leaves and basically died above ground over the winter; but, when we traveled at the hands of humans, we found ourselves in places where we just kept growing and growing and growing--I honestly think that Energizer Bunny got the idea from us.  But back to my point: although we are still admired for our ability to provide comforting shade on southern porches, increasingly we are viewed as hated Mongol hordes, invaders, killers. 

We do have our uses, however, as livestock feed, in medicines, as basketry fibres, even for paper and clothing, et al.  But, like zebra mussels, our harm outweighs our good.  As invasives, we are out of context, kind of like plopping a big handful of parsley on a birthday cake: ruins the whole mood.

Here’s another mood ruiner: let’s say I’m a beautiful, elegant mute swan.  Here’s a picture of me and my mate—we connect for life, you know!

Our Cygnus olor ancestors came to this country to be used as decoration on large estates for folks like the Rockefellers, the Roosevelts, the Carnegies, you know, the 1%ers of their time.  Some of us also landed in zoos; well, we didn’t literally “land” there because we were shackled and caged there by our human captors.

About 100 years ago, some of us escaped captivity and established successful wild populations in New Jersey, New York and Long Island.  Wildlife folks estimate that there are about 5,000 of us now, spread throughout the Northeast.  No one argues against our beauty and majesty, but we are a non-migratory waterfowl, so when we identify a wetland as ours, we stay put; and because we are very large birds and aggressively territorial, we drive away and sometimes kill native waterfowl.  Plus, we have a wing span of 7’ and with a 4’ underwater reach, and due to our long necks, we can reach down quite far into ponds and lakes to consume the 4-8 pounds of vegetation we need each day to survive.

Our aggressive territorial habits and consumption needs have gotten us into trouble.

“Over the winter [NY State’s Dept. of Environmental Conservation] DEC became the target of public outrage after it issued a draft plan that entailed eradicating the state’s entire population of 2,200 mute swans by 2050, claiming that they’re an invasive species who pose a threat to native wildlife and are aggressive toward people” (2).

Um.  Excuse me?  We’ve been here 100+ years—longer than, well, you could name any number of immigrant groups, like Italians, Vietnamese, Lebanese, Jews, Mexicans, blah, blah, blah.  Get it?  We came to the U.S. by force, adapted, found a niche for ourselves and our families, but now we are regarded as “invasives,” so it is necessary to put us into the sites of guns, which two NY State DEC officers did two weeks ago, killing the two parents pictured below, even though the state had put a moratorium on killing us due to opposition from human groups who recognize our right to life and the significance of our iconic beauty:

Anyway, those four cygnets (baby swans) were left without parents.  Well, they are invasives anyway—much like the children of Mexican immigrants who do not yet have legal status.

Given the human tendency to determine what is a ‘fact,’ based on what serves or fits human purposes, perspectives, the prevailing value system, sure! mute swans are invasives because the point of view and context reality changed.  

Consider horses.  There were NONE! on either the South or North American continents before the Spaniards brought them.  Weren't horses an invasive species?  Yes, they were, but humans liked them . . . a lot. Horses fit smoothly into North America's Great Plains eco-system, and humans found them useful.

But what about humans themselves?  They are the ultimate invasive species, marching or blundering into wherever they do and not, generally speaking, considering the impact on what is already there.  Humans are ‘the better species’ or the ‘higher species,’ so their behavior, their decisions rule.  If an eco-system is harmed?  Oh, well. And tough luck to those for whom they develop distain.  Die invasives, die. (In some cases, this attitude is being demonstrated right now at the U.S.-Mexican border . . . a different kind of eco-system, but an eco-system nonetheless.)

Certainly, zebra mussels and kudzu need to be brought under control.  The lesson we can learn from their introduction into a new context is to be investigative and cautious before we introduce new species in new places.  As far as the species themselves, such as mute swans, are concerned, it would be most ethical to find a way to let them stay, and to monitor the populations of migratory waterfowl to determine if their numbers are negatively impacted by mute swan competition and aggression.  If so, let informed wildlife officials do what is necessary . . . short of total extermination.

I focused here on just three “invasive species,” but there are hundreds and hundreds of examples from all over the world available to use, and many sometimes ridiculous stories to tell—like the 3,000 mile rabbit fence in Australia, or the decimation-by-goat of the Galapagos Islands, or the massive extinction of birds in Hawaii—known as “the extinction capital of the world” (3)—thanks to Captain Cook and a whole lot of rats and cats--talk about invasives!

My point, however, is that humans are the real invasive species.  We’ve been invading new lands since we first began our trek out of Africa.  The problem with us in the last 500 years or so is twofold:  1) Our population has grown exponentially.  It’s out of control, and from an International Space Station perspective, we are the ones clogging the waterways and smothering everything under us.  2) Our rampant technologies are facilitating a global eco-system increasingly out of balance, for which other species are paying with their lives, and for which we, too, are starting to pay with decreased diversity and quality of life in virtually every eco-system on Earth.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu_in_the_United_States

2. http://www.care2.com/causes/mute-swan-parents-killed-in-new-york-despite-promise-of-protection.html

3. http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/features/story.aspx?id=129&cookieConsent=A