Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Food-delivery apps are good for you, not so good for food workers
Civil Eats
Apps like UberEats and DoorDash, and their meal-kit peers, Blue Apron and Hello Fresh, are all part of the so-called gig economy. They run on “automation, peer-to-peer transactions and online delivery,” says Civil Eats. But if these companies are the most convenient way to satisfy your Thai-curry cravings, they’re also “less likely to provide workers with salaries, benefits, or a consistent schedule.” The gig economy makes it easier for employers to skirt year-round income for employees, and as companies like Wendy’s and McDonald’s look to automate more of their business, their employees could find themselves in a more precarious position. Last year, for example, the grocery delivery company Instacart, made it impossible for customers to tip — until a wave of complaints forced the company to reinstate the practice. Tipping on Instacart remains so complicated, however, that the company distributes brochures to explain how.
Where seeds go to survive the eco-apocalypse
Fresh Air
“It’s projected that by mid-century, half of the cropland of more than half of the countries in Africa will be in a climate regime that has never before been experienced by agriculture. So we’re headed toward climates that are pre-wheat, pre-rice, pre-corn, even pre-agriculture,” says Cary Fowler — the man behind the Global Seed Vault, which has more than a million varieties locked in the bowels of a Norwegian mountain 700 miles from the North Pole. The seeds come from around the world, including Syria, where one of the largest collections of wheat varieties existed before civil war broke out. Scientists like Fowler hope that the seeds they’ve gathered, many of which have been adapted over centuries to withstand drought or extreme microclimates, can help the farmers of the future face climate change, war and disease.
Debunking the go-vegan documentary from Netflix
Vox
A new documentary out on Netflix, What the Health, wants the world to go vegan, claiming that an egg a day is as bad as five cigarettes and eating processed meats (e.g. bacon) causes cancer. But the film depends on “silly gotcha journalism to suggest organizations like the American Diabetes Association intentionally hide the truth about diet,” and it offers a “narrow view of the science with cherry-picked views,” says Vox. For example, a person’s risk for colorectal cancer is 5 percent. If you were to eat a strip of bacon or a salami sandwich every day, it would only raise your risk of getting cancer to 6 percent. A huge part of why so many diet documentaries like this one get the facts wrong, says Vox, is that the science behind nutrition isn’t definitive and studying what people really eat — not just what they report eating — is extremely difficult.
How the Amish sell to Whole Foods
New Food Economy
Amish farmers are famous for their horse-powered agriculture. But because they also try to avoid computers and telephones, selling to mainstream customers — especially at massive retailers like Whole Foods — requires some technological finagling. In Pennsylvania, 18 Amish families teamed up to form the cooperative Clarion River Organics, hiring two young men from outside their community to handle phone calls and price sheets. Zeb Baccelli and Nathan Holmes communicate with the growers via letter, or else they wait for them to run over and take a call at their neighbor’s house. But even as the co-op has figured out how to bridge the horse-and-buggy divide, the future is uncertain now that Amazon has bought out their biggest customer. “Amazon has a reputation of being ruthless in pursuing efficiency, and I don’t know that they will maintain Whole Foods’ relationships with local farmers or their social and environmental values,” Baccelli says.
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