For most of us, getting our food is one of those chores that’s best completed as quickly and as cheaply as possible – usually via a trip to the local supermarket or ordering a home delivery.
But, with the EU throwing away more food than it imports, are there alternatives for consumers to access food that might also improve our attitudes to the value of food – and towards the natural world on which food production depends? Our food is a critical connection between ourselves and nature but, when you can simply press a button and have it arrive at your doorstep, it seems easy to forget that.
Take the humble potato: you can check the label for where it was grown – but that won’t tell you much about how it was grown, how the weather and soil impacted on its growth, on its appearance and taste, or about its journey from the soil to the supermarket shelf. Behind every vegetable is a story that’s usually hidden by the conventional shopping experience. And …..you can reason that by knowing less about that story, we end up caring less about the natural environment that’s produced the food.
So….what might be the alternatives to the typical supermarket experience…and how might these impact on how we think about food and our planet?
Somone who has studied food innovations and their effect on their users is Dr Felix Zoll at the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF, Müncheberg, Germany). He told me “in the past, research and development was often focused on more technical solutions to solve problems. But I think it’s also very important to think of social changes that can be implemented through innovation.”
In recent research, one of the innovations that Felix studied was the “Too Good To Go” app. After entering your post code, this app allows you to discover which local restaurants, supermarkets and bakeries have excess food that you can collect for around a third of the usual price. Wasted food and drink in the UK is around 3% of our consumer greenhouse gas emissions, or approximately 18 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (based on 2021/22 figures), so this type of initiative is potentially good news for the planet. I discovered that one slight challenge when using the TGTG app is not knowing what will be in your “surprise bag”. But…..I know from my own previous brain research, that having to connect random elements together to make something new can be a great boost to one’s creativity – so maybe that’s a silver lining! I think the TGTG app offers amazing value and it’s good for the environment – but can it bring us closer to nature and encourage us to be more thoughtful and involved with how our food is produced? Felix told me that, amongst the three innovations he looked at, this was the least effective in producing changes amongst its users – probably because of how little social interaction is involved. You just order the bag and collect it.
Felix’s research pointed towards a general trend: “the more social exchange is involved, the more changes you also get” and changes were clearer in the next innovation he looked at. This was the co-operative supermarket, where shoppers were expected to work 3 hours every month and make a modest one-off investment in the business. I visited the Berlin “Super Coop” on Oudenarder Str. and spoke to the workers/customers there. One told me she enjoyed being part of the Super Coop enterprise because prices were cheaper (since the coop doesn’t have to pay labour). Also, she felt the quality was better because the people involved all shared a common interest in the food they were sourcing to sell. But also, she confided, it was about community – with people like her often spending more than 3 hours a month working there just because they enjoyed hanging out with everyone. This echoed what Felix was telling me, that a major motivation for people to become involved was social – with people seeking out a sense of involvement with others through the way they accessed food:
“that’s the big difference because we all know the normal shopping experience, you go to the supermarket, look for your products, take them from the shelves, pay and go home. But in these cooperative supermarkets, people are involved. First of all they buy a share of the supermarket, which already creates some sense of ownership, of course. And then they’re also involved in the work at the supermarket.”
But as well as providing motivation, the social aspect of some food innovations can also provide a platform for learning. The greater learning occurred in the more social initiatives. It seems our primate sociality – our human motivation to collaborate – may be the most important ingredient for tweaking our neural networks and making us more aware of the meaning of food.
The strongest changes were reported amongst those growing their own food in community gardens. Felix told me that it was here that some of his participants were changing their behaviour in a way more oriented towards sustainability. This was the initiative that seemed most powerful in terms of people learning from each other – and in ways that were benefitting environmental attitudes and understanding.
Some of these gardens have emerged in Tempelhofer Feld – an abandoned airport that is now a public park. The gardens I visited there had been constructed from re-used materials with flowers and vegetables mostly grown in raised beds and containers – since you can’t dig into the ground here due to risk of unexploded ordinance from the Second World War. It’s a gorgeously peaceful and spacious place to escape to, with a very creative and even eccentric feel to the gardens. Katerina, one of the gardeners I bumped into, told me how the different areas of the gardens were organised by different groups with different ways of going about things – different politics she told me. Her group was meeting once a month and anyone could join. She was growing flowers but also potatoes – because she had discovered that tomatoes and fruit would disappear before she had a chance to eat them. “It’s nice to share” she tells me but “people would come with big bags and just load up when she wasn’t around”. Katerina liked coming to her garden as often as she could from her apartment in Berlin, where she sometimes found things were just too much. This was the place she could come to escape.
I asked Felix whether if everyone grew a few potatoes, whether that would be a world that thought more sustainably. He was keen emphasise that his study alone could not prove that, but added “This is more of a personal opinion. Sure. but I think it would help….For example, we also did research on self harvest gardens where people rent a little plot or community supported agriculture where people finance a farmer the farm operations of a farm, but can also visit the farm, can get involved in production. We had similar results. So yeah. There, there are several indicators that this might work. The question is just how, how can we get many people involved?”
Yes indeed – how might we get more people involved? But what I found most interesting about Felix’s exploration of food innovations was that their impact hinged on their potential to get people talking. Of the three innovations Felix looked at, the community garden was probably the most challenging approach to putting food on the table – but its social nature meant it was the most effective at influencing hearts and minds. It seems it’s the social experience of sharing the growing of food that can lead to changes in how we think and behave – and in ways that benefit our planet.
To discover more and hear my interview with Felix, listen to the podcast.
