Food+City Magazine, Issue III

Food+ City How We Feed Our Cities

ISSUE III

Special Dispensation: a history of vending machines page 16 Tapping the potential of food waste page 18 Is urban agriculture the solution we need? page 38

IS S UE III

$18.00

The Gansevoort Market (1880 to 1928) has always been a mixed-use space, as you can see from this photograph taken in 1900. Low Italianate structures exist next to tall warehouses. Some of the metal canopies built for the transfer of meat into those warehouses still exist, as does some Belgian block paving.

The Hudson River Railroad freight yards nearby provided transit for meat and other food items uptown and beyond Manhattan. Beginning in 1869, Cornelius Vanderbilt owned the rail line, along with the New York Central, and expanded the rail network to reach meatpackers in Chicago.

By 1880, other food markets in New York had fallen into disrepair, and vendors filling the streets had become a nuisance to pedestrians and horse-drawn vehicles. The city decided to create a new market space in the Gansevoort neighborhood to aggregate the commerce of farmers, buyers and sellers into one space.

Originally developed for the sale of fruits and vegetables, Gansevoort eventually became the center of the meat market.

Horses transported most of the food from the piers and through the market. Buyers brought their wagons into the market, bringing filth and congestion with them.

By 1900, almost 170,000 horses filled Manhattan’s streets. Over 250 slaughterhouses and meatpacking companies filled the Gansevoort Market neighborhood, adding to the stench and manure.

IMAGE COURTESY EPHEMERALNEWYORK.COM

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

SMART CITY TOOLS THEN & NOW Food technology — gizmos such as blockchain, sensors, taste algorithms, genomic tracking — is a hot topic these days, generously funded by venture capitalists. But food technology has been around for decades. Can openers, anyone?

No one would dispute that a GPS tracker is sexier than a simple can opener. But those early inventors deserve credit for laying the foundation for today’s innovations. After all, it took almost 50 years after the can was invented before someone made an opener for it. Our everyday can opener — the rotating serrated-wheel device — first appeared in 1870, and it’s still in everyone’s kitchen drawer, nearly 150 years later.

Food storage technology developed from clay amphorae and wooden barrels to polyethylene drums with lever-lock rings for transporting food commodities such as cooking oil.

Today, wooden barrels appeal to artisan fermenters and brewers who embrace the flavor-enhancing properties of wood. Sacks and bags continue to transport our food from the grocery store to our house or from the coffee plantation in Kenya to our roaster in Brooklyn. Some are still made of cloth, paper and hemp, while others are big, woven-plastic buffle sacks that optimize space in container ships.

Weights and measures are the quants of food markets. Beginning as bowls and rocks in the Indus River Valley, weighing scales used balance mechanisms, such as this early 19th century balance scale, until the digital age arrived in the early 1980s. Not quite the graceful scales of the past, these digital scales are more sensitive and adapt to multiple units of measure.

Maintaining its utility throughout the ages is the meat hook, the hand tool for butchers and meat processors. The only difference between this 19th century hook and today’s version is the handle: one is wood and the other plastic. Some technology endures the test of time.

TEXT AND ILLUSTRATION

BY ROBYN METCALFE

Food + City Magazine

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FROM THE PUBLISHER

Food+City publisher Robyn Metcalfe has been an editor and writer at Sunset Magazine, a heritage pig farmer and a food historian. You can find her @foodmiracle on Twitter because she thinks food is a miracle.

YOUR FOOD: UP FOR GRABS?

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on’t panic, but your food is about to appear on your plate in surprising and unexpected ways.

More than ever, food delivery is becoming faster, fresher and more personal. Our food supply chain looks transitory as it shifts to accommodate changes in where our food comes from and where it’s going. The traditional food movers — large logistics, distribution and transportation companies — are now in the company of small, scrappy, food delivery services.

These changes are the result of the aggregation of big data and consumers who are willing to forego the shopping experience for the shipping experience. Both the data and the consumers who create that data have come together to transform our food supply chain. For the better, we think.

Just about everything is up for grabs. Farmers look more like engineers, food is fresher and those who deliver our food are coming from unexpected directions.

This issue, our third, takes a close look at some of the shifts from imagination to reality.

Food waste is a top concern now as consumers are either being shamed by the amount of food left on their plates or rallied to find new ways to use food waste. If we accept the fact that we can’t eliminate the waste in our supply chain, we can turn our attention to ways we can put it to use, either as a source of energy or repurposed as new food or non-food products. Ari LeVaux takes us to the land of biodigesters and ugly fruit jam.

Jen Wong offers surprising ways in which food waste reappears in new shapes and forms, such as coconut shell tiles.

When two Norwegian shipping firms, Yarrao and Kongsberg Gruppe, announced their electric, driverless ships, the prospect of a global food supply chain that doesn’t require bunker fuel (the lowest grade of fossil fuel) suggests we may soon see more sustainable ways to ship food around the world. Providing context for this new model for shipping food is our story about canals and barges, the original slow movers of food

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along inland waterways. David Leftwich shares his story of barges that travel up and down the Mississippi in this moment of battery-powered cargo. And Jeannette Vaught’s history of cattle logistics reminds us that the tracks of our food have been visible on our landscape for centuries.

The Norwegian vessels also promise robot loading and unloading of cargo, one of the many human displacements occurring within our food supply chain. Rachel Wharton’s story about robots and Melanie Haupt’s images of vending machines that serve us our food suggest that the experience of eating may lose its deeply human connection.

To give us some perspective of how we got here, Laurie Zapalac explains how a mundane container of food was invented because of a challenge prize offered by Napoleon in the late 19th century. Cans today are smarter, carrying much more than food. They carry the history of their contents, and some contain sensors for tracking and tracing a can throughout the supply chain.

Zapalac sheds light on how we’re getting a better view of a more transparent food supply chain.

Jane Black’s story about urban agriculture tells us more about the complexities and questions that accompany this new way to feed cities.

And if you thought urban agriculture was the way to create Smart Cities, read Gergely Baics’ story about a 19th-century smart city. Cory Leahy’s deconstruction of wartime cookbooks on ration use brings new meaning to ways we might attack the food waste problem.

We do our part to help change how we feed our cities through our annual Food+City Challenge Prize. Each year we see more and more startups that are finding ways to improve food logistics.

See our description of what these startups are doing to get food faster and fresher to our cities.

And finally, check out our recommendations for cool books and nerdy websites.

P U B L I S H E R, EXECUTIVE E D I TO R

Robyn Metcalfe M A N A G I N G E D I TO R

Cory Leahy

DESIGN

Julie Savasky C O M M U N I C AT I O N S &WEB

Cole Leslie

A D M I N I S T R AT I O N

Karen Thomas

C O P Y E D I TO R

Joan Phaup

FA C T C H E C K E R

Kristin Phillips

RESIDENT DOG

Barbara

G E T I N TO U C H

For info about writing for us or magazine advertising, email info@foodand city.org.

Food+City magazine is published by Foodmakers, a nonprofit based in Austin, Texas.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without prior written permission of the publisher.

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I S S U E I I I D E PA R TM E N T S

2 FROM THE PUBLISHER Robyn Metcalfe invites readers to explore changes in comsumers’ experience with the food supply chain. It’s real-time evolution — in food waste, urban ag and more.

8 LO C K , S TO C K AND BARGES An ancient form of over-water food transport never phased out. From the 1400s through today, big flat boats haul food commodities from inland farms to ocean ports.

10 R O B OTS Cocktail-making and pizza-delivering bots may be a sign of the future. But the real workhorses of the food supply chain aren’t just simple-task machines.

They’ve got multiple senses and big brains.

12 IT’S IN THE CAN Practically the perfect package: durable, stackable, long-lasting — and in a pinch you can cook right in it.

Over 250 years, cans have transformed food processing, shipping and even shopping.

16 SPECIAL D I S P E N S AT I O N Vending machines are the ultimate in selfservice. We’ve collected an array of options — from the Automat to custom quinoa-bowl kiosks. Just push a button.

54 S TA R T U P S P OT L I G H T The 2017 Food+City Challenge Prize awarded innovation in refrigeration, transportation, food waste and more.

56 ON OUR LOA D I N G D O C K We’re not the only ones thinking about food systems, food tech and the food supply chain. Check out these recent books, films, podcasts and other media that are making our brains buzz.

PAINTING BY LEONORA K. GREEN

58 FOOD+CITY MAPS 21st century New York City hums with hightech commerce. But it’s been a smart city, in terms of food systems, since the earliest days of the republic.

50 RECIPE TRACKER War can bring major supply chain disruptions. Brits “made do” in World War II using rations, substitutions and frequent doses of cheery optimism from the likes of “Potato Pete.”

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COVER: Tracy Whitehead of Johnson’s Backyard Garden holds an armful of beautiful, ugly produce.

Vegetables like these don’t always make it to supermarket shelves because of their irregular shapes and occasional blemishes. Learn more about what happens to unharvested and unsold crops in our story about the new food waste hunters on page 18.

THIS PAG E : Food rations in England during World War II were hardly luxurious. But helpful hints, recipes and positive, patriotic messaging from the Ministry of Food encouraged citizens and families to feel that their sacrifices were a valuable contribution to the war effort. This painting illustrates the weekly rations for two people.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Gergely Baics is assistant professor of History and Urban Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University.

His research focuses on urban social and economic history, New York City history, and historical GIS. He is the author of Feeding Gotham: The Political Economy and Geography of Food in New York, 1790–1860 (Princeton University Press, 2016). His articles have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Urban History, Urban History and the Annals of the American Association of Geographers.

JANE BLACK @jane_black Jane Black is a nationally recognized food writer on culinary and sustainable-food trends.

For nearly 15 years, she has covered the emerging good-food movement with a focus on food politics, nutrition and agriculture. Her work appears regularly in the Washington Post, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. She lives in Washington, D.C.

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KENNY BRAUN @KennyBraunPhoto

MELANIE HAUPT @boxingoctopus

DAVID LEFTWICH @DavidLeftwich68

ARI LEVAUX @arilevaux

RACHEL WHARTON @rachelwharton

JEANNETTE VAUGHT @JeannetteVaught

Kenny Braun is known for environmental portraiture, landscape and fine art photography.

Music, surfing and photography have been his passions since high school, each influencing the other. His series on Texas Surfers and the Gulf Coast, Surf Texas, was published in 2014.

Other books include the Salt Lick Cookbook (2012), and Jack Allen’s Kitchen Cookbook (2014).

His new book on the Texas Landscape, As Far as You Can See, is due out in the spring of 2018.

Melanie Haupt earned her Ph.D. in English at The University of Texas at Austin. In addition to her academic work, she is a freelance writer focusing on food criticism, upand-coming dining culture and historic Austin foodways.

She is particularly interested in the intersections of feminism and the food industry.

David Leftwich is executive editor of Sugar & Rice, a Gulf Coast food and culture publication, and co-host of The Full Menu, which airs monthly on Houston Public Media’s Houston Matters.

He is also the author of the chapbook, The City, published

by Little Red Leaves Textile Series. Besides cooking locally grown vegetables and researching the history of food in Houston, he likes to hang out with his wife, daughter, two dogs, one kitten and stacks of books.

Ari LeVaux writes Flash in the Pan, a weekly syndicated food column that appears nationally in newspapers. His work has appeared in Outside Magazine, Slate and elsewhere.

He lives with his family in Missoula, Montana.

Rachel Wharton is a James Beard Foundation Journalism award-winning freelance food writer and journalist with a master’s degree in food studies from New York University. Her work has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Saveur, NewYorker. com, Lucky Peach, and six cookbooks and counting.

Jeannette Vaught is an American Studies Ph.D. who splits her time between Austin, Texas and Long Beach, California.

Her veterinary background and interest in technology and culture inform her writing about animals, agriculture, food and science.

She produces the podcast “The Range” for Foodways Texas, and is working on Locust for Reaktion Books’ Animal Series, when not lavishing carrots upon her aged horse.

CORY LEAHY @coryleahy

ELLAPHANT IN THE ROOM theellaphantin theroom Jeremy Alan of Brooklyn-based The Ellaphant in the Room paints murals and print illustrations by commission. His commercial work can be found above as well as in New York Magazine, One Kings Lane, UnionWine, The Wall Street Journal and Phaidon Books.

Inspired by everyday people, places, and objects, his creations prove our world as one of magic, whimsy, and humor.

Food + City Magazine

Cory Leahy — editor, writer, runner, enthusiastic cook and veggie-leaning omnivore — has spent more than 20 years as an editor of books, magazines and websites. She recently stepped out of familiar labels and into unknown territory to reimagine a next chapter that’s all about food.

COLE LESLIE @colej_L Researcher, food nerd and self-proclaimed “bon vivant,” Cole is a graduate student at Tufts University studying sustainable food systems. Along with his passion for sustainability and entrepreneurial spirit, Cole’s keen interest in improving food systems drew him to Food+City’s mission of bold food supply chain exploration.

You can often find Cole with his wife and young son — cooking, dancing, laughing and being outside.

JULIE SAVASKY @juliehsavasky After spending 22 years at international design firm, Pentagram, Julie recently opened her own design consultancy.

Her work focuses primarily on editorial, identity, strategy, and web design and has won awards from Graphis, Communication Arts, Society of Publication Designers, and Texas Institute of Letters among others. She lives with her family in Austin, Texas.

JEN WONG Jen Wong is Director and Curator of the Materials Lab at The University of Texas at Austin, a research center dedicated to material investigation as design. She gets excited about how and why things are made, what they’re made of, and how they can be made better.

LAURIE ZAPALAC @LaurieZapalac Laurie Zapalac is the founder of Zapalac Advisors, a Boston-based urban planning firm providing research and strategic planning for urban revitalization and enhancement.

Laurie is passionate about understanding how and why digital technology is making historic urban environments newly attractive as places to live, work and play. When not traveling farther afield, you can find her trekking the New England coastline and enjoying local bakeries.

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OPPOSITE: PHOTO BY KENNY BRAUN

GERGELY BAICS

I S S U E I I I F E AT U R E S

18 The Hunt for Food Waste The fact that an enormous fraction of the food we produce — 30 to 40 percent, experts say — is unharvested, unsold or simply discarded isn’t new news. But you might not have heard about all the ways food waste is being transformed: from building materials to raw energy. As Ari LeVaux explains, the trick is getting it out of the waste stream to start with.

30 From Hoof to Highway owboys driving cattle over a dusty range — it’s an C iconic image for many when they think of Texas.

While cross-country cattle drives are no longer the first step in the beef supply chain, the paths carved out of the land by millions of hooves left their mark on the state. Historian Jeannette Vaught reveals the legacy of Texas’ earliest traffic.

38 Urban Agriculture: Can It Feed Our Cities? echnological developments in agriculture have T opened up a surprising new kind of field for crops.

Vertical gardens that thrive in urban warehouses and soil-free greenhouses with produce growing in hydroponic tanks bring fresh food closer to population centers. Jane Black digs into the future of farming.

44 Seafood Traceability Nets New Benefits igh-tech tracking is everywhere in food today — H from RFID tags in strawberry crates to temperature sensors in dairy shipments. Urban planner Laurie Zapalac shares a case study of new tracking tools used by Boston’s seafood industry that leverage big data to ensure food safety, sound fishery management — and to let you know who raised your oyster.

Joe Diffe, of Joe’s Organics, turns a compost pile, which generates steam — even on a hot September day in Texas.

FOOD MOVER

Check out Ben Powell’s 2015 documentary, Barge in this story at foodandcity.org.

LOCK, STOCK AND BARGES Growing up playing in the alluvial soil of farms along the Mississippi River, I gleaned a vague notion of the importance of barges. These flat-bottomed, square-ended boats — whether towed, pushed or self-propelled — are used primarily to haul cargo. My granddad owned a small red and white one that was rusty around the edges. He used it to transport tractors, farm supplies and crops back and forth from his island farm in the Mississippi River.

As a youngster, I often visited Lock & Dam 24 in Clarksville, Missouri, to watch the low-slung hopper barges loaded with Midwestern grain travel through the locks with the help of towboats. Contrary to their name, the towboats gently push — rather than pull — the barges into the lock, a 110-foot-wide and 600-foot-long concrete chamber built between the riverbank and the dam. Locks, along with dams, create a step-like system that helps vessels navigate the changing elevations of the river.

There are many types of barges: A dredging barge is basically a clamshell bucket excavator on a floating platform.

In China’s Grand Canal, self-propelled barges sport a cabin and motor at the back. Decades ago, sail-powered Thames barges plied England’s coasts and rivers. Barges are even used as ocean-going landing pads for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets.

But the hopper barge that has become integral to the modern food system, especially in the United States, is a 200-foot-long, 35-foot-wide, 13-foot-deep boat with a large fiberglass cover. These barges are perfect for transporting bulk, dry cargo like grain or coal. They have no engines. Instead, they are designed to be lashed together with a web of steel cables into groups of two to 70 barges, known as tows, and pushed by a single towboat.

Towboats vary in size depending on how many barges they will be pushing and how and where they will be operating. Most are diesel-fueled and include a pilothouse that rises three to four stories above the deck, a kitchen, and quarters that house a crew of eight to 10 people. The average crew includes a captain and a pilot who alternate six-hour shifts in the pilothouse, a cook, a mate, four deckhands and an engineer.

Crews serve 28-day stints, usually taking a four-week break before returning to the river.

LOCK AND LOAD Hopper barges haul corn, soy, wheat, fertilizer and other bulk dry goods, primarily on the Mississippi, Ohio and Illinois Rivers. But they don’t travel alone. The standard tow on the Upper Mississippi is 15 barges, or five rows of three barges abreast, a bundled mass of vehicles that’s too long to go through the lock at one time.

The solution? Unbundle. Once in the lock, the first three rows of barges are disconnected. After the gates close on a

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southbound tow, the emptying valve under the lock opens. The water and thousands of tons of metal and cargo descend 15 feet.

The process repeats for the towboat and remaining barges.

Each of those 15 barges can carry between 1,500 and 1,750 tons of dry cargo — enough wheat to bake 2.5 million loaves of bread, or one loaf for every person in Houston. A standard 15-barge tow can haul enough wheat to fill 240 railcars or 1,050 trucks, enough to provide a loaf of bread for every resident of New York, New Jersey and Virginia combined. But the wheat on the barges steaming down the Mississippi is likely bound for Europe or Asia, rather than New York.

INTERNATIONAL GRAINS Most of the grain grown and transported in the U.S. is used domestically. Of the 480,799,000 tons of grain shipped in the U.S. in 2013, some 114,843,000 tons — 24 percent — was exported, while the remaining 365,956,000 tons remained in the States. Since 1978, the amount of grain transported in the U.S. has steadily increased from about 250 million tons in 1978 to a peak of just over 500 million tons in 2010. But the amount exported has remained steady. In 1978, domestic and export grain was almost evenly split at 125 million tons each. Increased domestic use has been driven by several factors including a growing U.S. population, ethanol producers’ greater demand for corn, and more consumption of grain-fed livestock. At the same time, demand for U.S. exports has been held in check by increased grain production in Brazil, Russia, Canada and the European Union.

In 2013, barges only transported 1 percent of grain used domestically, while trains transported 21 percent and trucks hauled the remaining 78 percent. However, barges shipped 45 percent of U.S. grain bound for foreign markets. Though 2013 marked one of the slower years for grain exports, since 1998 grain exports have remained fairly steady, which is helping keep barge traffic afloat.

Though barges emit fewer greenhouse gases and are more fuel efficient than trains or trucks — barges can move a ton of cargo 647 miles per gallon of fuel while that same gallon will move a ton of cargo 477 miles via train and only 145 miles by truck — barges are confined to waterways wide, deep and regulated enough to handle large commercial tows. These geographical restrictions limit barges’ usefulness in transporting grain to domestic markets. However, it makes them ideal for moving large amounts of grain from Midwestern farms to international ports in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. For years, barges cruising the Western River System (the Mississippi, Illinois and Ohio Rivers) have made it possible for Midwestern farmers like my granddad to help feed the world and make a decent living, most years. D A V I D L E F T W I C H

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BARGES BY THE NUMBERS Each of those 15 barges can carry between 1,500 and 1,750 tons of dry cargo — enough wheat to bake 2.5 million loaves of bread, or one loaf for every person in Houston. A standard 15-barge tow can haul enough wheat to fill 240 railcars or 1,050 trucks, enough to provide a loaf of bread for every resident of New York, New Jersey and Virginia combined.

But the wheat on the barges steaming down the Mississippi is likely bound for Europe or Asia, rather than New York.

15-BARGE TOW

TO P : Engine-less barges lash together in groups known as tows, floating their cargo of bulk dry cargo downstream from farms to ports.

L EFT: Examples of tow configurations, each pushed by a single towboat. A 15-barge tow is standard on the Lower Mississippi River.

BELOW: The Western River System, including the Mississippi, Ohio and Illinois Rivers, has been the main conduit for Midwestern crops to travel to international ports in the Gulf of Mexico for export.

40-BARGE TOW

A STANDARD 15-BARGE TOW CAN HAUL:

ENOUGH WHEAT TO BAKE:

ENOUGH WHEAT TO FILL:

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To see these robots in action, check out this story at foodandcity.org.

FOOD MOVER

ROBOTS BOT a device or piece of software that can execute commands or perform routine tasks either automatically or with minimal human intervention.

Every day there’s a new story about robot bartenders on Carnival Cruise Lines or Domino’s Pizza delivery pods trolling the streets in Europe. For now these are mainly stunt-bots, more public relations than practical. Yet there are already many kinds of robots at work in our existing food supply, albeit models slightly more mundane. Whether robots (and their engineers) will totally replace regular workers is still up for grabs, but in truth bots will soon be everywhere in the supply chain: Packing and warehousing, farming, food processing and, yes, even hamburger flipping and order taking.

This is the first in a series on food bots, starting with a deeper dive into three cases where bots have taken over some of the dreariest jobs in mass production — repetitive, physically stressful, low-paying, dead-end, sometimes dangerous — that many humans would rather not do.

RACHEL WHARTON Inside the robot’s 600kilogram basin is a mixer arm, which automatically starts to blend different types of food together as soon as they hit the bowl. The system can prepare different formulas based on which groups of cows Vector needs to feed.

The constant spinning of the robot’s “skirt” brushes feed up along the open gates of a cattle barn, where the cows can easily get to it.

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IMAGES COURTESY LELY.COM

THE FEED BOT A Dutch dairy technology company called Lely makes Vector, a battery-powered feedbot that looks like a slow-moving escapee from the teacup ride at a state fair. Its speed belies its benefit to a working dairy barn: Consider that a cow can eat for six hours per day, and dairies feed hundreds of cows.

Vector uses lasers, ultrasound sensors and metal guides to keep on track as it slowly scoots around, distributing feed, and then plugs into a docking station to recharge during downtime. Vector re-ups with silage — aka the mix of grasses, corn, sorghum and other grains dairy cows need for good-tasting milk — using a laser-assisted claw that serves up the proper proportions.

The robot glides around until its laser finds a spot low or empty of feed; a sliding door rises up and feed settles out.

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THE PICK AND PLACE BOT One of the more common robotic technologies used in the food industry is “pick and place,” which is exactly what it sounds like. These robots move things from one place to another with lightning-fast speed. They’re also making basic decisions, thanks to digital cameras and other tools that let the robots “see.” As things come down a conveyor belt, for example, robots rotate and place items into the proper packages, or — with the addition of special tools — score bread loaves, decorate cakes and swish sauce across pizzas. Many work something like ABB Robotics’ IRB 360 FlexPicker, which hangs from above and look like a giant daddy longlegs. Skinny metal arms triangulate to pack cookies, beers, cherry tomatoes, beef jerky, pancakes or — with some heavy-duty models — even boxes or pallets.

The bot “sees” using mounted cameras connected through network software, which means it can find objects when they’re overlapping and in random positions.

TOP: COURTESY ABB.COM; BOTTOM: COURTESY TECHCRUNCH.COM

The “hands” can be suction pads, “fingers” or special tools for slicing or spreading.

Pick-and-place robots handle more than 15 pounds and can relocate things up to five feet, making their moves in less than a second.

The LettuceBot attaches to an ordinary tractor, then uses camera systems to see plants in 3-D as they roll by. It picks out which to thin and which to keep in less than a second.

Blue River Technology uses the term “see and spray,” as in the bot sees the plants in a field and precisely sprays only the lettuce plants to be thinned.

The LettuceBot processes thousands of plants per minute with an accuracy of a quarter of an inch, says the company. Most people rent them by the acre for the vast lettuce farms of California and Arizona.

THE SEE AND THEN DO BOT More advanced robots work by combining the sensor technology used above — cameras, 3-D mapping and digital “vision” — to execute more complex actions. A handful of companies make robot systems that can process meat, for example, using 3-D scanners or X-rays to map the bone placement of pork sides or lamb carcasses. The robot arms — its fingers would be the knives — react within seconds to make the right cuts.

More mobile versions of these systems are also applied to farming: In California, Blue River Technology’s LettuceBot uses computer vision to see fields as it crawls them, perfectly thinning lettuce starts in vast fields.

Other farmbots include Hortibot, which can see weeds and treat them, a RowBot made for dense cornfields and an Agrobot that travels down a raised bed of strawberries scanning each plant and harvesting only the ripe, red fruits.

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FOOD MOVER

STAPLE OR DELICACY, IT’S IN THE CAN

BELOW: Cans are easily stacked and difficult to destroy, criteria that make them indispensible to military food supply chains. Contents can be cooked right inside the can, offering the prospect of a warm meal to anyone with access to a flame.

OPPOS ITE: Artistically packaged canned sardines first appeared as a delicacy in the late 19th century. Later, during both world wars, the packaged protein was a crucial component of military rations.

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to the Dutch Navy for being the first, in the late 18th century, to package hot beef covered with hot fat in tinned iron canisters.

The first to publish on the process of canning — preserving food in sealed containers — was Frenchman Nicolas Appert in 1809, writing about a technique using glass containers.

Fellow Frenchman Phillipe de Girard devised a canning process using tin and collaborated with Englishman Peter Durand, who obtained a patent in 1810. Durand promptly sold the patent to the British company Donkin, Hall and Gamble, which provided meat in tinned wrought-iron cans for the British Army and Royal Navy.

CONTAINER MATTERS Now a pantry staple, canned food was initially conceived for use beyond a conventional kitchen.

Metal cans could function as a serving container and, in a pinch, be heated over open flame. The sealed and opaque quality of the container prevented oxygen and light from breaking down food and protected it from contamination, thereby extending the product’s shelf life. Advances in metallurgy eventually helped cans become the cost-effective, disposable food containers now commonplace in kitchens and pantries.

Three types of metals are now commonly used for cans. Tinplate is made by coating steel with a thin layer of tin, which is highly corrosion resistant. Cans made of aluminum—corrosion resistant and highly malleable — can be fabricated from two rather than three pieces. Electrolytic chromium-coated steel (ECCS, also known as tin-free steel), introduced in the 1960s to respond to fluctuations in the supply and cost of tin, has a higher melting point than tinplate but is less resistant to corrosion.

As the fabrication processes for rolling, shaping, soldering and welding metal improved, so did cans. They became thinner and more durable. Sealing methods evolved, too — some early cans were soldered closed with lead. A firmer understanding of microorganisms also has changed canning practices. Botulism from commercially produced canned food is now a rarity.

Sustained high heat in processing kills spores of the Clostridium botulinum bacterium, which can otherwise survive in low-oxygen environments.

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SOLDIER PHOTO COURTESY WWIISOLDIER.COM; OPPOSITE: TOP ROW MIDDLE COURTESY MAINEMEMORY.NET

MULTI-PURPOSE FOOD (MPF) a low-cost, shelfstable, protein- and nutrient-rich product made by General Mills for use in “emergency or disaster.”

What do you need in a bomb shelter? Water, flashlights, blankets, a radio and, of course, canned food.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, many a family fallout shelter was stocked with canned food, including Multi-Purpose Food (MPF), a low-cost, shelf-stable, protein- and nutrient-rich food supplement manufactured by General Mills to be consumed “in case of emergency or disaster.”

MPF, first conceived in the 1940s as a remedy for widespread hunger in postwar Europe, became a symbol of Cold War preparedness.

Since the mid-20th century, canned food has been a staple of the American diet. According to the Can Manufacturers Institute, the average American household has 24 cans of food in their pantry. And while the technology of canned food focuses on creating a shelf-stable product, the significance of canned food in food culture is anything but fixed.

For as long as people have moved food from its production location to market, packaging has played a key role, from product durability and trade efficiency to product differentiation and marketing. Canned food — durable, stackable and completely sealed — has transformed multiple links along the food supply chain since its first appearance nearly 250 years ago. Military campaigns, with their widely distributed provisioning requirements, have often led to innovations in the processing, packaging and distribution of food, particularly sources of protein. Credit goes

OPPOSITE: TOPIMAGE COURTESY STEFAN ENGSTROM FLICKR.COM; THIS PAGE: ANDY WARHOL WIKICOMMONS

For a refresher on how to play Kick the Can, watch the video in this story on foodandcity.org.

Opening metal cans initially required brute force and assumed the availability of heavy tools.

The first metal can openers weren’t patented until the 1850s — some 50 years after the container itself came into use. Subsequently, market expansion led to the engineering of new opening strategies, which in turn made cans increasingly popular. Key-wind opening systems, which include a key with which to pull away a strip of metal (usually on the top of a can or tin), and later, easy-open ring tabs, made for portable, pocket-sized, accessory-free foodstuffs.

Like other products now considered relatively common, such as chocolate, 19th-century canned food took on special significance for a growing middle class. Take, for instance, readyto-eat seafood “delicacies.” Comparable to predecessors such as salt cod and pickled herring, seafood cooked (or smoked) and packed in cans or tins offered a way to expand the market for seafood harvested in a specific location.

Canned sardines are but one example of a product that emerged as a delicacy and then became a crucial wartime ration during the two world wars. At its peak in 1939, the central California fishery associated with Cannery Row in Monterey landed 460,000 tons of sardines for the year. Today, canned sardines and anchovies, as well as other canned seafood products, cover a broad market range, from in-house brands for major supermarket chains to restaurants offering carefully selected tinned fish delicacies.

THE ART OF THE SELL Food science and packaging technology created canned food, but grocers introduced it to the American household. Canned food transformed the role of grocers as well as the design of stores.

As a prepackaged good of consistent weight, with labels as built-in advertising, canned food could practically sell itself. In 1917, the Piggly Wiggly market chain opened the first self-service grocery in Memphis, moving cans out from behind the counter into displays, and then shelves, where consumers could pick up cans, read labels and put them into carts. After World War II, the housing boom, the expansion of supermarkets, the practice of driving to shop for groceries, and the greater number of women working outside the home all helped normalize canned food as part of the modern American diet.

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Artful labeling and package design is an integral part of branding, particularly for products sold in opaque containers. The rounded corners of rectangular metal tins of fish are practical, as well as emblematic of product contents. Streamlined form and graphic design evoke a sense of efficiency. Many original label motifs persist as recognizable brands today. In 1962, Andy Warhol painted the first of his Campbell’s cans series — 32 paintings that represent each offering in the Campbell’s brand — elevating the Campbell’s soup can into Pop Art. NUTRITION: IS IT IN THE CAN? In 1990, Congress passed the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (NLEA) requiring all packaged food to list nutritional information relative to Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA).

For the first time, consumers could compare the nutritional content of foods before buying them. Since then, processing improvements have enabled the use of fewer preservatives and increased nutrient retention. Nutrition research has also been important, for instance, in clarifying that canned fruits and vegetables do not make up a major source of sodium in the American adult diet.

For many people, canned food is a more nutritious choice than other food options, especially when accounting for seasonal availability. New packaging technologies — such as bisphenol A (BPA)–free see-through plastic cans now coming on the market — prompt the question: Does being able to see what’s in the can ensure that it is fresh, flavorful and healthy? The market will decide.

From newfangled packaging for military rations to convenience-food wonder for postwar households, the simple can ensured that foods grown or produced in one location could safely be consumed many hundreds of miles away. And while its status may have ebbed and flowed — from nifty new technology to cheap holder of less-than-fresh ingredients, and back to retro packaging of exotic delicacies — canned food remains a staple for pantries and fallout shelters the world over.

LAURIE ZAPALAC

O P P O SITE : Before canned food, groceries were full-service stores, where grocers measured and gathered your order together. Prepackaged cans, with labels as built-in advertising, enabled consumers to choose and pick up goods themselves. In 1917, the Piggly Wiggly market chain opened the first self-service grocery in Memphis, moving cans out from behind the counter into displays, and then shelves.

ABOVE: Cans have come a long way — evolving from opaque metal vessels to the TruVue clear plastic can, a kind of jar hybrid.

They’re functional and iconic: The most money ever paid for a can of soup was $11.7 million for Andy Warhol’s Small Tom Campbell Soup Can (Torn Pepper Pot), one of 32 paintings in his soup can series, first exhibited in 1962.

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SIDE DISH

There’s going to be an Automat movie! Keep up with the film’s progress at automatmovie.com.

More than a century ago, Horn & Hardart revolutionized American eating with the introduction of the Automat, an automated cafeteria where a nickel or two would buy a hot plate of macaroni and cheese or a chilled slice of lemon meringue pie.

It was a new concept of self-service dining: Customers would approach a wall of windowed compartments, insert a coin and take out a plate of freshly prepared food. Behind that wall, workers restocked the compartments with food prepared at an off-site commissary and shipped to as many as 40 Automats across New York City. There was a well-lit seating area where diners could enjoy their meals, along with Horn & Hardart’s famous hot coffee.

The first Automat — a precursor to both fast-food restaurants and vending machines — opened in 1902 in Philadelphia.

But Automats quickly became associated with New York City, where citizens from all walks of life rubbed elbows over lunch and dinner amid the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple.

“The Automat offered really low prices, really good food, and clean and safe surroundings,” says food historian Laura Shapiro. Automats enjoyed their heyday through the 1930s but began to decline within 10 years, she explains. “After World War II, a lot of people moved to the suburbs, and people weren’t eating dinner in the city. The prices of everything went up, food went up, labor costs went up. They couldn’t keep up that trio of price, quality and nice surroundings.”

The last Automat closed in New York in 1991. But its spirit lives on in food vending machines that connect consumers with fast-food favorites, agricultural products, regional specialties and luxury and novelty foods.

Where the Automat was a revelation of the Industrial Revolution, today’s vending machines reflect the realities of a more mobile global populace whose access to food exists in disparate contexts. The foods distributed from contemporary iterations of the Automat aren’t meant to be enjoyed sitting at a table with real cutlery at traditional mealtimes. Instead, customers can access products at any hour.

This can be a boon to rural consumers who don’t have 24-hour shops nearby, as well as to farmers seeking additional points of contact to distribute their products. You see this with egg vending machines in Japan, a pecan farm in Central Texas boasting a vending machine stocked with nuts and full-sized pecan pies, and the Applestone Meat Company in Accord, New York, which operates a 24/7 butcher shop called the Meat-OMat inside its meat-processing plant. The machines feature hormone- and antibiotic-free beef, pork and lamb in various cuts and are restocked every day.

In a sign that such machines could be a disruptive force in agriculture, a vending machine in Japan called Chef’s Farm can produce 60 heads of lettuce per day using 40-watt light bulbs.

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Designed for use in restaurants, the machine can grow up to five types of vegetables on multiple seed shelves in a temperature-controlled environment.

Vending machines also reflect regional foodways. Machines in China chill live hair crabs in a sort of suspended animation to ensure their freshness and preserve the flavor of the claws.

Sake vending machines in Japan showcase rice from the Niigata prefecture. And machines in France dispense fresh-baked baguettes, Comté cheese and andouillete sausages.

These machines can even be instructive. Take the edible insect vending machine at the Museum of Natural Sciences in Houston. Patrons can snack on chocolate-covered bugs and chips made with ground cricket flour while learning about how other cultures incorporate insects into their diets.

For eaters who value convenience, there are plenty of options for mechanized grab-and-go food, from pizza in Italy to salads in jars in Chicago and piping-hot burgers and croquettes in Dutch FEBO shops. With walls of coin-operated windows displaying hot snacks, FEBO shops closely resemble the Automat and elicit similar feelings of nostalgia.

“I lived in a little town near den Haag when I was 10 or 11 years old,” says Julie Ann Holden of Austin, Texas. “I took the train to school every day and would frequently stop at the automat in Central Station for a Kaassoufflé [a kind of Dutch fried quesadilla].” There are even vending machines for luxury food items like caviar and champagne, perfectly chilled for immediate consumption at holiday parties or to give as presents to the most discriminating people on shoppers’ lists.

As in the Automats, these machines are replenished regularly, but few offer dining tables and chairs. Instead, the foods are meant to be consumed while in transit, whether while waiting for a flight in an airport terminal or walking the streets of Amsterdam. This extreme automation — such as at kiosks like EatZa in San Francisco and New York, where diners place orders for custom-made quinoa bowls via iPads and retrieve their freshly made meals from sterile compartments — amplifies how today’s vending machines speak to a different set of needs and desires for today’s consumer than the somewhat social Automat of yesteryear.

Gone are the days in which people sought out a full meal and maybe a little conversation at an Automat diner. But the dream of quick, easy access to all sorts of food is alive and well.

At any hour of the day, People can get the food they want and need, from comfort food to hard-to-access ingredients. It’s not difficult to imagine that, along with meal-kit, grocery, and restaurant delivery services, contemporary vending machines could be instrumental in further disrupting the way our food comes to us. M E L A N I E H A U P T

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OPPOSITE: IMAGE #6 COURTESY TEAMHALLNASS.COM

​S PECIAL DISPENSATION

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VENDING MACHINES: NOT JUST FOR SODAS ANYMORE

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1 . In Germany consumers can access meats, cheeses and other deli items with a push of a button. 2 . Audrey Hepburn chooses a sandwich at an Automat.

3 . Eggs are available in machines that resemble Automats. 4. These aren’t your standard chips. At the Museum of Natural Sciences in Houston, cricket-based snacks are part of the learning experience. 5. Automats used to combine the ease of self-service with the sociability of a cafe. 6 . Fresh pecan pie is available at a Berdoll Pecan Candy & Gift Company in Cedar Creek, Texas.

7. Making a roast?

Swing by the MeatO-Mat, a 24/7 vending machine butcher shop in Accord, New York.

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IN DEPTH

The Hunt for Food Waste B Y A R I L E VA U X PHOTOGRAPHS BY KENNY BRAUN

Not going to eat those carrots? Don’t throw them away. Once food reaches a landfill, its potential is lost. But unwanted food, captured before it’s tossed, can transform into energy, building materials — or even desirable food.

Meet the new generation of hunters and gatherers. fooda ndci t y .org

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Executive producer Anthony Bourdain takes a deep dive into this issue in “Wasted! The Story of Food Waste.” We’ll link it from this story on foodandcity.org.

IN DEPTH

PR E V IOU S SPR EAD : Jake Milliner and Belinda Bonnen tend a towering vine of fresh malabar spinach at Joe’s Organics in Austin, Texas. Joe’s collects food waste from area restaurants and, with their composting partners, creates rich soil for their crops of baby greens.

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A third of the food we produce goes uneaten.

10% Ten percent of humanity still doesn’t have enough to eat.

Austin-based Joe’s Organic’s grows microgreens and produce with rich compost derived from their restaurant waste-collection program. Clockwise from top left: micro cilantro; edible bean blossoms; blossoming red okra; founder Joe Diffie with his fleet of compost carts; malabar spinach stalk — the stalk and ugly leaves often get wasted, but they’re perfect for green juices; red and green okra at Johnson’s Backyard Garden in Austin; sorting sweet potatoes at JBG.

Wherever there is food, there is food waste. Like water leaking from an aqueduct, food waste will find the gaps in the supply chain between field and plate, a journey filled with opportunities for loss.

A heartbreaking amount of produce rots in the field, unharvested. Some is culled for size, shape or another cosmetic factor. Even more food is thrown away or lost during cleaning, boxing, processing and distribution. It rots slowly in retail stores or commercial kitchens and in your fridge. Food is also tossed during meal preparation, at home or in restaurants or other commercial or institutional kitchens.

And then, far too often, the meal itself — or much of it — is thrown away.

In the end, a third of the food we produce goes uneaten. Data from a new report issued by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) indicate that Americans throw out more 400 pounds of food per person per year. Sadly, in the shadow of this massive overproduction and loss of food, 10 percent of humanity still doesn’t have enough to eat.

But it’s not just about feeding the world: The environmental consequences are significant.

The amount of cropland needed to produce the food that ends up as waste is roughly equivalent to the acreage of China and requires a fourth of the country’s irrigation water. Feeding people is the largest single contributor of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere of any human pursuit, and roughly 10 percent of greenhouse gases that humans release are in service of food that will not be eaten. When this wasted food rots in a landfill or is burned in an incinerator, the process releases even more greenhouse gases.

The holes in the food supply chain through which food slips away represent more than hunger and pollution. It’s wasted investment and fruitless effort that could have been channeled into something more useful. Entire cities could be built, or rebuilt, with the effort that goes into the food we throw away.

But there’s another side of the coin. The scale of this waste, and the problems it causes, have created opportunities. Wasted food is essentially money that’s being left on the table, available to whomever is crafty enough to grab it and put it to use. It has potential value as energy, soil fertility and calories — all of which

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can add up to dollars that can be earned from harvesting food from the waste stream, or intercepting food before it gets tossed.

THE NEW HUNTERS AND GATHERERS The highest good to which a piece of wasted food could aspire (if wasted food had aspirations) is to be rerouted to a hungry human mouth before being discarded. The next-best thing would be for it to be eaten by something else, like a chicken or a pig, or — in the case of food that can’t be routed to organisms with recognizable mouths — a bacteria. Today, most food waste diverted from landfills or incineration is digested by anaerobic bacteria to produce natural gas and fertilizer. Food scraps left over from food processing and retail food preparation are suited for this, as is the majority of household waste. The challenge is getting food out of the waste stream and sending it to a better place than the dump.

That best-case scenario, in which food is rescued from the edge of waste and routed to other human mouths, has been deeply explored in Europe in recent years, while the United States is playing catch-up. The players, increasingly, are for-profit waste hunters that are bringing high-tech solutions to the task of reducing food waste.

Sometimes that initiative comes from the (would-be) food wasters themselves. Campbell Soup Company has been an early corporate leader in reducing its share.

“Food that meets our rigorous safety standards is donated to local food banks in and around our manufacturing plants and distribution networks,” says Thomas Hushen, a Campbell spokesman. “In most cases, we partner with Feeding America and their network of food banks to make donations.”

While some corporations have been early and eager to embrace measures to curb food waste, other companies want to jump on the bandwagon but don’t know where to start.

The French corporation Phenix (a 2017 Food+City Challenge Prize finalist) offers support services to businesses interested in diverting their food waste away from landfills and incinerators. The company has a solid track record in Europe, where the culture of food-waste recovery is more evolved than in the U.S.

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Keep up with the latest in food repurposing and follow Claire Cummings on Twitter @WasteAce.

But Sarah Lenoble, who heads Phenix’s push to set up shop in the States, is that rare French person who looks at America and sees a land of opportunity. The biggest reason food-waste recovery isn’t as advanced in the U.S., she says, is that the food-waste hunters are just getting started. “Even though it is happening, it’s not happening in a very structured way,” Lenoble says. To a veteran organization like Phenix, this youthful discombobulation amounts to low-hanging fruit.

Phenix uses a market-based approach that capitalizes on the fact that unused food has value even if it isn’t sold. American supermarkets, for example, must pay a waste disposal company to get rid of expired food, a fee they could forego if the food were collected by a charity. Last year, according to the NRDC, companies spent $1.3 billion disposing of food scraps, thanks largely to transport and disposal fees. Meanwhile, a surprisingly robust tax credit is available to companies that donate food: the Federal Enhanced Tax Deduction for Food Donation. It allows retailers to recover the higher retail price of their donations, even though they paid the lower wholesale price. Another law, passed in early 2017 with bipartisan support, amends the Good Samaritan Act to offer stronger liability protections to those who donate food. With laws like these in place, and companies eager to exploit them, Lenoble is optimistic about Phenix’s planned rollout into the U.S. food recovery space.

She notes that the U.S. charity scene is much stronger than in Europe, in part because in European governments often handle issues that in the States are left to charities. Even though it’s out to make a profit, Phenix won’t be competing with the food banks, churches and ugly-produce resellers. Instead, they’ll be partnering with them, providing logistical and strategic support to help these charities become more effective in their food-recovery efforts. A rising tide will lift all boats, Lenoble believes, and she likes what she sees. “We believe the market here is going in the right direction.”

In addition to its work with charities, Campbell recently doubled down on its corporate introspection, implementing its Food Loss and Waste Reporting Standard. It’s an effort to develop a benchmark of lost and wasted food, and to identify hotspots and opportunities for reduction

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and diversion. Like any other hunter, a food-waste hunter needs to know where the opportunities are. “We believe measurement improves management,” Hushen says.

THE PERFECT FLAVOR OF IMPERFECT PRODUCE The U.S. is so new at food recovery that one of the movement’s veteran waste hunters isn’t yet 30 years old. Fresh out of college in 2011, Claire Cummings started as a fellow at Bon Appétit Management Company (BAMCO), which runs more than 650 eateries on college and corporate campuses. A year later she became the company’s first food-waste specialist. She went on to create Imperfectly Delicious Produce (IDP), a BAMCO program that pursues ways to recover produce that usually goes to waste (mostly from farms and distributors) and serve it in the company’s many dining rooms.

Since it launched in 2014, IDP has recovered more than 3 million pounds of produce and served it as, for example, broccoli stem soup or cauliflower fritters made from small heads.

While the figure sounds impressive, she admits it’s just a drop in the bucket.

“It’s a huge chunk of food that would have been wasted and was instead utilized in our operations, through purchasing and cooking it,” Cummings says. “But that is still such a small sliver of what actually is going to waste.”

She says many problems remain, but she believes they are solvable. “We’ve gone hunting for a lot of different products on farms. I’ve visited hundreds of farms at this point, large and small.

I’ve seen all different types of operations: orchards, processing facilities, fields of produce,” she says. “There is so much product that is going to waste that could be rescued through purchasing if there were better systems for tackling those missed opportunities at harvest.”

WASTE ENERGY VERSUS WASTED ENERGY Food contains energy, which powers life, makes the world go round — and happens to be worth money. The energy resides in the bonds between the carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen atoms that make up the food molecules. When we eat, that energy is released into our bodies, where it fuels our daily escapades. Fed to animals,

SARAH LENOBLE After completing her MBA, Sarah worked in finance in the private sector before switching to microfinance and finally social business. Originally from France, Sarah has also lived and worked in Argentina and Italy. She is now based in Washington D.C., where she is launching the U.S. subsidiary of PHENIX, a French waste diversion social startup.

CLAIRE CUMMINGS Student activist turned garbage guru, Claire Cummings is the first-ever waste programs manager for Bon Appétit Management Company, the food service pioneer that operates more than 650 cafés in 33 states for universities, corporations and museums. Claire is one of Food Tank’s 30 Women Under 30 Changing Food, she’s a recipient of Saveur’s “Activist” Good Taste Award and her work has been featured in Bloomberg News, Sunset Magazine and The New York Times.

Johnson’s Backyard Garden in Austin delivers fresh, organic — and sometimes scarred or misshapen — vegetables to subscribers in 10 Texas cities.

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CHANGING ORGANIC WA S T E I N T O F U E L

STEP 1

STEP 2

Separate

Collect

STEP 3C

STEP 3B

STEP 3A

Process / Screen

Process / Liquify

Process / Grind

STEP 4 Digest

PRODUCT 1 Renewable Energy

PRODUCT 2 Bio-based Fertilizer

OPPOSITE: WASATCH RESOURCE RECOVERY; THIS PAGE: IMAGE COURTESY GRIND2ENERGY

The Grind2Energy machine is a powerhouse food grinder.

Check out a demo video in this story at foodandcity.org.

the energy transfers to other forms of edible potential energy, such as meat, milk and eggs, or some form of kinetic energy, such as chasing balls or pulling a plow.

But most food that isn’t eaten by humans is discarded, where, depending on the local trash disposal situation, it either gets buried or burned.

Incineration releases carbon dioxide and other pollutants. And food in a landfill will break down anaerobically and release methane, which is even worse (about 18 percent of U.S. methane emissions comes from food scraps in landfills).

The best-case scenario is far from the most common, but it could be. The energy in that wasted food can be extracted as methane in an anaerobic digestor and captured. The resulting energy can be used to generate green electricity or heat houses.

Anaerobic digester operations are popping up wherever there is enough available food waste to make them feasible. Sewage treatment plants are the ideal places to build these operations because co-digesting allows the food-waste recovery process to piggyback on the existing infrastructure of the water-recovery process, rather than requiring a new facility.

Construction began in June 2017 on the Wasatch Resource Recovery Project (WRRP), Utah’s first anaerobic digester facility. A partnership between South Davis Sewer District in North Salt Lake City and the private Alpro Energy and Water, the WRRP is going up adjoining the county sewage treatment plant. Morgan Bowerman, sustainability manager for WRRP, is pleased with the arrangement.

“The South Davis Sewer District has been operating the most efficient wastewater treatment in the whole state for years,” Bowerman says. “The fact that we have these guys on board to run our digesters is huge. The other major advantage is that here in the West we are in a massive, 17-year drought. When we co-locate, we can use their wastewater, which is a huge boon to us and so much better for the environment.”

Phase one of the project involves two 2.5-million-gallon digesters, to be operated, as mentioned, by the county sewer district. There will also be a “depackaging facility” to relieve expired edible goods of their containers.

“It exponentially increases how much we can recycle. They can send it to us completely

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IN DEPTH

boxed and packaged, and we can do the depackaging and suddenly it’s viable,” Bowerman says.

They also have a F.O.G. (fats, oils and grease) receiving station and a depackaging station specifically for expired cans and bottles. “We can use the product inside to make energy and recycle the packaging.”

After the methane is recovered, what comes out is a nutrient-rich sludge, high in nitrogen, potassium, phosphate and organic matter — basically, fertilizer. Bowerman anticipates theirs will eventually be certified organic, once they determine its final form. Meanwhile, they’re also separating the ammonia and carbon gas from the methane for beneficial use. Wasatch plans to be operational in fall 2018.

Of the more than 1,000 sewage treatment plants in the U.S., about 216 are co-digesting food waste alongside sewage. That means 83 percent don’t yet have a food-waste digester, which amounts to a lot of money and energy being left on the table.

While pioneers like Wasatch are taking this plunge, the whole waste-to-energy industry is still coming of age. Groundbreaking advancements are frequent: Scientists at Cornell University have been playing with a process called hydrothermal liquefaction, which is a fancy way of saying “pressure-cook the food waste into oblivion.” It’s a process that recalls the way dinosaurs and their ecosystems were turned into oil under the ground. In the case of hydrothermal liquefaction, heat and pressure combine to turn food waste into an oily liquid that digests in days, rather than weeks, with more complete digestion and energy extraction.

Meanwhile, 97 percent of food waste is still getting away — for the moment anyway. But it’s only a matter of time before this low-hanging food waste will be plucked, because we can’t can afford not to.

“We wouldn’t take a barrel of oil and bury it,” Bowerman says. “And that is what we are doing with our food waste.”

COUNTERTOP COMBUSTION The largest garbage disposal company in the world, Emerson, wants into the food-waste energy business. Any food industry player of a certain size that deals with large amounts of raw food can install Emerson’s subunit called Grind2Energy in a food disposal area. It includes a stainless steel work area, sink and a very powerful garbage disposal. Plumbing connects it to a special holding tank for the slurry, which features a sensor that notifies Grind2Energy when it’s time to be emptied.

The free service saves the client in waste transport, disposal fees and kitchen labor.

O P P O SITE : Step 1: Organic waste is separated into a designated container at a food business.

Step 2: Waste is collected and delivered to Wasatch Resource Recovery facility. Step 3: Machines process the waste to remove contaminants or non-food. A. It goes into a grinder to be chopped into small pieces. B. Secondary (not potable) water is added to ground-up waste and mixed until it liquifies.

C. The material passes through a screen where packaging or contaminants are washed free of remaining organic material, which is fed into the digester. Step 4: In the digester, waste is heated to aid growth of microbes, which break down organic matter without using oxygen. This produces biogas. Product 1: Biogas is captured and purified before being converted into biomethane (renewable natural gas), fed into nearby gas pipeline and sold as renewable “green” power.

Product 2: The remaining product is a nutrient-rich, carbon-based fertilizer for crops.

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To see more of the 28,000+ materials in the The University of Texas at Austin’s Materials Lab, visit materials.soa.utexas.edu.

IN DEPTH

EDIBLE MATERIALS

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JEN WONG DIRECTOR AND CURATOR OF THE MATERIALS LAB AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN Jen Wong is Director and Curator of the Materials Lab at The University of Texas at Austin, a research center dedicated to material investigation as design.

She gets excited about how and why things are made, what they’re made of, and how they can be made better.

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#1 COCONUT SHELL TILES Indulge your fantasies of tropical escape with Coco Tiles from Kirei, made from coconut shells collected after harvest. The shells are an agricultural byproduct (agro-waste) otherwise subjected to open burning, a common practice that contributes to atmospheric pollution. Open burning is used in developing areas to quickly eliminate post-harvest waste and pests, and to prepare fields for planting. Converting coconut shells into building materials is a great example of transforming food-related waste into a higher-value use. #2 PEANUT SHELL BOARD Another shell-based material used in buildings is Peanut Shell Board from Kokoboard, an alternative particleboard that flaunts its origins. The Thailand-based manufacturer purchases unwanted shells from local farmers and presses them into use. They also produce boards from post-harvest rice and coconut agro-waste.

The boards, which are suitable for interior surfaces and furniture, are free of formaldehyde. #3 BARK CLOTH Harvested from the bark of the Mutuba fig tree, Bark Cloth is a non-woven textile with 600-yearold roots in Uganda. The trees are debarked annually and regenerate quickly, which qualifies the textile as a rapidly renewable material. Rapidly renewable content is defined by a short (less than 10-year) life or regeneration cycle. Bark cloth can be used for interior surfaces, furniture and apparel.

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY IAN RANDALL. COURTESY MATERIALS LAB, THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN.

Here’s some food for thought: The following products are derived from food system losses in agricultural and livestock production. These materials, currently used in buildings, apparel, consumer products and packaging, lead the way in replacing fossil-fuel derivatives and other strained natural resources with rapidly renewable food waste.

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an attractive alternative to lumber from old-growth forests.

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#6 RICE HUSK CONCRETE Concrete is the most commonly used building material in the world, and it exerts enormous demand on natural resources. The production of Portland Cement, a critical ingredient in concrete, generates 5 percent of all CO₂ emissions. One agro-waste product that can be used as a partial substitute for cement is rice husk ash. Unburnt rice husk is also a promising aggregate in lightweight, insulative concrete.

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#7 CHOCOLATE PAPER Don’t be deceived by the somewhat unsavory term agro-waste.

James Cropper, maker of luxury papers, offers Cocoa, which replaces 10 percent virgin fiber with cocoa shell powder. The line identifies a unique and higher use for this abundant byproduct of the chocolate industry. It was developed through a packaging collaboration with Barry Callebaut, maker of fine chocolates.

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#8 BLOODMEAL BIOPLASTIC Though you wouldn’t guess from its smooth, honey-colored appearance, Novatein from Aduro Biopolymers is made from blood meal, a byproduct of the meat industry. The bioplastic pellets have comparable capabilities to petroleum-based plastic and can be molded into a wide variety of products with different attributes, from pots and cutlery to softspun mats.

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#4 SORGHUM SURFACING The striking patterns of TorZo’s Tiikeri™ line come from post-harvest sorghum stalks. Acrylic resin combines with 50 percent agro-waste content to form a biocomposite material. Sorghum is a rapidly renewable crop grown worldwide, with many uses in food, alcoholic beverages, fodder, fuel and, of course, building materials. The panels are available in a variety of colors and are suitable for interior surfaces and furniture.

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#5 BIO-TREATED WOOD Some agro-waste materials are harder to spot. Kebony has the rich appearance and durability of tropical hardwood, but it’s manufactured through a patented process that uses bio-based liquid derived from byproducts of the sugarcane industry. This nontoxic process permanently enhances the cell structure of sustainably grown softwoods, producing

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#9 FISH SKIN LEATHER Atlantic Leather uses animal-based byproducts of the fishing industry to produce an exotic leather alternative. The Icelandic tannery utilizes the skins of four species — salmon, cod, wolffish and perch — and recently introduced MIMOSA, a line of vegetable-tanned salmon leather processed with Mimosa bark. #10 MUSHROOM MATERIALS Ecovative manufactures foam and wood substitutes from mushroom mycelium, which binds together agro-waste fibers such as flax, canola and hemp for a win-win. The material is molded or pressed into a variety of shapes and densities as packaging, acoustic and thermal insulation, and board material.

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Keep up with the latest in food repurposing and follow Claire Cummings on Twitter @WasteAce.

IN DEPTH

CUTTING WASTE ACROSS CULTURES

ALL PHOTOS OPPOSITE SHOT AT JACK ALLEN’S KITCHEN

The United Nations has proposed a goal to cut global food waste in half by 2030. Liz Goodwin, a senior fellow and director of food loss and waste at the World Resources Institute (WRI), has taken that mandate to heart. Goodwin, of all people, would know what that entails. During her tenure as CEO of the U.K.-based Waste and Resources Action Program, U.K. food waste fell by 21 percent.

Now she seeks to take lessons learned from that effort and apply them to other countries that have very different challenges with regard to food waste.

The specific opportunities to prevent food waste vary from place to place, Goodwin explains, for reasons that are cultural, economic and tied to infrastructure.

In China, the world’s most populous nation, good hospitality would suggest that as much food remains on the table at the end of the meal as was there at the beginning. Otherwise, it sends the message that the host hasn’t provided enough to eat. However, Goodwin notes that it’s heartening to see that the Chinese government has been encouraging people not to waste food at banquets and events. Many Muslim countries have similar edicts that are in direct conflict with the goal of preventing food waste. Meanwhile, many modern industrialized societies such as Switzerland and Singapore impose unnecessarily cautious food expiration dates, which results in the disposal of perfectly edible food.

By contrast, poor countries have less waste in the home than in wealthy nations, Goodwin says. Leftovers don’t go bad in the fridge when hunger is an issue. Food scraps are more likely to be fed to animals or composted. But waste isn’t a non-issue. In developing nations there are gaping holes in the supply chain infrastructure through which large amounts of food are lost.

“With slow transport and unrefrigerated storage conditions, the food just doesn’t get through to the end user in time,” Goodwin says.

“And then there are gluts of food, such as massive numbers of mangos that ripen at the same time, and no infrastructure in place to process it all.”

In the developed world, the biggest source of

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food waste is in private residences. It’s where 70 percent of food waste happens in the U.K., and there are a range of causes, including getting portion sizes wrong, not using leftovers and letting food expire or go bad before using it.

On the other hand, food waste is less of a problem in commercial or institutional settings.

“Organizations can control what goes on within their operations,” explains Goodwin, referring to the large farms, processors, distributors, grocery stores, institutional kitchens and restaurants where food is flowing. Not only are these big players easier to work with, they can make big deliveries of salvageable food that could be diverted from the waste stream — or of food waste that can’t be eaten but which can be digested anaerobically and converted to energy and fertilizer.

The world’s two most populous nations, India and China, have both first-world and developing world conditions. “China and India have a mixture of developed-world problems and developing-world problems. Their populations are big, and they are producing a lot of food, so supply chain issues are really important.”

With such differences from country to country, Goodwin explains, the first thing to do when evaluating a nation’s food waste profile is to look at where the food waste is happening. Is it in restaurants, the household or at various points in the supply chain?

“Start measuring,” she says. “Because that will help to identify where their biggest issues lie.”

DR. LIZ GOODWIN SENIOR FELLOW AND DIRECTOR OF FOOD LOSS AND WASTE AT THE WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE (WRI) From 2007 to 2016 she was CEO of Waste and Resources Action Program. During her tenure, recycling rates in the U.K. increased from 9 percent to 43 percent, and U.K. food waste was reduced by 21 percent. At WRI, her goal is to work with people and organizations around the world to cut global food waste in half by 2030, in line with UN sustainable development goals.

CLO CKW I SE F ROM TO P L EFT: Ugly carrots make lovely pickles, a better fate than being plowed under, unharvested, in the field; uneaten restaurant meals contribute to the enormous amount of edible food discarded daily; food waste is a cause of greenhouse gases; byproducts from food preparation, such as this watermelon rind, can be composted or even pickled rather than chucked.

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Photographer Erwin E. Smith (1886–1947), captured images of cattle drives around the turn of the last century. This one, shot at Matador Range, Texas, 1910, features the “drag” (end of trail herd) moving along a trail. “The Point” is the front or lead of the herd. Strung out along the trail there will be considerable distance between the “drag” and the “point.”

In 2017 the Chisholm Trail turned 150 years old.

Millions of cattle traveled it when migrating north through Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas between 1867 through 1884.

Gelatin dry plate negative, 5 x 7 in, Erwin E. Smith Collection of the Library of Congress on Deposit at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, LC.S6.168

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From Hoof to Highway B Y J E A N N E T T E VA U G H T

Since the Civil War, beef has been central to Texas’ agricultural economy. The movement of all those cattle, from ranch to slaughterhouse, shaped the state’s modern highway system — literally.

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For more photographs of the American West

by Erwin E. Smith, visit the link to the Amon Carter Collection in this story at foodandcity.org.

Managing a herd of hundreds or even thousands of animals required a kind of choreography.

A team of drovers, as cowboys were more accurately known, spread out around the herd, keeping strays from wandering too far off course. They were on the hoof together for weeks at a time, covering distances of hundreds of miles between ranch and beef processor.

Fourteen-year-old Frank King, a cattle drover in the late 19th century, was responsible for moving cattle through Texas and points north.

Back then, men and boys on horseback rode through the fields, plains and hills of what’s now the center of the country, forming trails that remained long after the last of the cattle drives — trails that became some of this country’s most well-traveled highways.

Conceptions of Texas, for natives and non-Texans alike, often begin with sepia-tinged images of cattle drives, visions of sprawling ranches and the smoky smell of slow-cooked beef briskets. Since the Civil War, beef has steadfastly remained at the center of Texas culture and its agricultural economy. But while beef is no longer the state’s largest export product, the paths taken by beef cattle to go from range to market had a lasting impact on paths developed for human travel. The legacies of moving cattle to market on the hoof still shape how people, animals and products move into and around Texas.

“I was only fourteen, but had been learnin’ the work on the Bill Chisholm Ranch on the Canadian River in the Chickasaw Nation,” recalled a much-older Frank King in an oral history recorded in the 1930s and housed at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. As he recounted the mechanization of his “Old West” way of life, he noted the stark changes he’d seen in the previous 60 years. “The young fellers can’t vision the broad Plains, now covered with wheat fields” — in the 1930s when he recorded these memories — “...as once bein’ the home of millions of buffalo grazin’ and runnin’ across ’em, lookin’ like great big black waves as they moved from North to South, changin’ with the seasons.”

Today, those waves moving along the northsouth corridors of Texas are made of motor vehicles. Interstate 35 is the main road that runs north and south through Texas, forming a highway spine from Mexico through the American heartland all the way north to Lake Superior. Yet the very things that make it modern — its ex-

REMUDA

WRANGLER

CHUCK WAGON

FLANK SWING

“CATTLE DRIVE,” FROM FLINT HILLS COWBOYS, JIM HOY

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DRAG

DRAG TRAIL BOSS

DRAG

POINT FLANK SWING

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CHISHOLM TRAIL The trail known as the Chisholm Trail guided Texas cattle northward through Indian Territory, no matter where the cattle came from in Texas. It was first marked out by a Cherokee man named Jesse Chisholm to provide safe passage for cattle moving north from the Red River to Abilene.

Later, the Chisholm Trail came to also include a route from San Antonio to the Red River, and today the route is mostly overlaid

by Texas Highway 81.

TO P: A coyote trapped at the carcass of a range critter. Three Circles Ranch, Texas, 1906.

Nitrate negative, 4 x 5 in., Erwin E. Smith Collection of the Library of Congress on Deposit at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, LC.S59.215

BOTTOM : The loading yards at the railroad station in Lubbock, Texas, one of the first shipping points to be established on the Texas plains, 1910.

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Nitrate negative, 4 x 5 in., Erwin E. Smith Collection of the Library of Congress on Deposit at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, LC.S59.585

TO P : Overlooking the Canadian River while cowpunchers put a herd of LS cattle across it, 1907.

Nitrate negative, 4 x 5 in., Erwin E. Smith Collection of the Library of Congress on Deposit at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, LC.S59.489

BOT TOM : January 1965 aerial photo of San Gabriel River in Georgetown, Texas, with Interstate Highway 35 bridge under construction.

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TEXAS TRAFFIC: CATTLE TO CARS

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The routes cattle drovers took laid the foundation for many of Texas’ modern highways. The ground, tamped down by decades of cattle drives — and millennia of migrating bison — gave way to roads in the middle of the 20th century.

Interstate 35, the main north-south artery that bisects the state, follows the old Shawnee Trail.

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panses of pavement and high speeds — also obscure the unique history of this strip of ground in Texas. When we drive up I-35 in Texas today, we are following a movement pattern carved out by bovine hooves — first by wild bison, as King remembered, and then by ranched cattle. That’s hard to imagine now, as the concrete hums under the tires and the landscape whizzes by in a blur.

Unbeknownst to most motorists today, including truckers moving cattle through various points of the beef commodity chain, Interstate 35 overlays the same path taken by cattle drovers, the first men on horseback to guide Texas cattle to northern markets in the 19th century. Men like Frank King. “When I started to ridin’ them North Texas ranges, barbed wire hadn’t been invented,” he remembered. “There was nothin’ to hold cows together but cowboys and hosses.”

Topography helped, too. King and his fellow drovers followed existing wild bison trails that hugged the geological guide of the Balcones Escarpment. The drovers were hired to walk Texas cattle to railroad depots in Missouri and Kansas, but in the early days there was no set route. The cattle themselves found and followed these tamped-down bison trails. “It was a wonderful sight to see herds of them lanky old cattle

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strung out along the trail. Folks didn’t drive cattle in them days,” he noted. “They moved ’em, lettin’ ’em graze along in the right direction ’til they reached the northern markets or grazin’ grounds.” Even for someone who was there, the past seemed very far away.

CATTLE ENTREPRENEUR AND TRAIL BOSS, MARGARET BORLAND Margaret Heffernan Borland ran a large cattle operation from Victoria, Texas, along with her husband, Alexander, in the 1860s.

She took over the business entirely when he died of yellow fever in 1867. Within a few years she grew her herd to a whopping 10,000 head and regularly sent herds of 2,500 or more up to Kansas railheads. She procured and organized the supplies and hired the laborers for these drives, and in 1873, she led a cattle drive from Victoria to Wichita herself. Like many people at that time, she caught an illness along the trail that led to her death. She died shortly after arriving in Kansas.

FROM TRAILS TO RAILS TO ROADS

In contrast to the well-established east-west corridor known as the Old San Antonio Road — the Spanish Texas version of El Camino Real — north/south routes in Texas were inhospitable to Anglo settler colonists in the 1820s moving into what is now Texas. The east-west routes of the Old San Antonio Road were a series of trails blazed in the late 17th century to ferry people, animals and commodities from Louisiana deep into the Spanish Empire. But the route north from San Antonio remained remarkably unchanged, even in the days of the Texas Republic and Texas’ entry into the United States in 1845, and was used almost exclusively by bison and indigenous nations. More passable long-distance routes beyond El Camino Real didn’t emerge until after the Civil War. This timing had much to do with the post– Civil War militarization of the western plains against indigenous people, which opened up

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ESTIMATED CATTLE NUMBERS ON THE CHISHOLM TRAIL

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35 CATTLE TRANSPORTED IN THE U.S. IN 2016

CATTLE TRAILS

BY THE NUMBERS The Texas State Historical Association estimates that more than 1.5 million cattle tamped down the Chisholm Trail between 1866 and 1873; other sources estimate that more than 5 million cattle wound up in Kansas over the life of the trail into the 1890s.

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territories to settler colonists. At this point, any new route across Texas was designed to funnel resources toward burgeoning markets. Yet even in this moment of rapid modernization, the most enduring route from southern to northern Texas was formed by bovine hooves with a twist: they were beeves, not bison.

From the 1840s to the 1890s, cattle moved northward from Mexico and Texas on the hoof, grazing on lush grassland prairies during autumn before boarding a train in winter to feed the meat demands of industrial cities to the east. The Shawnee Trail, an indigenous and bison-maintained trailway that prefigured I-35, was the first popular route to bring Texas cattle to northern markets in the 1840s and 1850s because it connected with rail and port systems in Missouri.

King rode the trails during the rise of ranching in the 1870s. As Anglo settlers took over more and more indigenous land, “there was no fences at first and cattle herds was located on ranges and kept there by line riders and sign riders,” effectively grazing within the living fences made

by King and his fellow hired hands.

The financial stakes were high for this fast-growing industry. After the Civil War, Texas cattle numbered in the millions, and postwar cattle capitalists eagerly resumed the pre-war Shawnee Trail route in 1866. As railroads crept further west, cattle entrepreneur Joseph McCoy opened a depot in Abilene, Kansas. This reorientation to a more western terminus inaugurated the famed Chisholm Trail, guiding Texas cattle north straight through Oklahoma Indian Territory into Kansas. The Texas State Historical Association estimates that more than 1.5 million cattle tamped down the Chisholm Trail between 1866 and 1873; other sources estimate that more than 5 million cattle wound up in Kansas over the life of the trail into the 1890s. The powerful trail-making capabilities of thousands upon thousands of bovine hooves made parts of Texas navigable by settlers for the first time.

When cattle arrived in Kansas, they rested and grazed on the tallgrass prairie before loading up on trains. The locations of the northern railheads were ideally situated near grasslands to fatten cattle before their final journey to slaughter — a circumstance that kept cattle traveling out of Texas by hoof even after railways had

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been well established in the state. Indeed, Texas rails were plentiful in the era of on-the-hoof mobility. Rail access across eastern Texas flourished between 1870 and 1880, when the number of rail miles more than quadrupled, from 700 to 3,293.

Much of this was passenger rail that connected towns to cities.

Connecting goods to markets was harder.

In the 1870s, the explosion of Texas railways did not immediately affect cattle drives, in part because freight fees were far higher than drovers’ costs and most railroads were built in the eastern part of the state. This left the Chisholm Trail mostly free of rail crossings. The early Texas rail system was simply not designed to move beef north, but rather to move profitable cotton crops east and move people from town to town. Rails revolutionized human mobility across Texas, enabling many Texans to break free from their small towns when roads were few and far between. But as rails expanded east and west, cattle still cut the most important northward routes.

RAILS AND FENCES

In the 1880s, barbed wire began to replace men on horseback as the preferred method for keeping ranch cattle contained, and rails expanded westward into the state. By 1890, rails and fences blocked the Chisholm Trail, helping to bring the cattle drive era to an end. In 1900, the movement of cattle across Texas was no longer a long grazing walk, but rather a journey of multiple short segments. For example, North Texas cattle raisers would drive their cattle a short distance to Fort Worth on the hoof. Then, a major meatpacker like Swift and Co. would buy cattle from the Fort Worth stockyards and put them on a train to one of the 20 feed yards they ran in Texas. The last stop on the trail was the slaughterhouse, where the meat was packed and shipped by refrigerated rail car to markets across the nation.

Cattlemen no longer had to bear financial responsibility for their animals during the long walk northward. For men like King, this spelled the end of a way of life. “The younger generation will never have the thrills and experiences of the old-time fellers before, during, and immediately after the wire fence days, when a cowhand didn’t have anything to do but ride them side-wheel ponies after cows.” Cowhands still guided cattle

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INFOGRAPHIC BY MICHELLE MAUDET

ESTIMATED BISON NUMBERS ON THE CHISHOLM TRAIL

MARTIN PHIPPARD COLLECTION

By 1965, flatbed trailers brought cattle north from ranches to feed lots or processors in North Texas or as far as Kansas over a new network of Texas highways paved between 1945 and 1955.

a short distance to local rail yards, but for half a century — from about 1900 to after World War II — the grand and ancient bovine trails through Texas were barely used at all.

The Shawnee Trail was reborn as Interstate 35 through Texas in the early 1960s. It joined a 24,000-mile network of rural roads in Texas that was paved between 1945 and 1955. Turning the Shawnee trail into Interstate 35 opened this route back up to cattle, but it also heralded the end of cattle walking across Texas. By 1965, flatbed semitrailers brought cattle north from their home ranches — whether to be fed in a Panhandle lot, to graze on the Tallgrass Hills of Kansas or to be distributed as meat products to grocers and food producers around the country.

Roads like Interstate 35 reproduced some of the oldest navigable routes that bovine critters had used to cross Texas for centuries — routes that had been generally unavailable to them since the end of the 19th century, but to which they returned on wheels, no longer on the hoof.

This pattern of movement from ranch to lot, facilitated by the rural and interstate highway system, still describes how beef cattle move around and out of Texas.

TRAIL LEGACIES

Frank King witnessed a wholesale transformation of the way cattle were raised and sold. These changes were hard to miss because they were

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geographical as much as they were logistical: Indian territories shrank and disappeared, fence posts appeared on landscapes and rail beds rose up across well-tamped trails. King did not live to see the day cattle were loaded up on highway haulers, but he did observe one way in which rural roads affected the lives of cattle workers in 20th-century Texas. While cattle droving was “sometimes scary when the Comanches were on the prod,” it was not “half as dangerous as it is nowadays tryin’ to cross a street or highway on foot when a band of modern Apaches is passin’ along armed with one of them high-powered automobiles. Personally,” he added, “I’ll take my chances with the Comanches.” Perhaps he had an inkling that paved roads would spell the end of his kind of work for good.

Change in the cattle industry is harder to see now. While the geography of modern cattle logistics has remained steady, changes affecting the beef industry have occurred in the less-visible areas of veterinary medicine and nutrition, market regulation and animal reproduction.

King, who experienced an era of incredible change from the back of a horse, could not foresee the days of the 75-mile-per-hour cattle trail, just as the Shawnee, Apache and Comanche residents of Texas could not have foreseen the transformation of their bison trails into commercial cattle routes. But for the last 500 years, the route they followed has remained the same.

CONNECTING THE FORTUNES OF CATTLE AND HIGHWAYS Dolph Briscoe Jr. was instrumental in connecting the fortunes of cattle to highways. After serving in World War II, Briscoe returned to run his family’s cattle operation in Uvalde. His ranch, along with about 6,000 others in 1945, was part of the Cattle Raisers Association of Texas. Regional raisers’ associations formed in the 1880s to coordinate ranch labor, prevent theft and represent ranchers’ interests. These regional associations merged in 1921. The Briscoe family were longstanding members. During his tenure as a state representative (1948–1957), Briscoe Jr. successfully secured permanent funding to pave rural roads across Texas by sponsoring, along with State Senator Neveille Colson, the Colson-Briscoe Act. Briscoe’s work to support ranchers by providing passable roads was a key factor in his election as president of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association in 1960 — and ranchers were a cornerstone of support for his successful bid for governor in 1972.

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Urban Agriculture: Can it Feed Cities?

BY JANE BLACK

OPPOSITE: COURTESY AEROFARMS; THIS PAGE ELLAPHANT IN THE ROOM

From rooftop gardens and indoor vertical farms to community plots and edible landscapes, urban agriculture is on the rise. As more of the world’s population resides in cities, city farming is touted as a sustainable solution.

But are there enough rooftops to make it work?

New Jersey has been known since the late 19th century as the Garden State. But today its 12th largest city, Camden, is anything but lush and green. It is the country’s poorest city — an astonishing 42 percent of the population lives below the poverty line — and one of the country’s most dangerous. A recent Rolling Stone profile of the city began: “The first thing you notice about Camden, New Jersey, is that pretty much everyone you talk to has just gotten his or her ass kicked.”

And yet.

A small food economy is blossoming in Camden. AeroFarms, an indoor agriculture firm, plans to break ground as early as this year on a 78,000-square-foot vertical farm that would grow 12 stories of red-leaf lettuce, kale, bok choy and more.

Meanwhile, more than 100 of the city’s thousands of vacant lots have been transformed into community gardens. In 2009, at the dawn of enthusiasm for urban farming and during the last available year data were collected, gardeners at 44 sites harvested almost 31,000 pounds of vegetables. Had it not been an unusually wet and cold summer, it might have been more.

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It’s all very inspiring: Whizz-bang technology that offers healthier food and much-needed jobs.

Communities taking charge of their food destiny in a place that the almighty market has neglected.

(Camden, population 77,000, has just one supermarket within its city limits.) But it’s not only struggling cities that see the promise of urban farming.

Urban agriculture — which by definition includes indoor farms, rooftop and backyard gardens, community plots and edible landscapes — is often hailed as a solution to daunting global challenges. It addresses climate change by allowing food to be grown close to home, rather than hauled thousands of miles. It could affect obesity and chronic disease by making healthy options more available. And urban farming could help feed a quickly growing world population, because many of the predicted 9 billion people on the planet (by 2050) are increasingly headed to cities.

SUSTAINABLE SOLUTION?

But can urban farming sustainably feed cities? A close look under the agri-hood suggests that it’s a lot more complicated than advertised.

Leafy greens — which are 90 to 95 percent water and don’t require much light to grow — are great candidates for indoor vertical farms. But denser fruits and vegetables or other crops (e.g., carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, wheat) need a lot more light — and, thus, electricity — to grow without the sun.

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In a Victory Garden in England during World War II, glass balls for forcing early cabbages are placed in position at a Salvation Army farming colony at Hadleigh, Essex (1940).

5,000,000 household garden plots during WWI in the U.S.

20,000,000 household garden plots during WWII in the U.S.

For starters, let’s examine the history. The Industrial Revolution quickly and dramatically severed ties between consumers and the farmers who grew their food. Efficient train networks transported food more rapidly, from farther away, and more people moved away from rural areas to cities for work in factories. Since then, there have been regular waves of enthusiasm for urban gardening in the West, motivated by social reformers, who made a moral connection between the land and healthy living, or by the innate human desire for self-sufficiency.

To wit: One of the Salvation Army’s first initiatives in late 19th-century London was “farm colonies” designed to help city folks feed themselves. Beginning in the 20th century, Israel’s early Zionists created thousands of small urban farms. But the only examples of urban farming feeding substantial numbers of people occur when there is little other choice.

In Israel, urban farms soon gave way to rural kibbutzim (collectives based around agriculture). The United States saw Americans plant more than 5 million household plots during World War I and 20 million in World War II. Those 1940s victory gardens produced 9 million pounds of produce each year — what amounted to 44 percent of the U.S. harvest. (Read more about how people cope with food shortages during wartime on page 50.) But when the war ended, citizens largely abandoned their gardens and returned to the convenience of shopping at the supermarket.

HIGH-TECH FARMING

Lettuce grown in indoor farms and greenhouses uses at least 70 percent less water than traditional California-grown lettuce.

Proponents of urban farming say this time could be different. Besides the global challenges of climate change and population, there is wide consumer demand for locally grown food. Moreover, technology that makes urban farming more productive and more sustainable could tip the balance. The technologies include lightweight beds that can be stacked, efficient LED lights and hydroponics and aeroponics, by which plants grow without soil and fed a calculated diet of nutrients by water circulating beneath them.

“By some estimates, we will need 50 percent more food by 2050,” says David Rosenberg, CEO of AeroFarms. “We need transformational changes. Vertical farming does more with less.”

A decade ago, not even one of these so-called

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vertical farms existed. Today, there are dozens of them — one in Singapore, one in a former bomb shelter in London and one in Japan, built by researchers to provide safe food after the devastating Fukushima earthquake in 2011. That farm, formerly a semiconductor factory, now produces 10,000 heads of lettuce per day.

AeroFarms operates nine vertical farms.

Its largest, in Newark, 90 miles northeast of Camden, produces 2 million pounds of leafy greens each year. The 70,000-square-foot complex is a poster child for futuristic farming.

Inside, so-called grow tables are stacked 12 levels high and enveloped by a glow of pink LED light.

(Plants, it turns out, require little from the yellow part of the light spectrum, which requires greater amounts of power to produce.)

Rosenberg sees AeroFarms less as an agricultural producer than as a data-science company, delving into the intersection of plant biology and engineering with the goal of controlling every aspect of growing and maximizing efficiency.

“We take data on plants and understand what makes them grow,” he explains. “You can’t do it this way in the field. There are too many unknowns.”

RESOURCE CONSERVATION: PROS AND CONS

The biggest boon of vertical growing may be water conservation. Drive through California’s Salinas Valley, where the vast majority of America’s salad greens are grown, and you’ll see hundreds of sprinklers shooting great arcs of water across the fields. Some of that is used by the plants, but much is lost to evaporation and runoff.

In contrast, hydroponic and aeroponic systems give the plants only the water they need, and it is recirculated through the system. On average, indoor farms and greenhouses use at least 70 percent less water than traditionally farmed lettuce in California.

There are other benefits, too. The produce doesn’t have to travel — unlike the lettuces that journey as far as 2,800 miles if they are shipped from coast to coast. This all but eliminates the greenhouse-gas emissions associated with transport, though those are only a fraction of the total associated with producing food. (Read more about greenhouse gases tied to food waste

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LED LIGHTING

LEAFY GREENS

AEROPONIC MIST

CLOTH MEDIUM

PHOTO COURTESY AEROFARMS

SOLUTION CHAMBER

in our feature on page 18.) And because they are fresher, the greens last longer in consumers’ refrigerators, which means less lettuce thrown away because it’s gone bad before it could be eaten.

No wonder vertical farms are catnip to technology investors looking for the next big disruptor. According to AgFunder, in 2016 funders poured $126 million into indoor agriculture-related startups (including things like lighting and software). But critics say that the environmental benefits of indoor farms don’t add up.

For one, to grow even a fraction of the fruits and vegetables needed to feed cities would take vast amounts of space. According to one analysis, it would require a 150-foot-by-150-foot, 37-story building to provide the vegetables for a city of just 15,000. This would cost $250 million to build and $7 million in electricity to run annually.

Indoor farms also fail to take advantage of a free and renewable source of energy: the sun.

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“If you’re not taking advantage of the sunlight, then the process will inherently involve excess energy consumption and carbon emissions,” says Stan Cox, a researcher at the Land Institute in Salinas, Kansas.

Substituting electricity for sunlight is costly.

Using current technology, the equation just about works out for leafy greens, which are 90 to 95 percent water and don’t require as much light to grow. But do the math on denser fruits and vegetables or other crops — carrots, potatoes or wheat — and the amount of power required to grow them soars. According to Cox, it takes about 1,200 kilowatt-hours of electricity for each kilogram of edible matter (excluding the water stored inside). Or to put it another way: You need the same amount of electricity to grow one kilogram of tomatoes as you do to run your home refrigerator for an entire year.

“The claim of indoor farming is that we can spare the land by getting rid of industrial farming,”

AeroFarms’ vertical gardens grow under energy-efficient LED lights and use up to 70 percent less water, compared with more traditional soil-based or horizontal farming. Its largest facility, in Newark, New Jersey, produces 2 million pounds of leafy greens each year, which don’t have to travel far to reach urban markets.

Despite these efficiencies, critics of vertical farming say using electricity rather than renewable sunlight doesn’t add up for high-volume production.

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Cox says. “But of course, this vision uses more industrial inputs than anything done on the landscape.”

AeroFarms’ Rosenberg counters that lighting technology is getting ever more efficient.

And though he concedes that indoor farming may look industrial, it addresses major challenges including the depletion of arable land, water pollution and conservation: “We don’t use soil.

We don’t use pesticides. We use a fraction of the water that field farms do. We have a much softer footprint.”

GREENHOUSE GROWING

An even softer footprint comes from other types of commercial urban and peri-urban farms that use greenhouses. Take BrightFarms, which operates three commercial greenhouses and sells directly to grocery stores in seven states and the District of Columbia.

BrightFarms uses hydroponics, which means that trays of greens grow atop vast ponds. But

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rather than place its farms in cities, where land is generally more limited (and much more expensive), it locates its greenhouses just outside of urban areas. With more space, it is not necessary to stack plants to turn a profit. The use of hydroponics also means that the farms can be, well, horizontal — and take advantage of (free) sunlight.

Today, the crops that make commercial sense for hydroponic farming are greens and tomatoes, says BrightFarms CEO Paul Lightfoot.

Both crops travel long distances, unless you live on the West Coast. Both too are highly perishable and sell for a premium price. And, as anyone who has eaten a winter tomato knows, these crops benefit from being grown closer to home.

One day, Lightfoot hopes that BrightFarms will expand to other crops that meet the same criteria: strawberries, peppers and cucumbers.

But there are limits to what he can produce.

BrightFarms, he says, will never be able to compete on a crop like apples, which grow in many

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PHOTO BY CHELSEA CLOUGH

In sunlit greenhouses on the outskirts of urban areas where land is more plentiful, BrightFarms raises greens and tomatoes using hydroponics — a system in which plants grow directly atop pools of fortified water. These and other crops like strawberries, cucumbers and peppers benefit from growing near where they’ll be consumed, a selling point for cities that have an urban-adjacent BrightFarms facility nearby. But hydroponic agriculture isn’t the right fit for all crops; apples, for instance, store well and travel more easily than delicate tomatoes, making traditional orchards a better option, for now.

In a hydroponic set-up, plants get the nutrients they need through irrigation water. The process eliminates soil and increases yield. For this process to be successful, ventilation and temperature modulation are key. Solar panels provide renewable energy to power irrigation pumps and ventilation systems, and rainwater is captured in roof tanks for use as irrigation in dry periods. Water is constantly recirculated in a hydroponic system, wasting none.

geographic areas, store well and travels easily.

They will always be cheaper and more sustainably grown in the field.

ELLAPHANT IN THE ROOM

CLOSING THE GAP

Commercial farms, of course, do not have to produce everything. Could community, rooftop and backyard gardens make up the difference?

According to a 2016 report from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, the answer is no.

While a significant proportion of fresh produce needs could theoretically be met in some places, it would only work in those locations if urban farms are widely implemented and focus on intensive forms of production such as rooftop gardens.

To feed Cleveland, for example, 80 percent of every vacant lot (of which there are many), 62 percent of industrial and commercial rooftops, and 9 percent of every occupied residential lot would have to be put into food production. Those are daunting numbers before you even consider practical constraints such as property values, in-

frastructure limitations and zoning regulations.

Urban agriculture’s limits do not make it a failure. Community, rooftop and backyard gardens make significant impacts in the lives of the people who tend them, and give poor communities like Camden access to fresh, free food.

Dominic Vitiello, a professor of city planning and urban studies at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied urban farming in cities including Camden, concludes that in the United States, perhaps urban farming’s greatest potential is to effect “inside-out” community revitalization. Urban farming offers opportunities for social enterprise and supplemental income for low-income families. It also helps to build and sustain vital social networks that go unmeasured by traditional economic-development research.

In other words, urban farming may not feed a city like Camden. But its gardens can help rejuvenate the city and make it a worthy representative of the Garden State.

HYDROPONICS A method of growing plants without soil, using mineral nutrient solutions in a water solvent. Nutrients may be delivered a variety of ways, including fish waste, duck manure or a fertilizer containing key macronutrients.

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Oysters delivered to Salt Traders Coastal Cooking restaurant in Round Rock, Texas, come tagged with a load of information about the product’s provenance, including shipper identifier information, harvest date and location, harvester identification and sell-by date. As seafood production grows more sophisticated, so, too, do the tracking and tracing technologies.

PHOTO BY KENNY BRAUN

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CASE STUDY

Seafood Traceability Nets New Benefits

BY LAURIE ZAPALAC

Combatting “fish fraud” and ensuring sound fishing practices are two reasons net-to-plate tracking is on the rise.

But high-tech tracing satisfies consumers’ curiosity, too.

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CASE STUDY

C LOC K W ISE FR OM TO P L E F T: #1 Pallets laden with Styrofoam boxes filled with fish from at least 150 countries fill Billingsgate Fish Market, the United Kingdom’s largest inland fish market, located near Canary Wharf. Many of the fish sold here follow the EU standard for traceability called TraceFish; #2 Packing Maine lobsters in Portland for shipment to China; #3 Red’s Best places QR codes on product packaging so customers can link to learn not only where and how fish is caught, but also a bit about the life of the New England fisherman who caught it; #4 Red snapper caught in the Gulf of Mexico are tagged to make it easy to find out how fresh the fish really is; #5 Fresh carp caught in the waters off the shores of France arrive in Billingsgate for trade between 4 and 8 a.m.

Illegible labels similar to those on these boxes are still the norm for much of the seafood sold in large wholesale markets around the world. Some fish are mislabeled, not intentionally, but because of mistaken identity — dozens of fish look can look pretty much the same to an inexperienced fish trader; #6 Boxes containing live lobsters are loaded into an air cargo container at Halifax International Airport bound for China.

A BOATLOAD OF RULES

Management of fisheries has been a long-standing practice. The Venetian Republic, for instance, enacted protective laws as early as 1173, taking the view that the Venetian lagoon and its resources were the critical underpinning of the Venetian economy. In the mid-20th century, global industrialization of fishing led to stock depletion in U.S. waters and ushered in the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (1972; revised 1996). This legislation created a complex quota and landings reporting system to manage and monitor the harvest.

Separately, health and safety laws for handling food products in processing, transport, and at point of sale leave their own paper trail.

Bringing the records from the two ends of the supply chain together into an integrated system is more complex than it might seem, but new technology is helping to make this possible.

CERTIFY THY FISH

Much credit goes to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for raising awareness about the state of the commercial seafood industry. In the 1990s, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) was formed to protect the world’s oceans by working directly with the seafood industry, encouraging best practices among all participants in a fishery. Companies that meet MSC criteria can carry the blue MSC ecolabel on their products and in branding. The MSC Chain of Custody Standard applies to all suppliers, processors and vendors handling MSC-certified seafood, and MSC performs periodic auditing to verify those standards are being followed.

Most major supermarket chains now require that the fish products they buy have an envi-

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ronmental certification or be associated with a Fishery Improvement Project (FIP). Yet problems persist. Continuing concerns over illegally harvested and mislabeled seafood, as well as human rights abuses in the seafood industry, led to the founding in 2002 of FishWise. The NGO now leads the charge for electronic, interoperable systems for end-to-end traceability that implicate all players in the commercial seafood supply chain. In 2014, President Obama issued an executive order to combat illegal unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and seafood fraud.

This brought about a new traceability program for imported fish and fish products especially vulnerable to IUU fishing and/or seafood fraud, with a compliance deadline of January 1, 2018.

Additional legislation on the federal and state levels may follow, in part as a protective measure for one of the country’s oldest industries.

INNOVATION IS ON THE MENU

As the hub of the New England commercial seafood industry, Boston is a rich testing ground for innovation in seafood traceability and tracking across the supply chain. Seafood restaurants and retailers have been particularly adept at responding to consumers’ concerns and capitalizing on growing interest in food production. For example, menus at Island Creek Oyster Bar and Row 34 list not only the name and place of origin for each shellfish offering but also its producer. Giving previously undifferentiated products, such as oysters, a provenance is a first step in building brands and customer affinity.

Based on the idea that consumers care about the source of their fish as well as the livelihood of the New England fishermen who provide it, seafood company Red’s Best has developed a traceability program for the products it sources and sells. Labels include QR codes, readable with smartphone apps, linking customers to information about where and how the fish was caught and about the life of the fisherman who caught it. On the tracking front, Maine Coast Lobster, which ships live lobsters globally from Boston’s Logan Airport, places sensors that record time, temperature and humidity within its specially designed shipping boxes. If a problem is detected upon arrival, data can be uploaded via USB and correlated with logistics records to pinpoint the problem in the transport process.

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TOP LEFT AND BOTTOM LEFT: ROBYN METCALFE; TOP RIGHT: PORTLAND PRESS HERALD

Does it matter if your sashimi is not the fish it purports to be — or that your salmon was grown on a farm in Ireland, but labeled wildcaught from the Pacific?

When amplified globally, the answer is a resounding yes. In the last few years, DNA analysis of seafood samples from markets and restaurants has helped expose the prevalence of “fish fraud.” Many industry insiders assert that combating the problem hinges on one thing: end-to-end traceability.

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CASE STUDY

OPPOSITE: COURTESY RED’SBEST SEAFOOD; INFOGRAPHIC BY MICHELLE MAUDET

MOVING FORWARD WITH BACKTRACKER

Launching one of the most fully integrated solutions is BackTracker, the Boston-based startup with a data-driven seafood traceability system to eliminate operational errors and bad practices that can occur at any number of steps along the supply chain. Founder and CEO Michael Carroll is a former commercial fisherman who obtained a graduate degree in economics before becoming a fish buyer for a major supermarket chain and then working on fishery certification. He understands the commercial seafood industry, including its eccentricities, in a way that few people do.

BackTracker accesses official government harvest records and uses them for an important secondary purpose: following the records through each participant in the supply chain — first receiver, processor, wholesaler and retailer — and verifying participant-provided output data at each step.

“If a landing record lists 10,000 pounds of haddock from a particular vessel on a particular day, and we know that haddock has a 36 percent yield when processed, we shouldn’t see more than 3,600 pounds of haddock tied to that landing from the processor,” Carroll explains.

As anyone who has watched an episode of “Wicked Tuna” knows, the fishing industry is a competitive business. While GPS technology makes it possible to collect data about where fish are being caught, for now traceability begins with what is reported at the dock.

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In this context, unbiased third-party certification has its advantages. All data is encrypted and ownership remains with the parties who provide it. BackTracker issues unique tamperproof codes as records of verification for each individual package in a processed lot, and the app for managing the process is flexible. “Trade partners can determine collectively which information is shared downstream and which is kept confidential,” Carroll notes.

BackTracker’s pilot system is now underway in Boston with participants from each step in the supply chain, including first receiver Atlantic Coast Seafood, processor/wholesaler Ipswich Shellfish Group and supermarket chain Wegmans. The system also has support from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries’ Seafood Marketing Program. Focusing on New England haddock, redfish and pollock, the program will enable product differentiation and help reduce the amount of imported groundfish sold erroneously as “local,” in turn increasing ex-vessel values — price paid for the catch upon unloading — for fishermen.

Over time, end-to-end traceability should also help reveal how well quotas and other regulations are working. Before you know it, that photo you post on Instagram of your haddock sandwich will tell a story not only about what’s on your plate but also about the entire supply chain. Solutions like these are one way of ensuring that sustainably harvested fish, and the industry players who source them, are at the table.

In a Red’s Best fish case at the Boston public market, labels display catch data, including fisherman, vessel, port of unloading, gear used to catch the fish and even a suggested cooking method. The center label notes a species of underutilized fish, encouraging consumers to try something they might have overlooked.

GROUNDFISH fish such as flounder, cod, haddock, pollock, hake and other species that live on, at or near the bottom of the water they inhabit. Particular areas of science and policy focus on the sustainable management of groundfish species. Common harvesting techniques include trawling, as well as the use of gillnets and bottom long lines.

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English food bloggers have shared their experiences cooking with wartime rations. We’ll link to a few from this story at foodandcity.org.

RECIPE TRACKER

HOW TO MAKE DO IN WARTIME

In 1939 UK had

50 million civilians and imported:

20 million long tons of food per year

70%

of its cheese and sugar

80%

of its fruits

70%

of its cereals and fats

50%

of its meat.

C LOC K W ISE, F R OM TO P LEFT: Food-related messaging reminded consumers why they were sacrificing and encouraged good eating habits, despite the hardships. Each citizen had his or her own ration book, which grocers, butchers, bakers and other sellers stamped when purchases were made. A points system was used in addition to rations for certain staples. At harvest time, neighbors came together to help reap fields.

Rations. The word itself conjures up images of shortages, insufficiency and want. No fruit.

Limited amounts of sugar and flour. Small bits of tough meat. As World War II interrupted agricultural production and food distribution in the United Kingdom, simple staples — nevermind specialty or exotic items — became scarce.

To keep a healthy population that could contribute to the war effort, the British government, like many other governments before it during tough times, instituted a system of controls that limited, but aimed to equalize, what people could buy — regardless of their socioeconomic status. Along with the rations, the Ministry of Food enlisted home economists to help families effectively manage their food budgets. These experts also offered ideas and recipes for making the most of what was available, both in terms of flavor and satisfaction, but also for national morale. Books and pamphlets from the era encouraged home cooks with reassuring language, inviting a patriotic perspective of the hardships.

While long lines were a daily reality at markets, and meats and treats were in short supply, everyone was entitled to the basics. Each citizen had his or her own ration book. Adults were apportioned a certain quantity of meats, fats, sugars, tea, cheese, eggs and milk (either liquid or powdered). Children were allotted their share and enjoyed the occasional orange or portion of whole milk for their growing bodies. Staying healthy was an important part of the war effort.

Other scarce items were distributed through a points system, which allowed consumers some choice and the ability to splurge on fruits, sweets or finer cuts of meat from time to time.

One of the biggest changes during the war for home cooks was the introduction of “National flour.” Before the war, England imported up to 70 percent of its grains (or cereals, as they were known), but the waterways around the island nation were dangerous and not easily passable.

German U-boats regularly attacked ships bound for the U.K. in an effort to starve the Brits into submission.

In 1942, the Ministry of Food introduced National flour, a coarser grind that included 15 percent more whole grain wheat than the refined white flour available before the war.

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It also contained “diluent” grains — including barley, oats and rye — and powdered milk for additional calcium. The government’s goal was twofold: reduce import losses and improve the health of Britons, “even under the handicap of war.”

For a population that loves its baked goods, National flour and the tough, grayish “National loaf ” — the only bread available in bakeries — took some getting used to. The Ministry’s home economists published leaflets and newspaper columns with handy hints: “Cooking Hints for National Flour National flour can be used just as well as white flour in cakes, puddings, pastry, for thickening soups and stews, but remember the following points: — 1. Use a little more liquid for mixing, i.e. mix to a softer consistency.

2. Bake, boil or steam a little longer.

3. Add a little more seasoning to savoury dishes.

4. Add more salt and water when making bread.

5. Use a little extra flour for thickening sauces.

6. Use a little less sugar for sweet dishes.”

In fact, the Ministry more actively encouraged the use of an alternative and much more readily available ingredient for its population’s pastry needs: potatoes.

“Song of Potato Pete Potatoes new, potatoes old Potato (in a salad) cold Potatoes baked or mashed or fried Potatoes whole, potato pied Enjoy them all, including chips Remembering spuds don’t come in ships!”

The lowly potato was elevated to a key ingredient during the war years. It grew in abundance on the British Isles and was filling during lean years. “Potatoes help to protect you from illness,” says a leaflet from the Ministry of Food. “Potatoes give you warmth and energy. Potatoes are cheap and home-produced. So why stop at serving

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WIKI COMMONS

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Watch a charming newsreel-style film about rations in Britain during WWII. We’ll link to it from this story on foodandcity.org.

them once a day? Have them twice, or even three times — for breakfast, dinner and supper.”

WIKI COMMONS

“P’s for Protection Potatoes afford; O’s for the Ounces of Energy stored; T’s for the Tasty, and Vitamins rich in; A’s for the Art to be learnt in the Kitchen.

T’s for Transport we need not demand; O’s for old England’s Own Food from the Land; E’s for the Energy eaten by you; S’s for the Spuds which will carry us through!”

Potatoes were among many edible plants that could be found in British “Victory Gardens.”

The government commandeered sports fields and golf courses for planting and encouraged people to use every bit of soil they had access to — from decorative gardens to small edge plots and even containers on apartment roof- Leafy stems from root vegetables were neither tops — to cultivate household vegetable and tossed nor composted but valued as a vegetable herb gardens. Leeks, turnips and swedes (ruta- in their own right. The Ministry of Food embagas) were popular choices that grew well in phasized the nutritional importance of green the chilly British climate. veggies and encouraged families to eat one raw In addition to managing ingredients, home vegetable per day. cooks also had to worry about conserving fuel.

Creative substitutions were common a way Using the oven for multiple items at once (the to adapt. “You can make many a good tricked casserole AND the pudding) was crucial. Alter- dish, with a few mushrooms, some leftover rice, native methods for conserving fuel included and a dash of wine, if you have one of those starting a braise on the stove, then finishing in frightening, efficient cans of ‘rich brown meat a cooling oven once the baked goods were done. gravy’ on hand,” Fisher writes, inspiring readers Or using a hay box, a box with room for a cooking to use what they have to its best effect. “It is spupot, lined with hay and covered; the insulation rious, maybe. It is chicanery. But it is economical preserved the heat in the pot for several hours, and useful psychologically, especially if you are until the stew or soup was done. three miles from a market and the siren blows “More or less, this simple but surprisingly just as you are pumping up your bike-tire.” little-practiced rule is true in using an oven: The British system of rations lasted well try to fill every inch of space in it,” wrote M.F.K. beyond the end of World War II, ending in 1954.

Fisher in “How to Cook a Wolf,” her handbook But the effects of rationing were largely positive. of sorts for living happily during trying times. “The rich got less to eat, which did them no harm “Even if you do not want baked apples for sup- and the poor, so far as the supply would allow, per, put a pan of them with whatever is baking got a diet adequate for health, with free orange at from 240 to 400 degrees. They will be all the juice, cod liver oil, extra milk and other things better for going slowly, but as long as their skins for mothers and children,” wrote Lord Boyd Orr, do not scorch they can cook fast. They make a post-war head of the United Nations Food and good meal in themselves, with cream if you have Agriculture Organization, in his memoirs. any, or milk heated with some cinnamon and The nutritional playing field had been leveled nutmeg in it, and buttered toast and tea.” across the classes, and Brits had no choice but to No ingredient was wasted. The water used eat their vegetables. to boil vegetables was saved for soup base. C O R Y L E A H Y

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Grocers and shoppers worked together to understand the weekly rations for both staples and points-based provisions, the latter of which allowed shoppers some choice in their meal planning.

S TA R T U P S P O T L I G H T

2017 PRIZE FINALISTS KEEP SPARKING CHANGE

Whether they were newly hatched companies or enterprises needing a little help getting to the next level, competitors in the 2017 Food+City Challenge Prize are still going strong. We checked in with several finalists to hear about their progress.

Evaptainers

Refrigeration is an invention of the supply chain. You can’t safely transport perishable food without it (unless you employ centuriesold preservation tactics like salt curing or pickling). But in the 100 years since refrigeration technology was invented, it hasn’t changed much, and it almost always requires electricity to work.

In many developing countries, electricity is not assured, and many people suffer from food insecurity because they can’t save or preserve enough food. Nearly half of the produce grown in Africa goes to waste before it reaches the consumer. Evaptainers, a Boston- and Morocco-based startup, has reimagined refrigeration technology and is bringing it to those who need it most.

Evaptainers’ refrigeration systems don’t run on electricity.

Instead, they use sunlight and water. A collapsible box, small enough to sit on a countertop, cools food the same way humans cool themselves — through evapotranspiration. In other words, when water evaporates, cooling occurs.

This simple yet revolutionary technology has been garnering lots of attention and gaining traction. Following the capital infusion that came with winning the gold prize at the 2017 Food+City Challenge Prize, the company went on to win more awards: One award at the pitch competition Foodbytes! in San Francisco and a United Nations innovation award at the Seeds and Chips global summit in Milan. They have also been featured in Ag Funder News, The Boston Business Journal and TechCrunch. Their acceleration continues, with support from LAUNCH Food and funding from USAID, and they are finalizing the production of 400 prototypes slated for a field trial in Morocco this summer.

A commercial launch is likely in 2018.

In addition to vital funding, a key result from their experience at Food+City’s Challenge Prize has been relationships with other startups.

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met startups workingsoonmuch different of food and food“We waste and have learned fromaspects our conversations with them about the arduous yet fruitful process of growing a small social impact business,” says chief strategy officer Serena Hollmeyer Taylor. Starting a company is often a struggle, as Prize competitors know. The opportunity to interact with others going through similar challenges, who can share knowledge and lessons learned, is a powerful outcome of Prize.

Nüwiel

The Last Mile is a supply chain concept ripe for innovation. It is often the most expensive and complicated leg of the supply chain journey for food products. Narrow roads, city traffic and generally limited space contribute to the challenge of this final stage in the supply chain. Large, cumbersome trucks have traditionally been the go-to mule — and scapegoat — for these deliveries.

Nüwiel, a startup in Hamburg, Germany, has taken on that challenge. The company created electric-powered bicycle trailers specifically for last-mile delivery in urban settings. Their technology knows exactly when to accelerate, decelerate and brake to make last-mile delivery via bicycle more efficient and realistic. In addition to improving delivery efficiency and reducing road traffic, the bike trailers don’t contribute to the pesky urban problems of noise and air pollution.

After winning the bronze prize at the 2017 Food+City Challenge Prize, Nüwiel used the attention to accelerate their development.

“The Prize has certainly helped us a lot. We received significant media attention, getting mentioned not only in Germany but also in the U.S., U.K., Austria and Italy,” says co-founder Natalia Tomiyama.

In the months since Prize, Nüwiel has been accepted to a second stage at the biggest trans-European accelerator, Climate KIC; they’ve scheduled pilot projects with four different partners; attended South By Southwest; updated the design of the trailer; built a prototype; and were selected as to pitch and exhibit at the CUBE Tech Fair in Berlin. Last summer, they got out of the building to bike across Europe — from Hamburg to Italy, passing through the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Spain — and test the durability of their trailer.

Phenix

The issue of food waste is under attack on multiple fronts.

Entrepreneurs are coming up with new ways to use food waste, while public awareness campaigns aim to induce behavior change. Some progressive governments have even joined the battle. In France and Italy, laws ban food waste and remove barriers to food donation. This means that French supermarkets can’t throw out unsold produce. While well intentioned, the law leaves French groceries in a bind, with hundreds or thousands of pounds of food that can neither be sold nor thrown away.

Enter Phenix, a 2017 Food+City Challenge Prize finalist, which is addressing that logistical issue in their home country of France.

Phenix’s digital platform connects grocery stores with nonprofit organizations whose mission is to feed the underprivileged and food insecure. They organize pick-ups and drop-offs and connect surplus supply with demand in real time, employing their fleet of vehicles to transport the food. Phenix is saving 20 tons of food before it hits landfills, while supplying their charity partners with 27,000 meals — every day.

Since Prize, Phenix was a finalist for the French American Entrepreneurship Award (FAEA). At its headquarters in Europe the company has continued to expand into new regions in France and by finding new segments of the market.

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Learn more about the Food+City Challenge Prize online at foodandcity.org/prize. Read about the 2015, 2016 and 2017 finalists and their innovations.

Phenix’s mission goes beyond food waste, which is why they have created a lab to incubate new projects around the circular economy, a system that challenges the more linear system of make-use-dispose by inventing ways of maximizing the value of a resource and regenerating it into another purpose when it reaches its functional end. So instead of trashing unused food, for instance, a circular economy maximizes value buy feeding it to people in need or, when that’s not possible, transform it into a different usable product such as nutrient-rich compost. A planned grocery store with shelves full of strictly unsold products will serve as an example of of this model.

“We met startups working on different aspects of food and food waste and have learned so much from our conversations with them about the arduous yet fruitful process of growing a small social impact business.” — e va p ta i n e r c h i e f st r at e g y o f f i c e r s e r e n a h o l l m e y e r tay lo r Despite similarities in the ways France and the U.S. treat tax

deductions for donations, operating in the U.S. can be difficult because of regulation around food expiration dates. “France has a very detailed and clear framework on what expiration dates mean and what can be donated,” says Sarah Lenoble, director of Phenix USA. “Whereas it is much less clear in the U.S., where there is no real regulation on expiration dates, and every state can have its own regulation.” Phenix is searching for the right partner to launch a pilot program in the U.S.

Rise Products

There’s a movement brewing that includes turning surplus bread into beer, aquafaba — aka chickpea cooking liquid — into vegan mayonnaise and food waste into new packaging and products.

With all the attention food waste is getting, it makes sense that “upcycling,” the process of using a discarded material and creating a valuable product with it, is quickly gaining traction in the marketplace.

Rise Products takes unspent barley from microbreweries in Brooklyn and uses a proprietary process to turn it into flour, which can be used to make the same products as traditional wheat flour. And they’re working with well-known Brooklyn bakery Runner and Stone to develop recipes for all kinds of carby treats. The flavor of the flour Rise produces varies based on what type of beer was produced from the grain — flour from ales tastes nutty and light, while porters create a dark and rich flour that smells like chocolate.

By participating in events like the Zero Waste Food conference and the Make It in Brooklyn Pitch Contest, in which it was selected as a top-five finalist, Rise has firmly entrenched itself in the upcylingto-beat-food-waste movement.

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Since winning a silver award at Prize in February, Rise has continued to gain momentum. They completed their time at the Food-X accelerator, gaining valuable mentorship and connections, and came away with a prototype for a production facility. From their spot in the Brooklyn Navy Yard as part of the 1776 Accelerator, Rise is working with the New York Economic Development Board to develop their own production plant.

Making the most of the Prize experience, they have stayed in touch with other startups from the competition, as well as their mentor, Ashley Shaffer of IDEO.

“Participating was an awesome experience for us, especially since we met our mentor, Ashley. We’ve kept in touch with her and with the other participants since then, even meeting some of them recently in Milan during the Seeds & Chips conference,” says COO Ashwin Goutham Gopi.

Smallhold

Some say the future of agriculture is in cities. As the world’s urban population continues to expand, it is easy to imagine how growing food in nontraditional areas, like skyscrapers and downtown warehouses, will benefit the food system. But while vertical farms, urban and rooftop gardens, and shipping container farms are all making progress in the area of urban farming, none has a foothold quite yet.

Distributed farming is the latest idea in this sector. The process enables a business or restaurant to re-route the last food mile and finish growing a product in the location where it will be consumed.

Brooklyn-based Smallhold is leading the charge for distributed farming. At the 2017 Prize, co-founders Andrew Carter and Adam Demartino pitched the idea of distributed farming through restaurant mini-farms that produce mushrooms. Today they’re cultivating several unusual varieties of mushrooms, from lion’s mane to yellow and pink oyster, and they plan to expand into other products like leafy greens soon. Top chefs and restaurants in New York are taking notice and endorsing the products.

Since Prize, three new restaurants have come become clients, welcoming Smallhold farms into their kitchens. Smallhold also sells their products directly to grocery stores and intends to use connections from Prize to pursue expansion in major retail stores.

“Food+City introduced us to some amazing stakeholders and thought leaders from places like Whole Food and Walmart, and we are extremely happy we attended,” Carter says. The company is gaining momentum in the tech circles as well. The team benefited from the mentorship and guidance of the TechStars Boston program, which wrapped up in May 2017. They have also seen their team grow 100 percent since Prize and have expanded their farm with a custom-built shipping container to grow more mushrooms.

FOOD + CITY CHALLENGE PRIZE Innovation in food takes all forms, from making improvements to pallets to creating new avenues for delivering food or designing packaging that increases the shelf life of a food. Since 2015, we’ve hosted a challenge prize for startups in the food space that are challenging our notions of how the supply chain works. The 2018 Challenge Prize will be awarded on March 13, 2018. Be sure to visit foodandcity.org/prize to watch this year’s entrants become finalists and compete at SXSW Interactive 2018.

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ON OUR LOADING DOCK

Our nightstands are loaded with books to read and our laptops are packed with websites to explore and unpack some wisdom about the global food supply chain.

How I built this: App

A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression

In the 1930s, Americans who were used to abundance were suddenly on food rations. Jane Zeigelman and Andrew Coe show how home economists came to the rescue with nutritional science, and government rose to the occasion with food assistance programs. Alas, some of the food promoted by the government was dismal: liver loaf (made palatable by a the addition of ketchup). Today’s MyPlate guidelines may be unimaginative, at least liver loaf is absent.

Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, From the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First

Frank Trentmann examines how and why we consume things, including food. He explains the closed-loop economies of company towns: companies provided jobs, housing and food through one supply chain. He illustrates how two trends—wellness culture and the rise of food prep outside the home—opened opportunities for new food products. Without directly addressing how the global food supply chain gets all those things to consumers, he offers a wide-ranging discussion of why we consume things.

Refrigeration Nation: A History of Ice, Appliances, and Enterprise in America

In Jonathan Rees’ history of America’s cold chain, he shows how refrigeration influenced our diets and improved food safety—from ice harvesters in 19th century New England to Kelvinator’s Foodarama in the 1960s (the largest home refrigerator ever built). He explores refrigeration’ impact on the environment, illuminating tradeoffs with technologies that limit food waste by using energy resources. He also suggests ways to make the cold chain more energy efficient.

Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America

Michael Ruhlman takes readers through the history of food retailing to an evaluation of today’s grocery stores. He explains the complications of processing, labeling and distributing food to a population obsessed with convenience, unable to cook and confused by conflicting food claims. In the end, he shares his view of the future of retailing with consumers who demand more processed food produced on a smaller scale. Look for surprising news about the history of food delivery.

Bread is Gold

This new book by the world-famous chef Massimo Bottura contains recipes that address food waste. Dishes created by Bottura and his friends (such as Chef Alain Ducasse) focus on low-cost but tasty ways to prepare meals with minimal waste.

Food + City Magazine

developer Apoorva Mehta almost gave up on being an entrepreneur until he figured out what he really wanted to do: find a hassle-free way to buy groceries. Five years after launch, the grocery delivery app Instacart is valued at $3 billion.

Containers

Alexis Madrigal covers the world of global shipping in eight episodes.

Interviews of tug boat operators and dock workers provide insights into the world of our global supply chain, including the food supply chain. Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, Madrigal captures the sounds of shipping.

Can Food Waste Save the World?

Part of The Wall Street Journal’s podcast series, The Future of Everything, this episode covers films, chefs and other projects that are raising awareness about the need to reduce food waste. A good complement to our feature on page 18.

FILMS AND TELEVISION The Oyster Revival

This new documentary film tells the story of how oysters are critical to the ecology of our coastlines. The increasing consumer demand for oysters of all types is adding pressure to the oyster supply and also adding to the number of producers. See how oyster beds are water filtration systems at the same time as they feed an oyster revival.

Downeast

The disappearance of fish canneries from our landscape is good news for environmentalists but bad news for those who lose their jobs. This documentary looks at one small town and its loss of jobs and a local fish cannery and how one man attempts to keep the factory open.

Wasted

Produced by Anthony Bourdain and co-directed by Anna Chai and Nari Kye, this feature documentary film offers more than the usual mea culpa about food waste. Viewers will see mountains of food waste but also learn how high-end chefs are leading a campaign to use everything the world produces. Massimo Bottura, Dan Barber and Danny Bowien are a few of the chefs that make the case for eating food waste. Look for some innovative ways to cook with all those potato peels and ugly fruit. As Bourdain says in the film, “I’d urge you to look at what you’re eating, instead of looking at waste.”

COURSES GustoLab

If you want to study food, there’s no better place to go than Italy and the Gustolab International Institute for Food Studies (GLi). As the first center of study and research in Italy dedicated to academic programs on the theme of Food Studies, GLi offers study abroad programs in food, media and nutrition. Check out their website for academic affiliations that may provide academic credit for Gustolab’s program. While you’re in Italy, enjoy some of the gelato shops featured in the first issue of Food+City magazine.

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OYSTER PHOTO BY KENNY BRAUN

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FOOD + CITY MAPS

MARKET SYSTEM: THE CASE OF EARLY NEW YORK Petitioned in 1786 by prominent residents of New York City’s far-flung Catharine Street neighborhood, the city’s legislative body, known then as the Common Council, approved the building of Catharine Market. As was customary, the interested parties furnished the grounds and construction costs. In subsequent decades, local and municipal funds were used to expand the facilities.

This blend of local initiative and government response created a successful public market to serve as a community anchor and supply the provisioning needs of a working-class district.

By the late 1810s, Catharine Market — located in lower Manhattan, east of where the Brooklyn Bridge now stands — became one of New York’s most abundant fresh food emporia. Its 47 butchers, 25-plus fishmongers, more than 61 regular farmers and dozens of hucksters and informal vendors, as well as the many grocers who settled nearby, supplied an estimated 25,000 people.

Depending on the season and day of the week, 2,000 to 5,000 shoppers visited each day.

Catharine Market was part of a tightly regulated system, which mandated that fresh food — meat in particular — could be sold only at municipally managed and owned marketplaces. As the population exploded from 30,000 to 160,000 between 1790 and 1825, the city responded by expanding the system from six to 11 neighborhood markets.

The market infrastructure of New York in the Early Republic was a smart system in spatial terms: Its facilities reached all areas, ensuring access to supplies for all residents. No matter where one lived a market could be found within a 10-minute walk. This was a critical factor in managing an effective food distribution system when New Yorkers, lacking refrigeration, had to

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shop as often as twice per week in the winter and up to six times per week in the abundant summer months.

Negotiations between vendors, customers and municipal officials ensured that the markets’ capacity and volume of trade closely corresponded with their neighborhoods’ population size, indicating a match between supply and demand. Overall, the Early Republican model of public markets responded to local demands about opening new markets or upgrading existing ones, and it cost little. Through its collection of fees — excise taxes at the beginning and rents later — the system largely paid for itself.

Critically, the market system provided the city’s main line of defense for food quality. It safeguarded the wholesomeness of supplies by penalizing those who sold decaying and spoiled provisions, while also instituting standards of cleanliness in the daily conditions and practice of food sales. For example, market clerks appointed by the city government enforced quality standards and fair trade practices at each location. Given their large assembly of independent vendors, public markets enabled customers to comparison-shop for price and quality. The vendors also exerted peer pressure, working with market clerks to punish violators of market laws and to uphold their market’s reputation. Moreover, the market butchers, the city’s most elite food purveyors, were artisan tradesmen who handled their vital, perishable goods with skill and care, ensuring high-quality products. Finally, given strict licensing policies and customers’ frequent purchases, neighborhood markets fostered repeated transactions and nurtured trust between buyers and sellers.

Beyond protecting public health, the system also set a baseline of equal access to food. Whether living in wealthier

central districts or poorer outlying ones, New Yorkers provisioned their households under similar institutional settings.

This continued even as the city grew.

Developing a new neighborhood depended on extending this municipal service, funded in part from revenues earned at larger, centrally located markets.

The system was also efficient in not wasting supplies. Markets worked six days a week, from sunrise until early afternoon, except for Saturdays when they stayed open until late evening. On Sundays, only the fish stalls were open.

Before refrigeration, the main constraint was perishability, so vendors — including butchers, hucksters and fishmongers who attended the markets daily, and regional farmers from rural New York and New Jersey who came less regularly — brought only as much merchandise as they expected to sell the same day.

Choice sales occurred early in the morning. By 10 a.m., the main business of the market was done. Then poor customers came to purchase cheaper, less desirable goods. At noon, secondary traders were allowed to join in, picking up market leftovers and peddling them at discounted prices after market hours and across the neighboring streets.

Waste and byproducts from the key trade of butchering were recycled by an urban economy of noxious trades plied by tanneries and makers of soap, tallow and glue.

As with smart systems today, the success of the market system of early New York depended on the flow of information between key groups. The crux of the matter was the democratic process of petitioning and negotiation.

All participants — residents, vendors, city officials — had to continuously (re)negotiate the location, size, layout, building material, basic rules and daily practice of the public markets. The process facilitated communication

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For more from Gergely Baics about New York City’s history, read his book, “Feeding Gotham: The Political Economy and Geography of Food in New York, 1790-1860.”

In our own age of heightened debate about the role of government and private enterprise, it is worth recalling that American cities, New York especially, once depended on public market systems to feed their populations. By bringing the trade of life’s necessities under tight municipal regulation and oversight, and balancing the interests of customers and vendors, early New York managed a smart and successful market system that sustained the common good of access to food to all residents.

GERGELY BAICS

MANHATTAN MARKET MULTIPLICATION

Between 1790 and 1825, as the population of Lower Manhattan grew, the public markets expanded — both in size and location — to meet the needs of New York residents. No matter where one lived a market could be found within a 10-minute walk, a critical factor in managing an effective food distribution system in the burgeoning urban center.

4

10

3

51

-

11

88

-

14

89

61

82 -

75

15

-

45

70

1800 population/acre

1790 population/acre

1800 no. of butcher stalls

1792 excise tax

Catharine

Catharine Bear Oswego

Bear

Peck Slip

Oswego

Fly

Fly

1

4

15

12

6

14

7 11

96

-

10

9

population/acre

-

84

21

-

-

10

79

14

1 11

13

-

2

96 -

Exchange

1825

8

90

76

population/acre

-

1820 39

Exchange

30

and coordination between neighborhood-based interests and citywide policies. Despite the messy politics (thanks to fragmented and competing interests), the system worked, because it was participatory, decentralized and coordinated to deliver workable compromises for everyone concerned.

For the model to continue to work, the Common Council had to adhere to its basic principles: that access to food was a public good, that fresh provisions should be sold at publicly managed markets instead of unregulated private shops, and that market facilities should be opened and expanded in response to local needs. Delays in infrastructural investments could undermine the welfare of customers and vendors, potentially jeopardizing the model’s integrity.

Indeed, from the 1830s, the system showed signs of malfunction. Demographic growth, a rising free-market ideology and weakened municipal commitment resulted in inadequate infrastructural expansion. First, unlicensed food sales outside of the municipal markets by street vendors and in private shops increased, chipping away from public market trade. As municipal spending priorities shifted, market construction came to a halt by 1837, leaving urbanizing northern districts without market facilities. In 1843, the city deregulated the food economy, allowing retailers to set up shops anywhere and without much regulatory oversight.

By mid-century, New York’s oncefamous public markets were in tatters.

Urbanization posed an enormous challenge — the population had skyrocketed to 500,000 by 1850. Yet instead of modernizing the market system, city officials turned to private enterprise to organize food access. Existing markets survived, but the earlier model of public market provisioning disintegrated.

1816 excise tax Centre Greenwich Corlaers Hook

Spring

Essex

Greenwich

Grand Street

Spring Governeur

Collect Duane

Catharine

Washington

Governeur

Duane

Catharine

Washington Fly Franklin

Fulton

1822 no. of

butcher stalls

1 mile

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The Manhattan Refrigeration Company towers over the Gansevoort Market. The company, incorporated in 1894, operated nine cold storage warehouses.

By 1906, a network of underground pipes connected the chilled warehouses, providing storage for shipments of perishable food that arrived on the steamers docked at the Chelsea and Gansevoort Piers nearby. “Mechanical refrigeration” was a new invention then. It situated the market as an area for food distribution– related businesses.

Now known as the Gansevoort Market Historic District, this space in today’s Meatpacking District was a food market throughout the 19th century. Near the Hudson River commercial waterfront, Gansevoort Market was ideally situated to transfer meat, dairy and produce from ships to the market and beyond. After the Civil War, the market space expanded and included Skelly & Fogarty’s Centennial Brewery on West 14th Street.

Buyers and sellers of regional produce and dairy also transacted their business there. In 1893, the New York Biscuit Company, which became Nabisco, added to the food-related business that crowded around the market space. You can imagine the combined aromas of manure and biscuits filling the streets.

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The Gansevoort Market (1880 to 1928) has always been a mixed-use space, as you can see from this photograph taken in 1900. Low Italianate structures exist next to tall warehouses. Some of the metal canopies built for the transfer of meat into those warehouses still exist, as does some Belgian block paving.

The Hudson River Railroad freight yards nearby provided transit for meat and other food items uptown and beyond Manhattan. Beginning in 1869, Cornelius Vanderbilt owned the rail line, along with the New York Central, and expanded the rail network to reach meatpackers in Chicago.

By 1880, other food markets in New York had fallen into disrepair, and vendors filling the streets had become a nuisance to pedestrians and horse-drawn vehicles. The city decided to create a new market space in the Gansevoort neighborhood to aggregate the commerce of farmers, buyers and sellers into one space.

Originally developed for the sale of fruits and vegetables, Gansevoort eventually became the center of the meat market.

Horses transported most of the food from the piers and through the market. Buyers brought their wagons into the market, bringing filth and congestion with them.

By 1900, almost 170,000 horses filled Manhattan’s streets. Over 250 slaughterhouses and meatpacking companies filled the Gansevoort Market neighborhood, adding to the stench and manure.

IMAGE COURTESY EPHEMERALNEWYORK.COM

Food+ City How We Feed Our Cities

ISSUE III

Special Dispensation: a history of vending machines page 16 Tapping the potential of food waste page 18 Is urban agriculture the solution we need? page 38

IS S UE III

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