Want not.

As we approach the Giving Season, my Scrooginess has lead me to think about waste. A while back, I read an editorial in the Manitoba Cooperator about a study on Canadian food waste that had just come out of the University of Guelph. I was curious about it, so I asked the editor, Laura Rance, where I could find the study. It has been published online since.

I had a fair number of criticisms of the study's methodology and foci (who, me?), but Laura gently suggested that the study had value in sparking interest and further research. I think it is spot-on in its premise: 'Along with the rest of the world, Canada invests enormous resources in seeking ways to feed a growing population through increased production.  Far fewer resources are invested in making more effective use of the food already produced, even though doing so would have immediate results.'

The most startling revelation is that 40% of food that is produced in Canada ends up wasted, and the great majority of waste in the food supply chain - 51 percent - occurs at the consumer household level.

Because the authors are 'value chain' specialists, they only briefly address this household waste. Primarily, they look for ways waste is created as food moves along the chain, such as poor cooling of raspberries post-harvest and feeding animals until they are overly fat. They talk about waste due to processors receiving "products that do not meet the required specifications" and their recommendation is to change things on the farm.

A Maclean's article they reference deals with this issue in a much more comprehensive way, addressing retailer and consumer preferences for cosmetically pleasing produce and the laws (such as retailed carrots in Britain having to be a certain diameter) that facilitate this waste of imperfect produce. Paul Roberts tells a story in The End of Food (link) about green beans heading from Africa to a European market - 7 of 15 tonnes were waste because they were not of a certain length and straightness. We, of course, also pay the price of having to eat long-lasting uniform tomatoes, for example, instead of tastier ones.

I am curious about what the authors of the Guelph report do not address - any sociological reasons why waste occurs. What, in addition to techno-fixes, could result in the changes in production and consumption habits that lead to waste. For example, I would estimate that a fair amount of food waste is due to deskilling of the consumer. If you don't know how to use less popular cuts of meat, or that you can freeze celery leaves and vegetable ends for stock, then those things will be wasted.


I'm also curious if you have seen any initiatives that are working to address waste.

Lost skills?

A relative of mine had the chance to travel around to a lot of small-town museums this fall. The museums tend to have a lot artifacts from the European pioneers who first settled the area as farmers - a cream separator, a forge, an old school desk, a horse-drawn carriage...

Most of these museums are volunteer-run, and open only in the summer. To close the season, a big event at some museums is the old-time threshing demonstration.

Unfortunately, as the overwhelmingly elderly people in one small town told my relative, there aren't any young people who know how to operate a threshing machine, or who have the time and inclination to learn. One of them went on to list other old-timey skills that they have difficulty finding people to demonstrate: canning chickens and darning socks were at the top of the list.

It so happens I can do those domestic things. (Don't ask me to operate a thresher.) And when I think about it, I know more than a few city folks who are able to. Canning, I think, is making a renaissance; I volunteered this summer with a group of undergrads who gleaned fruit trees and learned how to can the proceeds. They had a blast trying out different recipes from the Bernardin website. Knitting has also come back into style, and if you put all the effort required into knitting socks, you're going to want to darn them. Believe me, I know:

An acquaintance commented on the city-rural divide that she saw in our area during a debate on urban chickens. "People in the city were just like, why would you want to do that? we left the farm for a reason." Maybe the younger generation doesn't have as much of that. The city is slowly coming to appreciate what once were rural skills that you shucked off along with your manurey boots as soon as you could leave the farm. The values of good food, manual labour, the pleasure to be taken in creation and craft, and a spiritual yet practical connection to the soil can be universal.

Will there be a renaissance in the rural areas too?

Earthiness

For me, the deep satisfaction I find in gardening and food preparation occurs because it is a combination of what Kropotkin called "brain work and manual work". If I sit in front of a computer too long, or read for hours, I start to feel detached from the world around me, not to mention headachey and restless. But I can't be happy running on a track or treadmill; I need meaningful exercise that accomplishes something and gets my mind to work as well.

Working with food also connects me to the earth. It grounds me; I am in the present when I am working, not daydreaming of the future or dwelling on the past. My senses are attuned to the smell of newly-turned dirt, to the moment when the bread dough becomes smooth and elastic under my hands, to the buzz of a heat-dazed fly emerging from hibernation.

These experiences were a part of my childhood, and have become kinetic memories for me. I realized this three years ago, when I was helping my father plant a garden, and picked up a rake to tamp down the earth over a row of beans. I hadn't gardened in years, but my arms and hands knew how much pressure to put on the rake, at what angle to hold it, and how to move efficiently down the row.

Discussing the deskilling of the consumer, JoAnn Jaffe and Michael Gertler* put it like this:

"Food production has traditionally been learned through apprenticeship, with children learning first-hand while their mothers cook. These skills are sentient, practical, and in some senses non-discursive forms of consciousness, with the learner acquiring a knack, or a feel, that comes with the continual engagement with the physical and sensual qualities of food. (This is exemplified in the experienced cook’s instructions to add a pinch of this or a smidgen of that, or to knead until the dough is elastic.) It requires a fine-tuning of all the senses – a good cook knows how things ought to taste, smell, look, feel, and sometimes even sound through different stages of the cooking process. She recognizes off-notes and textures. Cooking involves body knowledge, such as the movement required to whip an egg, knead biscuit dough, or skillfully cut a chicken. Putting together a meal involves juggling several tasks at once."

I didn't remember that it was Earth Day today until half way through the afternoon. Unconsciously, however, I chose an activity for Earth Day that, for me, connects me to my history, my environment, the production of farmers in my region, and my family - my future. I am using my mother's recipe to bake bread.

Happy Earth Day.

*Jaffe, J. & Gertler, M. (2006). Victual vicissitudes: Consumer deskilling and the (gendered)

transformation of food systems. Agriculture and Human Values, 23, 143–162.

Baking with Kids: A Photo Essay

Saskatoon Muffin!