At the Odunpazarı Modern Museum in Eskişehir, Turkey, there is a sculpture depicting a huge pile of lifelike anchovies and sardines spilling on to the floor. The artist, Guido Casaretto, named his arresting artwork “21:34”, because that was the time he witnessed the fish being thrown away as rubbish at an Istanbul market. Such terrible waste, along with its silvery beauty, made the piece not just memorable but haunting.
I thought of Casaretto’s work while reading Vaclav Smil’s latest book, How to Feed the World, which is not about art but about cold hard numbers. As he puts it: “I do not understand the need for hyperbolic and incorrect statements when the actual numbers are newsworthy and attention-grabbing enough.”
Confident, yes, but the reader is in safe hands with Smil, author of more than 40 books on energy, environmental and population change, food production and public policy.