Whenever someone talks about the “global food system” I’ve found it to be an excuse to pontificate without being called to account for the real world in any specific place. It’s no accident that universities in farm country study livestock and crops, markets and so on, and places like Stanford and Yale study “food systems.” The playbook seems to be “dream up abstractions; involve academia, and attempt to bamboozle the public.”
I often wonder if what's really needed to help the poor farmers of the world isn't just roads and rails to get their crops to market. The money made would go toward fertilizers and machinery etc, and pretty soon the big problem would be surpluses.
In your article you could have mentioned the greening of the earth due to more co2 with more than 16% positive impact on plantlife. A fact and benifit from co2 rarely recognized and mention when babbling about socalled climate change.
Good article, as usual. If you have not already read it, I found the chapter on agriculture in Vaclav Smil's Grand Transitions to be useful. I was surprised at the trends in land use for agriculture, which is often declining as better inputs and technology is used.
"even by those writing for the New York Times" - I went to college with many of these people, and I can assure you there is no one more clueless than a NYT reporter. Provincial in the extreme.
And as Wallace-Wells demonstrates, they're unable to parse a basic scientific paper. Ivy League credentials are less about knowledge & competence and more about jumping through hoops that please professors.
In thinking through the system design of food system and climate, I am now anchored around taste, nutritional density, and affordability. With an even narrower focus on metabolic health. If you get the "Productivity of Nutrition", essentially the nutrition version of total factor productivity right, then the supply chain will adapt to efficiently deliver that nutrition. Nutrition and taste are positively correlated, so you get the taste as a positive attribute. If taste and nutrition are stronger, you likely reduce waste and cost because you deliver more value per unit. Nutrition also improves health, so you have that positive externality. And to get better nutrition in a crop, and livestock, you need better soil health because nutrition comes from soil. To get better soil health, you need more carbon in the ground. To get more carbon in the ground, you need to move away from synthetic fertilizers to microbes.
Each of these is tough, but an improvement in one, leads to positive externalities in others. Those combined effects are the components that drive an exponential function.
To RMS - You hit the nail on the head, and you cna add to thie list of "do-nots" -- do not quote the IPCC - that like "jocks - jaw-boning over last seasons basketball player's stats.
Whenever someone talks about the “global food system” I’ve found it to be an excuse to pontificate without being called to account for the real world in any specific place. It’s no accident that universities in farm country study livestock and crops, markets and so on, and places like Stanford and Yale study “food systems.” The playbook seems to be “dream up abstractions; involve academia, and attempt to bamboozle the public.”
I often wonder if what's really needed to help the poor farmers of the world isn't just roads and rails to get their crops to market. The money made would go toward fertilizers and machinery etc, and pretty soon the big problem would be surpluses.
Right on! NYT continues to embarrass itself.
Brillant article ! Bravo !
In your article you could have mentioned the greening of the earth due to more co2 with more than 16% positive impact on plantlife. A fact and benifit from co2 rarely recognized and mention when babbling about socalled climate change.
Just google greening og earth and co2
Just an opinion best LaRs
Good article, as usual. If you have not already read it, I found the chapter on agriculture in Vaclav Smil's Grand Transitions to be useful. I was surprised at the trends in land use for agriculture, which is often declining as better inputs and technology is used.
"even by those writing for the New York Times" - I went to college with many of these people, and I can assure you there is no one more clueless than a NYT reporter. Provincial in the extreme.
And as Wallace-Wells demonstrates, they're unable to parse a basic scientific paper. Ivy League credentials are less about knowledge & competence and more about jumping through hoops that please professors.
In thinking through the system design of food system and climate, I am now anchored around taste, nutritional density, and affordability. With an even narrower focus on metabolic health. If you get the "Productivity of Nutrition", essentially the nutrition version of total factor productivity right, then the supply chain will adapt to efficiently deliver that nutrition. Nutrition and taste are positively correlated, so you get the taste as a positive attribute. If taste and nutrition are stronger, you likely reduce waste and cost because you deliver more value per unit. Nutrition also improves health, so you have that positive externality. And to get better nutrition in a crop, and livestock, you need better soil health because nutrition comes from soil. To get better soil health, you need more carbon in the ground. To get more carbon in the ground, you need to move away from synthetic fertilizers to microbes.
Each of these is tough, but an improvement in one, leads to positive externalities in others. Those combined effects are the components that drive an exponential function.
To RMS - You hit the nail on the head, and you cna add to thie list of "do-nots" -- do not quote the IPCC - that like "jocks - jaw-boning over last seasons basketball player's stats.