Superfood.
It sounds like a comic book character invented by an elementary school student.
And yet, my entire life, advertisers have been trying to attract me to some new gimmick
based on this one tired buzzword.
And while I personally stick to a strict bagel bites diet, for those of us who believe
that a celery juice cleanse is somehow going to help our health, superfoods are all the rage.
And don't get me wrong.
This is not meant as a takedown of those who follow alternative medicine fads.
I think we all know people who are eating goji berries and drinking wheatgrass
aren’t looking to me for tips on their health.
But I do want to talk about capitalism.
I want to talk about what happens when your food becomes super.
What happens when something that you rely on to survive internationalizes.
This is the story of teff, Ethiopia’s superfood.
It’s hard to state just how important teff is to Ethiopia.
It is probably the most valuable crop in the entire country.
And it isn’t just about consumption either, although that’s a major part, of course.
After all, almost every single meal is going to include teff in some way.
Usually like this, as a spongy bread called injera.
It doesn't matter if you're rich, it doesn't matter if you're poor, homeless sleeping on the street,
here virtually everyone almost every single meal is going to be eating some form of teff.
It isn’t just about the economy, either, although again that’s certainly a huge part.
Around a tenth of the country’s population are teff farmers,
and nearly half of all society relies on it in some way to make a living.
Changes to the price and production of teff have long-reaching effects.
If the harvest is good, Ethiopians have money.
If it’s bad, they don’t.
Yet, despite all that, its most important quality is that it’s a distinct, unique part of the culture.
It’s one of the first grains ever domesticated on Earth.
It’s one of the main pillars of this society.
It is fundamentally and undeniably Ethiopian.
And while I suspect you didn’t see it in the news recently, a single company in the Netherlands just came very close to knocking out that pillar.
To me, teff is a near perfect example of the difficulties of a closed country opening up to the world market.
Of neo-imperialism in general.
The story of this grain spread around the world is microcosmic of virtually all popular cultural products.
It’s unique, hyper-localized, and with very little consumption beyond its natural borders.
International demand is virtually non-existent outside of Ethiopian expats.
Yet, it’s also the sort of thing that the spiritually nutritious would definitely go nuts over.
It’s full of vitamins.
It has more calcium and iron than your average grain.
And most of all, it’s naturally gluten free.
A classic superfood.
From my perspective, teff is just a single well-run marketing campaign away from being
a part of every yoga-bound smoothie and Williamsburg café menu.
I doubt it will ever take the West by storm as injera, but as a disgusting tasting powder?
The sky’s the limit.
If people will drink wheatgrass, they’ll drink anything.
The question I have is not whether it would be popular once introduced,
but how that introduction would reflect back on the society where it came from.
For Ethiopia, a growing international desire for teff is one of the greatest existential threats to their society that they’ve seen in generations.
Losing control of this crop could mean losing control of the entire economy.
Of the daily routine of an entire nation.
It could easily lead to regime change.
And because of this, even as superfoods have surged forward in popularity in European and American stores,
Ethiopia has kept their teff exports restricted to nearly zero.
But as yields have grown by almost 50%, and local consumption has remained the same,
farmers are looking to join the international market.
The government is feeling the pressure to let their people grow.
But for all their surplus, these new potential customers aren’t making things easy.
International business isn’t exactly known for its altruism, and the systems we’ve set up to protect it
are rarely ever looking out for Africa.
In 2007, the European Patent Office gave sole monopolistic control of teff and teff production
to a single company in the Netherlands.
That means that if Ethiopia wanted to sell its products to Northern Europe or the UK that have large expat populations,
it would have to do so via companies acceptable to the Dutch, in a manner agreed to by the Dutch,
at a price fixed by the Dutch.
It was the first step in a plan that we’ve seen repeated with crops around the world.
Those with wealth get another option on their shelves, while those with little find themselves with even less.
It’s a culture killer.
And unless something changes, teff will presumably be no different.
Like with the famous example of quinoa in South America,
the world’s blossoming interest in a grain creates a boom, and then a bust.
As those abroad begin to get a taste for the crop, the price skyrockets.
Those who’d come to rely on the food to survive are now faced with a very hard choice.
What was once the only affordable option, part of everyday life, becomes unattainable.
If you have ten cents to spend and the food you’d eaten for a thousand years now costs fifty, what do you do?
As time continues, things only get worse.
Small scale farmers, with little understanding of international trade, see the boom as endless.
They take large loans to increase production.
They buy more land and tools.
They invest heavily back into the unexpected cash crop.
But the same companies that brought the boom also bring the bust.
Small family farms are too complicated for an international supply chain.
They’re just a stop gap to get it going.
Once there’s a stable market for the product, they’re going to build a factory to produce it.
They’re going to industrialize.
They’re going to use machines.
They’re going to use chemistry.
And before long, the crop that had brought untold wealth to tiny communities will bankrupt them.
Families can’t compete with factories.
Prices that had skyrocketed would plummet to levels far below what they’d ever been before.
Families who’d been working the same land for hundreds of years would now have to sell it and move to the city.
Sell it to the same factory that was putting them out of work.
Those who took out loans would have to sell pennies to the dollar.
Before long, they’d be facing a competitor few of them could possibly endure.
Entire regions of farmland would be bought by those with enough wealth to do so.
The self-reliant families that were once the backbone of society would be forced into international wage labour.
People would starve, others lose their livelihoods, and all of this would reflected back on their leaders.
It would lead to civil unrest, possibly even war.
This isn’t an abstract fear for Ethiopia, it’s happening right now.
And what’s more, it’s happening in the same pattern that has come time and time again.
Peru and Bolivia are still reeling from the explosion of quinoa.
And while sure, in the long-term it certainly helps drive down prices and keep a more stable harvest,
in the short-term it's devastating.
With an economy centred on agriculture, a substantial percentage of their population on family farms,
and a near-total reliance on this one single grain, Ethiopia has every reason to be afraid.
Especially when those who aim to control the means of production have no interest in their national stability.
This is the modern imperialism.
And I’m not saying that it’s by definition bad.
Of course there are huge advantages to joining the international market.
Especially in the long-term.
That’s why we do it.
It isn’t as if the pattern was created to harm developing nations or steal bread from the mouths of the poor.
That’s not the point.
The point is to create more wealth from the same product.
But it’s incredibly important to remember that it does do those things.
For ten years, Ethiopia fought Dutch control of their most important resource, and in 2019, they won.
They’ve kept their pillar standing.
For now, at least, teff is in the hands of those who need it most.
It remains Ethiopia’s superfood.
But the world is still watching.
Commerce never ends.
As long as there is an appetite for yoga retreats and celery cleanses, there's going to be a market for teff.
The risk never truly goes away.
And personally, I can handle that, just so long as you never mess with my bagel bite farmers.
Capiche?
This is Rare Earth.
Superfood!