Fertile Soil
May 11, 2022Fake Meat
May 21, 2022GUEST: Nicholas Sullivan Senior Research Fellow, Tufts University Author of The Blue Revolution: Hunting, Harvesting, and Farming Seafood in the Information Age
Given the technologies of the information age, we-the-people have become very adept at catching fish.
In fact, if we could get away with it– like we got away with killing all the buffalo– we would probably go out and catch all the fish in the sea. And why not? There are a lot of hungry people that need to be fed, and there is a lot of money to be made!
But we simply can’t get away with it. If we catch all the fish in the sea, there will be no more fish to catch. Who will then feed all those hungry people? And how would we make any money fishing?
Therefore, some of us are taking steps to establish sustainable fisheries. That is simply a fishery where fisherman can go back year after year and catch fish, but only to the extent that the fish they do not catch can reproduce themselves and the fishery.
Certainly not all of us are taking those steps. And if you think about the business of setting up sustainable fisheries, it’s a lot like the business of managing greenhouse gases. Some communities will eliminate all their wood burning fireplaces; other communities will build coal burning power plants! But that is our world, and it does lead us to ask:
Leave a comment below: Can we catch fish so there will be fish left to be caught?
Michael Olson’s Three Laws of the Food Chain
#1 Agriculture is the foundation upon which we build all our sand castles.
#2 The farther we go from the source of our food, the less control we have over what’s in that food.
#3 Cheap food isn’t! READ MORE