Category: Agriculture

Abundance Fantasies: Canoe-sized Banana Peels

November 14, 2025 By arne hendriks Off

In the Abundance Fantasies we explore how to activate a deeply rooted desire for abundance to unlock a desire for less. Rather then grow towards scarcity we could shrink towards abundance. In a subplot to the 1973 Woody Allen dystopian scifi-comedy Sleeper, our hungry protagonists (Woody…

Japanese Miniatures: Sukunabiko

April 18, 2024 By arne hendriks Off

There is something majestic about the arrival of the shinto dwarf god Sukunabiko (AKA The small lord of renown) to the shores of Izumo province in Japan. Dressed in the wings of a moth and carried by a tiny boat made from a sweet potato…

Rod at Dawn

March 2, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

In 1994 popstar Rod Stewart gave a concert on Copacabana beach in Rio di Janeiro. And it turned out to be a legendary concert as it attracted the largest crowd of people in history for a musical event. 4 to 5 million people came to…

Micro-Livestock’s Short Shadow

October 18, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options, a 2006 report released by the Food and Agriculture Organisation, assesses the impact of the livestock sector on environmental challenges, along with potential technical and policy approaches to mitigation. The livestock sector poses serious challenges to the environment at every…

Deaf Fish

December 12, 2017 By arne hendriks Off

A recent study shows that every second farmed salmon we eat is deaf resulting of a deformity in the ear, caused by accelerated growth in aquaculture. The study’s lead author, Ms Tormey Reimer, says when they went looking for the cause of the deformity they…

Vechur A2 Milk

November 27, 2017 By arne hendriks Off

The Incredible Shrinking Man is not big on dairy because it promotes excess growth in the body. But we’ll make an exception for the milk of the tiny Vechur cow originating from the warm and humid climate of the state of Kerala in southern India. According…

Land Reclamation

November 5, 2017 By arne hendriks Off

It is certainly not a coincidence that the Dutch are known for their expertise in the process of land reclamation. They live surrounded by the sea and The Netherlands are a small country. Yet the most obvious reason for the Dutch desire to create new…

Lodan Report: Private to Public

October 19, 2017 By arne hendriks Off

Kampung Lodan, Kampung Kerapu and Kampung Tongkol are three villages situated on the banks of the Ciliwung river in the sinking Indonesian city of Jakarta. Because the river beds along the Ciliwung were, and increasingly are, subjected to regular flooding it was never a popular…

Japanese Miniatures: Akakomugi

February 17, 2016 By arne hendriks 0

Japan is the conceptual epicentre of shrink philosophy. Our ongoing series of Japanese Miniatures collects and connects these stories and hopefully eventually will be able to inspire some of the fundamental Japanese sensitivity and desire towards smallness in the rest of the world. Akakomugi, an…

Micro-Livestock: A Possible Future

January 8, 2016 By arne hendriks 1

Although animal science has traditionally emphasized bigness, the 1991 report Micro-Livestock: Little-Known Animals with a Promising Economic Future shows that smallness has many advantages. If in the future the human species will become smaller, we will benefit from most of the advantages listed below. Small animals…

The Fear of the Gods

February 3, 2014 By arne hendriks 1

In The Food of the Gods and how it came to Earth, the British writer H.G. Wells presents Herakleophorbia IV, a nutrient that makes anything grow to about six times its regular size. The story takes the reader, rather uninspired, through the regular motions of such…

Abundance Fantasies: Spherical Soup

October 30, 2013 By arne hendriks 0

The Disproportionate Restaurant investigates how downsizing the human species will affect our relationship with food. Over the past years we did a number of experiments, including abundance fantasies such as the Ostrich BBQ and Sunflower Table and explorations of new ingredients and possibilities such as…

Abundance Fantasies: Exaggeration Cards

August 30, 2013 By arne hendriks 1

Exaggeration cards are picture postcards depicting enormously oversized fruits, vegetables and livestock. First appearing in Fresno in 1905 the cards quickly struck a chord throughout the western United States. These  “tall-tale postcards”  became especially prevalent in small town rural communities hoping to forge an identity…

Micro-Livestock: Guinea Pig

May 21, 2013 By arne hendriks 1

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…

One Bean Coffee

December 30, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

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…

Deflating the Food Bubble

October 15, 2012 By arne hendriks 1

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…

Abundance Fantasies: Corn Cult

July 27, 2012 By arne hendriks 1

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…

Six Cities / Empty World

June 20, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

Earth is turning into a global city. Over half the world’s population lives in urbanised areas and those cities are taking up more and more space.  Most of the rest of the world is organised to supply food and resources. Even so, cities are the most…

Rewilding Ghost Suburbia

October 21, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

If mankind decides to shrink, and we succeed to achieve an average height of 50 centimeters as The Incredible Shrinking Man proposes, one of the most significant changes will be the increase of available space. The scale of buildings, infrastructure and distance will be enormous…

Sunflower Table

May 3, 2011 By arne hendriks 2

Downsizing the human body will not only create an abundance of food, it will also open up unexpected new possibilities for sharing a meal. Possibilities like the dried sunflower table suggested by Marlyn Coetsier. Coetsier, a puppeteer from Amsterdam, researches how we will experience reality…