The Food Industry Problem Must Be Viewed from a Structural Perspective (Part 1)

Believe it or not…a student actually took the initiative after class to transcribe the entire content of my fourth session of the first-level course. It would be a real shame not to share it. This was a three-hour class; although the content is very long, I think the reason he was willing to do this is that he wanted more people to see it.

Looking at Problems from a Structural Perspective

Next I want to talk with you about facing the food industry. This is a very heavy topic, because the problems in our current food production system are enormous and complex. I think many of these problems are actually systemic, but we are used to looking at them from a single phenomenon and then thinking about how to fix that symptom. Yet the overall problem never gets solved, so these symptoms keep emerging endlessly and can never all be resolved.

When I used to be an office worker, I also looked at these things from a partial, individual perspective. But later I came to farm, and when I became someone without a fixed salary, at the time I thought having no fixed salary was truly a terrifying thing. For an office worker, it feels like you cannot survive. But after taking that step and gradually adjusting, I feel it gave me a completely different set of values. I began to look at things from a whole-system perspective, rather than only from my own perspective.

Like what we just saw, the people in the film are all working hard to play their roles in their own positions. They do not even realize what China will look like after the Brazilian rainforest is cut down. I think this is the most terrifying thing about being an office worker: being able to see things only from your own perspective.

I am not saying that being an office worker is bad. Rather, it is even more important to be aware of this mode of thinking, and to know how to break out of such a cycle. I am not saying everyone should quit their jobs to farm. I just feel that because of my experience, I discovered this shift in values. When you can look at things from a more holistic perspective, you can truly find the crux of the problem. When you look at things only from your own perspective, many problems actually cannot be solved, because they are structural problems.

The first thing I want to talk about is this: over the past ten years, the prices of oil, soybeans, and corn. It is very obvious that food prices have closely followed oil. The Japanese film just now was probably made in 2007. They were incredibly sharp; before the problems occurred, they were already alert to them. But even now we still only see the phenomena and not the core. I think the difference is just too great. As I just said, when we keep looking at things from our own perspective, it is actually very hard to see the core. We only see fragments. And when you only ever see fragments, the problem will not be solved.

We all know oil is not a sustainable energy source. There is no need to even talk about oil running out; no one knows when that day will come. The general estimate is 2030. We should still be alive then. But the point is not oil running out. The problem with oil is its price. As long as oil prices rise to a certain level, we will not be able to buy food. That food will become too expensive for us to afford. As long as oil prices rise, even before oil runs out, what will we do on that day?

In the long-term trend, oil prices should keep rising. Oil is spending an inheritance, the wealth left by our ancestors. When it used to be cheap, we did not feel it, but now it is almost spent. Renewable energy means earning money by yourself; it earns slowly, and it does not accumulate fast enough. Unlike oil, which left you an entire mountain of gold. Now we are almost done spending it. This food supply system is now having problems. Without oil, it cannot plant, machines cannot start, it cannot get inputs, and its food cannot be transported out, so consumers cannot get it either. Many people ask whether farming will leave you starving to death. Farming absolutely will not leave you starving to death, because we are at the place where food is produced. The ones who will starve to death are the people in the cities. The food in the supermarkets was not supposed to be there by nature. As long as goods cannot be transported in, the entire hypermarket will empty out. That is easy to understand, right?

Because we had never seen that phenomenon before, we thought those things being there was a given. It is not a given. Behind it, a very complex system is operating, and the core of that system is oil. When oil prices surge, that should be a huge crisis, right? Correct? Although this crisis is troublesome, perhaps we can still handle it. But if a surge in oil prices drives up food prices, and these two crises come together, what do we do? Are we capable of handling it? It seems a bit difficult, right?

As I just said, Taiwan, China's self-sufficiency rate for corn, soybeans, and wheat is all zero. There is no need to talk about how important soybeans are. Then corn: wow! It feels like we rarely eat corn, but corn is a very important processing material. Much of the sugar we eat, syrups, and many processed food ingredients are extracted from corn. Without corn, it would be a real problem. As for wheat, the owner of a flour mill told me that Taiwan, China now consumes more wheat-based products than rice. If one day we cannot get this wheat, if we cannot get this flour, what do we do?

Maybe you would say, fine, then I will switch to eating rice. I would be fine with that. But as I just said, the consumption of wheat-based products has surpassed rice. Does that not mean there is an enormous industry here? What if the industries related to soybeans, wheat, and corn collapse? Would that have a huge impact on our economy? It would. So the three crises of energy, food, and economy will break out one after another. On that day, are we capable of facing them? If these three problems happened separately, perhaps we could still handle them. But when they happen together, they will definitely come together. It is like Japan's earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident coming together. No government would be capable of handling that. It would definitely become a major disaster. What do we do on that day? Our lives and property, and also our dignity, how exactly are we to secure them?

Where Does Our Food Come From?

First we need to look at where our food comes from. We may not even know where we got a meal. More and more people now eat out. They may eat at a buffet restaurant, or buy microwave food at a convenience store, or go to McDonald's. In short, more and more people are eating out. Buying ready-made food directly from outside saves time and is convenient. These products may come from food factories or central kitchens. When they process these foods, they usually separate the food into good elements and bad elements. The bad elements refer to the parts that spoil easily; the good elements are the parts that do not spoil easily. What does easily spoiling mean? It means nutrients, that microorganisms want to eat it. So they remove the nutritious and tasty parts, leaving only the parts that do not spoil easily. But then the stuff tastes bad, so they put a lot of additives in to give it flavor. They may even add some nutrients, such as vitamins, and then they can claim it is nutritionally fortified. This is a very strange thing.

Have you seen "Terrifying Food Additives"? I recommend everyone take a look at it. It talks about these food factories and how they make things that cannot be eaten into things that can be eaten. In any case, this kind of food comes from this kind of system. Take buffet restaurants, for example. I think many people should have noticed that no matter how hard you try, your own cooking can never look as beautiful as a buffet restaurant's, right? Our own cooking looks ugly. Why can buffet restaurants cook food so beautifully? Also, if you cook at home, some dishes may need 30 minutes to become tender. What about restaurants outside? You sit down and food is served in 5 minutes. Why? It is not that their chefs are more skilled. This is not a matter of culinary skill, but a difference in additives. They add some chemical materials you do not know about, so their dishes can stay green for a very long time, and their food can become tender very quickly. These are things your kitchen does not have.

Food factories: elementary school field trips often visit these factories, soy sauce, soda, and all sorts of odds and ends. At the time, I often found it strange. Food factories should have fields around them, right? Are they not making food? But why are these food factories all in industrial zones? At the time I could never understand this. Later, after reading "Terrifying Food Additives," I finally understood, because their most important materials are these chemical substances. Those chemical powders may come from the factory next door making them for them. They may also use real food, and that real food comes from distant production areas, traveling more than half the way around the globe to Taiwan, China.

How do you judge whether food is good or not, whether it is clean or not? There is a very simple principle: large quantity, long time, long distance, there is definitely a problem. That is all, just these 3 criteria. Because this food is not only for people to eat. Insects want to eat it, birds want to eat it, mice want to eat it, and microorganisms want to eat it too. How can it be transported here in large quantities, over a long time, and long distance without anything going wrong? There is a problem. So they all have to do a lot of anti-rot and anti-insect treatment. Cherries: does anyone peel cherries before eating them? No. Cherries are sprayed with 7 rounds of chemicals before export. 7 rounds! Apples are sprayed and then the chemicals are sealed inside with wax. If you really think about it, you can definitely figure it out. This stuff cannot be allowed to grow insects when it is transported in. As long as there are insects, the entire container must be destroyed. How could they possibly let it grow insects? So stop buying imported food. That is the most terrifying thing. The pesticides used in storage and transport are 10 times to 100 times those used in the fields. So imported food is the worst.

We say this food production system is efficient. Its goal is to increase yield. Why increase yield? In the future, when you do fertilizer-free cultivation, a farmer will definitely tell you that growing this has too low a yield and that it will not work. Take rice, for example. With no fertilizer, the yield may be a bit worse, perhaps 400 jin per fen of land, while others grow 1000 jin. He says this yield is too low, no good, no good. But how much does his rice sell for per jin? 20 yuan. How much can our rice sell for per jin? Up to 90 yuan. My yield is half of his, and my price is more than 4 times his. Am I losing money? What on earth is he thinking? (The yield of Japan's Shumei Natural Farming is about 80 percent of conventional farming. The rice yield and selling price of Thailand's Rice God are the same as conventional farming, and farmers can still make money.)

Increasing Yield Cannot Solve the Problem

The first purpose of increasing yield is to solve the famine problem. Farmers say this stuff cannot be grown only for rich people to eat. I spray so much fertilizer because I want to solve the famine problem. But over the past 40 years, humanity's ability to produce food has reached a historical peak. Yet have famines occurred over the past 40 years? Yes, famines are still happening. They have always been happening. Why, when our food production is so high, do famines still occur? This is very strange. So famine is not a problem of insufficient production, but a problem of unequal distribution. Some people do not get food, while some people take too much.

If it is unequal distribution, then when you increase production, can the people who cannot get food get it? They still cannot get it. The food is still wasted in the hands of the rich. As I mentioned last time, our food self-sufficiency rate is only 30 percent, yet a pile of food is used for compost. This is a terrible waste. Those who cannot eat still cannot get food. So increasing production cannot solve the famine problem.

The second purpose of increasing yield is to raise farmers' incomes. Has it? No. The times when farmers' incomes are worst have always been the times when yields are highest, right? High yield, price collapse, total loss. It has always been like this. So increasing yield completely cannot solve these two problems. What farmers should be thinking about is how to improve quality. Improve quality to the point where people are willing to buy from you at 4 times the price. Is that not so? Consumers are willing. They know that rice at 20 yuan per jin does not make them feel safe eating it. It is not that we grow high-quality food and people who cannot pay cannot get this food. We also very much like barter or labor exchange. The key is to create a friendly agricultural environment, so that more city people can return to the countryside to farm, and this can also solve the difficulties of agriculture and food.

Why Do We Eat So Much Meat, Dairy, and Eggs?

The food produced on Earth is enough for 12 billion people to eat. This is United Nations statistics. Do you know the Earth's current population? 7 billion. It recently passed 7 billion. Actually, 7 billion people on Earth is still enough to eat. Why are some people still hungry? This is very strange. First I need to explain the conversion ratio of food. If people ate a purely vegetarian diet, 100 units of food could feed 10 units of people. But if they ate a purely meat-based diet, 100 units of food could only feed 10 units of livestock animals, and could only feed one unit of people. A person who eats purely meat will consume 10 times more food than a person who eats purely vegetarian.

I am not saying we cannot eat meat. It is that we should not eat so much meat. The human body is designed as an omnivore mainly based on a vegetarian diet. We eat meat occasionally, but mostly eat vegetarian food. Our digestive tract is mainly designed for a vegetarian diet. So how much vegetarian food should we eat? There is a statistic saying that as long as the people of just two countries, Japan and the United States, eat vegetarian for one meal a day, the whole world would be fed. Is that hard? One meal a day! Is it that hard? You would not die from eating one less meal a day. Meat is actually very hard for our bodies to digest, so if you eat vegetarian for dinner, does your body feel better? Good for yourself, good for the environment, and good for society. Is that not great?

Strangely, why do we eat so much meat, dairy, and eggs? It is commonly believed that not eating meat, dairy, and eggs will leave you malnourished, make you sick, and cause poor development. You need protein, right? But last time I already told everyone that protein is originally made by plants, not animals. Animals obtain those proteins only after eating plants. So plants are not lacking in protein. If you eat plants, you need to eat a variety, meaning you cannot be picky. Let us think: the largest land animal, does it eat meat or plants? Plants. Eating plants did not stop it from growing large. The animals we use for plowing fields or for riding and transport, do they eat meat or plants? Plants. They have great stamina. So eating vegetarian will not leave you without stamina.

The characteristic of carnivorous animals is strong explosive power, but they sleep all day. What about herbivorous animals? They can work continuously. So it is very obvious that the stamina of herbivorous animals is far superior to that of carnivorous animals. I have some friends who rock climb. Rock climbing also greatly requires explosive power. Quite a few of them eat vegetarian. Eating vegetarian will not leave you without stamina. But I must emphasize once again that a vegetarian diet must be very balanced. You cannot be picky.

Why have we long felt that not eating meat, dairy, and eggs is impossible? This starts after World War II. At that time, the United States became the big winner. Taiwan, China, Japan, and South Korea were all brought under its protection. But to be protected, you had to pay protection money, namely buying its agricultural products. After that, rice yields increased, but we switched to eating wheat. Very strange, right!

After these corn, soybeans, and wheat kept being sold over, they found they still could not consume it all. So the United States took these grains and fed them to animals, and after feeding the animals, sold them to Taiwan, China, Japan, and South Korea. But in the past we did not eat so much meat, so advertising was needed. They taught schoolteachers and mothers that you must eat meat, dairy, and eggs. The reason we Americans are so smart and so strong, and were able to win World War II, is that we ate this stuff. So if you want your children to be as tall, as strong, and as smart as Americans, you must eat this kind of food. From then on, schools and families constantly told us to eat more meat, dairy, and eggs. Even today, this idea has not changed.

But we can see that among the top causes of death now, cancer, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and so on keep soaring, and all are very closely related to changes in dietary habits, starting from mass consumption of meat, dairy, and eggs. As I told everyone before, the best food is local, seasonal, natural food. Eating the same food as our ancestors is the best food. Why? As I said before, we have many microorganisms in our digestive tract. This is the same principle as continuous cropping. That is, with continuous cropping, plants and microorganisms adapt to each other. Eating food grown on this land is the food our digestive tract microorganisms are best at handling. But when you change your dietary habits, you switch to crop rotation, and the microorganisms are not adapted to this kind of food. They are not used to this kind of food.

Westerners can drink milk, but many Easterners feel uncomfortable when drinking milk. Easterners can eat soybeans, while Westerners are not used to soybeans. These are all the results of hundreds or thousands of years of people and food continuously adapting to each other. We Easterners adapted to soybeans, and Westerners adapted to milk. How did that adaptation happen? For example, Westerners may have had to drink milk in places where food was insufficient. If they did not drink milk, they had no food. So everyone who could not drink milk died out, and those who remained could all drink milk. We are the same. Those who could not eat soybeans were naturally eliminated, and those who remained are all well adapted to soybeans. This is a result of long-term mutual adaptation between food and our bodies.

When we suddenly change the content of our diet today, does that pattern have to start all over again? That is, we may need to spend another few hundred years eliminating the people who cannot adapt to this food. After that, we can be like the West and be very used to eating this kind of food. How many years have we been switching? Only a little more than 60 years! There are still several hundred years to go. So eating so much meat definitely has no benefit for health. As I just said, when the food crisis occurs and the prices of these meat, dairy, and egg products rise, what do you do? It is very simple. You do not need to eat these foods at all. No matter how high the price rises, does it affect you? It does not. But if you think you will die without meat, dairy, and eggs, what do you do on that day? You are doomed! This is a matter of changing your mindset. You simply do not need this stuff. Once your mindset changes, that day will have no effect on you, and you will cross it easily. So do not be afraid.

Monopolizing the Means of Production Causes Famine

Next is the problem of monopolizing the means of production causing famine. First, land has been monopolized. This starts with the Industrial Revolution. After the Western Industrial Revolution, with powerful ships and guns they attacked backward regions in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, and then took their most fertile land to grow cash crops and raise livestock. The purpose of Western countries developing imperialism was not to expand territory. They only wanted to plunder the resources of those places. Why did this happen?

Because after the Industrial Revolution, the wealth gap within their countries became larger and larger. To avoid social unrest, they had to continuously plunder resources from elsewhere to maintain continuous domestic economic growth, so as to appease the middle class and keep them from rioting. So when the best land in these colonized countries, originally used to produce food to feed local people, was taken to grow cash crops, what were local people supposed to eat? They had nothing to eat, right? They could only go to very remote places with poor terrain to grow what they themselves wanted to eat, or otherwise go to Westerners' factories or farms to work as laborers, and then buy imported food. How could famine not occur under such conditions?

Later these colonized countries became independent one after another, and local people also took power. But was this land released to grow food crops? No. The vested interests continued to grow cash crops. So we find that those countries suffering famine actually still have agricultural products for export. This should be a sin, should it not? People are starving to death, yet there are still agricultural products for export. These cash crops include cotton, coffee, cocoa, and also sugarcane, in which Taiwanese people also participated. The Japanese needed sugar. At that time, eating that sugarcane was illegal. Because of this, the land did not produce food, leaving the people with nothing to eat.

Since ancient times, when this situation occurred, what would the people do? Riot, revolution, then overthrow the ruler, seize the land back and continue producing food, and then society would return to stability. It has always been this cycle. But now this situation is unlikely to happen. It is very hard for it to happen. Why? Because consumers all over the world are supporting this dictator. Their cash crops are sold all over the world, allowing this dictator to obtain an endless stream of financial support from around the world and giving him the ability to suppress his own people. When we see these famine problems, we should not judge in a one-sided way that the people are lazy, stupid, unmotivated, or unlucky. It is not that they are too backward. No. This is all closely linked to our consumption behavior. We must understand where the thing I buy comes from and how it is made.

Take cocoa. There is a book called "The Bitter Heart of Chocolate." These chocolates are all blood, made with the blood of children. So when you buy such things, you should think even more carefully: am I creating a certain phenomenon somewhere else on Earth? So support local products as much as possible, because with local products you can see them and know how they are made. Shorten your consumption mileage, and only then can you take responsibility for your consumption. If your consumption mileage is very long, you simply do not know what is happening in the place of origin, and this kind of exploitation of the environment and the socially vulnerable will happen again and again. And in the end, these things will definitely come back to harm us.

Just like what we saw in the film earlier, because we do not know how these soybeans, this meat, and this palm oil come about, that they come from cutting down forests, our irresponsible consumption behavior causes people far away and environments far away to be harmed, and all of this is caused by us. So we must take responsibility for our own consumption behavior. Only then can we solve these problems. If we treat all these problems as other people's problems, unrelated to me, these problems will never be solved. So when the Earth's climate becomes abnormal, there is no need to keep thinking it is caused by carbon dioxide and, once you push it onto carbon dioxide, feel it has nothing to do with you. These are all caused by consumption, and they are closely connected to us.

Energy Crops Crowd Out Food Crops

Next is energy crops. As I just mentioned, in order to grow biomass energy crops, farmers switched one after another to growing corn, crowding out soybeans, causing soybean prices to surge as well. These are used for feed, so meat, dairy, and eggs also rose, and all foods rose together. We need to think about those cars that claim to use biomass energy and are environmentally friendly. But what does the backside of environmental friendliness mean? We must think about what these advertising slogans are really saying. If your environmental friendliness means sacrificing some people so they have nothing to eat, is that called environmental friendliness? So I have always emphasized that you cannot trust brands, cannot trust certifications, and cannot trust blogs. You need to go to the place of production to see the producer, get to know him, and then choose whether or not to trust him. Only between people can there be trust.

Let us think about another thing called "electric." Has the government not always encouraged electric cars? They also claim to be environmentally friendly. Why is electric environmentally friendly? Huh? Emissions. They do not use oil and do not have an emissions problem. But where does the electricity come from? How is the electricity generated? Solar power? Impossible. Renewable energy is absolutely not enough. With the way we consume energy today, renewable energy is absolutely not enough. The way we consume energy today is spending an inheritance, not earning it ourselves. It is a very wasteful way, so it is absolutely not enough. Where does this electricity come from? Electric is meant to connect with "nuclear power." Is that called environmental friendliness?

In Taiwan, China there are now 3 nuclear power plants. Their power generation is 14% to 17%. If we want to raise nuclear power generation to 80%, how many more plants would we need to build? One per county or city, the fairest way, so there is no need to argue about who has one and who does not. Nuclear waste can just be handled right where you are, and there is no need to move it far away, right? Is this the future we want? So is electric environmentally friendly? Think carefully about what these terms are really saying behind them. Just because they themselves say it is environmentally friendly does not make it environmentally friendly.

There is something called "fair trade coffee." By paying farmers more... that is, money, to buy their coffee, it aims to improve the difficulties in their lives. But we need to think about who caused their difficulties. Why today can these coffee merchants buy his coffee at such a low price? He could refuse to sell. Why does he still sell at such a low price? Who exactly caused his difficulties? Their government. This is their social problem. So it still comes back to this: when a government is bad, its people should have the ability to replace it with a good government. But when we pay more money to buy coffee from him today, is it not still their government that profits the most?

Keep fattening up their government, and then it continues to squeeze the blood and sweat out of its people. No matter how much more money you give, it will still be plundered by their government. When we spend more money to buy coffee from him, what happens? It may be hard to imagine. Take Taiwan, China's model as an example: fair trade betel nut. Now you know what happens, right? More land is developed to grow coffee. Is that good for them? I think a better way to improve their difficulties should be to give them the ability to feed themselves, so they can first produce food and feed themselves, and only then are they able to think about what their next step should be. If coffee prices are better than food prices, who wants to grow food?

When he has the ability to feed himself and think about his next step, his autonomy will emerge. When he cannot feed himself, he would rather be a slave. He can accept even the worst government! What exactly these consumption choices mean behind them is something we must seriously think about. (This article is to be continued.)

(To read part two of Facing the Food Industry, please click here.)