The Incredible Shrinking Man

The 1991 OFA report ‘Microlivestock: Little-known Small Animals with a Promising Economic Future’ introduces several alternative small animals for domestication and meat and dairy production. Small animals are easier to breed and keep, and are a quick way of supplementing a diet, especially in less developed countries. One of the species of great interest to [...]

Our desire for abundance represents both the cause for the planet’s perilous condition and the incentive for a possible solution. If (despite Earth’s dwindling resources) we want to continue our present lifestyles, and the desire for abundance is stronger than the desire for being tall, eventually we’ll be forced to seriously consider shrinking the human body into [...]

According to the Water Footprint Network the fresh water involved in the production of a single cup of coffee (125ml) is 140 liters. One part of coffee consumes 1100 water parts. To make an average cup of coffee requires around 40 coffeebeans. To produce one bean requires 3,5 liters of water. In total the global [...]

The era of world food security is coming to an end simply because we can’t sustain the way food is produced. Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Research Centre in Washington, says the demands for food are growing so fast that unless we deflate the food bubble at wartime speed, a breakdown is inevitable. The inability [...]

Small is disappearing. If you order a small coffee in Starbucks, or any of its copy cat formula coffee shops, you’ll get a cup of coffee which in any previous timeframe would have been considered large.
The 1993 introduction of supersizing meals and soft drinks by McDonald’s to boost sales has confused consumer’s understanding of small. [...]

Mexican protesters against the high tortilla prices in 2007 rallied around an oversized corn. Their public display of the desire for an abundant food supply ressembles cargo cults in which the visualisation of desired abundance, or the context in which the abundance is believed to exist, is reproduced in order to attain it. But obviously they don’t. [...]

Fish kept in small tanks remain small because they produce pheromones that suppress growth. If the same rule applies to people, the small house movement may proof to be a powerful tool to curb our physical growth.
The small house movement is an intriguing architectural and social movement that advocates living in very small homes. While in most developed countries [...]

Being tall is expensive. You need more of everything just to sustain yourself, and for most of it either you pay or the environment does. Tall people are an increasing burden on the planet. A 20% increase in height equals a 73% increase in weight. And all those tall people feed, transport themselves, wash and pollute. Seen [...]

During the Second World War Mussolini’s government urged Italians to keep guinea pigs to supplement their meager meat rations. It was not a bad idea. Rodents are the world’s most widespread, adaptable, and prolific group of mammals. They reproduce well, grow fast, and can adapt to a wide variety of local conditions.  Many are herbivores and [...]

If we decide to shrink the human species to 50cm our livestock needs will shrink with us. We’ll only consume about 2 to 5% of the food we consume today. The meat of one chicken could easily feed 100 people and one egg alone would be enough to make an omelet for 25 to 30 people. Poultry [...]