My friend and colleague Doug Nelson lent me this book: How the World Really Works by Vaclav Smil.
One-sentence review: everybody should know this stuff.
I don’t have the space here to review this book in detail, but it is a comprehensive overview of what is (and isn’t) important in the global economy.
One snippet: the four materials on which global civilization rests are “cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia.”
Ammonia? Yes, as should be obvious to anyone involved in agriculture. Because the world would not be able to feed itself (even to the extent that it does) without nitrogen soil supplements. That means ammonia.
Smil’s view of the produce industry? Remarkably peripheral. He doesn’t mention it much in chapter 2, “Understanding Food Production.”
Tomatoes are most prominent. “Nutritional compendia praise its high vitamin C content: indeed, a large tomato (200 grams) can provide two-thirds of the daily recommended requirement for an adult. But as with all fresh and juicy foods, it is not eaten for its energy content; it is, overwhelmingly, just an appealingly shaped container of water, which comprises 95 percent of its mass. The remainder is mostly carbohydrate, a bit of protein, and a mere trace of fat.”
Smil also dismisses the promises of “‘land-less’ urban agriculture—hydroponic cultivation in high-rises,” aka vertical farming.
“Such high-input operations can produce leafy greens (lettuces, basil) and some vegetables (tomatoes, peppers) whose nutritional value is almost solely in their vitamin C content and roughage,” he writes.
But “hydroponic cultivation under constant lights could not be deployed to produce more than 3 billion tons of cereal and leguminous grains, whose high carbohydrate content and relatively high protein and lipid supply are required to feed nearly 8 (soon to be 10) people,” Smil contends.
That’s pretty much it for produce in a global context, although Smil also objects to flying in green beans from Kenya to Great Britain.
The produce industry might find Smil’s comments infuriating, but they need to be seen in perspective.
From the point of view of global food policy, the top priority has been to provide basic nutrition for the large part of the human population (an estimated 394 million across 79 countries) that doesn’t have it—and first and foremost, that means carbohydrates and protein. This has been the consensus of global policy leaders.
You may feel the need to push away a plate of French fries, but it would be an important nutritional boost to many children in sub-Saharan Africa.
This attitude, says Harvard professor emeritus C. Peter Timmer, a world expert on the global food supply, “is being increasingly challenged by the international nutrition community, now with considerable support inside FAO [the UN Food and Agriculture Organization], which wants the focus to be broadened to a ‘healthy diet,’ with more attention to micronutrients, vitamins, fiber, and diversity. The produce sector obviously plays a key role here. The big policy debate is over the cost of a healthy diet compared with an energy-sufficient diet.”
The problem, as Timmer indicates, is that such a healthy diet is a costly luxury for many, since fish, fruit, and vegetables are “two to three times as expensive” as a diet consisting chiefly of carbohydrates and legumes—which many people can’t afford to begin with.
So there is tension between these points of view, and, Timmer indicates, “those debates are just getting started.”
I am neither expert enough nor foolish enough to take sides in this complex and difficult discussion.
The punch line of this article is simply that it is imperative for everyone in the produce industry, and probably all industries, to understand where and how they fit into the global picture. Smil’s book can take them far in that direction.
