The text below was created in connection with the exhibition Vynikající (Delicious) by Uli Westphal at Artwall Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic (Oct 4 - Dec 2, 2016). Written by Uli Westphal and co-edited by Zachraň jídlo (2016), updated by Uli Westphal (2020).
以下文字是与Uli Westphal在捷克共和国布拉格Artwall画廊（2016年10月4日至12月2日）举办的展览Vynikající（美味）相关的。由 Uli Westphal 撰写，Zachraň jídlo （2016） 共同编辑，由 Uli Westphal （2020） 更新。

The Decline of Wonkiness
Wonkiness 的衰落

Introduction 介绍

Fruits and vegetables that don’t fit our established norms are filtered out and avoided in every stage of our food-system. It starts from the initial choice of varieties that are planted, to the way they are grown, harvested, processed, packaged, transported, traded and displayed.
不符合我们既定规范的水果和蔬菜在我们食物系统的每个阶段都会被过滤掉并避免食用。它从种植品种的最初选择开始，到种植、收获、加工、包装、运输、交易和展示的方式。
  Our food originates from a rich pool of diverse and constantly evolving species and varieties. These plants are not only part of our culinary heritage but also essential for the future of agriculture. Currently we only utilize a tiny spectrum of the varieties that still exist and we only eat a fraction of the harvest. Much of it is wasted, often due to purely cosmetic marketing standards. With it we also waste the energy, labor and resources that were spent to grow the produce in the first place. Because our food system is globalized, the way we handle food has consequences that reach far beyond our directly perceived surroundings.
我们的食物来源于丰富多样且不断发展的物种和品种。这些植物不仅是我们烹饪遗产的一部分，而且对农业的未来也至关重要。目前，我们只利用仍然存在的一小部分品种，我们只吃了收成的一小部分。其中大部分被浪费了，通常是由于纯粹的化妆品营销标准。有了它，我们也浪费了最初用于种植农产品的能源、劳动力和资源。因为我们的食物系统是全球化的，我们处理食物的方式产生的后果远远超出了我们直接感知的环境。
  This short guide will shine some light on why our food system has become obsessed with perfection, and how this affects our food culture, farmers and planet.
这本简短的指南将阐明为什么我们的食物系统变得痴迷于完美，以及这如何影响我们的饮食文化、农民和地球。


The Industrialization of Agriculture
农业产业化

During the Green Revolution of the 1960’s, people tried to apply the same methods and mechanisms that previously drove the industrial revolution to agriculture. In order to do so agriculture had to become an automated process and the cultivars (cultivated plant varieties) it used needed to become standardized.
在 1960 年代的绿色革命期间，人们试图将以前推动工业革命的相同方法和机制应用于农业。为了做到这一点，农业必须成为一个自动化的过程，它使用的栽培品种（栽培植物品种）需要标准化。
  To boost productivity, so called HYVs (High Yielding Varieties) were developed. HYVs can be grown in a wide variety of climatic and geographic regions, but are heavily dependent on external inputs, such as fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation. HYVs were used globally to replace thousands of diverse, traditional, locally adapted varieties. A one-size-fits-all approach to agriculture inadvertently led to the extinction of many cultivars that were developed over the course of history. A vast majority of all varieties developed by humans have already become extinct during the last 50 years.
为了提高生产力，开发了所谓的HYV（高产品种）。HYV可以在各种气候和地理区域种植，但严重依赖外部投入，如化肥、杀虫剂和灌溉。HYV在全球范围内被用于取代数千种多样化的、传统的、适应当地的品种。一刀切的农业方法无意中导致了许多在历史进程中发展起来的品种的灭绝。在过去的50年里，人类开发的所有品种中的绝大多数已经灭绝。
  Today the remaining agricultural diversity is stored frozen in time at international genebanks and kept alive through cultivation by dedicated gardeners and smallholder farms, many of them in the global South.
今天，剩余的农业多样性被及时冷冻储存在国际基因库中，并通过专门的园丁和小农农场的耕种保持活力，其中许多在全球南方。


Hybrid Seeds, GMOs and Patent Enforcement
杂交种子、转基因生物和专利执法

Today the seed market is dominated by so called F1 Hybrids. These are created from two different lines of plant cultivars that are developed for specific qualities, such as size and pest resistance. The two lines are crossbred to create a hybrid that, in its first generation, expresses the superior qualities of both lines and grows especially vigorously. However, subsequent generations become unstable and lose the beneficial qualities of the first generation. This means it is useless to save seeds from a hybrid variety - it essentially has built in copyright protection. The farmer must repurchase the seed every year and becomes dependent on the breeder. He also loses the ability to develop the cultivar over time. Hybrids cannot adapt, evolve or diversify on the farm, in contrast to non-proprietary, open pollinated varieties.
今天，种子市场由所谓的 F1 杂交种主导。这些是由两个不同的植物品种系创造的，这些品种是为特定品质（如大小和抗虫性）而开发的。这两个品系经过杂交，形成一个杂交品种，在第一代中，它表达了两个品系的卓越品质，并且生长得特别旺盛。然而，后代变得不稳定，失去了第一代的有益品质。这意味着从杂交品种中保存种子是没有用的——它基本上具有内置的版权保护。农民必须每年回购种子，并依赖育种者。随着时间的流逝，他也失去了开发品种的能力。与非专有的开放授粉品种相比，杂交种不能在农场适应、进化或多样化。
  There are many other examples of how the industry makes farmers dependent on its seeds, thereby inhibiting diversification. One is the so called ‘terminator technology’ used in select genetically modified plants, which renders their seeds infertile. Another is the strict enforcement of seed patents by suing farmers who are found to have saved and regrown corporation owned seeds.
还有许多其他例子表明，该行业如何使农民依赖其种子，从而抑制了多样化。一种是所谓的“终结者技术”，用于选定的转基因植物，这使得它们的种子不育。另一个是严格执行种子专利，起诉那些被发现保存和重新种植公司拥有的种子的农民。


Monocultures and Monopolies
单一栽培和垄断

Over the past decades a few large agrochemical corporations have bought up smaller seed companies in order to control the market. The corporations discontinued existing seed lines of these companies in order to cut costs and to promote their own cultivars, along with the chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which are sold by the very same corporations. Today a large percentage of the industrial food system relies on just a few cultivars that are planted as monocultures on a massive scale. In 2013 the global seed and pesticide market was dominated by just six companies (Syngenta, Bayer, BASF, DOW, Monsanto and DuPont) that, together, controlled 63% of the commercial seed market and 75% of the global pesticide market ¹. Some of these companies are currently in the process of merging with others to gain an even bigger share of the market.
在过去的几十年里，一些大型农用化学品公司收购了较小的种子公司，以控制市场。这些公司停止了这些公司现有的种子生产线，以削减成本并推广自己的品种，以及由同一家公司销售的化肥和杀虫剂。今天，工业化食品系统的很大一部分仅依赖于少数几个品种，这些品种被大规模种植为单一栽培品种。2013年，全球种子和农药市场仅由六家公司（先正达、拜耳、巴斯夫、陶氏、孟山都和杜邦）主导，这些公司共同控制了63%的商业种子市场和75%的全球农药市场 ¹ 。其中一些公司目前正在与其他公司合并，以获得更大的市场份额。

  One hurdle that prevents diverse plant varieties from entering the market are cultivar registration procedures, which are very costly and time consuming. Small breeders and farmers, who wish to plant and sell local, traditional varieties, can rarely afford the costs of registering their seeds, because these often are niche products that don’t generate enough money to cover the costs of registration.
阻碍各种植物品种进入市场的一个障碍是品种注册程序，这非常昂贵和耗时。希望种植和销售当地传统品种的小型育种者和农民很少负担注册种子的费用，因为这些通常是小众产品，无法产生足够的资金来支付注册费用。


Trade Norms 贸易规范

In order to regulate and simplify the international trade of produce, governments have implemented trade norms that specify exactly how a fruit or vegetable has to look. The EU recently dropped many of these criteria (regulations for apples, pears, tomatoes, citrus fruits and others are still in place ²), but traders and retailers still stick with the norms or impose their own secret standards. A strict ‘quality’ control system is in place to filter the harvest. Fully automated sorting machines are used on the farm to find and discard even slight variations. Hand tools for checking fruit and vegetable samples, such as color swatches and stencils to measure shape and size are used in the distribution centers. A perfect cauliflower, for example, must measure 15 cm in diameter and weigh 1 kilogram. Whole truckloads can be rejected if individual samples turn out to be deviant. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, up to 20% of production ³ is wasted mostly due to post-harvest fruit and vegetable grading caused by quality standards set by retailers.
为了规范和简化农产品的国际贸易，各国政府实施了贸易规范，明确规定了水果或蔬菜的外观。欧盟最近取消了其中的许多标准（苹果、梨、西红柿、柑橘类水果和其他产品的法规仍然存在 ² ），但贸易商和零售商仍然坚持这些规范或实施自己的秘密标准。有严格的“质量”控制系统来过滤收获物。农场使用全自动分拣机来查找和丢弃哪怕是微小的变化。配送中心使用用于检查水果和蔬菜样品的手动工具，例如用于测量形状和大小的色板和模板。例如，一朵完美的花椰菜直径必须为 15 厘米，重 1 公斤。如果单个样品被证明是异常的，整车货物可能会被拒绝。根据联合国粮食及农业组织的数据，高达20%的产量 ³ 被浪费，主要是由于零售商制定的质量标准导致收获后的水果和蔬菜分级。
  Dependence on costly high tech sorting machines to facilitate the grading process also puts small and biodiverse farms at a disadvantage.
依赖昂贵的高科技分拣机来促进分级过程也使小型和生物多样性农场处于不利地位。

Automation, Transport and Artificial Growing Environments
自动化、运输和人工生长环境

The automation of agricultural processes such as planting, harvesting, processing and packaging only works with cultivars of very specific shapes, sizes and qualities. For example, long, skinny french fries can only be cut out of large uniform potatoes. Tomatoes need to have a tough skin in order to cope with being harvested with heavy machinery.
种植、收获、加工和包装等农业过程的自动化仅适用于具有非常特定形状、大小和质量的品种。例如，又长又瘦的炸薯条只能从大而均匀的土豆中切出。西红柿需要有坚韧的皮肤，以应对重型机械的收获。
  With a large amount of produce being traded globally, logistics have a large influence on what kind of produce is being grown. Uniform fruit can be transported more efficiently, because it facilitates the use of standardized packaging and stacking methods. Long distances of shipping also mean that only a few durable cultivars are used.
随着全球农产品的大量贸易，物流对种植的农产品种类有很大影响。均匀的水果可以更有效地运输，因为它有利于使用标准化的包装和堆叠方法。长途运输也意味着只使用少数耐久品种。
  Produce is often grown in ultra-controlled artificial environments, such as hydroponic solutions in greenhouses. The environmental effects on the growth of these plants, like differing soil and weather conditions are taken out of the equation. Plants that are bred and grown under these consistent conditions do not evolve and adapt anymore. They are no longer subject to evolutionary pressures.
农产品通常在超受控的人工环境中生长，例如温室中的水培溶液。环境对这些植物生长的影响，如不同的土壤和天气条件，被排除在外。在这些一致条件下培育和生长的植物不再进化和适应。他们不再受到进化压力的影响。


Processed Food, Blurred Seasonality and Branding
加工食品、模糊的季节性和品牌

The rapid decline of agricultural biodiversity is masked by the enormous increase of processed foods and imports of new exotic fruits and vegetables. Instead of recognizing the impoverishment of our food supplies, we are given the impression of a massive increase in the diversity and choice of the food we buy. Processed food often relies on only a small number of species that are transformed into a seemingly infinite variety of products. The constant availability of any type of fruit or vegetable from greenhouse farming and food imports also contributes to the idea that the quality of produce needs to be predictable and consistent. Consumers have become accustomed to this monotonous stability. Fruits and vegetables are expected to be as consistent as factory made mass products. In fact, the consistent shape and color of particular fruits and vegetables fulfill the same purpose as the color and design of trademarks or brands.
农业生物多样性的迅速下降被加工食品的大量增加和新的外来水果和蔬菜的进口所掩盖。我们没有认识到我们的食物供应的贫困，而是给我们的印象是我们购买的食物的多样性和选择大大增加。加工食品通常只依赖于少数物种，这些物种被转化为看似无穷无尽的产品。来自温室农业和食品进口的任何类型的水果或蔬菜的持续供应也有助于农产品质量需要可预测和一致的想法。消费者已经习惯了这种单调的稳定性。水果和蔬菜预计将与工厂制造的大众产品一样一致。事实上，特定水果和蔬菜的一致形状和颜色与商标或品牌的颜色和设计具有相同的目的。


The Hunt for Perfection 追求完美

At the end of the industrial food chain, is the consumer. We have become increasingly detached from the processes of food production. Many have forgotten or have never experienced the ways fruits and vegetables can actually look. Retailers and advertisements heavily influence our perception on what is good to eat and what is not. We predominantly use vision rather than smell and taste to judge our food. The more familiar a fruit or vegetable looks, the more likely we are to pick it up. The more consumers get used to the uniformity that is presented in supermarkets the more they are repelled by variation and the more difficult it becomes, in turn, to market fruits and vegetables that don’t look the way we think they should. The effects of this hunt for perfection trickle down the food chain from retailer to trader to farmer to breeder and back to the consumer. The food system is caught in a redundant cycle that causes produce to become increasingly more consistent.
在工业食物链的末端，是消费者。我们越来越脱离粮食生产过程。许多人已经忘记或从未体验过水果和蔬菜的实际外观。零售商和广告严重影响了我们对什么好吃和什么不好的看法。我们主要使用视觉而不是嗅觉和味觉来判断我们的食物。水果或蔬菜看起来越熟悉，我们就越有可能捡起它。消费者越是习惯于超市的统一性，他们就越会排斥变化，反过来，就越难以推销看起来不像我们想象的那样的水果和蔬菜。这种追求完美的效果沿着食物链从零售商到贸易商，从农民到饲养员，再回到消费者。粮食系统陷入了冗余循环，导致产品变得越来越一致。


Why it’s good to eat Wonky Fruits and Vegetables
为什么吃不稳定的水果和蔬菜很好

Nothing is more impactful in transforming our planet than agriculture. Depending on how we practice agriculture, it can be a constructive or a destructive force. We currently overproduce and globally waste one third of the food we grow. In the process we poison our rivers, erode our soil, deplete our resources and extinguish biodiversity.
没有什么比农业更能改变我们的星球了。根据我们从事农业的方式，它可能是一种建设性的力量，也可能是一种破坏性的力量。目前，我们生产过剩，全球浪费了我们种植的三分之一的食物。在这个过程中，我们毒害了我们的河流，侵蚀了我们的土壤，耗尽了我们的资源，并消灭了生物多样性。
  Appreciating and eating unusual looking fruits and vegetables can do real good on many levels. It helps to reduce food waste and overproduction. It promotes the return of diversity to agriculture and the use of regionally adapted and open pollinated varieties. It reduces agriculture’s dependence on external inputs such as irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides. It gives advantage to regional farms over long distance trade, and promotes bulk sales over standardized plastic packaging (fruit and veg already has its own natural packaging). And after all, wonky fruits and vegetables are no less nutritious or delicious than their ‘perfect’ counterparts.
欣赏和食用外观不寻常的水果和蔬菜可以在许多层面上带来真正的好处。它有助于减少食物浪费和生产过剩。它促进了农业多样性的回归，并促进了适应区域和开放授粉品种的使用。它减少了农业对灌溉、化肥和杀虫剂等外部投入的依赖。它为区域农场提供了长途贸易的优势，并促进了标准化塑料包装（水果和蔬菜已经有了自己的天然包装）的批量销售。毕竟，不稳定的水果和蔬菜的营养或美味不亚于“完美”的水果和蔬菜。

EAT WONKY! 吃得不对劲！