Matthew Kessler

I feel like grabbing a bag of potato chips. 

Alright I just got to the store, which one, so many options. Salt and vinegar looks good.

Pretty simple, right?

Now let’s rewind and think about how the bag of potato chips got to the store.

How to make of potato chips from scratch.

Step 1. Use large tractors to prepare your soil, drop thousands of seed potatoes in the ground, and apply fertilizers, fungicides, herbicides and irrigation.

Step 2. Wait several months, and use a potato digger to harvest your crop.

Step 3. Your potatoes are brought to the plant to be sorted, washed, peeled, and sliced.

Step 4. Fry your sliced potatoes in oil, pack them into bags, seal them, and ship them to your favorite store.

So maybe it’s not that simple.  And, there’s a hidden ingredient powering this process: fossil fuels.

From the diesel fuel powering the tractors, to the nitrogen fertilizers made with natural gas, to the electricity driving all the industrial machines—fossil fuels are everywhere. They heat the oil for frying, create the plastic bags, and fuel the trucks that deliver these chips to the store.

This simple bag of potato chips has some serious climate consequences.

This is Fuel to Fork, where we expose the fossil fuels in our food and imagine a future without them. This series is powered by TABLE, IPES-Food, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, and the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. 

I’m your guide and potato chip eater Matthew Kessler. I’ve spent 15 years in and around food -  on farms, kitchens, classrooms and labs. But producing this series was the first time I took a long, hard look at the intersection of fossil fuels and food.

Episode 1. There’s fossil fuels in our food?!

We’re going to explore how fossil fuels have reshaped the way we farm

Darrin Qualman

When I think of my grandparents farm, virtually everything that went into the farming came out of farming.

Matthew

It’s reshaped the way we eat

Raj Patel

Convenient these days just means edible on the go

Matthew

And reshaped how livable this planet is - for all species.

Navina Khanna

And over time, what’s that meant is, that the soil is completely depleted there, the water is actually poisonous. They call the train that takes people to the nearest hospital the cancer train.

Matthew

To help us navigate where fossil fuels are in our food, what are the options for phasing them out, and what can go wrong if we don’t get this right, we’ll be joined by some incredible experts from around the world.

Lets start with an introduction - what’s your name, what do you do for a living?

Errol

I’m Errol Schweizer. I’ve been on and off of the food industry for 30 years.

Anna Lappé

I'm Anna Lappé, I'm the Executive Director of the Global Alliance for the future of food. 

Raj

My name is Raj Patel. I'm a research professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food systems.

Christine Delivanis

So I'm Christine Delivanis. I work at an organization called SystemIQ.

Nnimmo Bassey

My name is Nnimmo Bassey. I'm the Director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation

Matthew 

I want to start here, with getting into this topic, where do fossil fuels show up in our food, and why should we care?

Errol

I consider fossil fuels to be the, and this isn't a compliment, but the lifeblood of the food industry. When you think about going to the grocery store, and anything that you're buying, most likely the packaging, fossil fuel based.

Christine

Of course, everybody uses energy. So the farmers use energy on their farms, the tractors -

Errol

The transportation, how it got there, probably fossil fuels, 

Christine

Logistics companies obviously will use different types of trucks to drive around. 

Errol

The refrigeration, probably fossil fuels.

Christine

The processors and manufacturers use energy and heat to process and make food. 

Errol

The equipment, the infrastructure, fossil fuels. 

Christine

And so all of those uses of energy today, and majority of them are still fossil fuel based.

Matthew  

What would you say are fossil fuels? 

Errol  

The pulverized and liquefied bones and remains of dead dinosaurs and ancient plants that have remained underground for millions upon millions of years. 

Matthew

So fossil fuels are formed from the remains of ancient plants, animals and microorganisms. These fuels, such as coal, gas, and oil, power our cars, heat our homes, and generate electricity.

So why is this a problem that requires our urgent attention?  Fossil fuels aren't just powering the food system. They're THE major driver of climate change. Burning these fossil fuels releases greenhouse gasses, primarily carbon dioxide, which traps heat in earth’s atmosphere. That's why governments around the world have agreed to transition away from fossil fuels.

Anna

In terms of emissions, so greenhouse gas emissions from the carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, the emissions we care about the most for climate impacts. The food system is responsible for about a third of all of those emissions. 

Matthew

Anna Lappe

Anna

For many of us how fossil fuels are integrated across the food chain is highly invisible. And it's much clearer when you're flying on a plane or driving in a car, even cooking in your home, that connective tissue to the fossil fuels is right there in front of you. 

So many people don't see that all across the food chain, from what happens on the farm fields to what happens in processing and packaging to what happens after our food is consumed, that all of it has implications for climate, for emissions, and for how the fossil fuels show up in the food system. 

Matthew

The food system. It’s kind of a wonder. It’s a big web of relationships that shapes how we produce, distribute, and consume food. At its core are farmers and us eaters. But much of what they grow and what we eat is influenced by big companies, government policies and changing diets.

The food system is as much about politics, economics, and culture as it is about agriculture. It’s a system full of challenges—inequities, environmental damages, and health impacts. But because it’s made of many parts that are constantly changing, it also creates opportunities to tackle these problems. 

Here’s Raj Patel talking about the food system.

Raj  

Well, first of all, it's important to understand what the food system is, you've heard this word food system. And you've sometimes thought, Oh, well, I know what that is. That's when the food is grown on the farm, and it goes to the processor, and then it ends up in the supermarket, and then I buy it, and then it gets to me, that's not the food system. That's just a supply chain. 

The food system is the way that society has made normal, certain ways of growing in certain places by certain people or certain kinds of technology, and has made normal also the way that that stuff from the land, ends up in animals, ends up on your plate in a diet that seems perfectly reasonable right now. That's the food system. The food system isn't the sort of pipeline. It's the mechanics that makes the pipeline normal.

Matthew
There’s a lot of questions you can ask about the food system. Are we growing enough calories? Amazingly, yes. Today we can feed 10 billion people.  But if you ask, "Are people well-nourished?" then the answer is more complicated. In 2023, 1 in 11 people faced hunger. And more than 2 billion people are malnourished—not because they lack calories, but because they lack the right nutrients. Also, many also can’t afford a healthy, sustainable diet.

The question that we’re focusing on is: "Can we phase fossil fuels out from our food the food system?" The food system is heavily dependent on fossil fuels, which isn’t sustainable. Yes, there’s the issue of climate emissions, but it goes deeper than that. Relying on fossil fuels ties the price of food to the volatile oil markets. So if oil prices rise in the future, food prices will also rise, leading to more hunger and malnutrition. 

Raj

Fossil fuels are there from the beginning to enable certain kinds of large scale industrial agriculture to be profitable. They're there also to provide raw ingredients in a lot of the ultra processed food that we eat. So it may feel very convenient, right? But convenience itself is weird. For food to feel convenient. What does it mean? Because there's no taste for convenience, there's nothing inherent in food that makes it convenient. The only thing that makes food convenient is the speed of our lifestyle. 

Because if we weren't having to run from pillar to post and hold down two jobs, to be able to basically make the rent and maybe you know, buy medication and maybe provide food for the table, then we would be able to slow down. And you know, the most convenient food would be the one that that brought everyone to the table with the most happiness. 

But convenient these days just means edible on the go. And I just want to point out that that idea of convenience is itself a product of the food system. There's nothing natural about it. And in that food system story. Fossil fuels are there every step of the way, making normal some of the weirdest things about the way we eat.

Matthew

I want to chew on this thought for a little. Making normal some of the weirdest things about the way we eat. Maybe you’ve heard this story from the writer David Foster Wallace about two fish swimming in the water. One says to the other “How's the water?" And the other responds, "What is water?"  

Basically, we don’t realize the water we’re swimming in. 

Some of us, depending on how old you are and where you live, might not remember another way of getting a majority of your food outside of from a big chain supermarket, with vegetables wrapped in plastic, frozen foods sections larger than fresh produce, multiple aisles filled with highly processed snacks, and year-round availability of all your favorite foods. 

Which, by itself, actually sounds pretty great.  At no point in history have people in rich countries spent such a small portion of their budget on food. You know the food you’re buying is safe to eat. And shelves are consistently stocked with a variety of easy-to-cook or ready made meals. 

But, that’s obviously not the reality everywhere, and it hasn’t always been this way.  So how did we get here? What’s the consequences of this fossil fuel powered food system? And what can be done about it?

We’ll get to those questions in time. But for many people, and I include myself here - we haven’t deeply considered these connections between fossil fuels and food. 

If this is your first time thinking about it, you’re not alone. Adam Titmuss, the audio engineer for this series, went to the streets of London to learn how much fossil fuels are on the minds of people as they purchase their foods.

 

Adam

What I’ll do is - they’re various questions. Do you mind if I ask what you bought?

Nicolas

Biscuits, muffins, banana.

Clare

We bought some green peppers. We bought some fennel. We bought some little jazzy potatoes.

Victoria

Lots of junk food. Cereal.

Adam

What matters most to you when you buy food?

Vivian

Freshness, value.

Peter

Try and use local produce as much as we can.

John

Taste and healthy.

Clare

Local is good. Fresh is best.

Nicolas

The price.

Adam

Does the role of fossil fuels ever come into your purchasing decisions with food? Does that matter to you at all?

Vivan

I haven’t really thought about it to be honest. To tell you the truth.

Nicolas

No, not really, no.

Fiona

Absolutely, I think that’s a really big issue at the moment.

Clare

I do check - I don’t like buying things that come from a long way away. Is that what you mean by that?

Adam

Tricky question. What aspect of the food chain do you think has the biggest reliance on fossil fuels? 

Nicolas

Manufacturing I suppose, isn’t it.

Clare

I would think bringing it here, from a long way away. So transportation of it. That is a difficult question.

Adam

Does it matter to you, the role of fossil fuels in the food you buy. Do you care about it much?

Nicolas

Not a lot we can do about it, is it really. Alternative energy can be used for that sort of thing, I suppose.

Fiona

It matters because climate change is a huge issue at the moment, but I don’t want to pass on an even bigger problem to my daughter’s generation. 

Adam

It’s tricky as a consumer, when it’s so expensive at the moment. Is there anything as a consumer you can do?

Fiona

Buy better, buy less.

Vivian

It’s like a lot of the vegetables are very seasonal, aren’t they.  But people want it. So they import it, because there is a demand for it. Whereas years ago you only had the stuff that was in season and you had what there was.

Adam

Yes, there’s an uncomfortable truth there. Which is that we are just very used to having whatever we want all the time.

Vivan

It’s not the season for it, but people still want it, you know.

Adam

Fantastic. Thanks. Lovely to meet you both. Take care. Have a good one.

Matthew

Thanks to Adam Titmuss, and Clare, Nicolas, John, Fiona, Peter and Vivian.

Maybe you’re wondering what is the right answer to Adam’s question - What aspect of the food chain do you think has the biggest reliance on fossil fuels? Nicolas was right! The majority of fossil fuel consumption comes in the processing and packaging stage, making up just over 40% of total energy use in food systems. Transportation actually only makes up a fraction of fossil fuel use in food. 

So we’ve actually organized this whole series around different parts of the supply chain. Farm inputs, what’s powers the farm, processing and packaging, cooking and consumption. In each episode, we’ll do a deep dive on our dependence on fossil fuels at each stage, and explore the options for phasing them out.

And we know all of this because of the Power Shift report that came out in 2023.

Anna 

We really dug into the numbers to try and understand this nexus between the food system and energy system. So roughly what we found is at least 15% of global fossil fuel use annually is for food system related uses. 

Matthew

15% of all the fossil fuels burned in the world are used to run the current food system.

Anna

So that's everything from synthetic fertilizers, it's processing, packaging, it's industrialized factory farms.

We got really interested in understanding within the food system, where do we see fossil fuels? Where, therefore, are there opportunities for really rapidly phasing out dependency on fossil fuels? 

Matthew

So what can we do? Anna Lappe, who works for an organization called the Global Alliance for the future of food, thinks a lot about how we conceptualize the future. 

Anna

And I think it's helpful to hold visions of the future that are, for lack of a better word utopic, you know, a vision of if we had within our power to change everything, what could it look like? I think it's helpful to do that kind of visioning. And I think it's helpful to also ground futurism, ground future thinking in realism. What are the political constraints that we occupy? And within those political constraints, what is possible? And what does the science tell us about what's possible, actually?

I have come to see if you kind of look at history and look at social change is that I think it's important for us not to constrain ourselves by what we think is politically possible today, when we start trying to look at the change that we're calling for. Because we don't know what might be politically possible in five years. And we don't know what kind of political opening we might create by calling for what's actually needed. 

When we think about the change that's needed, across these landscapes that are so fossil fuel dependent? It is going to require a nexus conversation. It's not just going to talk about well, farmers, what could they grow differently in the land? It's going to say, well, how are we actually shifting rural transportation? You know, how are we looking at that part of the economy? Not just food, right? 

How are we thinking about how those rural economies are looking at other revenue streams, besides, you know, these highly industrialized factory farming operations, for instance? And then of course, it's going to be talking about power, and how do we shift power?

Matthew

One of the reasons it’s difficult to focus on fossil fuels in foods is because they’re hidden, almost invisible. Both in how they’re used and how they’re extracted. Well, that’s only true if you don’t live near the tar sands extraction in Alberta, Canada, near the coal mines in Jharkhand India, or in the oil-rich Niger Delta, where communities are facing some of the most harmful environmental and health consequences of fossil fuel extraction.

Nnimmo

But to restore the environment to what it was before the pollution happened, we are talking of at least one lifetime, maybe two lifetimes. And so this is something that ought not to be allowed to happen in the first instance.

My name is Nnimmo Bassey. I'm the Director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation, which is an ecological think tank based in Nigeria. A major thing I do is fighting for environmental justice.

Matthew

When were you first exposed to the connections between fossil fuels and the food system?

Nnnimo

That goes back out a long time.  I started out my activist life as a purely human rights activist. That was when my country was under military dictatorship. So we're fighting for the rights for peaceful assembly, to protest. It was in that process I realized that a whole lot of the abuses that our people were suffering were actually abuses that related to environmental issues. 

Principally, the communities being abused by oil companies and by working with the military. And so when you talk about the issue of rights to life, I think when the environment is destroyed, your claims to right to life is totally empty.

Matthew

And can you maybe talk a little more about what are the problems that the oil industry is causing for human rights, for food production, for access to food?

Nnimmo

Yeah, I think the oil production in countries like Nigeria, can be said to be one of the worst evils that anyone can be exposed to, that any community can be exposed to. Because right from 1956, when the first commercially viable oil well was drilled in Nigeria, we've had a consistent trajectory of oil spills.

So we've had a situation where the soil is polluted by oil spills, the water is polluted by spills, the air is polluted by burning hydrocarbons. 

It directly impacts on the fisheries. It impacts on food production. So if people grow crops in polluted soils, they're going to either have very poor harvest, but whatever kind of harvest they have is already contaminated. So instead of eating food, you're eating poison. So the right to safe food is completely challenged by hydrocarbon pollution. Then your right to safe fish. Everything is destroyed. And you know, apart from the oil, water and air pollution, these oil corporations also engage in, they're building canals to bring in the equipment from the sea, from the Atlantic Ocean. And this actually destroys the aquatic ecosystem. And so you have where you ought to have fresh water you're now having brackish or salt water. And so the ecosystem changes affects everything. It affects the culture of the people, it affects the livelihoods of the people, it affects the food of the people.

Matthew

Raj Patel again, prof at University of Texas at Austin and panel expert with IPES-Food.

So I want to follow up on your big picture, what's at stake in this conversation?

Raj

In the United States, we spent about $1.1 trillion on food in 2019. And in addition to that, for every dollar we spent on food in the US, we spent a dollar on diet related disease, health care treatment. 

Then on top of that, if you look across a range of things, looking at, say the environment or social processes, or biodiversity, the total bill, for every dollar you spent on food. Americans were spending more than two dollars on mopping up the consequences of that. 

And that runs from health care, through worker exploitation to environmental destruction, biodiversity loss, and of course, climate change writ large. 

So the costs of eating the way that we do are already hidden from us, and hidden from us very intentionally, very successfully by the food industry. 

Now, I mentioned all of this, because fossil fuel oils the wheels here. One of the sort of historic bargains in the United States in particular, is that in exchange for low wages, Americans get cheap food and cheap gasoline. 

So the keeping the cost of oil - or the consumer cost of gasoline down is an integral part of the food system. But it's also necessary in order that food remain cheap, because so much of our food system is hostage to the fossil fuel system. 

You know, when we're thinking about the sort of hidden costs, and who it is that suffers, we're in a strange situation where, obviously, workers and working working families are, at the same time, most dependent on the cheap availability of fossil fuels to keep food and fuel prices down. And they're most disproportionately affected by the sort of scourge of ultra processed food and the modern diet.

Matthew

So let’s rule out business as usual.  It’s the one thing we can all agree on. 

But what should we act on? How should we prioritize? Coming up, we hear contested visions and different accounts on what can go wrong even when we try to get it right. 

So fossil fuels impact the way we eat, the way we farm, and how we bring food from the farm to our stomachs. There’s lots of ways to reduce fossil fuel use from different parts of the food chain. There’s increasing efficiency, switching to alternative technologies, and then there is changing the whole system. 

Christine 

So in 2050, I think we should fully expect that energy usage has fully transitioned to greener sources. 

Matthew

Christine Delivanis, head of the nature food and agriculture platform at Systemiq

Christine

By and large, the solutions to that problem already exist today.  So what I mean is in food processing facilities that today use natural gas, you don't have to process food at very, very high temperatures. So you can quite easily move to electricity to power those processes. And as long as you're able to procure renewable or green electricity, then you can basically green that process.

Matthew

Anna Lappé, I'm the Executive Director of the Global Alliance for the future of food, talks about some of the lessons learned from their Power Shift report. 

Anna 

There was two things that really became clear to us.  One is that we are currently in our industrialized food chain highly dependent on fossil fuels for inputs. So those are the agrochemicals known as synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. And we know from other research that it is not just possible to phase out dependency on those petroleum-based inputs. But actually it's desirable that it creates healthier soil, that it creates more resilient farms, that it also produces healthier and safer food. 

The other thing we found is that where we're seeing a lot of heavy reliance on fossil fuels in our food system is around on the other end of the spectrum, what we're eating. And it's using fossil fuels in terms of plastics, other packaging, processing, and highly processed foods. And so we know, on the other hand, that the kinds of diets that's better for our bodies, so eating more real food, eating more whole foods, less processed foods. Those are also the kinds of dietary shifts that are going to help us phase out or help us reduce the amount of fossil fuels we're seeing in the food chain.

Matthew

So imagine we have good intentions to phase out fossil fuels in our food system. But it all goes terribly wrong. It doesn't lead to this utopia, it leads to a dystopia. I wonder what happened on the way there where we can sort of identify, “Oh, that was a misstep that brought us in this direction.” What's the quote, the path to -

Anna 

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Matthew 

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Yeah.

Anna 

If we don't push conversations like this one, these nexus conversations, then I think that we could, in trying to solve one problem, we create many more problems. And so, for me, the nexus conversation between food and energy has really helped me understand more deeply the threat of petrochemicals writ large. So, pesticides are a petrochemical. Nitrogen fertilizers are a form of petrochemicals as well. The International Energy Agency projects that petrochemicals will account for more than two thirds of global oil demand growth by 2026. Though just in the next couple of years, that's where growth is coming from. 

And plastics and fertilizers together account for about three quarters of all petrochemicals produced, and so they're major drivers of this growth. And so my concern is that if we do not do a better job at bringing those who care about phasing out fossil fuels, together with those about transforming food systems into conversation with each other, that we could miss this huge growth area that industry has set its sights on, which is petrochemicals. 

Matthew

Anna worries that all the public and policymaking attention will focus only on getting fossil fuels out of transportation and energy, and neglect phasing out fossil fuels from food. 

Anna

So we want to talk about this holistically. And we want to talk about issues at the points of nexus. In doing so it doesn't just you know, make us feel good and pat ourselves on the back for being systems thinkers, it actually helps us solve problems well, and solve problems without creating new problems.

Christine  

When I am more worried than optimistic about the food system, I worry that climate shocks become quickly more severe. And they start to really impact the productivity of agriculture.

Matthew

Chrsitine Delavanis at SystemIQ.

Christine

And what companies do in response to that is they just rush off to the next place, which is still operating at good levels of productivity. And so we have basically an abandonment of let's say, land in areas where the conditions are not as attractive anymore, because the weather is just unpredictable. And people moving to other areas, and yet not changing their practices. And so we're just chasing the problem, let's say further north. So if I'm a company that makes ketchup just for argument's sake, and I sourced from the south of Italy, and now it's too hot. My reaction is I just go to the north of Italy. But I haven't really made sure that I've fixed anything. Do you see what I mean? 

So I hope that it doesn't come to that, and that people realize that that is a loser's game, what will end up happening is that these attractive locations, they will become fewer and fewer. And yet, we're still going to have increasing demands for food, we're still going to have lots of companies fighting over that land. And that's not going to be that's not going to create any value, societal or economic for anybody. So rather, let's change our practices and find a way to produce what we need in a way that's less extractive.

Matthew

Okay okay. So we’re ending this episode on a sour note. But the goal of this series isn’t just to articulate how screwed we all are, it’s to show that another path is possible.

Anna

So much of what we are trying to do is tell the story that getting off of this reliance on fossil fuels in the food system - it can actually increase climate resilience, better incomes for farmers, better health outcomes for those living on the land. 

Matthew

So, stick with us, and we’ll serve up a plate of options. Different ways of farming, different ways of eating, replacing dirty power with cleaner and greener sources of electricity. 

Nnimmo

This is why even the green energy concept must be decolonized. We don’t want to exchange one form of exploitation for another.

Matthew

Each option here comes with their own set of practical, political, economic, and technical challenges and we’ll unpack them throughout the series. We won’t just be talking about how hard everything is - we’ll also spotlight the solutions and opportunities to bring forward a just transition for the food and energy system.

Each episode will ask a radical question - how can we phase down fossil fuels across a particular part of the supply chain? What’s the low hanging fruit, the difficult nuts to crack, and what’s holding us back?

We welcome you to share your ideas and your reflections on the series with us. How does looking at food through the lens of fossil fuels change how your relationship with food?  You can email us or record yourself in a quiet room and send us a voice memo to podcast@tabledebates.org

We’re not going to be able to answer all of the questions. First of all, we don’t have the answers. The research is not all there. The future political and power dynamics are not all known. Some of the big technological breakthroughs always seem a few years out, and don’t always deliver on everything they’re promising.

What we’re trying to do here is to try and connect the dots, between food, climate and energy. To bring together experts, and confront big questions about our food systems that have almost felt too daunting to ask. So can we come together and make decisions that not only care for future generations, but communities across the world confronting challenges today.

And right now, you can go and listen to the very next episode which asks how did we get here in the first place?

Darrin

I’d start the story in 1918 and that's when they started replacing horses with fossil fueled tractors.

Matthew

Unlike phasing out fossil fuels from the food system, there is a tried and true formula here to get more people to listen to this podcast. It goes like this. Tell your friends, your neighbors, your colleagues. Tell everyone to listen! Open up your Spotify, Apple Podcast or whatever platform you’re using to listening and leave us a review! It only takes a minute and it really helps. 

You can find out more about the podcast on the website - Fueltofork.com

This podcast was made possible by IPES Food – the international panel of experts of sustainable food systems, Global Alliance for the Future of Food, and TABLE. The series was produced by Matthew Kessler, Anna Paskal and Nicole Pita. Episode was edited by Matthew Kessler. Audio engineering by Adam Titmuss. Special thanks to Robbie Blake, Chantal Clement, Jack Thompson, Jackie Turner,  Tamsin Blaxter, Tara Garnett, and Pablo Thorne. We’ve received funding from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Cover art and design was done by the Ethical Design Agency.  Music by Blue dot Sessions. 

Matthew  

What would you say are fossil fuels? Can you give me a 30 second answer on what are fossil fuels? 

Errol

The pulverized and liquefied bones and remains of dead dinosaurs and ancient plants that have remained underground for millions upon millions of years. We are essentially Detritovores. Surviving off of the dead remains of our ancient ancestors. 

Matthew

Have you printed that T-shirt yet?

Errol 

Only after this podcast? Yeah, We are Detritovores guys. Sorry.