Guest post by Matt Harry / Photo by Juliane Crump
I’m always thinking about my next meal.
So when I came up with the concept for my new dystopian detective novel Ash Land, which takes place in a world where flesh-eating microbots known as the Ash have trapped everyone inside, I immediately worried about the food issue. How could humans survive when much of what we eat exists outdoors?
To attack this problem, I realized I had to study current food production methods. Like most people, I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about how my food got to the grocery store. I might harvest the occasional lettuce leaf or lime from my backyard, but for the most part everything I need comes from the local Trader Joe’s. What would it look like if that entire system was destroyed?
I did a little digging, and it soon became clear that there were four areas I had to address: pollination, production, labor, and in the worst case scenario, replacement.
First, I had to make sure that my micro-munchers didn’t target plants or pollinators. About forty percent of our crops would go bye-bye if bees alone were killed off. Huge portions of the population would starve to death. Sure, I wanted a bleak setting, but not that bleak. So I tweaked the Ash to go after larger muscle proteins found in mammals. This would still affect the food supply chain, but I could solve this by giving some nations time to move their animals into sealed buildings.
A lot of food production, particularly chicken and pork, already takes place indoors. And seafood is protected in my world because the Ash can’t survive underwater. The animal that would take the biggest hit would be cattle. Sorry, hamburger fans. In Ash Land, beef becomes an expensive rarity that only the richest people can afford. In one scene, our main character Kai is so distracted by a slice of Wagyu carpaccio, he almost misses a key clue.
Even if a large portion of meat production could be moved inside, what about all the plants that were still outside? How would those be cultivated and harvested? Since drones were already playing an important part in the world of Ash Land, I speculated that some farm equipment could be automated. But there are some jobs, such as fruit picking, that can only be done by humans.
For this, I would need people willing to put on hazmat suits and risk their lives by going outside. In my novel, such folks are called Scrappers. Some of them are highly paid to do dangerous outside tasks, while others take the risk because they hope to scavenge something valuable. In either case, fresh fruit and vegetables would become a delicacy. Fresh lettuce would be on the level of foie gras. Almost everyone would have to take vitamin supplements to stay healthy.
And what about the worst case scenario, when significant portions of the food supply disappear or are too costly to provide for everyone? This is where food replacement comes in. We’re already looking at a variety of methods to replace traditional nutrients, from lab-grown meat to chemical supplements to alternate sources. One such source I found was cricket meal – a high-protein powder created from easily sustainable and cheaply-sourced insects. If a large percentage of meat was lost, humans would naturally have to switch to alternatives such as this one. There are other types of protein substitutes, of course, but I was creating a dystopia. It was much more fun to have my characters chow down on cricket loaf and cricket burgers.
When I started this novel in 2020, I didn’t set out to write about the possible dangers affecting our food supply system. Mainly I wanted to create a fun sci-fi mystery. But now that Ash Land is complete, my hope is that readers will be entertained, but they’ll also think a bit more about where their dinner came from. And hopefully, that next bite of burger, vegan taco, or even cricket loaf will taste that much better.
ASH LAND is now available in paperback and as an ebook.
For more information, visit MattHarryWriter.com
