The Messy World of Fermentation
Low-tech SolutionsWhen modernity meets its end-point and creates a world where everything is sterile, controlled, and known, there will be little space for fermentation.
In the mid 20th century, whole cities’ sewage systems safely and successfully used fish to treat and purify their water. Waste-fed fish ponds are a low-tech, cheap, and sustainable alternative to deal with our own shit — and to obtain high protein food in the process.
When modernity meets its end-point and creates a world where everything is sterile, controlled, and known, there will be little space for fermentation.
Vietnam’s decentralised food system has low energy inputs and reduced food waste, giving us a glimpse of what an alternative food system might look like
Pigeon towers helped Persian farmers cultivate all kinds of crops on previously arid, thin-soil land.
Fish fermentation allowed the ancient Romans to store their fish surplus for long periods, in a time when there were no freezers and fishing was bound to fish migratory patterns.
Before the British arrived, people on the subcontinent used traditional low-cost, low-tech engineering to collect rainwater for thousands of years.