Senior Research Fellow Dr Michael Drolet speaking on ‘The Agricultural Revolution or Nature’s Circular Economy in Nineteenth Century France: Might long-forgotten ideas and practices offer solutions to some of today’s most pressing environmental issues?’, hosted by Professor Patricia Clavin
So a very warm welcome to W’s online academic lecture series I’m Patricia Clavin uh the professor of modern history and I’m delighted to introduce tonight’s lecture entitled the Agricultural Revolution or Nature’s circular economy in 19th century France being given by uh my colleague Dr Michael Dr Dr do is senior research
Fellow in the history of political thought at he’s an intellectual historian with very wide ranging interests academically chronologically in the 18th 19th and 20th Century philosophy and in French political social and economic thought he’s written widely on French liberalism French romantic socialism a and contemporary French thought um he
Published very widely you can find details of all of his um many books on the website um but in particular uh I’d like to highlight his 2003 volume on tville democracy and social reform and just a year later he published the postmodernism reader foundational texts he’s currently got three book projects
On the Go including a book on the simonian and Statesman Michelle chaler tonight’s talk is part of a wider series of events supporting the college’s new initiative um of annual interdisciplinary research themes which this year is sustainability as well as aiming to increase biodiversity on the college State and reduce our carbon
Emissions the college is committed to widening and deepening our research on on sustainability Itself by using the unique College environment to facilitate interdisiplinary research and such as the scale of the challenge of sustainability really interdisciplinarity and multi-disciplinarity is the only way to address them our particular goal is to
Establish clusters of fully funded graduate student ships and post-doctoral early career opportunities to work together on solving sustainability problems the initiative is supported by the wealth of academic expertise on sustainability across the fellowship at Worcester and Michael is a shining example of this expertise and if I may
Say of of collegiality that underpins it in keeping with the established format the talk is being recorded Michael will speak for about 40 minutes or so which will leave us 5 to 10 10 minutes for Q&A I strongly encourage you to post your questions in the Q&A section under Zoom
Uh Michael the floor is yours Patricia thank you very much and thank you for that extremely generous introduction I I’m really happy to be here um so uh I want to talk about food um our way of growing transporting and eating food is presently in crisis UK farmers are
Struggling to buy seed feed fertilizer herbicides and pesticides they cannot afford the price of diesel fuel or the huge capital outlays on farm machinery the situation is no better in other European countries in France Belgium Germany Ireland the Netherlands Farmers have all taken to the streets the cost of machinery and artificial fertilizers
Is Now outstripped by more than 100% the cost of human labor in European agriculture the economics of farming are increasingly forbidding and nature is against farming too floods are predicted to destroy over 40% of this year’s UK wheat crop globally there’s a shortage of Wheat and barley rice and potatoes are in short
Supply brought on by too little and then too much rain and there’s ubiquitous Staples Maze and soy beans that appear in nearly everything we eat from animal feed to the syrup that grows into here Corn Flakes to the emulsifier that’s in your bread and just about every other processed food have been significantly
Impacted by droughts wildfires hail and floods If These Old Testament WS weren’t enough the wars in Ukraine and Gaza attacks on International Shipping in the Gulf of Aiden and the Red Sea and bottlenecks in the Panama Canal have all had an important impact on global Agriculture and the price of our
Food in the UK where the agriculture revolution has firm Roots farming is highly industrialized and monopolized in 2020 71% of UK land area was used for agricultural production the majority of this for grazing rather than crops Farms of over 1,000 ACR make up 54% of the
UK’s total form Farmland in the UK sorry in the EU the trend is similar 38% of the total land area of the EU is devoted to agriculture at the same time as the total number of farms is in steep decline the agricultural input sector is also highly concentrated which is the handful of
Farms dominating Global markets in for key inputs including seeds Agri chemicals farm machinery and fertilizers in the EU five seed companies control around 75% of the EU maze market share and four companies control around 86% of the sugar beat Market Market the three companies beay civa senta control over 50% of the
Global Seed Market the same is true for agricultural producers five companies account for 90% of the 19.5 million chickens slaughtered each week in the UK and just as in agricultural inputs and producers sectors the agricultural retail Market is dominated by big players in the UK tesas and Sainsbury’s together
Account for 42.2% of market share with Morrison’s Asda Aldi little and the co-op accounting for more than 44% in France five chains dominate the market accounting for 41% of market share while in Germany little Aldi and Ida dominate 37% of the market with these economies of scales and
Concentrations it would be fair to say that the agriculture Al Revolution is really an industrial revolution in farming over the last 150 years agriculture has been transformed into industry with a net Global worth of$ 3.7 trillion us according to the FAO as with the industrial revolution of the 19th century the Industrial
Revolution in agriculture is global in its reach the UK Imports food from over 180 countries over 50% of its food including 85% of its vegetables is imported UK Supply chains are amongst the longest in the world with the U but the UK isn’t the only country with long
Supply chains France the country of the Farmers Market has seen an impressive increase in its food miles in 1890 fruit and vegetables traveled no more than 100 kilometers to reach Paris now the average is 790 kilom though that is dwarfed by UK food miles which stand at nearly 3,000
Kilm to these industrial changes in production and distribution of food we must add those of consumption while we can’t yet speak of Filipino filipo Marines like cuchina futurista with its diet of sunshine soup and arrow food UK consumers have never had a larger range of futuristically prepared foods take take Miss Molly’s futurist
Kitchen recipe for ice cream reconstituted skim milk concentrate partially reconstituted wi powder glucose syrup sugar dextrose palm sterin palm oil palm kernel oil emulsifier mono and diglyceride fatty acids stabilizers garum sodium algate colors cartin and mystery presumably synthetic vanilla flavorings today along with Americans UK consumers are the largest consumers of
Ultr processed food in the world among 60% of the average UK consumer diet and 75% of School meals is ultr processed compared with 10.2% in Portugal and 13.4% in Italy where marinetti’s dream of abolishing pasta was never realized these concentrations or efficiencies of scale in production distribution and consumption of food are
All features of the Agricultural Revolution or the industrialization of Agriculture today scales of production and consumption are impressive yet these scales of production and consumption also follow a logic and established trends that give rise to worrying contradictions the food we eat that which nourishes life is in its transported processed concentrated and
Convenient form Ms posing risks to our physical and mental health with cardiovascular and obesity related illnesses on a steep rise but there’s another an equally worrying health problem with the industrial Agricultural Revolution that is the problem of the planet’s Health in our quest to feed the planet we are
Subjecting it to incalculable stress our ultr processed diets rely on key base ingredients soybean oil palm oil rapes seed oil and sunflower four oils that make up 90% of the global market rely on Industrial specialization that come from monocultures and their economies of scale palm oil plantations alone account
For 10% of permanent Global crop land the un’s food and agricultural Association organization estimates that industrial agriculture is one of the major causes of global deforestation more than half of global Forest loss is due to conversion of forests into crop land with livestock raising responsible for almost 40% of
Forest loss the UK with its impressive Global Supply chains is a a significant consumer of Commodities linked to deforestation industrial agriculture’s Global Supply chains and its scales of production and consumption harm the planet in other ways the US the UN estimates that over 17 % of total Global food production or between
770 to 819 billion pounds annually goes to waste the UK alone accounts for just over 19 billion pound in annual food waste or 2.5 billion tons of food wasted this was accounts for 38% of total energy usage in the global food system or 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions the same as international
Shipping and in industrial farming Nations such as the UK agriculture accounts for more than 10% of UK greenhouse gases in addition to the 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions the un’s food and agricultural assist organization reports that agriculture accounts for 70% of water abstractions worldwide and
This figure is set to rise as intensive agriculture demands more and more water with at the same time compacting soils diminishing their paracity microb microbial diversity and ability to retain water industrial agriculture’s intensive use of fertilizers insecticides and herbicides play a major role in water pollution Farms discharge large quantities of agrochemicals
Organic matter drug residues microplastics sediments agrochemicals and saline drainage into water bodies in the European Union 38% of lakes rivers and streams are significantly under pressure from agricultural pollution industrial agriculture’s intensive use of chemicals which has a negative effect on soil compaction their microbial life fertility and ability to
Retain water increas the need for more chemicals and more water a 2021 House of Commons report noted that quote the UK’s agriculture sector relies on natural capital and the degradation of this natural Capital poses an underlying threat to the UK’s ability to produce food the ecosystems services from
Natural Capital provide key inputs to food production I love that sentence it doesn’t make any sense to me ecosystems services from natural Capital provide key inputs to food production and I go on and it goes on to say which often go uncounted as does the impact of Agriculture on the environment which
Produces them the UK is not unique in this around the world and understanding and adapting to food to produce food sustainably and to maintain and improve natural Capital stocks in the long term is key but how is how to maintain and improve natural Capital stocks when Financial pressures demand further
Intensification and economies of scale the figures speak for themselves UK Farmers have seen their incomes fall by over 60% in the last six years and the figures are similar for our European counterparts with the EU now about to overturn nearly 30 years of Reform to the common agricultural policy and reintroduce guaranteed minimum
Pricing industrial agricultures long run cap sheet has led to an important reassessment of its revolutionary promises the organic farming and regenerative farming movements are among the many interested and complicated responses but they are unlikely to have a significant impact in the future the pressures to feed the planet’s growing
Number of inhabitants consumers desires for cheap and Convenient Food large economic actors from Banks and hedge funds to chemical and Industrial Machinery companies from from Global Food band Brands to Global supermarkets all have no interest in organic or regenerative farming but this only partly explains why we are not
Experiencing an altogether different and altogether sustainable Agricultural Revolution there’s something strange important going on here the Industrial Revolution in agriculture has had the same effect as the revolution in industry in his account of the clear benefits of the division of labor Adam Smith also warned in his Wealth of Nations of what
He called the mental mutilation of the worker as the worker’s task became more and more specialized so too his understanding of the world around him shrank what Smith did not envisage was how industry’s effects on the shrinking of the worker’s intellect took on a different form in the rest of society
The Enlightenment of which Smith was an internal part gave birth to a profound Paradox just as it embodied the advancement of knowledge the enlightenment also engendered an optimism in Humanity’s ability to conquer all before it as our knowledge of the world grew more and more detailed and as our Technologies became more and
More sophisticated we also became more and more remote from nature and the world around us this is what happened with the industrial revolution of Agriculture our relationship to food to the soil has since the origins of the industrial Agricultural Revolution become more and more remote this is reflected in an
Unquestioning acceptance of foods that are not foods that edible petroleum product which is your coffee whitener or Miss Molly’s ice cream which is an ice cream it’s also reflected in our ignorance of the Hidden cost of industrial food if we account for industrial agriculture’s impact on climate change and biodiversity loss
Then as a 2021 Rockefeller Foundation report observed the true cost of producing food is three times higher than what we spend on it a new report from the Food Systems economic commission the economics of Food Systems transformation lays out these costs starkly and I quote the recent evolution
Of Food Systems has fueled some of the greatest and gravest challenges facing Humanity notably persistent hunger undernutrition the Obesity P epidemic loss of biodiversity environmental damage and climate change the economic value of this human suffering and planetary harm is well above 10 trillion us do a year more than the Food Systems
Contribute to Global GDP in short our food systems are destroying more value than they create change is imperative but the pressures against it are great a pessimistic assessment would be that corporate interests are so powerful and our mentality to food and nature so irredeemably irredeemably antithetical
To them that the change that will occur will not be favorable to food nature or Humanity a more optimistic assessment sees positive change in our attitudes to food and nature but this change is halfhazard and without clear Direction We Are stumbling and groping our way to a new
Relationship with nature the land and what it grows our awareness of soil as the medium for what we grow is ancient but so too is our awareness that soil is the origin of our world that which carries it that which sustains it feeds it protects it the Industrial Revolution and
Agriculture fundamentally altered that awareness in the vast food factory that became Earth a complex division of labor developed with its Reliance on Technologies to extract more and more food from that medium in which it grows soil this is industrial understanding of soil needs fundamentally to change soil is no mere medium it
Contains about 2,500 gigatons of carbon that’s more than three times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and four times the amount stored in all living plants and animals is a vast carbon sink absorbing 25% of the world’s fossil fuel emissions each year it is is also hugely biodiverse accounting for over
25% of all known species and yet it like the food we eat is increasingly remote from our minds dirty smelly foul tasting it rarely features in discussions about food yet this nonrenewable resource which grows at a rate of about between 1 to 2 millim every hundred years is exploited
Ruthlessly and will it should be at the center of government policies it isn’t the UK government’s current agricultural transition plan makes references to improving soil health or soil quality a mere three times a 2023 House of Commons report could only draw on 2010 figures figures that are worth 13 years years out of
Date for that report to show that intensive agriculture has caused aable soils to lose 40 to 60% of their organic carbon and unlike the EU the UK government no longer map soil Health but if you thought things were better across the channel take note the current EU Farm to Fork
Strategy part of its green deal initiative mentions soil total of eight times and more as an afterthought soil health is part of the eu’s enabling transition policy which calls for and I quote a mission in the area of soil health and food to develop solutions for restoring oil soil health and
Functions at the heart of this quote mission is quote new knowledge and Innovations but why new when there is an abundance of old nor it is in this context that we might look back to the 19th century for instruction for it is then that the industrialization industrialization of
Agriculture began and with it a growing remoteness from soil food and nature the view of nature is a complex Web of Life in which science understood it holistically as a complex circulatory organization whose vital and coherence could be altered either positively or negatively by human activity gave way to an idea of linear
And constant innovation in which humans could perfect nature augment her power to serve Humanity yet this 19th century change was not straightforward the publication of Thomas Robert malus’s an essay on the principle of population established the principle of Nature’s circular economy the complex circulatory organization whose vitality and equilibrium were
Altered by human activity was summarized in the principle of population the challenge Mo’s essay posed was how could agriculture be made more productive to meet the growth in population the answer lay in the work of morus contemporary Jean batist lar L’s 1802 and then his 1809 philosophic a work that anticipated
Darwin’s Origin of the species by half a century established that all natural phenomenon were capable of adaptation and that nature and Humanity were governed by discoverable laws whose systematic application could make both more efficient now Mal is a hugely controversial figure but his work had a decisive impact in
France where it marked thinking in the all important technique the first modern engineering school there Modern Chemistry developed under the opes of Anan leier Berto alongside this Triumph rat we must add the name of Jean Jean Antoine shap whose 1790s elini brought the term nitrogen into LA’s new chemical
Nomenclature chapal was a key figure in the industrial in industrialization of France and Napoleon and during the borbon Restorations as founder of the society for the encouragement of National Industry he was a central figure in aate development of industry in France but development of industrial agriculture his 1823
Shim was hugely important to this isolating the chemical elements to plant growth and establishing a scientific approach to agriculture to this work we must mention Humphrey davies’s 1813 elements of agricultural chemistry a work that analyzed the role of nitrogenous manure particularly guano as a fertilizer alongside chaptal and Davy
With must add the German chemist eustus F liik liik like sh chapal worked closely with Berto and gusak and through gusak became friends with the famous naturalist Alexander F homol lic’s work with the French led him to apply his theoretical knowledge from organic chemistry to the problem raised by morus just
As revolutionized agriculture so to Li’s 1840 organic chemistry and its application to Agriculture and Physiology promoted the idea that chemistry could revolutionize agricultural practice yielding uh increasing yields and lowering costs Central to this was lic’s theory of mineral nutrients set out in the first half of the book we identified the
Chemical elements of nitrogen phos and potassium as essential to plant growth like Davy’s elements uh elements of agricultural chemistry the impact of this work would be Monumental not least because it gave a scientific basis to what humble discovered in 1804 which was that guano was a concentrated source of nitrogen critical to plant
Growth soon after the publication of lic’s organic chemistry began the frenzy exploitation of guano from islands off the coast of Peru these veritable open pit mines which in 1870 produced more than 700,000 tons of guano yielded vast fortunes and reaped a grim harvest in human lives among those who worked them the mines
Were also the center of a war between Peru and Spain in 1864 and then between 187 9 and 1883 between Peru Bolivia and Chile a war that claimed more than 18,000 lives The Mining and trade in guano established a long supply chain in agriculture guano was transported from
Peru to France and Britain over 18,000 kilometers a journey that took between 40 and 50 days it also established an industrial agriculture that viewed soil as a res Source whose nutrients could be extracted and replenished artificially this is what we might describe as a destruction and repair model of
Agriculture with the discovery in 1902 of the Oswalt process and then 1909 of habos process artificial fertilizers would come to replace Guan these developments reinforce the view of soil as a resource whose nut could be extracted and replenished artificially and this posed a problem not least because Li’s theory of mineral
Nutrients the first part of his organic chemistry and its application to agriculture was twinned with an analysis of the chemical mechanisms of putri action and Decay which made up the second part of his organic chemistry and its application to agriculture lic’s awar awareness of both synthesis and degradation led him to voice
Concerns over the Abundant use of imported fertilizers to overall soil Health as an early advocate of soil conservation and the recyclage of sewage liby could see how the artificial replenishment of soil might prove problematic and it is on this point that a long forgotten chapter to mois challenge might be usefully examined
In 1842 liik student Char Gart published a trans a French translation of Li’s organic chemistry the translation had an immediate impact not least on a former students of the PO technique the hydrologist and agronomist Pierre Ural Kazu Kazu is in the center of this picture Kaz and that’s his uh
Certificate that’s his um entry card into the E poly technique with all of his details Kaz you would make light of lic’s understanding of synthesis and degradation and Advance as an alternative to the importation of guano the novel idea of capital in manure the ideas of synthesis and
Degradation and capital in manure were set out in a long 1843 article from Pier L and Jean Reno’s encycloped n and then in kaz’s own both Works would have a profound impact on pier luru and his idea of the circulus or Nature’s circular economy malus’s essay posed the same and
A different problem for pi as it did for Kazu and liik VI is perhaps the most widely revered social thinker of his day luru was an extraordinary intellectual and activist the writer s would come to him for ideas and inspiration alons de Martin predicted he would be the Russo
Of the 19th century jul mishle victoro all came under his influence Marx described him a genius in a series of articles for in 1846 rep in 1849 as malus Economist luru highlighted the problem of the industrialization of Agriculture how industrial agriculture at the same time as increasing yields
Was diminishing the human and natural condition as with the mechanization of Industry the mechanization of Agriculture was as L sarcastically observed turning it into and I quote an agriculture that can do without men this was the artificialization of the natural world against the industrialization of Agriculture luru Advanced the idea of a
Bioeconomy with Nature’s circular economy or the circulus at its core 1853 set out in detail what he called and I quote the true law of nature the natural Circle or circut Nature’s Circle half of which is called production the other half consumption was from lus pen in effect
The union of the two halves of Lick’s organic chemistry L’s idea of the circuit is built on a development an extensive agricult culture and scientific literature advocating the use of human excrement in agriculture it also emerged out of the lived experience of an agricultural community that he and his brother jul
Established in busac in 1842 exiled to Jersey after Napoleon the third’s 1851 kudeta the lus reestablished their community at sarez and J carried it forward in California where it continued long after his death in the 20th century The succulus Faded from view yet the core idea of the
Use of human excrement in agriculture was widely endorsed by agronomist political economists social investigators and writers both in and outside of France victoro who shared the same shared his Exile in Jersey with Piero theed pages of that’s dated from 1862 to advocating the use of human excrement and agriculture agronomists including Maxine
P did likewise the social investigator Henry Mayu in his 1862 London labor and the London poor described as quote a great evil what Society with one consent pronounces filth the evacuations of the human body is not only washed away into the TS and the land so deprived of a
Vast amount of nutriment but that these very evacuations were then washed back into London’s drinking water Mayu highlighted the rich Paradox that quote we import guano and drink a solution of our own species and the American Journal the Working Farmer advocated the use of human excrement in agriculture
Contending quote the food of man being chosen from the more progress to organisms has its constituents in a condition to be readily appropriated by the higher class of plants and is for this reason that the excreta of man surpasses all other manures its value consisted both in its
Ability to furnish ammonia to the soil and its ability to enrich it through quote The Peculiar condition of the inorganic matter it contains for being derived from higher sources in nature and therefore ready for easy assimilation by crops P luru was not unique or isolated in his Reflections on the use of human
Excrement in agriculture where he was unique was in how in combining both dimensions of Lick’s thought in the natural cycle or ccus he established an intimate connection between humans and what they eat a connection that industrial agriculture through its lengthy Supply chains and many futurist Foods is fragmenting lus circulus foregrounds a connection
Between Humanity soil food and the Earth whose crime perhaps May indeed have come thank you many thanks Michael an absolute tur of Force if I may say and and questions I’m already as I popped that up um uh questions are coming in um but you know I think it’s uh it’s remarkably striking
At the at the way that really when people talk about the future of food um in fact they need to look to the past of food for Solutions so the first question is really asking you a very present day um question which is what do you think
The effect of brexit has been on UK agriculture zero is my honest answer I think UK agriculture is already been long since the 19th century industrializing rather rapidly and if we look at the Long View I’m not sure brexit has made any difference to that change where I think
It’s made huge differences to Farmers lives uh I think it’s uh the the obstacles to markets and to trade uh are hugely problematic for Farmers but that’s a consequence again of the industrial agricultural system that has evolved over the last 150 years uh with long Supply chains and
Everything else um I really think that we need to think very carefully about getting to a different form of Agriculture biodynamic regenerative organic um what have you I’m I’m just I’m not convinced that an industrial model for agriculture certainly not in its present form um is the solution to this so the short
Answer to the question is I’m not sure that brexit has made a profound difference to a long-term Trend um I do think it has made a shortterm difference to Farmers and it’s made their lives a lot more difficult that’s for certain you just need to listen to farming today
Every day to see in the the Myriad ways in which that’s happened uh the life of a UK farmer is extraordinarily diff difficult right now I mean I was especially strucken Away by and and your answer there touches on it a little bit by the fact that um your your your
Drawing on thinkers um and and is is fascinating so I think you know what I should have plugged really is that you’re also working on a book on on peruru I didn’t plug that one um but but you don’t draw on Farmers view of what’s happening to the changing patterns of of
Farming as they experience it from the 19th into the 20th century um is does that come into your work or uh it would I mean you know how can one talk about agriculture you know uh I’m not a farmer uh I grew up near Farms but I actually
Grew up in a mining town uh farmers in you know they invest their livelihoods huge amounts of capital going to Machinery uh we have agricultural policies going back decades which encourage Farmers to to to work with this kind of Destruction and repair model of Agriculture um and and of course we we
Speak repeatedly of you know economies of scale I mean if you look at uh you know if you look at this this speech that Michael G Gove gave uh farming for the Next Generation you know a hands-free farm with harvesting picking and automated I mean this is this is a
Profound disconnection from the land so I’m um but by the same token a farmers invested huge amounts of money uh in a way of growing food though we like to call it producing food but in a way of growing food and and and of course they’re bound up with that um I think
You know if you read Sarah Langford and others there’s a there there is a sense in which a lot of farmers are giving up that uh and trying to move to regenerative farming uh and finding that actually uh they have a closer connection with what they’re growing uh
Whether that’s crops or animals uh the people they’re selling their products to uh with the land with nature and and and all of those things and I think those are beneficial um but you know if you’ve if you’ve invested millions of pounds in tractors and other Machinery uh you’re
Not going to uh immediately turn around and say yeah I’m gonna give all that up and I’m gonna go uh to regenerative farming and I’m going to start using human excrement on my Fields yeah I mean it also is also the tension which you hinted at a little bit um around the
Problem of hunger and the relationship between the need to use some type of technology to I mean that’s partly what that hands-free farming is getting at it’s shooting the seed into the soil in a particular way that doesn’t disturb the soil um but it’s still industrial
Farming uh and and the next question in the chat gets at that a little bit too which is um Nigel’s asking what you think about the construction of large solar Farms on agricultural land does that improve or damage the soil uh well in a in a way you could
Argue that it improves the soil because it’s a form of stide so you’re not using the soil uh if you’re using solar panels um I think the L would be more usefully used if we were planting trees on it and if we improve the soil quality um if you
Know we have vast Warehouse spaces in this country uh and that are not used for stal pren you drive along any Motorway go through Milton ke or any other place like that you’ll see these huge warehouses which are you know hundreds of Square hundreds of thousands
Of square meters you know you could put solar panels on all of those instead we don’t do any of that um there’s there’s a kind of disjuncture all over the place here the next question in a way gets that well it suggests something joining together um from Benjamin Morgan uh who
Asks is it not possible to combine a smart farm with breaking that destruction and restoration model a smart Farm could perhaps cope well with the dynamic model you propose as suppose and a followup might be what would a smart Farm look like in the 21st century
If Pier you know at no point would I would I suggest that you know we go back to agriculture in its 18th century form yeah I think that we can incorporate uh Technologies but do that in a manner in which in which we’re not we’re not destroying and then repairing
The soil um the last slide here you know which is from the banali uh in 2023 finland’s exhibition ex exhibition of the composting toilet right in which in which you know your human waste is comp composted and you could then spread that as fertilizer on your garden you don’t
Have to go out to the Garden Center to buy fertilizer you’ve got it there uh and then you don’t have all of course the pollution of water courses and everything else that we’re currently experiencing um through what the what the French called had a wonderful expression legu so that ubiquitous sewer
In which everything is pumped into the sewer and then it just you know disappears magically from from from our vision um so that would be and that’s why I concluded with this slide that would be one way in which we could think about this and I know a number of
Schemes uh you know of communities uh new Eco hotels in which these things are being used um so that that would that would be a an ancient solution to a modern-day problem but we could do do that intelligently and do that you know in in a smart Farm
Environment as it were yeah the next question really gets at uh the complexities and challenges of the modern food system which is where you began um from Edward Styles who says I think the length of supply chain or food miles only tells part of the story an avocado produced anywhere has a lower
Carbon footprint than beef from the cow in your garden so the question that follows is how do we realistically change diets and attitudes to food when so many people in the UK lack the money knowledge equipment and so on to eat well and of course that’s a very it’s a
Big question that you know it’s not just addressed at you it’s addressed at people who no it’s a hug it’s a hugely complicated question because also as I said in my presentation um you know there are there are huge financial interests in maintaining the system as it currently operates uh you know the
The concentrations uh I mean basically you know five well in the UK what about seven or eight supermarkets control over 80% of the markets you know I mean this these the these are these are huge profit making Enterprises that are not so keen on changing our diets and food
Producers you know producing Miss money ice cream you know I mean again there are these huge financial interests um that that that are resistant to change um where I think you know the the questioner is asking how are we going to change our attitudes and I think what’s partly D driving his
Question is like you know can we change consumer attitudes and therefore get consumers to then say I want something different um that’s a that’s a that’s a possible way forward but but of course the forces that resist that you know there’s so much marketing uh then of course we have
The ubiquitous uh complaint about the nanny State telling us what we should and shouldn’t be eating what we should and shouldn’t be drinking um all of those things and then of course um our labeling systems don’t really adequately demonstrate to us you know whether something is good for you or not I mean
It may have green labels well a can of Coke has a bunch of green labels on it yeah and yet it’s got what is it 12 spoonfuls of sugar in it and God knows else what else is in it so I think there’re there you know I think it’s going to be an
Extraordinarily difficult um move uh and that’s and I’m just speaking about the UK I mean there’s a lot of resistance in Europe to to the equivalent of green labeling uh the Italians aren’t signed up to it because a lot of their traditional produce doesn’t actually you
Know it’s high in fats and other things and so you know their manufacturers are resistant and farmers are resistant to that kind of thing so it’s it’s a hugely complicated issue with a lot of very powerful players yes it’s one of the things that’s really striking about food isn’t
It that it all of its governance exists in the private domain you know it’s really striking and and you know even kind of agreeing nutritional standard you know what what’s actually a good thing for you to eat you know and the value of a calorie all of that’s
Contested so sort of scaling that up is quite something so a few more questions I may I may put a couple together if I may so um someone has asked from your interesting talk that you find yourself it’s interesting phrasing you find yourself supporting George Momio thesis Regenesis feeding the world without
Devouring the planet it’s that kind of a statement but a question mark at the end of it and then from Lucas Baker um who asks how might citizens in the UK and US assuage the problem of Highly unhealthy almost synthetic food would you think millions of people changing their buying habits
Subtly to change what is produced or regulation or do you think something else would be helpful so I suppose that question is pushing you a little bit more at the complexities if you were granted a power you know to kind of you know make one key intervention in the food system what
Would it be complicated because because there’s so many dimensions to this yeah um you know my presentation talks about soil we hardly pay any attention to that yeah hugely important to the climates the environments uh to to retaining water uh so you know highly compacted soils the water will run off
On these soils um and the the figures are quite staggering I mean a very a very um homus rich soil which is a healthy soil will absorb 95% of the water that falls on it a compacted soil will absorb at best 5% uh so I mean and that of course has
Huge implications for agriculture for the planet and for everything else um I’m going to be losing sight of and then there’s of course the Monopoly controls so all of these hug huge manufacturers of food or huge supermarkets I mean it it’s too simple to say that you know we
We we regulate nutritional standards that might be a that certainly would be laudable we should perhaps think about it but then of course there are all the complexities in that and how that’s all negotiated and work through uh if I had a magic wand um well certainly one of the first
Things that I would cause to disappear would be Miss Molly’s ice cream and and any other thing that’s not really what it purports to be um uh and get back to get back to some real food uh Less meat and some real food whatever that means in a way
Yeah well I think you’ve got two things there really you’ve got the sort of the I think you’ve also come up with a new a new label better labeling or you know accurate labeling and and and a measure that that signals the kind of relationship of the food that’s produced
To the soil that it’s notionally come from if it hasn’t come from a lab um the final question I think we have time for is from Ricky tah who asks but for homes with septic tanks doesn’t human exent eventually end up in the soil anyway uh okay
No our oceans lakes and when it does end up on the soil because the big uh water companies uh sell process sewage so process human waste they sell it to Farmers uh um it’s full of microplastics in fact T’s water is being there’s a civil court action against temp’s water
Because it hasn’t updated it hasn’t improved it hasn’t modernized its water treatment plants uh and as a consequence there are all of these microplastics which are finding their way onto Farm soil uh and that’s a huge problem uh um uh so uh the short answer is that
Human excrement um I mean in in terms of a kind of Co Cosmic uh circular economy yeah I guess so uh but then then but then it’s of course inflicting huge damage on on on on on on water courses on rivers on the oceans and on
Ourselves thank you and on that note uh thank you very much again to Michael for an absolutely super talk and to all of you for joining and the great questions uh in the chat um Michael is easily found so something else occurs to you I’m sure he’d welcome he’d welcome it
But but perhaps you might not be in a position to answer in the next week or so as we’re in the seventh week of term crashing into eighth week next week and I’m sure all of you remember what that’s like um so the next academic lecture in
The series is on the 18th of April uh from 5: to 6m by Dr Pao Savage um with it actually sounds like a great follow on to tonight’s talk workarounds for complex problems uh and the invite will be sent out to all members very soon thank you once again bye