On Climate Boons + Corporate Bathwater
plus the promise of a knish
Yesterday, I turned 26 years old. In many ways, it was a weird birthday— the Omicron spike in DC meant I felt obligated to cancel the party I had planned to hold at Sonny’s, a local natural wine bar and pizza garden.
But, in many other ways, it was also a really special birthday. My boyfriend Jake put together a bountiful Bloody Mary bar and made chicken and waffles from scratch. And I drank ample wine and champagne with my roommate Margo, her boyfriend (and, as I like to point out, my friend first!) Jonah, and Jake at the winter igloos at the Watergate Hotel.
Even as I was a little sad I could not see all my friends or celebrate my birthday in the way I initially envisioned, I had such a wonderful time and was buoyed by all the love I felt. In particular, I was reminded yet again of how cooking is an act of care, not in the self-care industrial complex type way, but in the way that it creates a relational bind between the cook and the eater. As anthropologist Annemarie Mol wrote in a recent book, “in eating, taking is not necessarily destructive.” At age 26, I hope to continue taking—and giving— in a productive way.
Anyways, let’s get into it!
Recently, Hannah Ritchie, in true data-scientist-needs-to-take-a-humanities-class form, tweeted out that “there is no sustainable world to rewind back to.” According to her, sustainability means the ability to “meet the needs of the present without sacrificing the needs of future generations.” In her estimation, we tend to “focus a lot on the 2nd half & forget the 1st” as “we have always failed to meet the needs of the present generation.”
The word “we” in that last sentence is doing a lot of work. In a development that will be unsurprising to many, Twitter users swiftly recognized this thread was erasing Indigenous history (“oh shit you’re so right! unless stuff happened between hunter gatherer time and capitalism but probably not,” reads a telling response). Tweets like Ritchie’s, as one person aptly diagnosed, are examples of colonial realism: “it is easier to imagine the end of the world instead of the end of colonialism.”
But, despite bombastic (and clickbait-y) claims which proliferate on Twitter, there is a move to draw upon Indigenous methods of agriculture in order to feed the world more sustainably. Civil Eats recently chronicled the marked increase in the use of Indigenous agricultural technologies in the American West, a change driven by rising temperatures, increasing drought, and shrinking resources. Scholars are noting how the Mesoamerican practice of milpa agriculture which relies on intercropping “could offer a potential solution to some of the food security issues that plague modern Mexico, where more than 10 percent of the population lacks access to adequate food supply.” And, Maya Ch’orti’ and Zapotec environmental scientist Jessica Hernandez recently released a book that advocates for the “resilience and efficacy of Indigenous knowledge in land management practices that have stood the test of time.”
Now, this is not to say that these agricultural practices represent a magic bullet for the present moment. In the past 300 or so years, we have seen a dramatic increase in population levels, not to mention rapid changes to lifeways worldwide. In order to provide adequate nutrition globally (and to avoid advocating for eco-fascism, which many popular food writers seem to be implicitly in favor of), we can’t “thro[w] out the technological, large-scale, and high-productivity baby with the corporate bathwater.” But to ignore or elide historical examples of sustainability is not only ignorant (and racist)— it is foolish. Are many of us so unable to imagine a different present that we erase thousands of years of past innovations?
After reading Ritchie’s tweet thread, I needed a palate cleanser, so I turned to the work of climate historian Emma Moesswilde. Emma works on strategies of climate adaptation in pre-industrial England; as she wrote in a recent article for NiCHE, “Bringing the intertwined histories of rural life and climate resilience forward offers not only potential adaptation strategies for agricultural communities today, but the hope needed to continue working for good harvests of all kinds in the years to come.” As I think about my own work as a historian, I hope to learn from scholars like Emma who collaborate not only with other historians, but also with scientists and quantitative researchers. In doing so, we can work to remedy insidious examples of ahistorical thinking and erasure, as well as draw upon the adaptation strategies and hope offered by the past.
Other food-related pieces occupying my mind:
As I noted in last week’s newsletter, lab meat is not a panacea for the climate crisis. However, as my dear friend Mitchell pointed out, lab meat does elide many (though not all) of the pernicious moral problems of eating animals. In that vein, I really enjoyed reading this socialist-feminist manifesto on animal liberation this week.
I am sick of pronouncements alleging the inevitability of contracting COVID. Such statements, as many have pointed to, “allow disabled people to be disposable or the necessary collateral for the status quo.” In reflecting on the uneven consequences of the pandemic, I am also left thinking of food service workers: Hanna Raskin recently published a well-researched piece showing the horrifying impact of COVID on food service managers and cooks in Georgia.
On a lighter note: this is probably the best headline that I have seen in recent years. For the record, I could also probably be lured to an amorous rendezvous with the promise of a knish.
I am finally back in my apartment in Adams Morgan, and good wine abounds! This weekend, I braved the cold at St. Vincent Wine in order to celebrate the birthday of my roommate, the inimitable Margo Williams. In her honor, we sipped on the 2019 Cantina Margò Regio Bianco.
It is a skin-contact wine from Umbria made with trebbiano spoletino grapes (a different grape than your run-of-the-mill trebbiano). It was easy to drink but had a nice amount of funk, and a lovely sour note on the end.
Here is a brief update on some of the food-related work I’ve been engaging in lately:
I published a “Plant of the Month” article with JStor Daily last week on the global history of cassava, and its potential to ameliorate climate-induced food insecurity. Check it out here.
Last summer, I did some research for a Whetstone Radio Collective podcast on food in South Asia. The first four episodes of the show were finally released, and I’m really enjoying listening.
I just submitted a proposal to present at a conference this summer on the history of instant coffee. I hope it gets accepted, but in the meantime, check out my other work on the beverage here.
Thank you all for reading this week’s installment of Linking & Drinking. I hope your week is filled with lots of joy and maybe a mug of Samin Nosrat’s “Whatever You Want Soup.” It can’t hurt.
Love, Julia