*[Enwl-eng] How to stop a climate famine
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Thu Oct 19 19:52:15 MSK 2023
the prospect of fertiliser-free farming
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Food shortages stemming from extreme weather caused by climate change
could provoke civil unrest in the UK within 50 years according to a survey
of 58 leading experts.
"Shortages of staple carbohydrates like wheat, bread, pasta and cereal
appear to be the most likely triggers of such unrest," say Sarah Bridle
(University of York) and Aled Jones (Anglia Ruskin University) who led the
research.
Scientific innovation, in the form of new crop varieties and
chemicals, has been credited with averting food shortages in the past. Could
something similar save us today?
You're reading the Imagine newsletter – a weekly synthesis of academic
insight on solutions to climate change, brought to you by The Conversation.
I'm Jack Marley, energy and environment editor. This week, we're discussing
the precariousness of food production on an overheating planet.
At the end of the 1960s, experts who studied international development
warned that growing populations in drought-prone countries like India faced
starvation in the following decade. Mercifully, "the population bomb"
predicted by US biologist Paul R. Ehrlich and others never materialised.
The supposed saviour was the "Green Revolution": the introduction of
new varieties and high fertiliser doses which brought record Indian wheat
harvests from 1968.
Today, the problem of feeding a growing world population is made more
urgent by mounting floods, heatwaves and droughts. To guarantee yields in an
increasingly erratic climate, some organisations have suggested a second
green revolution, this time centred on sub-Saharan Africa where the first
one had little influence.
Glenn Davis Stone, a research professor of environmental science at
Sweet Briar College, is sceptical.
"The Green Revolution does hold lessons for food production today," he
says. "But not the ones that are commonly heard."
Stone argues that the Green Revolution did not prevent a food crisis
in India. The Indian government paid farmers more money to grow wheat and so
they planted more of it.
While wheat production sped up, the cultivation of rice, maize and
pulses slowed down, and net food production increased at about the same rate
as before. Grain production actually became less predictable over time, and
India resumed importing food by the mid-1970s.
Nor did miracle seeds pioneered by Rockefeller Foundation biologist
Norman Borlaug produce more productive crops, he says. New varieties of
wheat offered by the US simply responded more vigorously to chemical
fertilisers – a commodity which India made very little of.
The result was Indian farmers becoming dramatically more dependent on
foreign chemical companies.
"According to data from Indian economic and agricultural
organisations, on the eve of the Green Revolution in 1965, Indian farmers
needed 17 pounds (8 kilograms) of fertiliser to grow an average ton of food.
By 1980, it took 96 pounds (44 kilograms)," says Stone.
"So, India replaced imports of wheat, which were virtually free food
aid, with imports of fossil fuel-based fertiliser, paid for with precious
international currency."
Fossil-fuelled food
Not only is agriculture a hostage to global heating, it's also a big
contributor to it. A study published in 2020 warned that greenhouse gas
emissions from the global food system alone threaten to raise Earth's
temperature 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average.
Fertiliser factories emit these gases by burning fossil fuels, and
their products continue to heat the atmosphere when they are spread on farm
fields. In New Zealand, where half of all emissions come from agriculture,
dairy farmers have managed to raise yields by using more fertiliser. But
this has come at an ultimate cost to their profit margins, not to mention
the climate.
"The reason why there hasn’t been more progress may be in part because
farmers are 'locked in' to the current systems through what economists call
path dependency," say Wanglin Ma, Alan Renwick and Kathryn Blackman
Bicknell, agricultural economists at Lincoln University, New Zealand.
"Investments have been made in both human and physical capital, and
for many farms, debts have to be serviced."
Stone's revised history of the Green Revolution is a warning about the
consequences of making food producers reliant on remote, profit-seeking
industries to maintain crop yields. That's relevant today, as farmers are
faced with having to transform their operations to limit climate change.
"[Food] supply chains – from providing ingredients, to processing and
retailing – are mainly controlled by a handful of large companies," says
Albert Boaitey, a lecturer in agriculture and economics at Newcastle
University. "In the US, Walmart holds a quarter of the grocery market share,
while Tesco commands 27% of the UK’s food retail sector."
When multinational corporations like these devise measures to
decarbonise the supply networks that deliver food to their supermarkets,
they pass down obligations that smaller and poorer producers may struggle to
fulfil, Boaitey says.
For instance, selective breeding of cattle could produce herds which
eat less feed and so produce less greenhouse gas.
"Still, a modelling study my colleagues and I conducted in 2016, found
that farmers are unlikely to adopt this practice if beef processors –
primarily large companies downstream in the supply chain – do not pay for
feed-efficient cows. Even though our results were published a few years ago,
the situation remains largely unchanged," Boaitey says.
If more independence is the answer, researchers may have some good
news. A study published this year made a startling discovery that could
ultimately break the dependency of wheat and other cereals on fertiliser.
Giles Oldroyd, a professor of crop science at the University of
Cambridge, says that during their evolution, cereals diverged from legumes.
These are plants which make pulses like beans, lentils and chickpeas and can
turn abundant nitrogen in the air into fertiliser with the help of symbiotic
bacteria.
But cereals have enough shared heritage with these plants that they
could be retrained to seek out such beneficial bacteria and fungi, Oldroyd
says:
"While still in early discovery, research suggests it may be possible
to grow crops without huge amounts of chemical fertiliser in the future.
This [could] benefit smallholder farmers in low-income countries who lack
access to fertilisers, and could also provide much needed reductions of
agriculture’s pollution and greenhouse gas emissions."
- Jack Marley, Environment commissioning editor
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Imagine.
The Green Revolution is a warning, not a blueprint for feeding a
hungry planet
Did the Green Revolution, which brought high-tech agriculture to
developing nations in the 1960s, prevent famine? Recent research takes a
much more sceptical view.
Read more
Farmers are bearing the brunt of big food companies’ decarbonisation
efforts – here’s why
Big name food brands are pursuing decarbonisation – but they are
squeezing farmers in the process.
Read more
How dormant plant traits could be reawakened to unlock
fertiliser-free farming
Farming has made crop plants reliant on synthetic fertilisers, but we
can reactivate their ability to engage with beneficial microorganisms and
make them more independent.
Read more
Why using more fertiliser and feed does not necessarily raise dairy
farm profits but increases climate harm
Dairy farming in New Zealand has intensified by using more
supplementary feed. While this boosts production, costs also rise and this
ultimately cuts profits - and it adds more harm to the climate.
Read more
Global food system emissions alone threaten warming beyond 1.5°C –
but we can act now to stop it
Modern agriculture releases lots of different greenhouse gas
emissions, each with complex effects on the global climate.
Read more
Climate change could lead to food-related civil unrest in UK within
50 years, say experts
Our study shows the UK must prepare for, and respond to, the risks
associated with future food shortages.
Read more
Reader comment of the week 💬
Money is not a limiting resource, and should the climate and
wellbeing crises be viewed as concerning as the pandemic and security
crises, trillions of dollars are available to develop a sustainable
wellbeing world, by making the same type of keystrokes that now are made to
fund armies, space travels, and pandemic measures.
Sten Grahn
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Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2023 10:02 PM
Subject: How to stop a climate famine
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