Well, technology and its innovations are now the order of the day. It has basically taken over all the fields and industries and now, while it has made life easier, it doesn’t exactly make life safer. It seems that the more advanced technology gets, the more fragile things become. Despite the amount of things that they can do.
Devices, vehicles, and gadgets today come with so many features that make using them fun and seamless, but then, it also poses major problems. Because they require more maintenance, they spoil more quickly and as such need more spending in the fixing. They’re also expensive as hell!
So, it’s no different when it comes to the agricultural sector. It has been taken over by technology and today, farmers use machines and all forms of heavy equipment to grow food. They add chemicals to the soils so they can get a particular breed of produce, they use fertilizer to increase their yield, and they add preservatives and chemicals to make sure that the produce doesn’t spoil before it gets to the consumers.
All these end up having severe effects on the nutritional value of the food. Taking it down by a lot! And today, we see it in the food that we eat. They don’t slap as hard as they used to in the past. I remember in the past making eba was quite easy. All you had to do was boil water and then pour in the garri before you stirred it. Simple, you had your eba. However, that’s not the case today. It requires a degree just to make eba.
You have to know the kind of garri that it is, that will determine if you’ll let the water boil fully or not. If it does boil fully, you might have to dilute it with cold water, or the garri would be soaked and ruined. Sometimes, you’ll make garri, and after turning it, when eating it will be breaking away in your hand. You’ll be eating fufu and all you can find are lumps after lumps.
But then, what about our local pap? In the past, making it was as simple as boiling water and pouring it into the ground mixture of corn, sugar, and warm water. When you poured in the boiling water, it thickened automatically, and if you poured too much, you would ruin it. Putting the actual pap on fire was always by choice, for those who wanted to make sure all germs were taken care of.
However, today, you must put it on fire! You pour in the boiling water, and there will be no change. You’d have to put it on fire for it to thicken, and many times, you could end up putting in too much. I could go on and on about how all these are affecting the food we eat. It is what happens when food is produced in mass quantities.
These days, if you go to the village and eat food prepared in local farms, you’ll want to live there. All the while I was in school, I was getting all my garri and corn from my village and they were always perfect. Exactly how they should be. Because they were all locally made. However, buying them outside, the difference was always clear.
I’m not saying that these innovations should stop, that’s impossible. At the rate the population is growing, we need faster and more efficient ways to produce our food. Sadly, this will only reduce the nutritional content even further. I’m sure that more research is being conducted to know how farmers can get more yield with as few seedlings as possible, or how one fowl can lay dozens of eggs within the shortest possible time.
That’s why these days, you’ll see animals that are bloated and look big, but when you prepare them to eat, there’s almost no flesh. They’re not sweet and they just seem way off. Honestly, the only way I think we can get out of this mess is by supplements. There are supplements for just about every nutritional content out there, and since your food is most likely not giving it, you might have to get it yourself.
It’s sad really, we’re most likely the generation that would end up colonizing Mars, but we can’t take our food back to the way it used to be. Despite all this technology. Just too bad!
I can definitely attest to the fact that you are an experienced Nigerian 😂, the way you were able to notice the gradual deterioration in the quality of garri, it takes a level of usage of the commodity 😅. But when it comes to garri most times the issue is not with the way it was planted with chemicals but more of the way it was processed, an error in the making. The ones that are planted and harvested locally also have the same issues, I would have elaborated on the cause of it but it will be a long story.
I notice something in the village I currently reside, they look stronger, live longer and more healthy than regular people in the city. The reason is quite simple, everything they consume is directly from the farm without the application of any chemical compound for preservation. They plant and harvest for consumption, they cook their meals without adding any manufactured ingredients and it still taste good, which is something rare. In order to have tasty meals in the city you will have to add a lot of ingredients because our meals lacks taste and nutrients.
Wow... i always thought that it was because they were making it in commercial quantities, and not really focusing on the quality. I guess I was wrong. But all those issues can't just be because of error in the making, or are they?
it's always been about the money bruno o.o since when has it not. There's definitely pros and cons to what's happening with technology. We have to adapt to it :) as we are human; we've been adapting for centuries. nothing new. It ain't the end of the world. colonizing mars possible but who would wanna go haha sounds like a recipe for disaster. it'd be super expensive there o.o
Hehe... it'll definitely be expensive. But if life there is better, many who can afford to will go there. Leaving earth to slowly turn into a sort of wasteland. It will always be about money.
o.o nah u overthinking it. it wont be wasteland. people prob thought this centuries back but we all still here. people thought it was the end of the world~ many times lol
The problem is the greed of money and at the same time, we need massive production to meet the market demand. It's something that is hard to control. If we want to eat fresh food we need to cultivate food ourselves.
yeah... but not everyone knows anything about farming. Take me for instance, all i know about farming is that you dig a hole and throw seeds in, then water it from time to time. Anything besides that, I'll have to seek an expert opinion on it.