Not by Bread Alone

by Naomi Mitchison

In 1983, at the age of 86, Naomi Mitchison published Not By Bread Alone. Sixty years had passed since the publication of her first novel, The Conquered. As a lifelong advocate of socialism and feminism, Mitchison draws upon the speculative imaginary in Not By Bread Alone to put forward and strategise political concerns which remain uncomfortably pertinent. The narrative transports the reader to a now not-so-distant future, where a powerful multinational corporation is close to producing free food for the entire world. It follows a group of scientists spread across continents, working on early GMOs. Their research is funded by the PAX corporation which (like its real-world counterpart) represents the global economic hegemony. Whilst their 'Freefood' policy may appear initially beneficial, the genetically modified crops soon start to present major problems. The scientists must learn from the people of Murngin, who reject PAX's Freefood and instead uphold a symbiotic connection to their land, before it is too late. Mitchison characterised the disastrous consequences of something going wrong with a global single-strain crop supply not as science fiction but as something that might really happen. In 1983, when the novel was first published, the world succeeded in producing the first genetically modified plant but it would be decades before the production of GM crops became as widespread as envisioned in the novel. It remains to be seen whether humankind is yet prepared to heed Naomi Mitchison's warnings.

167 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Naomi Mitchison, author of over 70 books, died in 1999 at the age of 101. She was born in and lived in Scotland and traveled widely throughout the world. In the 1960s she was adopted as adviser and mother of the Bakgatla tribe in Botswana. Her books include historical fiction, science fiction, poetry, autobiography, and nonfiction, the most popular of which are The Corn King and the Spring Queen, The Conquered, and Memoirs of a Spacewoman.

Mitchison lived in Kintyre for many years and was an active small farmer. She served on Argyll County Council and was a member of the Highlands and Islands Advisory Panel from 1947 to 1965, and the Highlands and Islands Advisory Consultative Council from 1966 to 1974.

Praise for Naomi Mitchison:

"No one knows better how to spin a fairy tale than Naomi Mitchison."
-- The Observer

"Mitchison breathes life into such perennial themes as courage, forgiveness, the search for meaning, and self-sacrifice."
-- Publishers Weekly

"She writes enviably, with the kind of casual precision which ... comes by grace."
-- Times Literary Supplement

"One of the great subversive thinkers and peaceable transgressors of the twentieth century.... We are just catching up to this wise, complex, lucid mind that has for ninety-seven years been a generation or two ahead of her time."
-- Ursula K. Le Guin, author of Gifts

"Her descriptions of ritual and magic are superb; no less lovely are her accounts of simple, natural things -- water-crowfoot flowers, marigolds, and bright-spotted fish. To read her is like looking down into deep warm water, through which the smallest pebble and the most radiant weed shine and are seen most clearly; for her writing is very intimate, almost as a diary, or an autobiography is intimate, and yet it is free from all pose, all straining after effect; she is telling a story so that all may understand, yet it has the still profundity of a nursery rhyme.
-- Hugh Gordon Proteus, New Statesman and Nation

Reviews

[Jack Deighton · Rating 3 out of 5]

A company called PAX has been developing various projects to improve crop types and yields over the world. This culminates in a product known as freefood, which promises to make human existence easier. It is widely welcomed nearly everywhere – a notable holdout is the indigenous Australian community of Murngin in Arnhem Land, North Australia, which has achieved a kind of independence.

Like in Mitchison’s other Science Fiction forays there is in the narration a high degree of telling not showing. Most of the story concerns itself with the scientists involved and interactions among the people running PAX and the reading experience is somewhat dry. Very little of what would be the social ramifications of such an innovation as freefood is explored. War has apparently ended because, as one character says, it was fought for food.

(Well, to a point: water too, and resources, but let’s not forget in these troubled times personal aggrandisement.)

The ‘future that never was’ that bedevils older Science Fiction stories is illustrated by Mitchison’s characters’ long distance communication methods (video calls) anticipating Skype or Zoom but not, of course, the internet or email.

There is an implicit racism – reflecting the times of 1983 but perhaps not Mitchison herself? - in one character referring to ‘Abos’ saying, “‘They could be a no-good mob,’” but admitting, “they got treated in a no-good way in Queensland,’” plus another use of ‘Abos’ in an unflattering context.

The promised paradise of hunger being banished from the world is disturbed when deaths start to occur among some of those using freefood. This is due to a compound called dioscorin which is found in yams and usually removed by the processes of preparing and cooking. Freefood production has omitted these steps.

Mitchison’s writing is usually perfectly agreeable. Her other (ie non-SF) fiction does not suffer from the flaws I have noted above and before - even though some of it is set in such alien (to us) societies as Ancient Greece or Rome. That tendency to didacticism apparent here is missing from those.

[Adam Stevenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not By Bread Alone is a story set twenty years in the future and spans continents.

Oddly, given the time it was written, it would be set now, but the book mostly works at being twenty years from any given time. A company called PAX takes an interest in a number of different biological projects. One in Australia adapts plants to grow with almost any water, one in South America affects plants so they can fertilise themselves and one in India creates plants with massively increased yield and nutrition. Slowly, over the course of the first third of the book, this projects are brought together to create free food for everyone.

Slowly is certainly the case. There’s a great deal about the contracts, safeguards and negotiations that have to happen to make freefood (as it is called) a thing. The reader learns a lot about the board members of PAX, the worries of the scientists and the processes which make their magic plants. Despite the wide spread of the ‘action’ and long time span, everything feels quite airless and claustrophobic. There’s also a number of sub-plots about people’s nationalities, religions and sexualities which seem to be included for colour and interest, showing how many types of people are involved in the project.

Freefood is a big success. In developing countries, the populations grow taller, healthier and with more time for study and infrastructure. It impacts the west less, but provides a safety net for everybody. Although all the freefood is plant based, it can also be fed to animals and so meat gets a little cheaper. Fish remains the most expensive and old-fashioned fishfingers become a luxury item. There are some complaints that it’s a little blander than the old non-free food but, with the exception of a nation of indigenous Australians, people are pretty happy. Until they are not.

Not By Bread Alone is an interesting idea but it’s a pretty lifeless book and the perceived problems of freefood seem much less urgent than the notion of being able to free everyone from starvation.

[Charlotte · Rating 2 out of 5]

What would happen if scientists developed a way to end world hunger? Not only was I unconvinced by Mitchison's projections, I found them frankly reeking of disinterest in the perspective of those populations regularly beset by famines. Worse, the "objective correlative" - the story! - failed to engage my interest. I didn't feel much for the characters, which felt like strangely abstracted collections of thoughts and background notes, and I'm not sure the writer did, either: those we knew by name were, for the most part, left in suspension at the end of the book.