My refrigerator was on the fritz this past week. Normally when this happens, I take the back off, clean the coils, move some food around, take a hair dryer to any accumulated ice, adjust the temp settings, and hope that does the trick. This time, the freezer was working, but the fridge was not. When my normal tricks didn’t work, I began moving food to the backup fridge and freezer. (We have solar generation to power these because, well, Texas. They also come in handy for non-grid-related events and small emergencies, like this one. But I find myself increasingly thinking of only using refrigeration that I could power completely with solar power. More on that in another post.) While doing this bit of extra work and thinking about what might be going on with the fridge, I remembered back to something I read about people who think refrigeration isn’t necessary or guaranteed. There’s a subculture of so-called “fermentos” who believe in the power of fermentation not just to create deliciousness (and alcohol), but also to aid in self-reliance in the event that power and/or refrigeration becomes dicey in terms of access.
As with most subcultures, there’s a political element to fermento rhetoric and Sandor Katz, (who some might know from Michael Pollan’s book “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation“) is kind of a celebrity in the culture. His words often feel subcultural. I thought back to the recording I made (apologies for the terrible sound quality) of Katz speaking at the Austin Fermentation Festival in 2014. Fermentation is a kind of food preservation, for sure, but for some folks, the secondary and tertiary benefits are what cultivate enthusiasm. Katz articulates the following additional motives for fermentation: alcohol creation, flavor development, health benefits, and economic incentives. We all know people who go nuts for these effects. These are things that literally move people. All the above benefits of fermentation are practical, but there’s a tertiary benefit bubbling beneath fermento rhetoric. There’s a sense of community.
These communities can be bound by the secondary benefits, for example people who bond over homebrew or craft brew or the health benefits of fermented items. But the Katzian flavor of fermento rhetoric–and the community that espouses it–isn’t based on any one of the motives above. It combines a practical self-sufficiency with a mistrust of refrigeration, or at least the socio-economic forces required for its proliferation. Katz says, “refrigeration is very very recent and, you know, most households on planet Earth do not have a refrigerator in 2014.” He says that refrigeration “depends on a reliable source of cheap energy and it’s not at all clear that we will always have that available to us.” He continues, “So I think it really behooves us not to lose the strands of cultural information that enable people to make use of milk, and meat, and vegetables without the benefit of a refrigerator.” His stats are out of date now, but if we consider people who don’t have refrigeration because they don’t have a home in which to put a refrigerator, I would guess he’s probably closer to the mark. (I suspect I’ll be doing more statistics soon, so maybe I’ll have some numbers on the global homeless to back this up at some point.) Whatever the case, we can use refrigeration as a categorical variable in thinking about communities of people. We could further divide this group into: people who have a fridge and love it; people who have a fridge but wish they weren’t as reliant on it; people who don’t have a fridge, but wish they did; people who don’t have a fridge and don’t want a fridge. It’s this latter group that I suspect would vibe with Katz and it’s this flavor of fermento that interests me. I’ve met tons of food-loving people who lacto ferment their own pickles, brew their own beer, make their own mead, make their own cheese, etc. But I’ve never met one who also didn’t want a fridge or the occasional bag of ice. I suspect if they exist, they exist up north where natural ice is abundant. Maybe I need to get out of Texas more.
Anyway, I used to think there was a bit of hyperbole in Katz’s rhetoric. I once thought that, despite refrigeration being a relatively new technology, it was here to stay. Now, I’m not so sure. Technologically, the capacity for refrigeration is probably going to stick around, just like the capacity for fermentation or cooking over fire is still with us. However, the desire for refrigeration might very well shift, as we see with van lifers, boaters, RV enthusiasts, campers, and other folks who like to be on the move outdoors and find refrigeration impractical in that context. Those activities downsize the role of refrigeration technology, even as they take advantage of it. Campers and boaters may eat and drink out of a cooler instead of a stainless steel fridge, but they still need ice, and that requires a freezer. The line between enjoying recreational activities like those above and being thrust into living in a tent or vehicle has never (in my lifetime) felt as thin. So while refrigeration technology might be with us from now until whenever, we could very well see a big gap between those who control the ice machines (so to speak), and those who sell bags of ice to people eating and drinking out of coolers.
In any case, almost a decade ago, Katz told a packed house of fermentation enthusiasts that the “cheap energy” required for refrigeration may not be available to us. (It’s interesting to consider who the “us” is in this statement. See the above categorical variable.) The crowd did not appear to take it as hyperbolic at all. I didn’t ask around if there were any Katizian fermentos who didn’t have and didn’t want refrigeration, but I probably should have. As it stands, my fridge still doesn’t work. I’m happy to have a solar powered backup, but I couldn’t run my fridge on solar for long, I can’t afford another one, and I can’t afford to fix my solar backup system if it goes down again. I’m also not sure I can trust that I’ll have unfettered access to the money or energy required for refrigeration for the rest of my life. Maybe I’ll become a Katizian yet.