Some 8.1 billion people live in the world today. They all need sufficient and proper amounts of food to survive and thrive.
Mia Wenjen’s Food for the Future: Sustainable Farms Around the World (2023) is a children’s book written in couplets about various types of farms and other approaches to acquiring food. In addition to the paired sentences, there are occasional word definitions and pronunciations offered.
There is a salt farm based on the evaporating of sea water. There is a honey farm. There is a mushroom farm. Under the ocean, there is a biosphere farm. Sweet potatoes and quinoa are grown in a terrace setup in S. America. Another feature is an oyster farm, part of aquaculture.
Each farm context is featured in a two-page double-spread illustrated entrancingly and memorably by Robert Sae-Heng. People are shown engaging in the work.
Some feature descriptions of hunting-gathering more than “farming” in a traditional sense:
Enawenê-Nawê people build a log jam
With handwoven fish traps placed in the dam
Others show methods for topsoil protection (against erosion), rainfall collection, the harnessing of solar power (in a vertical farm that also enables rainwater collection), and others. This work broadens understandings of real-world mixed farming. “Farming” here involves a “big tent” definition.
This is not really a work about a tour of the world’s farming practices, even though the various continents (N. America, S. America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia) are generally represented. Rather, the focuses seem to be on boutique practices, which may have some applicability in other contexts. The challenge is to feed the world’s people in various ways while preserving the ecosystem and environment.
This book sparks curiosity for further learning, which may be further strengthened by the notes at the back of the book which offer deeper details about each of the described methods and why those approaches are sustainable.
Readers come away with a deeper understanding of just where common foodstuffs come from, and perhaps a sense of how much labor goes into the growing, harvesting, making, and delivery of food. There is a focus on indigenous practices. There is a sense of the need to feed people sustainably. There may also be the sense of the need to avoid food wastage given the costs to making food.
Mia Wenjen’s Food for the Future: Sustainable Farms Around the World leaves out other practices of modern food-farming interest. What about the farming of insects for protein? What about the making of artificial meat / artificial protein? What about industrial scale farming and food production, which are crucial for feeding the world’s peoples?
Regardless, this children’s book is a powerful one for evoking food farming practices.
Shalin Hai-Jew has worked in higher education for many years. She has edited dozens of nonfiction educational books and authored a dozen with a number of publishers.
