Talking to the Future Humans is a column in which we speak to the people who have shaped and continue to shape the future, or at least ideas surrounding the future. It is the mindchild of Kevin Holmes, Managing Editor for The Creators Project.
Christophe Pelletier, with his booksFood. Maybe you think that it’s not the greatest subject to use as a looking glass into the future, and there was a time when I may’ve agreed with you. But that was before I stumbled upon the website of Christophe Pelletier, aka The Food Futurist. While us shortsighted dullards are happy to keep slurping at the existential gruel-teat of basic human sustenance, Christophe hears his stomach gurgling and tastes nano-bot ice-cream, feels the firm handshake of an aged farmer bolstered with an exoskeleton, sees farms disguised as inner-city skyscrapers. Here he is, talking.
VICE: Hey Christophe, you call yourself a “food futurist”. What does that mean?
Christophe Pelletier: I’ve always worked in the food and service industry, and, when I started the blog, I was starting to wonder where we were all going; what with the population of the earth exploding and all. Everything I read about the future of food was either written by scientists, for scientists, or it was telling women about the latest diets. I wanted to see if we’d be able to find some solutions to the problems we’re all going to have feeding ourselves pretty soon. Gotcha. One of the things that grabbed my attention was your article about robot farmers. How might that work?
One of the things that was quickly obvious to me was that famers are getting old. In North America, the average farmer is 58. In the EU, only 6% of farmers are under 35. So when you project 20 years ahead, and factor in a lack of interest from the young, you have a problem. And then I found out that they have a pilot robot farm in Japan.
So they’ve got robots to go around picking up a bunch of rice for them?
Yes, they’re investigating the possibility of a rice-farming robot. I also saw recently that they have started developing robot suits, like an exoskeleton to help old people lift heavy stuff. And the designer of that is looking at more applications to build into it, like something that could forecast the weather, for example. So instead of the traditional image of the lonely old farmer stoically tending his paddy fields, we’d have a guy in a robot costume going nuts with hay bales like a diesel-ly transhuman Stakhanov?
Possibly, it could happen. You could even have the farmer’s brain mixed with the equipment, and the equipment can do all the physical labour – that seems to be a possibility. Do you think that maybe we could grow food in space?
There is an interesting project that’s been running for a couple of years now, maybe you’ve heard about it? It’s called vertical farming.OK, I haven’t. What is vertical farming?
It's a project that’s being researched in Columbia University. The idea started when they looked at how they could grow rose gardens in big cities like New York. Then it started to develop into something else, and the idea came about of a farm that is 30 storeys high, in which they would produce all types of food organically. The ground floor of the farm, if it was in a city, could be the size of a whole block, and that’s where they could produce the fertiliser. The energy for the farm would be produced by solar power and they could also derive energy from the sewage. And all the hydroponics would be robotic. So you’d have android skyscrapers, and instead of them being filled with bored office workers, you’d have pigs, cows and cabbage patches. That would cut down on transportation, too, you could just stand under a window and someone could throw you a carrot or an apple.
Er, yeah. The cost of building it would be the only real obstacle – other than that, I think it’s doable. Let’s talk about nanotechnologies. People get a little weirded out when scientists play around with the molecules of things, and that’s something which is obviously exacerbated when people are told they should put those things in their mouths. What’s gonna happen there, do you think?
The technology is already here and, as you say, it’s quite controversial, because we don’t know the possible effects these components will have on our bodies – chrome, iron, silver; they can be very reactive with the body. Nanotechnology in food – that will be the next big fight in the food area. Is it already being used in food?
They use it in making ice cream, I believe. To make it more fluffy. One of the areas I think nanotechnology could be useful in food is identifying pathogens – for example, you could programme the food to go a certain colour if it’s gone bad.
Right. What about in vitro meats? Are we gonna grow all our sausages in petri dishes soon?
In vitro meats are already in the works; there’s a company in the Netherlands who are working on it. And they claim they would be able to commercialise in vitro meat by 2015. At this stage, the cost is prohibitive. But it’s also interesting to know that PETA are financial contributors to that project, because they say that the arrival of in vitro meats means there’ll be less animal suffering. It wouldn’t work for all meats, you couldn’t do it with steak because the texture is not there, but with sausages, where the texture is not really that important, it could replace what we have. Again, all it needs is for the price to be competitive. So would it make more sense, environmentally, to produce meat this way?
If you replace animals with something like in vitro meat, theoretically you could say that it reduces the impact of farmed animals on the environment. But then what do you use to produce the energy for the cells to grow in the incubator? You’d need to compare how much energy each uses, it might not necessarily be environmentally friendly, I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does at the moment. So what about the fast foods that we all supersize ourselves with these days. Are we all going to end up like the obese people in Wall-E, riding around on our own personal fat-mobiles?
Well in the West we’re getting fatter, body mass index has risen rapidly over the years. The thing is, in the West people have replaced carbohydrates with protein. We’ve seen it in the US and Europe since World War II, and now it's happening in China. People tend to replace rice and bread with meat. Before the economic crisis, the average daily calory intake of an American was 3800. The average person, depending on the age, gender and amount of activity, should eat between 2000 and 3000. So basically, when you ingest 3800 calories a day, you only burn about 50% and the rest doesn’t evaporate, it gets stored as fat. What about insects, then. Should we be eating more of them in our diets as a source of protein? Maybe McDonald’s could start doing a McBeetle burger or something.
There are only two types of people who eat insects; those that do it because they don’t have a choice, and then a very small percentage of the population in the Western world that thinks it’s trendy to eat insects. From a nutritional point of view, it’s good. Have you tried them?
No, I haven’t. Is it something we should reassess?
Well, I’m French and we eat snails and you’re British and you find that disgusting.
We ate bugs in our new issue. Read about it here.I love putting snails in my mouth.
We call it “escargot” and it sounds better. But obviously there is this whole visual barrier, the idea of eating insects, these crawly things we find invading our homes. But if you look at it, lobster – which is a delicacy – is very expensive. What’s the difference between a lobster and an insect? It has a shell; it has legs. It’s a matter of perception, so if someone comes along with the right kind of marketing, then why not? Let’s end on a small question: Can we ‘feed the world’?
When it comes to food production, we produce enough food to feed nine billion already. The thing is, there’s a lot of food that’s wasted – at a household level, at a retail level, at the food service level. There are already a number of actions to try to correct that. In the developing countries, most food is lost post-harvest, because there’s not enough infrastructure to store it and bring it to market. What I expect in the future, about three decades from now, is the price of animal protein, meat, to shoot through the roof because of production costs, feed, etc. And when the price of animal protein goes through the roof, I think we’re going to see that change the whole food structure in a massive way. People will eat a lot less meat.I think a lot of the problem with food is that it’s been so cheap in the West that people have consumed too much. I think it’s terribly important to make sure that food is affordable, to everyone on the planet, otherwise there could be riots and revolutions. But also it doesn’t need to be cheap. When it’s affordable you buy what you need and you consume it, when it’s cheap you buy more than you need and you go, “Oh, the date has passed” and you throw it away. So it’s about finding a balance, and also a balance between the different economic situations around the world. Well itat least it looks like we're close to doing that. Thanks for talking to me Christophe. If the Greeks stump up the readies, maybe we’re all be cyborg fruitarians before the decade’s out.Previously: Talking to the Future Humans - the Future of Sex
Christophe Pelletier: I’ve always worked in the food and service industry, and, when I started the blog, I was starting to wonder where we were all going; what with the population of the earth exploding and all. Everything I read about the future of food was either written by scientists, for scientists, or it was telling women about the latest diets. I wanted to see if we’d be able to find some solutions to the problems we’re all going to have feeding ourselves pretty soon. Gotcha. One of the things that grabbed my attention was your article about robot farmers. How might that work?
One of the things that was quickly obvious to me was that famers are getting old. In North America, the average farmer is 58. In the EU, only 6% of farmers are under 35. So when you project 20 years ahead, and factor in a lack of interest from the young, you have a problem. And then I found out that they have a pilot robot farm in Japan.
Annons
Yes, they’re investigating the possibility of a rice-farming robot. I also saw recently that they have started developing robot suits, like an exoskeleton to help old people lift heavy stuff. And the designer of that is looking at more applications to build into it, like something that could forecast the weather, for example. So instead of the traditional image of the lonely old farmer stoically tending his paddy fields, we’d have a guy in a robot costume going nuts with hay bales like a diesel-ly transhuman Stakhanov?
Possibly, it could happen. You could even have the farmer’s brain mixed with the equipment, and the equipment can do all the physical labour – that seems to be a possibility. Do you think that maybe we could grow food in space?
There is an interesting project that’s been running for a couple of years now, maybe you’ve heard about it? It’s called vertical farming.OK, I haven’t. What is vertical farming?
It's a project that’s being researched in Columbia University. The idea started when they looked at how they could grow rose gardens in big cities like New York. Then it started to develop into something else, and the idea came about of a farm that is 30 storeys high, in which they would produce all types of food organically. The ground floor of the farm, if it was in a city, could be the size of a whole block, and that’s where they could produce the fertiliser. The energy for the farm would be produced by solar power and they could also derive energy from the sewage. And all the hydroponics would be robotic. So you’d have android skyscrapers, and instead of them being filled with bored office workers, you’d have pigs, cows and cabbage patches. That would cut down on transportation, too, you could just stand under a window and someone could throw you a carrot or an apple.
Er, yeah. The cost of building it would be the only real obstacle – other than that, I think it’s doable. Let’s talk about nanotechnologies. People get a little weirded out when scientists play around with the molecules of things, and that’s something which is obviously exacerbated when people are told they should put those things in their mouths. What’s gonna happen there, do you think?
The technology is already here and, as you say, it’s quite controversial, because we don’t know the possible effects these components will have on our bodies – chrome, iron, silver; they can be very reactive with the body. Nanotechnology in food – that will be the next big fight in the food area. Is it already being used in food?
They use it in making ice cream, I believe. To make it more fluffy. One of the areas I think nanotechnology could be useful in food is identifying pathogens – for example, you could programme the food to go a certain colour if it’s gone bad.
Annons
In vitro meats are already in the works; there’s a company in the Netherlands who are working on it. And they claim they would be able to commercialise in vitro meat by 2015. At this stage, the cost is prohibitive. But it’s also interesting to know that PETA are financial contributors to that project, because they say that the arrival of in vitro meats means there’ll be less animal suffering. It wouldn’t work for all meats, you couldn’t do it with steak because the texture is not there, but with sausages, where the texture is not really that important, it could replace what we have. Again, all it needs is for the price to be competitive. So would it make more sense, environmentally, to produce meat this way?
If you replace animals with something like in vitro meat, theoretically you could say that it reduces the impact of farmed animals on the environment. But then what do you use to produce the energy for the cells to grow in the incubator? You’d need to compare how much energy each uses, it might not necessarily be environmentally friendly, I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does at the moment. So what about the fast foods that we all supersize ourselves with these days. Are we all going to end up like the obese people in Wall-E, riding around on our own personal fat-mobiles?
Well in the West we’re getting fatter, body mass index has risen rapidly over the years. The thing is, in the West people have replaced carbohydrates with protein. We’ve seen it in the US and Europe since World War II, and now it's happening in China. People tend to replace rice and bread with meat. Before the economic crisis, the average daily calory intake of an American was 3800. The average person, depending on the age, gender and amount of activity, should eat between 2000 and 3000. So basically, when you ingest 3800 calories a day, you only burn about 50% and the rest doesn’t evaporate, it gets stored as fat. What about insects, then. Should we be eating more of them in our diets as a source of protein? Maybe McDonald’s could start doing a McBeetle burger or something.
There are only two types of people who eat insects; those that do it because they don’t have a choice, and then a very small percentage of the population in the Western world that thinks it’s trendy to eat insects. From a nutritional point of view, it’s good. Have you tried them?
No, I haven’t. Is it something we should reassess?
Well, I’m French and we eat snails and you’re British and you find that disgusting.
Annons
We call it “escargot” and it sounds better. But obviously there is this whole visual barrier, the idea of eating insects, these crawly things we find invading our homes. But if you look at it, lobster – which is a delicacy – is very expensive. What’s the difference between a lobster and an insect? It has a shell; it has legs. It’s a matter of perception, so if someone comes along with the right kind of marketing, then why not? Let’s end on a small question: Can we ‘feed the world’?
When it comes to food production, we produce enough food to feed nine billion already. The thing is, there’s a lot of food that’s wasted – at a household level, at a retail level, at the food service level. There are already a number of actions to try to correct that. In the developing countries, most food is lost post-harvest, because there’s not enough infrastructure to store it and bring it to market. What I expect in the future, about three decades from now, is the price of animal protein, meat, to shoot through the roof because of production costs, feed, etc. And when the price of animal protein goes through the roof, I think we’re going to see that change the whole food structure in a massive way. People will eat a lot less meat.I think a lot of the problem with food is that it’s been so cheap in the West that people have consumed too much. I think it’s terribly important to make sure that food is affordable, to everyone on the planet, otherwise there could be riots and revolutions. But also it doesn’t need to be cheap. When it’s affordable you buy what you need and you consume it, when it’s cheap you buy more than you need and you go, “Oh, the date has passed” and you throw it away. So it’s about finding a balance, and also a balance between the different economic situations around the world. Well itat least it looks like we're close to doing that. Thanks for talking to me Christophe. If the Greeks stump up the readies, maybe we’re all be cyborg fruitarians before the decade’s out.Previously: Talking to the Future Humans - the Future of Sex