3052: Food
Every stage in the conversion of plant nutrients to animal
nutrients involves another quantity of external energy to be put into the
system. Inefficient metabolic processes
produce huge amounts of waste that also needs to be processed using even more
external energy.
The billions of more human mouths to feed will demand the
grains rather than the meat. We already
see this dilemma in the desire to extract ethanol from corn to fuel our
automobiles. We cannot grow enough corn
to fuel both the vehicle and the driver.
The bounty from the sea we are discovering and harvesting is
not inexhaustible nor is it exactly free for the taking. If we fish the national waters of a country
that country expects to derive an income for that privilege. Where there is not functioning government to
charge and collect the fees, lawlessness prevails. Fishing fleets plunder the waters of another
land without regard to sustainability and villagers set out in small boats to
confront the monster factory-fishing fleets.
The thieves meet the pirates and create a whole new aspect of global
food supply. In the centuries that pass
between today and 3052, the issue of territorial fishing rights and piracy on
the seas will also pass into insignificance when the fish themselves fail to
populate the waters in sufficient numbers to make a fishing fleet usable at
all.
In the world of the early 21st century the generation
of protein is a biological one where seeds are sown, watered, chemically
treated then harvested. Humans either eat the crops themselves or intermediary
animals consume the plants then we consume the animals. Both variations are
energy intensive and subject to the whims of the weather, longer term climate
and the cyclic emergence of insect raiders that devastate our food supply.
Ultimately there are but a few essential proteins that we need for our lives
that our bodies cannot make for themselves. In that distant time, we will cut
to the chase and manufacture those essential proteins without the need for
plant crops and animal intermediaries to make them for us.
Similarly, we will come to realize that locusts, beetles and
other crop eating insects are themselves a source of protein. While some lesser
developed societies readily eat insects, we eschew such practices in favor of
poisoning them and our crops. Then we consume the poisoned crops. In our Third
Millennium future, crops and insects will be harvested together and processed
into the unidentifiable packaged stuff on the shelves of today.
Food will become an even more mechanized and industrial
process that leaves out the aesthetics of taste and texture going only for the
nutritional value. Even as those processes work, scientists have been able to
coax beef muscle to grow in a Petri dish. Alas, meat without the cow. Maybe
chicken without the hens. Bacon and ham
without the pigs. The steady march of technological advancements will bring
about the streamlining of food production in the world. Cutting out the
inefficiencies of animal husbandry will be a necessary part of serving the
tastes of the human palette.
Much of the processed food that is marketed in the 21st
century is 50% or more sugar. Massive amounts of fats and other carbohydrates
are the hallmark of the snacks we consume as though they were meals. During the
run up to the 3rd Millennium, humans on a global scale will become heavier,
less healthy, less active, and die at a younger age. This process will be
fostered by the profits derived by the industries that produce the sugars,
starches and fats that humans love to consume. Even though this degradation
will be global and widespread, it will not be long lived.
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