Food in the City

Historically, urban areas have been viewed as superior to their rural counterparts, but in reality cities have always been utterly dependent on the vast areas of countryside needed for agriculture adequate to feed their populations. As Steel points out, “The feeding of cities has been arguably the greatest force shaping civilisation, and it still is” (Steel, 2013). The expansion of the Roman Empire, for instance, was fueled by the increasing burden of feeding urban centers, and the conquest of Carthage and Egypt was a strategic move to gain control of the North African for the purpose of grain production (Steel, 2013). A constant and affordable supply of food is the prerequisite to any city with a large, concentrated population. The urban populace must be fed (as cheaply as possible) lest risk dangerous turmoil and unrest. The free grain rations that were distributed in ancient Rome were not a result of concern for the general well being of the citizens, though certainly, those in control had an interest in keeping the population alive, as there is much work to do to keep a city running, but a calculated move to hold political power and to prevent dangerous unrest among the numerous inhabitants of the city. For instance, when Julius Caesar attempted to reduce the spending of the empire by cutting back on these grain rations it resulted in “bloody civil unrest that lasted until his own assassination…” (Steel, 2013).

Before the technological advances that allowed for easier transport and preservation of food, these cities depended on the farmland just beyond their metaphorical walls, but as cities grew larger and more numerous their food supplies came from further away, transported laboriously across land, such as the droving of livestock to urban centers for slaughter in times before meat preservation was viable, and somewhat more efficiently by sea and river. As technological advances, such as railroads and refrigeration, arose, food could increasingly be produced further away from the cities that consumed it, and with the onset of globalization and our current transportation capacities this meant that food could be grown in someone else’s backyard on a different continent in a different hemisphere. This has fundamentally changed the way that urban populations view food.

For one the increased separation between food producers and food consumers has resulted in a lack of transparency in terms of food production. Many of the people living in cities neither know nor care about where their food comes from. For some the concept of food seasonality is a foreign one now that there are food suppliers in both hemispheres allowing for our favorite fruits and vegetables to be available year round. Many people may not even realize the extent to which the variety of our produce has been limited as well, due to the demand for easily grown and transported food items. Much of this can be attributed to the rise of the supermarket, which “...were invented in the early twentieth century by American food processing companies looking for ways to sell their high-volume, long-life products as cost effectively as possible” (Steel, 2013). Steel also delves into the mind-boggling complexity of food distribution hubs and the transport of food from its place of origin to supermarket shelves, explaining that in 2002 “British food transport accounted for 30 billion vehicle kilometres...the equivalent of circumnavigating the globe 750,000 times” (Steel, 2013).

The ability to transport food over great distances and our more advanced and efficient farming techniques have been a boon to population growth. Steel mentions Vaclav Smil’s assertion that without the ability to artificially fix nitrogen into the soil through the Haber-Bosch process, “two out of every five people in the world would not be alive today” (Steel, 2013). Now, we are faced with the issue of feeding an overpopulated world, concentrated within cities, and how best to accomplish that in a sustainable manner. Some argue for a switch to organic agriculture and humanely raised livestock in order to save our natural resources, but others insist that only the most modern, efficient, and chemically dependent farming techniques can feed the world. Through the advances in agriculture it seems we will soon have succeeded in increasing our population beyond the capability of our planet sustain us. The only viable options, may be to wait and hope for new technological breakthroughs that will allow us to continually increase food production without depleting finite natural resources, or to change our eating behaviors. Current levels of meat consumption in the developed world are unsustainable, and this trend is picking up in other parts of the world as developing countries become more urban in nature (Steel, 2013). This behavior is the driving force behind the inefficient use of natural resources and the animal processing facilities that most people, when confronted with it, find abhorrent. The unfortunate reality of the situation is that many urban dwellers are deliberately ignorant of this situation or prefer an “out of sight, out of mind” point of view. Perhaps this will change in the future as the ever increasing demand for meat transforms the countryside as we know it.