Tag Archives: food

Bjorn Lomborg on food

1 Reply

Bjorn Lomborg, who is known for not being a big fan of controls on carbon emissions, is concerned about the food supply.

Affordable, nutritious food is one of people’s top priorities everywhere, and one in nine people still do not get enough food to be healthy. With today’s population of 7.3 billion expected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050, food demand will increase accordingly. Along with more mouths to feed, stresses on food supplies will include conflicts, economic volatility, extreme weather events, and climate change…

Investment in research and development is vital. According to research conducted for Copenhagen Consensus, which I direct, investing an extra $88 billion in agricultural R&D over the next 15 years would increase yields by an additional 0.4 percentage points each year, which could save 79 million people from hunger and prevent five million cases of child malnourishment. Achieving these targets would be worth nearly $3 trillion in social good, implying an enormous return of $34 for every dollar spent.

Scientific breakthroughs also play a key role in fighting specific nutritional challenges such as vitamin A deficiency, the leading cause of preventable childhood blindness. Robert Mwanga was awarded this year’s World Food Prize for inspiring work that resulted in the large-scale replacement of white sweet potato (with scant Vitamin A content) by a vitamin A-rich alternative in the diets of Uganda’s rural poor.

More R&D seems like a great idea. But I wonder if Bjorn is making the mistake of just projecting past trends linearly into the future. In the past, crops were often limited by the availability of water and nutrients. Once you solve those problems, you can work on breeding plants that make maximum use of the sun’s energy to produce plant parts that humans and animals can eat. Once you solve that problem, the next limit would seem to be sunlight itself, which you can’t increase.

climate change, ecosystems, and food

Leave a reply

This 17-author paper in Science describes evidence for how natural organisms and ecosystems are already adapting themselves to climate change, and what it means for humans.

The broad footprint of climate change from genes to biomes to people

Species are undergoing evolutionary adaptation to temperature extremes, and climate change has substantial impacts on species physiology that include changes in tolerances to high temperatures, shifts in sex ratios in species with temperature-dependent sex determination, and increased metabolic costs of living in a warmer world. These physiological adjustments have observable impacts on morphology, with many species in both aquatic and terrestrial systems shrinking in body size because large surface-to-volume ratios are generally favored under warmer conditions. Other morphological changes include reductions in melanism to improve thermoregulation, and altered wing and bill length in birds.

Broader-scale responses to climate change include changes in the phenology, abundance, and distribution of species. Temperate plants are budding and flowering earlier in spring and later in autumn. Comparable adjustments have been observed in marine and freshwater fish spawning events and in the timing of seasonal migrations of animals worldwide. Changes in the abundance and age structure of populations have also been observed, with widespread evidence of range expansion in warm-adapted species and range contraction in cold-adapted species. As a by-product of species redistributions, novel community interactions have emerged. Tropical and boreal species are increasingly incorporated into temperate and polar communities, respectively, and when possible, lowland species are increasingly assimilating into mountain communities. Multiplicative impacts from gene to community levels scale up to produce ecological regime shifts, in which one ecosystem state shifts to an alternative state…

The many observed impacts of climate change at different levels of biological organization point toward an increasingly unpredictable future for humans. Reduced genetic diversity in crops, inconsistent crop yields, decreased productivity in fisheries from reduced body size, and decreased fruit yields from fewer winter chill events threaten food security. Changes in the distribution of disease vectors alongside the emergence of novel pathogens and pests are a direct threat to human health as well as to crops, timber, and livestock resources. Humanity depends on intact, functioning ecosystems for a range of goods and services. Enhanced understanding of the observed impacts of climate change on core ecological processes is an essential first step to adapting to them and mitigating their influence on biodiversity and ecosystem service provision.

As smug as we are about the advanced state of our civilization, this planet still gives us an enormous amount for free, and we simply can’t afford to replace all the free goods and services with our own effort and technology. I continue to hear alarm bells sounding from many different quarters on one particular issue – food.

climate change and agriculture

1 Reply

This section of the World Economic Forum’s 2016 Global Risk Report explains in a fair amount of detail how climate change is likely to cause food shortages.

The risk to food security is especially great because agriculture is already straining to meet a rapidly growing demand from a finite resource base. The combined impact of a rising population and growth of the middle class – wealthier people eat more cereal-intensive meat – is set to drive a demand increase of 60% by 2050.3Yet the global average yield growth for cereals has slowed in recent years; it already lags behind demand growth. This gap cannot be covered by an expansion of cropland because of the need to protect forests and other areas of high value for conservation and carbon sequestration. Agriculture is increasingly competing with other uses for land – such as urbanization, transport, bioenergy, forestry and mining – and so crop production is pushed towards ever more marginal soils.4

Yet more worrying is the fierce competition for water, the lifeblood of agriculture. Water withdrawals have increased threefold over the last 50 years, and demand is anticipated to rise by a further 40% by 2030.5 With a shift in global production towards intensive systems that rely on groundwater resources for irrigation, along with the current growth in demand for water-intensive animal products, agriculture becomes even thirstier. At the same time, urbanization and industrialization in emerging and developing economies are also driving up demand for fresh water in energy production, mineral extraction, and domestic use, further stretching the already tight supply.6

Against this backdrop of tightening constraints, climate change seriously threatens food security in two ways. First, it will harm agricultural production: rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns will slow yield gains, contributing to higher food prices and an increasingly precarious supply-demand balance that will make markets more prone to volatility. Second, it will increasingly disrupt food systems: more extreme weather will destabilize tighter markets and exacerbate volatility, imperil transport infrastructure and trigger local food crises. As a result, the risks of humanitarian emergencies, national or regional instability and mass migration will increase. In the words of a former Executive Director of the World Food Programme, “without food, people have only three options. They riot, they emigrate, or they die.”7 The security implications will be felt by developing and developed countries alike.

In other words, the world might be in trouble on food even if climate change were not a factor. The combination of heat and drought that will be brought on by climate change will add to the risk, potentially destabilizing many populous areas of the world. The world’s response to climate change has been too little, too late, but at least there have been steps in the right direction the last few years. Being willfully ignorant of the risk and reversing the small progress we are making would be an evil, immoral thing to do.

RNA interference

Leave a reply

Monsanto is trying to use genetic technology to kill honeybee pests.

RNA can also “silence” specific genes, preventing an organism from using them to make proteins. In 1998 scientists discovered that they could engineer stretches of double-stranded RNA to do the same thing. As a lab technique, RNA interference—or RNAi—turned out to be useful for learning about genes by turning them off. It also showed promise in fighting viruses, cancers, and even harmful pests and parasites. The researchers at the seminar were talking about using RNAi to prevent mosquitoes from spreading malaria, but that gave Hayes another idea. “I thought, could this be adapted to honeybee predator control?” In other words: to kill mites…

Traditional pesticides act like chemical backhoes, killing their targets (beetles, weeds, viruses) but harming good things along the way (beneficial insects, birds, fish, humans). RNAi, in theory, works instead like a set of tweezers, plucking its victims with exquisite specificity by clicking into sequences of genetic code unique to that organism. “If you could design an ideal pesticide, this is the stuff you’re looking for,” says Pamela Bachman, a toxicologist at Monsanto.

 

meatless Monday, July 4

Leave a reply

Since I’m writing this on July 4, what the hell, I’ll write about burgers today. There is a sustainability connection after all because if more of us were vegetarians, our ecological footprint would be less, and as developing countries not only grow in population, but people shift to eating a lot more meat than they used to, the footprint can grow explosively. Certain traditional nomadic ways of life might get a pass, if they are grazing their animals on natural vegetation on lands that are not suitable for crops. Most of us don’t fall in this category. So, a blog called Meatless Monday provides us with a number of meatless “burger” recipes, plus ideas for grilling veggies. I’m determined to give some of these a shot.

I’m a hypocrite to some extent though – I admire vegetarians and I’ve reduced my meat consumption over the years, but I still like it and find it hard to imagine giving it up entirely. Certainly not eggs and cheese. I also have a policy that if someone cooks something for me, I eat it! If like me you like the idea of being vegetarian for environmental and ethical reasons (and environmental reasons are ethical reasons), but dang it you still like meat, I think the best way to think of it is as a treat – save it for holidays and special occasions, or give yourself a cheat meal once a week. Anyway, just to round out this post here are a few points/links about meat:

  • If you decide to indulge in a pork chop for that special occasion or cheat meal, it is okay to cook it medium rare. This article recounts the horrors of trichinosis, then says it is no longer an issue in the modern world. You should still cook ground meat thoroughly, however.
  • And finally, here are a bunch of recipes for various complicated, creative gourmet burgers.

January 2016 in Review

1 Reply

I’m going to try picking the three most frightening posts, three most hopeful posts, and three most interesting posts (that are not particularly frightening or hopeful) from January.

3 most frightening posts

  • Paul Ehrlich is still worried about population. 82% of scientists agree.
  • Thomas Picketty (paraphrased by J. Bradford Delong) says inequality and slow growth are the norm for a capitalist society. Joseph Stiglitz has some politically difficult solutions: “Far-reaching redistribution of income would help, as would deep reform of our financial system – not just to prevent it from imposing harm on the rest of us, but also to get banks and other financial institutions to do what they are supposed to do: match long-term savings to long-term investment needs.”
  • Meanwhile, government for and by big business means the “Deep State” is really in control of the U.S. In our big cities, the enormous and enormously dysfunctional police-court-prison system holds sway over the poor.

3 most hopeful posts

3 most interesting posts

  • There are some arguments in favor of genetically modified food – they have increased yields of some grains, and there is promise they could increase fish yields. 88% of scientists responding to a Pew survey said they think genetically modified food is safe, but only 37% of the U.S. public thinks so. In other biotech news, Obama’s State of the Union announced a new initiative to try to cure cancer. In other food news, red meat is out.
  • Not only is cash becoming obsolete, any physical form of payment at all may become obsolete.
  • The World Economic Forum focused on technology: “The possibilities of billions of people connected by mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge, are unlimited. And these possibilities will be multiplied by emerging technology breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing.”

 

what to eat?

Leave a reply

New U.S. government nutrition guidelines are out. And predictably, they are being criticized by nutritionists.

This year, for example, there were notable differences between the Advisory Committee’s recommendations and the final guidelines. According to scientific evidence, individuals should reduce their consumption of red and processed meats and sugar-sweetened beverages, such as soda, to prevent chronic diseases. The scientific evidence for those two recommendations is “so clear, so strong,” says Willett — yet neither recommendation was included in the final guidelines…

The final guidelines also don’t include the Advisory Committee’s emphasis on sustainability of the food supply, including the need to reduce portions of beef, cited as “the single food with the greatest projected impact on the environment.”

“This is virtual proof that the USDA is not allowed to say anything negative about red meat,” says Willett. “The basic censorship of the report from the Advisory Committee is deeply troublesome.”

The report from the advisory committee is not exactly censored. It’s here, readily accessible for people who know how to find stuff on the internet.

Paul Ehrlich

1 Reply

Paul Ehrlich is still worried about population.

To see why, let us suppose that, in 2050, the TAD [“tinker with agricultural details”] goals have all been reached. More food is available, thanks to higher agricultural yields and waste-reducing improvements in storage and distribution. Improved environmental policies mean that most of today’s forests are still standing and no-fishing zones are widely established and enforced. Ecosystems are becoming stronger, with many corals and plankton evolving to survive in warmer, more acidic water. Add an uptick in vegetarianism, and it appears that the global temperature rise could be limited to 3º Celsius.

As a result, the world could avoid famines by mid-century. But, in a human population of 9.7 billion, hunger and malnutrition would be proportionately the same as they are in today’s population of 7.3 billion. In other words, even with such an extraordinary and unlikely combination of accomplishments and good luck, our food-security predicament would still be with us.

The reason is simple: Our societies and economies are based on the flawed assumption that perpetual growth is possible on a finite planet. To ensure global food security – not to mention other fundamental human rights – for all, we need to recognize our limitations, in terms of both social and biophysical factors, and do whatever it takes to ensure that we do not exceed them.

November 2015 in Review

Leave a reply

What did I learn in November? Let’s start with the bad and then go to the good.

Negative stories (-10):

  • The World Economic Forum’s 2015 Global Risks Report came out. Some of the top risks are interstate conflict, water crisis, failure of climate change adaptation, unemployment and underemployment. Hmm, that “interstate conflict” items might be what we used to call “war”. And I think there might be one underway right now in the Middle East, which Jimmy Carter says we are getting all wrong. And it just might be caused by the other items on the list. And speaking of war, there is a new book on the Vietnam War aimed at the middle grades, but it seems pretty harsh for that age to me. (-2)
  • I noticed that Robert Costanza in 2014 issued an update to his seminal 1997 paper on ecosystem services. He now estimates their value at $125 trillion per year, compared to a world economy of $77 trillion per year. Each year we are using up about $4-20 trillion in value more than the Earth is able to replenish. The correct conclusion here is that we can’t live without ecosystem services any time soon with our current level of knowledge and wealth, and yet we are depleting the natural capital that produces them. We were all lucky enough to inherit an enormous trust fund of natural capital at birth, and we are spending it down like the spoiled trust fund babies we are. We are living it up, and we measure our wealth based on that lifestyle, but we don’t have a bank statement so we don’t actually know when that nest egg is going to run out. (-3)
  • This crop of presidential candidates is easy for comedians to make fun of. I enjoy it but think it may be a contrary indicator for the health of the country. (-1)
  • Bicycle helmets are not making U.S. bicycle riders any safer. This is why we need streets designed on the European model to be safe for driving, bicycling, and walking. It’s 100% known technology and there can be no excuses! (-2)
  • In current events, we had the awful, shocking terrorist attacks in Paris. I suggested that the long-term answer to violence caused by angry young men anywhere is to understand why they are angry, address their legitimate grievances, and give them productive work to do. Short term, we also have to detect and disrupt any plots involving nuclear or biological weapons, of course, because we can’t afford even one. (-2)

Positive stories (+9):

guns, germs, and porcines

Leave a reply

At last, here is a grand unified pork-centric theory of history.

Many people, for many different reasons, rejected pork in the ancient Near East. Largely arid, it was a land of sheep, goats, and cattle. Nomads didn’t keep pigs because they couldn’t herd them through the desert. Villages in very dry areas didn’t keep pigs because the animals needed a reliable source of water. Priests, rulers, and bureaucrats didn’t eat pork because they had access to sheep and goats from the state-focused central distributing system and considered pigs filthy. Pigs remained important in only one place: nonelite areas of cities, where they ate waste and served as a subsistence food supply for people living on the margins.

Later the Greeks and Romans were both huge fans of pork, which I didn’t know.