Colby Cosh writes the epitaph for that terrible month of January 2016, when the people were sorely oppressed by the Great Cauliflower Crisis:
I must have been assured a dozen times that peak cauliflower was a dark foretaste of the New Normal, a state of permanent food uncertainty in a ravaged world of shattered supply chains and sporadic kohlrabi riots. It turns out we are, for the moment, still living in the Old Normal: food is cheap and plentiful, far more so than it was even for our parents, but there are still very occasional kinks in our system of delivering fresh produce to our tables year-round, kinks that the market can usually sort out given a few weeks.
[…]
You will note that this price event had nothing to do with climate change per se, or even with the chronic drought conditions that have existed in California for the past few years. That did not discourage anybody who was already disposed to mutter about how California is doomed, or about how the whole planet is. Others who have collapsitarian/“prepper”/millenarian streaks shook their heads and saw the first inklings of the logistical breakdown that is always just about to devour the world.
And the “food security” people: oh, they had a field day. That phrase seems to mean something different every time I see it used; often “food insecurity” is a near-synonym for “being broke.” But if you are “food insecure” in that sense of the term, fresh cauliflower should probably not be a staple of your cooking in the first place. Depend on beans, potatoes, and whatever’s on sale, and let the paleo nerds fight for cauliflower until their madness evolves into another form. Honestly, the stuff can be surprisingly wonderful if prepared right, but you have to be kidding yourself a little bit to consider it positively delightful, don’t you?
