2022-10-03TheNewYorker_UserUpload.Net

refrigeration. Cutting back on fridge

use might seem difficult, but it is pos-

sible. I speak from experience. After

reading a 2017 article about how other

cultures refrigerate less, I tried unplug-

ging my fridge. I didn’t think I could

make it a day, but, using a combination

of tactics, including fermentation and

effective shopping, I made it three

months. My next try lasted nearly seven

months. Now, on my third try, I’m a

week short of making it a full year.

Josh Spodek

New York City

1

MORE THAN MAPS

Louis Menand’s observation that our

government “does not reflect the popu-

lar will” gets at the heart of many of

America’s current problems (A Critic at

Large, August 22nd). But partisan ger-

rymandering, the phenomenon that he

focusses on, is only partly to blame. The

U.S.’s use of single-member congressio-

nal districts is also a major factor. Be-

cause of their winner-take-all structure,

single-member districts inevitably make

it more difficult to select a House whose

composition is proportional to voters’

preferences. Consider that, in a district

that is fifty-one-per-cent blue (or red),

a given party secures a hundred per cent

of the representation. In California, where

an independent commission has all but

eliminated partisan gerrymandering, the

state’s current congressional delegation

is nearly eighty-per-cent Democratic,

despite Democrats’ having won only

sixty-six per cent of the vote. Changing

to a system that allows for multi-member

districts, in which seats are allocated pro-

portionally to votes, would go a long way

toward creating a House that better rep-

resents the wishes of the public.

Grant Tudor

Washington, D.C.

TOO COOL

Nicola Twilley, in her piece about Rwan-
da’s valiant effort to widen access to refrig-
eration, acknowledges many of the obsta-
cles standing in the country’s way while
also conveying the hope that creating a
cold chain will improve the predicament
of its smallholder farmers (“The Cold
Rush,” August 22nd). My fifty years of
experience in international-development
work, some of them spent in Rwanda,
have given me a more pessimistic view.
The economic situation of smallholder
farmers is on a downward trajectory al-
most everywhere in the world. This is in
part because, in the world’s economy,
scale is paramount, and being able to get
more product to market is unlikely to
mean more than a slight increase in in-
come for small farmers, who can produce
only so much. A more dismal sign is the
fact that few small farmers’ children want
to follow in their parents’ footsteps. Aid-
agency projects intended to improve food
storage and decrease costly waste—en-
compassing everything from promoting
coöperatives to providing warehouses
and technical innovations—have had few
lasting results in the past several decades.
More often than not, aid agencies’ and
governments’ need to get money out the
door quickly, combined with local fac-
tors, makes progress difficult.
Thomas Dichter
Provency, France

Twilley’s report brought to mind Amer-
icans’ almost unlimited use of refriger-
ation. In the U.S., about a quarter of
households have two or more fridges.
Compared with many other countries,
we also have longer supply chains, less
fresh produce, and more pollution from
transportation and packaging; we also
have overburdened electrical grids and
an abundance of unhealthy, heavily pro-
cessed products in our diets. One way
that Americans could help people in
developing countries is by reforming
our own system so that we pollute our
shared world less. We could make it
easier to run farmers’ markets here,
thereby reducing our overreliance on

•

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