Dinner on Mars
Lenore Newman was trapped.
For the first time in a very long time, the director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) couldn’t go and play outside. Newman, who’s also UFV’s research chair in food and agriculture innovation, was used to travelling the world conducting her research about food. But in March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic put a halt to that.
At the time, she wouldn’t have predicted this would lead to her best project yet.
As a geographer, Newman develops solutions for the thorniest problems affecting how we get our food. With her research base in the Fraser Valley, she understands how to protect agricultural land from encroaching urban development. Thanks to research for her book, Lost Feast, she also knows exactly how human hunger has caused mass extinction over the past few centuries. Most of all, she understands that the industrial agriculture and global food systems we rely on today aren’t sustainable.
Her love of animals, food and the beauty of nature mean this burden of understanding distresses her deeply.
Fortunately, Newman possesses what she calls a “puzzle-solving brain”.
So it surprised nobody when she quickly figured out how to put her unexpected time at home to good use. She started by doing exactly what so many academics found themselves doing in the first blush of lockdown: she used the extra time to catch up with far-flung colleagues. And one day, over a Zoom meeting with Evan Fraser, director of the Arrell Food Institute at Guelph University, when they were chatting about favourite sci-fi series they were finally able to binge watch, they found something to keep them busy for the next year.
A thought experiment: If we actually tried to colonize Mars with a human settlement, what would we eat?
What began as a lark quickly morphed into a deadly serious research project about how to save the world. After all, as Newman and Fraser remind us, “our food system is a mess, not fit for feeding us in the 21st century…. the 21st century needs another kind of transition to fix a lot of the problems our current food system has caused.”
When Newman suggested that “this next transition could come from developing a self-sustaining community on Mars,” Fraser was “skeptical.” But as they worked together, he’s come to see her point. The result is Dinner on Mars, a book that captures the past, present and future of human food systems in the form of delightfully effervescent conversations between Newman and Fraser.
Although the reasons for embarking on this thought experiment are depressing — our food system causes horrific environmental degradation and human rights violations — their solution is hopeful.
We can do better. We can revolutionize the ways we grow and distribute our food so people, animals and our planet become happier and healthier. Newman and Fraser insist that “the only hope for humanity is to use every tool in our formidable technological arsenal and do everything we can to save our planet from us.”
Newman explains in an interview with Edible: “Technology can help us achieve sustainability goals. If we want to preserve biodiversity, then we have to figure out how to have a [smaller] footprint. Technology is one tool we can use in concert with regenerative agriculture to get to where we need to go.”
How does regenerative agriculture pair with technology? Organic growing, hand labour and no-till techniques seem light years away from petri dishes, robots and warehouses full of growing trays.
But Newman and Fraser understand the connections intimately, because both have roots in the food system — she comes from a family of fisherfolk in B.C., he hails from an Ontario farm family. They know from hands-on experience the backbreaking toll manual labour costs those who procure our food. In fact, it’s the main reason both left the field for desk jobs.
And they’re not the only ones. Because agricultural work is often so difficult and unpleasant, very few people will do it. In fact, one of the greatest challenges for many Canadian farmers is procuring reliable labour. Those who can afford to do so close this loop with mechanized solutions.
But even if we had effective incentives to entice more people back into agricultural labour, the human costs would still be too much. Farming is infamous for its high rates of suicide, depression, injuries and disabilities. It’s time to find better ways of getting food on the table — without human rights violations, broken bodies or crushed spirits.
The good news is that the future has already arrived in the Fraser Valley, which is now home to some of the technologies Newman and Fraser imagine as integral on Mars.
For example, Newman realizes that, “one of the key lessons I’m learning may be more about the mindset of being a Martian than the specifics of any particular technology…. we are forcing ourselves to think about how every single input can be used with total efficiency” and imagining every output “fulfilling multiple purposes.”
Thanks to the innovative “circular farming” method developed by ReFeed Canada, the zero waste approach described in the book is happening right here in Langley. The organization reroutes surplus food supply that until recently went to landfills. ReFeed supports people by donating food to food banks and the earth by producing soil amendments and microbiology that enhance soil microbiomes.
Circular farming of the kind practiced at ReFeed remains rare, but vertical agriculture is becoming more prevalent — partly because it offers both ultra high-tech and tech-free methods, which means there's something for everyone.
Vertical agriculture is a cornerstone in the agricultural revolution because it accomplishes several important goals at once: it shortens supply chains, reduces our environmental footprint exponentially and relies on comparatively little human labour.
That’s why Newman’s colleagues across UFV are deeply committed to this growing method. According to Rose Morrison, who has taught soil science courses in UFV’s Agriculture department since the 1980s, to ensure survival here on Earth, “soil conservation and regenerative practices will increase. There is room and need for vertical systems that do not extract natural soil, but provide accessibly priced fresh vegetables for urban populations. The use of precision agriculture and robotics will expand. We need to embrace and adopt what is best within our specific locations, cultures, climate and soils.” To this end, UFV horticulture students learn how to use vertical agriculture for growing leafy greens and strawberries.
As well, a team at the UFV Food and Agriculture Institute led by Stefania Pizzirini, Alesandros Glaros and Rob Newell, a collaborator from Royal Roads University, is conducting studies on vertical agriculture and its potential role in local food systems.
“Being a form of indoor agriculture, vertical farming can be done in a variety of different types of environments including urban and industrial lands, placing food production closer to consumers and reducing need for agricultural encroachment on wildlife habitat,” Newell explains. “It could also be useful for farmers adapting to climate change, as vertical farms can be built in ways that are less susceptible to impacts from flooding and extreme heat than conventional farms.”
A personal point of view
Over in the College of Arts, where I teach in the English department, I harness the power of story to encourage children to imagine themselves as capable members of their communities who can conceive of and contribute to initiatives that help improve sustainability and food security. I collaborated with Newman to develop this approach to agricultural literacy, which has culminated in the Dig for Your Rights! program.
The aim of this program, which pairs picture books about farming with human rights concepts, is empowering children to get involved in their local food system—beginning in their own school gardens.
In 2022, I piloted Dig for Your Rights! with a few forward-thinking elementary schools near UFV. I plan to expand the program this year by incorporating vertical agriculture using indoor “tower gardens” in several Abbotsford schools.
Vertical agriculture is central to the Dig for Your Rights! vision, because this growing method provides a more sustainable, accessible and reliable way to produce leafy greens than conventional agriculture. Better still, even the youngest children can get involved in growing and harvesting all year round. Growing cycles are easy to start and stop quickly, which means logistical problems typically plaguing school garden projects — particularly summer break and other holiday periods when staff, students and volunteers disappear, leaving plants to wither untended — are easily overcome.
In Chilliwack, Sardis Secondary will host a Dig for Your Rights! pilot where vertical agriculture will be incorporated differently.
“For the last decade we have been educating students about how food is grown,” explains Tania Toth, a science teacher who runs the Sardis Secondary School Farm with her colleague Joe Massie. “For years, we have done this in collaboration with local partners, such as UFV and Local Harvest. We value connecting youth with hands-on activities around food production, with a focus on science and sustainability. With an ever-growing population, extreme weather events and a reduction in resources (including soil), it is important for our youth to be introduced to some innovative solutions for food production. To increase our teaching ability in this area, we are currently fundraising for a new greenhouse. Our goal is to increase our educational practices to include vertical growing.”
Bold steps for good
These educational initiatives are steps in the right direction. Transitioning to sustainable agriculture will take commitment from everyone involved in farming — and today’s youth will soon become tomorrow’s farmers. The school farm program at Sardis Secondary facilitates this by creating opportunities for students to mentor elementary school children and also be mentored by agriculture professionals.
The initiatives also prioritize incorporating new approaches. As Joe Massie explains, adding a greenhouse to the school farm not only “extends our growing season into the winter months, giving us a chance to grow food at times that nature restricts us,” but also “allows us to use more technological growing methods such as vertical gardens, hydroponics, propagation and more,” which “increases learning opportunities for students.”
Providing the next generation of farmers with effective techniques to farm sustainably is important. However, as Rose Morrison is quick to remind us, “any shortcomings in agriculture are not the collective fault of farmers. Some systems must change, and that’s a task for everyone. Future agriculture must be both productive and ecologically sound.” The sooner children understand this — and how to participate in achieving these goals — the better.
After all, as Newman and Fraser state, “this food revolution will have the biggest impact [on Earth]. Many of the tools and technologies described in this book, and designed to sustain the hypothetical Martian community, should immediately find their way into our economy and become incorporated into farming and food systems here on Earth.”
This is the message I’m sharing with children through the Dig for Your Rights! program, since they will soon comprise the voting public and influence — perhaps even develop — the “public policy to ensure there’s a fair price put on things such as biodiversity, climate change, human labour and animal welfare” that Newman and Fraser describe as fundamental to the coming agricultural revolution.
We can do this, and when we do, we’ll only need to eat our dinner on Mars if we want to.
