The architect Carolyn Steel (London, 1965) questions the prosperity model based on the exploitation of nature.
He has explained in the book
Hungry Cities
(Captain Swing) how the shape of cities depends on the way we eat, and in his new essay,
Sitopia
, how food can save the world.
We interviewed her at the
Carta de Santiago
congress on climate change
that the Galician capital hosted in November.
Why do we pay more for silver if we need more wheat?
The people who pay for the silver already have the wheat.
10 years ago I asked myself what a good life is.
I was obsessed with figuring out what makes us happy and why our economy is heading in the opposite direction.
What did you find?
Our idea of a good life is a 19th century concept.
The life of any farmer was hard.
So if someone said to you: "You will no longer have to work outside, you will do it under the roof of a factory."
How to reject that promise of the future?
What have we lost trying to achieve the good life?
Before, the way to solve life's problems determined existence.
And eating is one of the big issues because, if you don't solve it, you die.
That's why politicians talk so much about food.
Ernst Schumacher explains it in
Small is beautiful
: “Economic growth does not improve human life.
The improvement to put the economy at the service of man ”.
That's it: the good life cannot exist while that of others is in danger.
History seems bent on proving otherwise.
But we haven't found the good life.
Did humanity's problems start when we stopped sharing the forest or when we stopped growing what we eat?
Some nomadic hunting societies had such low material aspirations that they got what they wanted and people felt rich.
How do you know?
Reading historians like Marshall Sahlins [author of
Stone Age Economics] you
understand how hard it was for them to change because they were happy living in nature.
They worked to survive.
They understood nature as a place of abundance, not as a means from which to protect themselves.
They did not fear bad harvests: when there were none, they moved.
Since we became sedentary we live with a feeling of scarcity.
Sedentary lifestyle made us lose ...
Food, fitness, teeth ... The life of the collectors was hard, but complete: it kept them alert and fit.
The idea of work did not exist: they gathered and hunted for food.
Many societies were egalitarian and those were the closest thing to a democracy we have ever had: they shared work, helped and cared for each other.
They had an optimal diet because they ate everything.
Now we rediscover that dietary diversity is the basis of health.
Has profitability killed diversity?
Exactly.
95% of all the seeds in the world are in the hands of a single company: Monsanto.
How did we get here?
Controlling food is power.
Many historical problems exploded when those responsible for feeding the people failed to do so.
Today's politicians don't want that problem, they dedicate their energy to being reelected.
And the power to feed is in the hands of others.
Of less and less: supermarkets are in the hands of few groups.
We live the illusion of diversity.
Supermarkets have thousands of products.
But, in reality, many are repetitions of different forms made by the same brand.
It seems that we can choose, but what is really different is much more expensive because it costs more to produce.
Feeding the planet is in the hands of just five brands.
Neighborhood grocery stores and greengrocers can't compete with that.
We eat what they want us to eat.
Amazon has started serving food at home.
They don't have enough with one slice of the pie, they want it all.
And we allow it in exchange for a certain comfort and a small reduction in price.
What makes it possible for avocados from another continent to be cheaper than those that grow nearby, in the so-called zero kilometer?
Fuel subsidies received by airlines.
Politicians work with the food industry, but do not take responsibility.
In return, they do what the food companies ask of them: subsidies, types of taxation ... Governments are terrified of dealing with food.
Why?
Because people don't like being told what to eat.
Or drink.
It is part of the idea of freedom that neoliberal capitalism has embraced: doing what you want without thinking about the consequences.
From that point of view, eating cherries in December is freedom.
From a biological point of view, eating something out of season is nonsense with a high cost of contamination.
There is no more distorted concept.
If freedom is doing what I want, logically it goes against any coexistence.
Writer Carolyn Steel.Manuel Vázquez
How should society be organized?
We need politicians who understand that they are in power to serve us, not to sign contracts and make money, which is what the majority are looking for.
That is why they leave the feeding of the population in the hands of the food industry.
Many of the issues that have made us so vulnerable to covid are related to the way we live and what we eat.
And it is a phenomenon of the 20th century.
Markets like Les Halles, in Paris, or Smithfield, in London, were born to have their own power.
They were a place of exchange.
Today, as soon as we arrive in the city, food is commercialized, it is converted into money.
How do I change?
The modern food industry was invented in Chicago thanks to the railroad.
This separated the farmer from what he was selling and made the food anonymized: there was no longer a compromise between farmer and consumer.
Food became merchandise.
In the 1970s, France and Italy had laws that prevented the construction of supermarkets of more than 1,000 square meters.
What happened?
We have experienced what is happening today in the UK for a long time because we had an industrialized food system before.
That makes people stop cooking and the fruit is packed in plastic.
It is an American heritage where the supermarket became synonymous with modernity.
The time to shop, cook and eat together was wasted.
Now it is happening in Spain: people buy sandwiches packed in plastic.
And peeled apples.
What will be next?
Pre-chewed apples?
Predigested?
[Laugh].
How far can you go?
In the end everything refers to the same thing: what is our idea of a good life?
And it seems that trying the minimum pays off: no cooking, no cleaning, and watching Netflix all night.
It is a global rot.
It does not lead to a better life.
Do you watch Netflix?
Yes. Of course I need to relax at home.
But I try not to let that decide everything else, like eating right, being fair, or feeling good.
What do you do to feel good?
I cook.
I grow vegetables.
I write, I investigate, I denounce ... The Roman circus entertained and fed the population.
And we have something similar today.
We are paying a high price for cheap food and entertainment.
Choosing to be a consumer over a person is death in life.
Why don't we see it?
We have been persuaded.
For deception to triumph, there must be tolerance for self-deception and we have this very developed because it avoids suffering.
But he actually postpones it.
And it enlarges it.
Some 70 million Americans still believe that Donald Trump won the last election.
That is the world we live in.
The power of the current media to perpetrate lies is terrifying.
Do we live in an escapist society?
"Eat only these pills and you will lose weight", or the opposite: "Eat all the sugar you want and feel good reaffirming your personality."
Companies sell us an idea of the good life that is, in reality, the bad life.
Cheap food is cheap life.
Growing your own food is a utopia.
Clear.
But it is not trying to regain consciousness of what food is: something alive.
The cleanliness of modernity seems to separate us from what is alive: life is dirty.
What has made it possible for us to pay 23% less for food than in 1980?
We have outsourced your true cost.
Who is paying for it?
Us.
But not in the supermarket.
We pay with taxes: reducing the taxation of companies or their transport cost.
We are helping to destroy the planet by the comfortable way in which we have decided to feed ourselves.
How did we get here?
In the same way that people left the countryside and moved to the city.
Without forgetting the harshness of the countryside, the city was not the comfort it promised to be.
The same has happened with technology.
He promised to make life easier for us and we accepted.
What we did not know that we signed, accepting it, was that access to nature would be increasingly difficult or that jobs would cease to provide pride and motivation.
If we are what we eat, what are we?
The product of an industrialized food system: climate change, soil degradation, reduction of biodiversity, hunger, obesity, droughts and covid, of course.
This pandemic is a direct consequence of the planet's lack of biodiversity.
Carolyn Steel, author of 'Hungry Cities', shows an illustration from her new book, Sitopia.Manuel Vázquez
Is the lack of biodiversity due to valuing profitability more than the long term?
The biggest melon, the easiest eggs to produce ... If you bet everything on one type of tree, orange or whatever, when the pests arrive, nothing is saved.
We have built a production system so efficient that it ends up being ineffective.
Have we done something right?
As a general rule, almost anything that promises effectiveness ends up not being effective.
If I mechanize the production process, where will the workers get money to buy what I produce?
Did being the daughter of a nurse and a doctor lead you to pay attention to eating?
We understood from children the relationship between food and health.
If we dropped something on the ground, they made us eat it: microbes protect by building resistance.
But the obsession came to him in the hotel of his paternal grandparents, The Miramar ...
There I was fascinated with the door that separated the life of the clients from that of the service.
Our side was loud, chaotic.
And the other silent, pleasant ...
Which one did you prefer?
The kitchen, always.
Is she a good cook?
Yes. With forgiveness.
Why did you want to be an architect?
It took me 20 years to express that for me architecture was not the buildings, but the way they are inhabited.
In college, the way architects talked about architecture bored me.
I like things to work out, but I'm not excited about constructive detail.
The gaze of women in architecture is another.
Although there are exceptions. ”Zaha Hadid behaved like a man producing unlivable architecture.
My plural point of view comes from my family.
My mother was Finnish and my father was a Polish-Scottish-Dutch Jew.
I never felt British.
Why?
I was never part of the group of cool kids.
I only had two friends.
She was an
outsider.
What does it mean?
I didn't have a good time.
As a child I tried to fit in with the way of life of others without considering what I wanted or could do.
Was she a good student?
Yes. It was my defense: orderly, punctual, and polished.
Until I got to Cambridge and started to rebel.
I refused to plan a student residence.
With the problems in the world I wanted to do something useful!
And I managed to make an alternative proposal to the transformation that at that time was being designed for the London docks, converted into luxury homes more to invest than to live.
He taught in the cities department of the London School of Economics.
There were sociologists, engineers, mobility specialists there ... But I discovered that despite this diversity, their knowledge was not contagious, it did not merge into a multidisciplinary message.
So I was unable to introduce real life into urban discourse.
And I started researching about food.
I spent seven years writing
Hungry Cities.
In the book he talks about resistance: citizens opposing the disappearance of markets or the residents of Primrose Hill at the arrival of a Starbucks coffee.
Did they manage to stop it?
Yes. Large scale is never benign.
Merchants and customers win when they meet.
The bond between seller and consumer is narrowing and that improves life in the neighborhood.
Today employees of bank branches are changed so that they do not feel empathy.
There are municipalities that protect small businesses from the overwhelming supermarkets.
If we let the main streets disappear, life will be worse in the cities.
It happened to us in England because we bet on the American way of life that consumes more than cooking.
Who cooks in the houses?
I am not advocating bringing back the housewife of the fifties.
I defend that we can all cook.
It's a pleasure for me.
I love feeding people.
There is nothing more important than that.
Cooking is having time.
Exactly.
It is to make a cake for someone instead of mixing the preparation that they sell in the supermarket.
In 1921 the British Government considered it important to maintain diversity in the fruit.
For 1992 he judged it unnecessary.
What happened?
Politicians are moving further and further away from the responsibility of feeding citizens.
In the supermarket there are three varieties of apples, although there are more than five hundred.
That sums up the logistics of food: more efficiency and attractive merchandise.
The reason why some apples are grown and not others is so that there is the same fruit all year round.
We have this absurd illusion that there are no seasons for fruit.
We eat cherries at Christmas that don't taste like anything.
But we have overcome the natural organization.
Ha!
Are we posthumans?
Not yet.
We feel better sharing.
Remember: nobody wants to eat the last olive.
That is wanting to share and altruism is more powerful than selfishness.
It is better choice.
She live alone?
Alone, no children, no pets, no ex-husbands or ex-wives.
I never would have imagined it, but I love it.
Loneliness is relative.
I enjoy taking care of plants because it is a type of relationship with another living being.
Epicurus wrote it: accept the need and take pleasure in what you do.
I also have great friends.
Great friends are the chosen family.
You know: don't argue or stay out.