I recently found myself in the town centre of Carlisle, in the northwest of England, at 7am. The town square was empty except for a large truck whose driver was unloading packaged food into a shop. An incredible, raw-edged roar of noise came from the refrigeration unit on top of his cab. The noise was so extreme that I couldn’t hear a word when someone called my mobile phone. I retreated into the railway station cafeteria, but it was little better in there: two large refrigerated drinks machines were roaring so loudly that the sales assistant had to shout to tell me the price of a coffee. That noise, which represents wasted energy, was for me an audible warning signal that global food systems are lurching into crisis. As I write, there are empty shelves in Caracas, food riots in West Bengal and Mexico, and warnings of hunger in Jamaica, Nepal, the Philippines and sub-Saharan Africa. Global food prices have risen by 75 per cent since 2000, and soaring prices for basic foods have forced some governments to control the cost of bread, maize, rice and dairy products. According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, global food reserves are at their lowest in 25 years (see: https://www.energybulletin. net/36686.html).

Little of this appears in mainstream media in the North, where the rich have been the last to be hit. Food costs represent 10 per cent of household expenditure in rich countries, whereas in China the ?gure is 30 per cent. In sub-Saharan Africa, 60 per cent of household income is spent on food. The crisis is already acute. Many civilisations, from the Sumerians to the Maya, have faltered when the scale and complexity of food production generated ruinous diminishing returns. On American farms in the early 1800s, there was a roughly even balance between calories expended and calories produced as food. Under today’s system, it takes sixteen calories of input to produce one calorie of meat. Up to 40 per cent of a modern city’s ecological impact can be attributed to its food systems.

Most processed foods are packaged, and manufacturing the packaging (steel, aluminium, plastics) accounts for 70 to 80 per cent of the food industry’s overall emissions. Once packaged, processed food is generally purchased in supermarkets which consume electricity to keep foods frozen – especially in open display units. Food retailers also spend insanely on energy – seven times more than is used in an ordinary office. In larger food stores, up to a quarter of their energy budget goes on lighting – to make the food look good, not for it to be good. Most of the rest is used for refrigeration. More than 50 per cent of food in developed countries is retailed under refrigerated conditions. A single open-fronted freezer costs a retailer 20,000 euros per year to run in energy bills alone – and that does not include the embergy (embodied energy) involved in each unit’s manufacture.
When food is forced into the formal economy and industrialised, indirect costs skyrocket. Poor diet and physical inactivity account for 35 per cent (and rising) of avoidable causes of death in the US; the on-costs of obesity alone amount to 10 per cent of total health costs. In Europe, grab-and-go consumers probably do not realise that the sandwiches they eat contain the same amount of salt as seven bags of crisps (see: https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/ 6266164.stm). Processed food does not just clog our arteries. Two geographers, Simon Marvin and Will Medd, found that fat deposits from fast food outlets and homes was increasing the number of sewer blockages and overflows across cities in the US. Cities become fat, they say, as restaurants and fast food chains pour cooking residues into drains. Local governments lack the resources to monitor grease disposal or to enforce the relevant regulations (see: https://www.surf.salford.ac.uk/Events/UrbanVulnerability Abstracts.htm). John Thackara