Feeding a City
Having lived in three of the most vibrant urban centers of the world - New York, London, and Mumbai - I am continually fascinated by urban infrastructure. But more than this, I'm fascinated by how we get our food. Roads. Trains. Boats. Airplanes. I suppose.
In New York, I have to admit, I've never thought of how the food gets to the supermarket or the restaurant. It just somehow does, almost magically. And I take it for granted that it'll be there. It always is. Same goes for London, a city that requires 30 million meals per day to be produced, transported, bought and sold, cooked, eaten, and disposed of.
But Mumbai, it's a totally different story.
I think of the Indian trucks, Indian trains, and Indian roads. I've traveled on these bumpy roads and rickety trains. How are the bananas possibly not bruised when I buy them from my neighborhood fruit wala? Or the tomatoes kept fresh until I buy them from the sabzi wala? I have no idea.
Carolyn Steel, a London-based architect and the author of Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives, writes of the hidden paradox of urban life:
For the past 50 years, food has become increasingly plentiful and cheap in the West, but whatever price we pay for it in the supermarket, its true cost to the planet is many times higher. An estimated 19 million hectares of rain forest are lost annually to agriculture, and another 20 million of existing arable land are lost to salinization and erosion. Every calorie of food we consume has taken an average of 10 calories to produce. Four planet Earths would be needed if we all ate like Americans, yet half of the food produced in the US is thrown away. A billion people worldwide are obese, while another billion starve. None of it makes much sense, but then, very little about the modern food industry does.
These numbers are simply staggering.
Food is one of the dominant priorities in life. But how, over the course of history, have we arrived at this point, where the true cost of food to the planet is unsustainably high? More importantly, what can we do about it?
There are movements in the West valuing and celebrating food. Think food co-ops and the Slow Food movement. But as the developing world moves forward, with a population of 5 billion, food is set to become our greatest global challenge - in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. What will happen in India as more vegetarians become meat-eaters - in terms of supply chain management and the effects on the climate?
We'll be exploring this and other issues of food security in future articles of Beyond Profit. So be on the lookout. After all, food has a huge influence in modern society - transcending geographic boundaries and uniting cultures, yet, it also very clearly divides the haves and the have-nots.
- Adrienne Villani
"When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world." George Washington CarverWhat is Social Entrepreneurship?Statement of Faith
With a population of more than 1 billion, the challenges that India faces are numerous, and its Government is not necessarily prepared or equipped to solve all of these problems. New solutions to bridge the gaps are developing within local communities, driven by foresighted leaders with innovative solutions and big dreams to take their models to the masses. 
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