November 12, 2013 — There’s a powerful narrative being told about the world’s food system — in classrooms, boardrooms, foundations and the halls of government around the world. It’s everywhere. And it makes complete sense when you listen to it. The problem is, it’s mostly based on flawed assumptions.
You’ve probably heard it many times. While the exact phrasing varies, it usually goes something like this: The world’s population will grow to 9 billion by mid-century, putting substantial demands on the planet’s food supply. To meet these growing demands, we will need to grow almost twice as much food by 2050 as we do today. And that means we’ll need to use genetically modified crops and other advanced technologies to produce this additional food. It’s a race to feed the world, and we had better get started.
To be fair, there are grains of truth in each of these statements, but they are far from complete. And they give a distorted vision of the global food system, potentially leading to poor policy and investment choices.
To make better decisions, we need to examine where the narrative goes off the rails.
Changing Diets, Not Population Growth, is the Dominant Driver of Food Demand
While we often hear that population growth, and the need to feed 9 billion people by 2050, is the driving issue for agriculture in the coming decades, the math doesn’t add up.
There are more than 7 billion people on Earth today, and we’re expected (if current demographic trends continue unabated) to reach 9 billion by mid-century. Two billion more people in the next 40 years — that’s roughly a 28 percent increase. If those additional 2 billion people were to eat the average diet (which is actually unlikely, since most of these people will be added to the poorest regions of the world, where diets are very minimal) that would mean we need roughly 28 percent more food. It’s just simple math.
It’s crucial to note that we’re talking about the world’s choices, not a predetermined path. What we choose to do about population growth, and especially what we do about diets, will determine how much food the world ultimately needs.
So where does the “twice as much” idea come from? Mostly from assumptions about changing diets, not population growth alone.
In fact, ecologist David Tilman, a friend of mine, and his colleagues have shown that changes in diet will likely be the dominant driver of future food demand. The reason is simple: While population is projected to grow by 2 billion between now and 2050, there are about 3 to 4 billion people on Earth already who are getting richer — mainly in China, India and some other countries — and, if recent history is a guide, these richer people are expected to eat richer diets. That means 3 to 4 billion more people eating more meat, more dairy products, and other rich foods, putting tremendous pressure on the global food system.
Food Demand: We Have a Choice
According to Tilman and his colleagues, increasing wealth and projected increases in meat consumption could drive up global food demand much more than population growth alone. The researchers suggest that roughly one-third of future food demand increases may come from population growth, and roughly two-thirds may come from increasing wealth and richer diets. Of course, increasing reliance on crop-based biofuels would only add to the pressure.
But it’s crucial to note that we’re talking about the world’s choices, not a predetermined path. What we choose to do about population growth, and especially what we do about diets, will determine how much food the world ultimately needs. While there are powerful demographic and economic forces at work here — with a great deal of momentum behind them — the path is still ours to choose. Concerted efforts to reduce population growth, but more importantly to steer diets onto a more sustainable path, could dramatically reduce these projected demands. The script hasn’t been completely written yet.
People often confuse growing more crops with making more food available to the world. They’re not the same thing.
We could do much to ease the pressure on the global food system by looking first at transforming diets where they are already very rich, like North America and Europe. Shifting to less meat-intensive diets in these regions could have dramatic impacts on the food system. But just as important is to focus on the changing diets of newly affluent people — for example, new middle-class people in the cities of China, India, Indonesia and elsewhere. Will they continue to eat a mostly plant-based diet, with little waste, or will they move toward a meat-rich Western diet? In fact, what these people choose to eat in the coming decades will determine much of the future of the world’s food system.
Growing More Crops Is Not the Only Way to Get More Food on the Table
But no matter how much we can curb the growth in future food demand, we will need to grow more crops, right?
Yes, we probably will need to grow more crops, but not as much as this narrative suggests. That’s because people often confuse growing more crops with making more food available to the world. They’re not the same thing. What we really need to do is deliver more food and good nutrition to the world. And there is another way to deliver more food to the world besides simply growing more crops: Better use of the crops we already grow, making sure they create as much nutritious food as possible.
Sadly, we rarely hear about this option, and are instead told over and over again about ways to grow more crops. It reminds me of when some politicians have talked about energy policy in the past, and yelled “Drill, Baby, Drill!” I think we’re obsessed with a “Grow, Baby, Grow!” mentality in agriculture too. In this mindset, it’s all about supplying more — more energy, more crops, more whatever. What’s missing is how we can better use the resources we have today, through reducing waste and better managing our demands. Buying a bigger furnace for your house because it’s cold and drafty in the winter, without even checking if the windows are well sealed or if the attic and the walls are insulated, is shortsighted and misguided. The same is true in agriculture.
If we need more food on the table — and we very likely will — a sensible strategy would take a balanced approach, looking at supply side and demand side solutions. Why would we leave half of our potential solutions off the table?
Food waste alone takes roughly 30 to 40 percent of the world’s calories, but it rarely receives the attention is deserves. (While we can’t fully eliminate food waste, surely we can cut it substantially in the coming decades.) Meanwhile, the use of crops for animal feed (instead of for direct human consumption) can be extremely inefficient in feeding people. Furthermore, some key crops are increasingly being used for biofuels, at the expense of producing food. Altogether, this leaves tremendous opportunities to feed more people with the same level of crop production by shifting more of our animal agriculture to pastures and grass-fed operations, and moving biofuel production away from food crops. Basically, how we use crops matters as much as how many crops we grow.
My colleague Emily Cassidy recently made this point very clearly. She noted that the typical Midwestern farm could theoretically provide enough calories to feed about 15 people daily from each hectare of farmland. But there’s a catch: People would need to eat the corn and soybeans these farms grow directly, as part of a plant-based diet, with little food waste. What Cassidy found was that the actual Midwestern farm today provides only enough calories to feed roughly five people per day per hectare of farmland, mainly because the vast majority of the corn and soybeans are being used to make ethanol or to feed animals. Amazingly, feeding five people per day per hectare is comparable to the production of an average farm in Bangladesh today.
In other words, we grow a lot of crops, but it’s not translating to as much food. So we can deliver more food by rethinking how we use our crops — whether for plant-based diets, feeding animals to make meat and dairy products, or making biofuels — and by not wasting them. If we need more food on the table — and we very likely will — a sensible strategy would take a balanced approach, looking at supply side and demand side solutions. Why would we leave half of our potential solutions off the table?
GMOs and Other Advanced Technologies Aren’t Really Giving the World More Food
The final piece of the widespread food narrative is that we will need genetically modified organisms and other advanced technologies to feed a growing world.
I’m not so sure.
Before I begin, I am going to state for the record that I hold a neutral position on GMOs. From my read of the current scientific literature, I do not believe that GMOs pose an obvious health threat (although more research should be done on this), nor do they seem to pose any direct environmental threat. Most of the concerns I hear about genetically modified crops are mainly related to how they are used by large corporations in giant monocultures, which are experiencing herbicide-resistant weeds, declining pollinators and so on. But these seem to be mainly problems with vast monocultures, not GMOs per se. GMOs may, in fact, be able to reduce pesticide use and help farmers reduce soil tillage, leaving more organic matter and nutrients in the soil. Maybe GMOs can actually do some good, if used wisely. So I try to keep an open mind about them.
While future genetically modified crops could add other beneficial plant traits, which might help boost productivity in crucial crops, I think the best answers lie elsewhere.
But I am unsure whether GMOs are actually delivering substantially more food to the world. In fact, as far as I can tell, they aren’t. Why? Just consider how GMOs are used: Roughly 10 to 15 percent of the world’s cropland is growing GMOs today, mainly for five crops — feed corn, soybeans, cotton, canola and sugar beets. The vast majority of those crops are not feeding people directly, but rather are being used as animal feed, biofuel feedstock or fiber. Of this list, only canola and sugar beets are mainly “food” crops. Furthermore, the GMO traits currently being used today mainly give plants the ability to fight off insects (the so-called “Bt” trait) or to withstand herbicides (the so-called “Roundup Ready” trait). While reducing losses to insects and weeds is important in maintaining high crop yields, most farmers, especially in the U.S., simply switched one method of insect- and weed-control (e.g., more frequent tillage, a broader mix of herbicides and pesticides) with another. These GMOs haven’t made fundamental changes in plant growth or photosynthesis (that has not yet been done with GMOs in practice); they mainly traded one set of pest- and weed-control systems with another. These “turnkey” solutions for pests and weeds have made big farms more efficient, more profitable, and maybe offered some environmental benefits because of reduced tillage and chemical use. But large, sustained yield improvements have not been a major outcome, except for possibly cotton in India, where pest losses were quite severe and ongoing.
While future genetically modified crops could add other beneficial plant traits, which might help boost productivity in crucial crops, I think the best answers lie elsewhere.
Work in our lab, led by Nathan Mueller, has shown how focusing on improved soil nutrition and water availability is key to boosting crop yields around the world. Mueller’s research shows that in developing countries many places exhibit substantial “yield gaps” — the difference between the crop yields we see today, and the crop yields that are possible with improved farming practices — which can be largely closed by improving agronomic practices, such as adding organic matter, small doses of fertilizer (chemical or organic), and extra water (especially with efficient systems like drip irrigation). At this point, it’s hard for me to imagine how GMOs would dramatically help farmers in poor countries right now, where yield gaps are large, especially when yields are currently limited by the availability of soil nutrients and water.
The prevailing narrative about the global food supply needs to be replaced by a more accurate narrative that can better guide future investments and decisions.
Of course, GMOs and other advanced technology might be able to help in the quest for a food-secure world, especially if they are not primarily used in large monocultures of nonfood crops, but they are no silver bullet. Hopefully they can help. But in the near-term, I’m placing my bets on lower-technology approaches, targeted at small landholders, especially for improved soil and water management.
Shifting to a New Narrative
While the prevailing narrative about the global food supply is persuasive and sounds very logical, it is actually based on several wrong assumptions. It needs to be replaced by a more accurate narrative that can better guide future investments and decisions.
The new narrative might sound something like this: The world faces tremendous challenges to feeding a growing, richer world population — especially to doing so sustainably, without degrading our planet’s resources and the environment. To address these challenges, we will need to deliver more food to the world through a balanced mix of growing more food (while reducing the environmental impact of agricultural practices) and using the food we already have more effectively. Key strategies include reducing food waste, rethinking our diets and biofuel choices, curbing population growth, and growing more food at the base of the agricultural pyramid with low-tech agronomic innovations. Only through a balanced approach of supply-side and demand-side solutions can we address this difficult challenge.
These are big challenges, and there are no simple solutions. As a first step, though, we at least need to be sure that we get the story about the food system straight. After all, if we’re not even starting at the right place, we certainly will not end up at the right destination. 
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For those looking for an even more radical re-framing of the global food discourse, you may be interested in a very recent article by Jahi Chappell and colleagues, available here:
http://f1000research.com/articles/2-235/v1
This ridiculous GM debate would end immediately if we all recognized for what GM actually is: just another breeding tool, no more risky for health or the environment than the others. Leave the choice of breeding tools to the breeders, and move on to deal with more important questions.
A more important question, which you touch upon, is where to invest our scarce resources. Should we invest in population control measures, shifting diets, education, infrastructure, health, and/or agricultural development? It boils down to the question: Given that our goal is to do as much good in the world as possible, where can we get the greatest bang for the buck? This is a central question that deserves far too little attention in public debates. Economists have been trying to come up with answers and a laudable effort has been made by Bjorn Lomborg to compile and popularize them. According to Lomborgs 2013 book "How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place?", the single most important investment would be to step up the fight against malnutrition (micronutrient provision, complementary foods, treatment for worms and diarrheal diseases, and behavior-change programs). Every dollar spent on malnutrition would do $59 worth of global good. Other high-ranking investments are malaria prevention and research and development to increase agricultural output. Within the agricultural domain, this focus on R&D (as opposed to subsidies to push existing technologies or practices) blends well with other research I've seen in this area.
If you or anyone wants to make a different proposal regarding our investment priorities, you'll have to crunch some numbers. Consider interventions to reduce food waste or meat consumption, calculate their costs and benefits, then compare the rate of return to other interventions or investments. Merely stating that no solutions should be left off the table, but at the same time placing your bets on "lower-technology approaches" (which presumably excludes GM crops) is not convincing to me.
Earlier in your piece, however, you seem to say that population growth is not a primary cause of problems, and that supply-side increases are not a primary driver of progress. So while I'd agree these items need to stay on the table, placing them on approximately equal footing--"balanced approach" implies though does not state a 50/50 split in focus--seems inapt. If diets are a major driver, and changing them a major challenge, it would seem they should get the most attention. If lack of access to food is the main cause of hunger (which it is), and not lack of supply, it would seem addressing effective demand and access policies should occupy most of our time. Why apply the rhetoric of "balance" when the opportunities from these different levers are not equivalent? Smith and Haddad's classic study, for example, found that increases in women's education to parity had 4X the hunger reduction potential of increases in productivity to minimum optimum levels. There are also many knock-on benefits to education. So why isn't the right "balance" a much heavier focus on education in comparison to production?
Irrigation would make the biggest difference, as you'd need only one third of the acreage for the same production. I have this vision where we would pump and desalinate ocean water to make fresh water for irrigation, at least near the coasts. (And salt and nigari and gypsum and maybe "mine" rare earths and metals from ocean water too.)
I don't agree with the "lower technology" approach. My experience with organic farming shows that this is a very innovative sector, also leading in the understanding of the soil and plant and pest biology. But organic farming is plagued by a costly need of workforce to perform ungratifying and unhealthy tasks such as constant weeding. Mechanical or even better, roboticized weeding or harvesting automation will need to be part of the equation. It might even come from conventional farming, for which mechanical weeding is the only way to prevent "superweeds" to develop tolerance or resistance or even, as seen in some weeds, dependency on chemical herbicides. I know it sounds taboo, but I would not even exclude genetic engineering from organic farming. Just because GE has been pushed by companies such as Monsanto in horrible ways, it does not mean that it has to be so. There is nothing wrong with the GE technique itself, only with the kind of GMOs that have been produced so far, like pushing the farmer into a contract to buy Monsanto's Roundup, or having plants produce the Bt toxin in every cell 24/7. There are also different types of GMOs, like cisgenic or transgenic, it's not possible to hold a single generalized opinion about GMOs, each is a special case. Conventional selection requires cross-pollinating 2 cultivars, then regressing the unwanted traits of one cultivar to keep only the one you want. This process takes years and years, even more for tree crops that have a longer cycle. Cisgenic engineering could add a stem rust resistance trait from one wheat cultivar to another in just one year, and it would add only this one trait. Stem rust is currently plaguing African (and Australian partly) wheat, and is expected to be even more devastating in the next years if nothing is done. GE is not the only way to fight stem rust, but it sure is cheap and effective and environmentally or medically risk-free. Same thing for the citrus disease in Florida for which there is no current cure but GE hope. I'll give t you that GMOs have certainly done nothing to "feed the world", these biotech companies should be sued for false advertizing! ;)
Another way to develop production is indoors: Chicago has been converting some of its abandoned factories (lots of them, now that corporations outsource all jobs to China) into hydroponic plants (in both senses of the word). This basically means that you multiply the acreage by 5 instantly if you have several bunk trays on top of each other, growing small plants like salad or radishes, each tray with its own LED lighting system and irrigation/fertilization. Not just the acreage either: The yield is also increased since you can rotate more crops. Radishes that grow in 30 days will for instance yield 60 times more (12 x 5) with 5 superposed trays than normal ground land. It also means that these very perishable foods can now be grown just next door to a market, and help reduce the food waste mentioned in the article. Aquaponics is also developing: Basically it is integrated hydroponics and fish farming, where the fish feces and feed waste are used to fertilize the crop. I'd much prefer using real trays of soil to grow my tasty lamb's lettuce or roquette/arrugula, but that's my organic background speaking.
Also, if Minecraft ever taught me anything, it is that the underground is also an option to expand the acreage. A costly one, so I don't see it happening before decades when we have cheap excavating machines, but maybe in the mean time, natural caves can be used for more than just cheese aging or mushroom growing or doing nothing. There are some high value crops that can justify the digging expanse even now. Still, it's only science-fiction for now, but I have no doubt that it will happen.
Mike Childs, Friends of the Earth, UK
Mainstream economists and politicians tend to suppress the facts that the lack of food entitlement is the main cause of hunger, and that the proper distribution is more important than food production. They should cleanse their brains of the supply-side argument and educate themselves in the political economy of food distribution. Jonathan's article is a good primer for them.
The reason that farmed animals are kept in extremely tight enclosures and fed those crops instead of grass is that it is a more efficient use of land space.
Switching to pasturing would require dramatically more square hectares of land to produce the same meat (and it would also release more greenhouse gasses).
So the far better solution is to simply eat lower on the food chain. The more vegetarian each person can become, the better for the planet.
Check out what Bill Mollison, David Holmgren & Geoff Lawton(his youtube videos on Greening the Desert & Designing a Food Forest are great) just as a starting point.
I am in connection with thousands of people worldwide who are practicing this, both in cities, towns and rural areas.
I like many others am being the change I wish to see rather than pointing fingers around to find blames, excuses & reasons.
One point I have to add:
Since this is an issue, we ask: How can we feed the world. This narrowed our concepts.
We should ask: How can the people of the world feed themselves?
This widens the perspektive and includes everybody in taking part.
Scarcity = better prices. Fewer skilled farmers as they are reamed out of existence. Fewer home gardens as seed supplies and laws tighten. Why produce more? It is a model we won't prefer as it unfolds.
As an observer of all kinds of biology and conditioning it is always interesting what humans will do to each other, and what they will take lying down.
One big ethical challenge for me is this: who are we to say to those 3-4 billion wanting a richer diet that they should watch what they eat – especially when we are not changing our diet ourselves first? And I don’t mean as individuals, but on a large scale. This is different from the idea that “they” shouldn’t make the same mistakes we made and install solar panels rather than power generator running on fossil fuel – that is actually feasible at similar cost (and much lower cost in the mid- and long term). This is about their daily bread. Or meat. So we need to change our own habits first, and fast, but at the same time invest in programmes from education to cultivation to distribution that result in more efficient use of land and food where it is needed.
Your point about food waste is valid and vital. But even if we learn not to throw half our food away, because we bought too much or because it doesn’t look nice and shiny any more: how can that help the poor and starving thousands of miles away? As you write, the average hectare of arable land in Bangladesh feeds five people. How is changing the output on a farm in the Midwest to feed fifteen going to change that? I’m not saying it can’t, I’m saying this needs re-structuring of production and distribution on a massive scale (on top of changing millions of mind-sets).
A huge challenge that isn’t getting nearly enough attention. Thank you for this article. We need to push this discussion.
Just for a moment, let us imagine that now we have all the greatest population experts speaking with one voice. They tell us that we are headed rapidly for 8 billion people on the surface of Earth, declining TFRs in many western European countries notwithstanding. When that number is reached in the foreseeable future, we will have too much food, too little water and clean air, and no decent environment to speak of. Pollution will be visible to all, everywhere. In the meantime many species of birds and wildlife will go extinct because of the destruction of their habitat from land clearance to grow more food to support an exploding human population. What is happening is made evident. Why this situation is occurring with a vengeance of our watch is avoided at all cost. All this is good, they say.
All these top rank population experts, inside and outside the scientific community, then go on to say that in order to have more and more happy people we need more and more people who can be counted upon to increase the depletion and degradation that will rapidly subtract from the source of that happiness, our planetary home, until such time as Earth is no longer able to function as a source of happiness. More importantly, because we self-proclaimed experts are 'free to know' and then speak of what is determined by the powers that be to be best for the rest of us to know, some scientific research can be and will be denied. While these experts do not lie, they deliberately refuse to give voice to the whole of what is true to them, according to the lights and knowledge they possess. By their conscious silence, these experts will ensure that the unsustainable growth of the human species, the reckless depletion of resources and the irreversible degradation of ecology of the planet happens as soon and efficiently as possible. All this is good, they say, because we are making things better.
What remains is to change our lifestyle and agricultural practices in order to reduce the impact of current and future populations on the planet.
In addition to the permaculture sources indicated above, see Daren Doherty's presentation on permacuture and carbon farming at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDMg6W95-2s&list=PLB952DE4EFCBB3256
The experiment led me to ask whether and how more locally grown food can help "feed the world."
I realized it is a false question. First, "feeding the world" isn't what rich nations do for poor ones. If you ask, how can the people of the world feed themselves well, you see that industrial scale agriculture - and deeper, financial mechanisms that allow the wealthy to bid up food and to buy out farms, have contributed to impoverishing former subsistence farming communities and driving people off their land - is part of why people can no long feed themselves locally.
Being practical, i ask, "what can we do?"
Some of the suggestions are already popular.
Encouraging lower on the food chain diets has been on the agenda for a long time. My ethic is meat as a treat, not as a meal. And also, locally produced meat.
Food rescue - putting the 30% wasted back into the nutrition stream - is underway. Progress is being made through feeding programs and policy change. My ethic is that all food that ends up in my community - wherever it is from - is local and should be fully utilized through families, schools, food banks, skillful cooking with leftovers and at least compost.
Which brings me back to "local food" as an important part of the new narratives. We need to ask, how much of what we eat in our communities can be sourced locally. Why? Food security - a redundancy system for the global supply chain. Food sovereignty - feeding ourselves is a foundation of freedom. Nutrition - fresher and possibly grown in better soil. Imagination - releasing ourselves from the assumption that we need the global corporate industrial food system to feed the world, that without it we'd all starve. Asking "what percentage of what we eat can be sourced locally (within at least 500 miles) opens a powerful conversation, and a focus on your communities assets, throughput, underutilized resources - in other words, you think like a designer and as a member of a real community. More on my blog at http://vickirobin.com
-- part of the last paragraph of the Colbert article:
...In most of Europe and also in the U.S., social-welfare systems were put in place at a time of rapid, Haber-Bosch-fuelled population growth. The programs were structured around the assumption that there would always be more young people paying for benefits than there would be old people receiving them. ... Thus the systems depend on endless population growth, but endless population growth is probably not possible and certainly not desirable. This double bind is distressing to contemplate, but, as Malthus advised his unhappy readers, “The most baleful mischiefs may be expected from the unmanly conduct of not daring to face truth because it is unpleasing.”
Denial wears many faces. Whether it's average people who are too busy with their lives to take on board the more extreme reports of environmental degradation; bloggers and politicians who believe that it's all a hoax cooked up by evil scientists to get grant money for bogus studies; or, perhaps surprisingly, the green activists who believe that more political or technological change will improve or even fix the situation - these are common techniques we use to avoid confronting the horror of global collapse face-to-face.
We are all familiar with the face of climate change denial. The Koch brothers, James Inhofe, Anthony Watts and a host of bloggers and politicians work tirelessly to derail any efforts to address humanity's greatest existential crisis since the Toba super-volcano 75,000 years ago. They are a resilient species, their fact-resistance bolstered by inoculations of status and cash.
But this form of denial is easy to spot. There is a more subtle form, one that is endemic among the white hats of the green movement. They are the ones who tirelessly work from the moral high ground - to change policies, to develop and promote green technology, to encourage sustainability. They resolutely refuse to countenance any thoughts of our predicament being inextricable. Tireless work, even in a lost cause, tends to keep one insulated from the deeper, darker realizations, and lets one keep fighting the good fight. Heroism has always been an intrinsic part of our story: "Quitters never win and winners never quit!"
Is it unfair to characterize (at least some) green activists as being (at least somewhat) in denial? Possibly. But it's true far more often than you might expect.
I have no idea if we're facing "the end of the world", whatever that hackneyed phrase might mean. However the big picture that most green activists, including the Transition folks and most Permaculturists I've met, fail to take on board includes some very simple, very stark facts: the entire planetary biosphere is collapsing, including the oceans, rivers, lakes and land; we are going to break the 2C degree "safe" threshold (which wasn never safe to begin with) within a couple of decades even with our best efforts (which we're not giving); we will break 4C and possibly 6C with BAU; the agricultural systems of the world are destabilizing before our eyes due to extreme weather; methane feedbacks may have already begun; the world's populations of human beings and their food animals are exploding while the world's population of wild creatures is imploding; the bees and bats are dying; starfish are melting; sea turtles are dying on the beaches; the Eastern Cougar, the Western Black Rhino, the Japanese River Otter and the Formosan Clouded Leopard have all been declared extinct in the last year.
It looks a whole lot like the global life-support system is coming apart at the seams, and we are doing what we've always done: precisely nothing.
This is not a situation that Transition Initiatives or Permaculture or Appropriate Technology can ameliorate, because it looks to me like we're headed for world-wide economic breakdown, social breakdown, dieoff - and eventually human extinction. How eventually is still an estimate, but a safe bet is sooner rather than later.
This is what I mean by inevitable, no exit. Not boom we all fall down. Not with a bang, but with a series of low, pitiful, drawn out whimpers from every living/dying organism on the planet. Anyone who can say, in the face of this evidence, that all of us have a moral responsibility to "work tirelessly to make things better" is the victim of a blindness so deep that it can only come right up from our DNA.
Now, those activists who do get it, and prefer to do this sort of work because it's what humans do and we should all leave a small space for a miracle in our Flowcharts of Doom, well they have my complete empathy. So do those who simply say, "You know, I think I'll just take a walk and look at the sky." But the moment the word "sustainability" crosses someone's lips, it's like they lit up a a big neon sign that says, "I'm blind. Please follow me!"
I've been asked why I am so deeply pessimistic and hostile towards the systems of civilization. Call it the anger of trust betrayed.
Growing up, I was taught that the world worked in a particular way: that governments were of the people, for the people; that humans were conscious, rational creatures; that policy was guided by sound science; that human beings learned from their mistakes; that the future would be better than the past.
Now in my 60's I discover that absolutely none of it is true. Governments are of the rich, for the rich; human beings are largely unconscious and most of our decisions spring from emotion rather than reason; policy is guided by greed for wealth and lust for power; most people want today to be about the same as yesterday, mistakes and all; and the future looks not just dim but bleak.
And I'm supposed to keep sucking on the hopium pipe so I don't make the sleepwalkers feel uncomfortable? I don't think so.
The few people who were awake to the knowledge of decline did what they could. Their efforts speak for themselves, and I doubt they will will feel trivialized by my outrage. But damn few environmentalists connected the dots to see where the curve was really heading, and virtually everyone has operated from the horrifyingly mistaken idea that human nature is based on rational thought.
I've been accused of falling into the doomer trap of believing the failed predictions of men like Paul Ehrlich. Let's talk about failed predictions. I distinctly remember being promised flying cars and electricity too cheap to meter. Instead we got Macondo and Fukushima.
When Ehrlich wrote his famous , and famously reviled, book The Population Bomb just before Limits to Growth was published, the world population was about 3.5 billion. Today it's double that and growing by 75 million a year. We have managed to materialize one of Norman Borlaug's worst nightmares:
"Most people still fail to comprehend the magnitude and menace of the 'Population Monster' ... If it continues to increase at the estimated present rate of two percent a year, the world population will reach 6.5 billion by the year 2000. Currently, with each second, or tick of the clock, about 2.2 additional people are added to the world population. The rhythm of increase will accelerate to 2.7, 3.3, and 4.0 for each tick of the clock by 1980, 1990, and 2000, respectively, unless man becomes more realistic and preoccupied about this impending doom. The tick-tock of the clock will continually grow louder and more menacing each decade. Where will it all end?"
~Norman Borlaug's Nobel Prize lecture, 1970
And how did Dr. Borlaug's 30-year prediction hold up? Well, by 2000 we were at 6.1 billion people (about 6% short of his estimate) and we were increasing by 2.5 people a second. I don't think we can count that as any kind of a victory over the evil Dr. Ehrlich.
I usually do my best to stay "doomy but not gloomy". I can generally maintain a semblance of emotional equilibrium by taking refuge in the non-attachment of Buddhist and Advaita teachings. Despite my clear recognition of the predicament, that approach can can cause equal consternation among the denialistas of the engaged environmental movement. At other times the news all gets to be too much, and I get f'ing pissed off. This seems to be one of those times.
Paul Chefurka, November 14, 2013
meat actually has some nutritional value
and cattle has environmental value
but grains = virtually worthless
I'm sorry but that would devastate the planetary ecosystem. The reason that humans now eat more grains and legumes is that as our populations and hunting prowess grew they exceeded the ability of wild lands to support hunting or even grazing. The square footage required dwarfs that required by modern plant food based agriculture.
It takes -far- less land, water, energy and inputs to grow a plant based diet.
And though grazing can be done without much in the way of inputs and energy, it takes -vastly- more land space to accommodate grazing. It simply isn't scalable to a planet with 7 to 9 billion people, and we would need at least 3 additional planets Earth to make it work.
Our population and the power of our technologies now demand of us that we make a dramatic shift to eat much lower on the food chain.
Permaculture, multi-tiered, perennial agriculture based on plant foods and tree foods is the answer.
The only arena where grazing makes sense is in carbon farming, and we should allow wild animals to perform that grazing function so that we are saving endangered grazing species, and so that their energy and nutrients are returned to the wild through natural death and predation (which, in turn, would save many other endangered species).
i said stop wasting the energy on grains
meat actually has some nutritional value
and cattle has environmental value
but grains = virtually worthless"
Yes, meat has nutritional value, but grain has just as good a value, plus more health value to boot, plus much more environmental value. Even between the different types of meat, there are huge variations: It takes just over a pound of vegetal protein to build a pound of farmed fish, two pounds for chicken, three for pig, five for cow. Some meats are obviously worse than others on several aspects.
Why do you think 3 billion people feed mostly on rice? Because meat is cheaper and easier to raise and grain is a waste to grow?
Generalizing one way or the other (vegan or carnivore) is just uninformed extremism, and disrespectful for farmers who have been feeding humanity both plants (including grain) and livestock for thousands of years.
I love meat, but I appreciate it much more as an occasional treat than as a three-time daily food. There is also much more variety and flavors and by-products and ways to prepare grains than you seem to be aware of. To take just wheat, refining produces wheat germs and bran to add to salads or soups or as a topping to dishes, wheat germ makes a fine oil too, white flour can be rinsed to wash away the starch and leave only the gluten strands, also known as mock duck or seitan, which makes delicious protein chunks in soups or dishes, or can be sliced into vegan gyro for sandwiches. Wheat grown for bread has over 12% proteins, it is great stuff.
again
please READ
"i didn't say not to grow or eat plants
i said stop wasting the energy on GRAINS"
people don't eat grains because it's nutritious or environmentally sound
they eat grains because of cultural tradition
we could grow foods much higher in nutritional content
Or what kind of "waste" do you mean by "wasting the energy on grain", and what kind of food do you have in mind that could replace grain when you say "higher in nutritional content"? You did say "meat has nutritional value" in your first post, you don't mention anything about non-animal food, and there is no vegetal farm-raised food that has a higher nutritional content than grain. Sorry if I seem to have picked on you, but you later comments don't make it any clearer. If not meat, do you mean other plants or processed food?
Same as for meat, I don't think grain should be taken away from our diet. It does provide the best bang for the buck in term of energy (starch, proteins, oil for some pulse such as soybean). Vegetables provide different types of nutrients, such as more vitamins, but that's no reason to exclude grain, or I don't see any advantage in replacing, say wheat, with potatoes entirely. The best nutrition comes from a diverse diet, and whole grain have a lot to offer.
i'm arguing against grain
and unless you want the whole planet to turn into a desert, we need ruminant animals grazing, shitting and peeing
and in certain parts of the world, meat might be the only food option
my suggestion is instead of grains, grow vegetables with much more substantial nutritional value
grains = primarily filler
and stop feeding them to animals that shouldn't be eating them just to fatten them up
Grains are a key source of myriad nutrients including protein.
When one eats lower on the food chain it is actually vital to eat grains combined with legumes to get complete protein. Other plant crops do not fill that role.
We need to eat as low on the food chain as possible, and that includes grains.
Again, there is not enough land on the planet for people to eat only grass fed animal products and non-grain vegetables.
On the subject of deserts, the -best- way to create deserts is widespread grazing of meat and dairy animals.
You are arguing against grains and in favor of meat when meat has far more negative impacts than grains.
I have developed similar observations in my two books, Future Harvests (Aug 2010) and We Will Reap What We Sow (May 2012) However, identifying the possibilities is only the easiest part of the story. The true challenge is about having a leadership that has the courage to change our "bad" habits and that will create the proper incentives to do it right. We are not there yet. And let's not forget that we have the leaders that we deserve. So, it is everybody's responsibility to induce that change.
We are talking about saving the planet and civilization here.
If we don't -all- act dramatically and immediately human civilization and almost all life on earth is literally toast. And the responsibility to act clearly includes India and China.
The only time calling on China and India to do more is bogus is when climate criminal countries like The U.S. and Canada point at China and India as an excuse not to take action themselves.
Yet historically crops have long served these functions beyond food for humans.
For example, until the 1930's, a significant portion of each farmer's land in the USA was dedicated to feed or forage for draft animals--is this not equivalent to growing crops for fuel?
If we shift from fiber crops such as cotton to food crops such as sweet corn, where will our textiles come from? Petroleum? Sheep?
Shifting away from beef & pork is sensible; but it's also hard to argue against the benefits of finishing range-fed cattle with grain feed.
Finally, for farmers who are seeking to make a living for themselves and their families, these multiple uses for crops lead to higher demand and therefore higher prices and thereby the potential for higher income. This point is not directly addressed in this essay.
Our reality is that the planet is in a deep ecological crisis and we need to dramatically lower our impact by drastically reducing our incredibly wasteful use of animals (and the huge excesses of land and resources required to support them) for needs that can instead be met through plants.
Extant scientific research regarding the population dynamics of Homo sapiens has to be openly acknowledged, objectively examined and honestly reported. Population scientists and ecologists have been shown to be as vulnerable to denial of apparently unforeseen and unfortunately unwelcome scientific evidence as well as to capitulation to the entreaties of all who choose favorable unscientific research to be spread by the mass media without meaningful objection from many too many members of the scientific community. It is a deliberate breach of responsibility to science and humanity for population scientists and ecologists not to object to the spreading of false knowledge and thereby, to fail in the performance of the fundamental duty of disclosing what could somehow be real and true about Homo sapiens and the workings of the existential world we inhabit, according to the best available scientific research.
Let us recognize the willful denial of the ecological science of human population dynamics. Where are the population scientists and ecologists who are ready, willing and able to attest to or refute empirical evidence that human population dynamics is essentially similar to, not different from, the population dynamics of other species; that human population numbers appear as a function of food supply; that more food for human consumption equals more people, less available food to consume equals less people and no food equals no people? No exceptions! Are these scientists blind, deaf and electively mute in the face of new scientific knowledge. Most reprehensibly, their refusal to accept responsibilities and perform duties as scientists has made it possible for pseudoscientists to fill the mainstream media with false knowledge about the way the world we inhabit works as well as about the placement of the human species within the natural order of living things.
Is it not science, and science alone, that most accurately allows us to confirm our perceptions as objective correlates of reality and truth? Without science, thought leaders and power brokers in cultures everywhere are free to widely transmit attractive ideas at will, regardless of the extent to which the ideas bear a meaningful relationship to what could be real and true. For example, a preternatural factoid like “food must be produced in order to meet the needs of a growing population” is deceitfully given credence as a scientific idea although it reflects the opposite of the actual relationship between food supply and human numbers. Findings from science indicate population numbers are the dependent variable and food the independent variable, just like the population dynamics of other species. By increasing the food supply, we are in fact growing the human population, are we not?
The idea that human exceptionalism applies to the population dynamics of Homo sapiens, that human population dynamics is different from (not essentially similar to) the population dynamics of other species, is a pseudoscientific factoid, bereft of an adequate foundation in science. Overwhelming scientific research regarding the human population indicates that human population numbers appear as a function of food supply. For many this scientific idea is on the one hand irrefutable and on the other hand unbelievable. So completely are many too many professionals enthralled by the notion of human exceptionalism. Exploding human numbers in the past 200 years are the natural result of the dramatically increasing production and distribution capabilities of food for human consumption that occurred with the onset of the Industrial Revolution and later on during the Green Revolution.
Please consider that demographers and economists are not scientists. They are presenting false knowledge that is appealing because it presents what all of us wish to believe about the way the world in which we live works as well as about the exceptional nature of the human species. Human beings are mistakenly believed to be outside (not within) the natural order of living things. The false knowledge regarding human species’ exceptionalism with regard to its population dynamics is determined de facto by whatsoever is politically convenient, economically expedient, socially desirable, religiously acceptable and culturally syntonic. Such de facto determinations of what is real about human nature and the existential world are based primarily upon ideology, not science.
Refuse to be duped by clever, absurdly enriched vendors of words and highly educated sycophants. These ‘talking heads’ duplicitously claim they are scientists and then promulgate preternatural ideas and pseudoscientific theories that are passed off as well-established results of scientific research without objection from scientists.
Let us examine the false knowledge from conventional, Neoclassical Cornucopian Economics and the Demographic Transition Theory. These theoretical perspectives are not connected to the foundation of science. The speciousness of what is presented by demographers and economists and then broadcast ubiquitously by the mainstream media is in need of correction by scientists. Ideas of endless resources availability in a finite world and an indestructible ecology that is in fact frangible are fabricated. Automatic population stabilization; a benign end to population growth soon; a glorious world by 2050 when the entire human community will reap the benefits you and I enjoy now because everyone in the human community will have entered the fourth and last stage of the demographic transition, all of these notions are fanciful and ideologically-driven. Such false knowledge as we find in the pseudoscientific disciplines of economics and demography needs to be eschewed. The best available scientific evidence must to be our guide because science stands alone as the best method by far for apprehending what could be real and true. Science needs to be categorically distinguished from all that is not science. Then, perhaps, we will be able to see more clearly how the existential world we inhabit actually works and more accurately perceive the placement of Homo sapiens within the natural order of all living things.
The imprimatur of science has been not so surreptitiously usurped by pseudoscientific disciplines in which professional research is primarily underwritten by wealthy power brokers and corporations. Economic and demographic research is designed and the findings presented so as to comport with the transparent self interests of the rich and powerful. Where are the scientists who will speak out to correct such widespread misunderstanding and reckless wrongdoing? The conscious silence of scientists serves to give consent to ubiquitous unethical professional behavior that cannot be tolerated any longer because of the confusion it engenders among those in the human community who are rightly seeking an intellectually honest understanding of the global predicament we face and a path to a sustainable future that can only be derived from the best available scientific research. The disciplines of demography and economics are prime examples of what science is not. Perhaps the findings of demographic and economics research will soon be widely recognized and consensually validated as preternatural pseudoscience.
“Speak out as if you were a million voices. It is silence that kills the world.” — St. Catherine of Siena, 1347-1380