Green Options

I was thinking of doing a post with a title like ‘In defense of cows’ or something along those lines.  This is not just because I’m a sort of carnivorous and contrarian guy (which I am), but because cows can actually do something that is objectively remarkable.  I know that lots of the readers on this blog are vegetarians or even vegans, and that is fine as a life-style choice for you. But no matter what your personal food choices are, it is worth thinking about what cows can do for the rest of us.

What Cows Do

One of the most abundant natural, organic chemicals in the world (cellulose), is something we humans can’t digest at all.  Cows are cool because they can eat cellulose and turn it into human-edible foods like milk and meat.  The reason that I switched the title of the post is that it isn’t actually the cows that should get the credit for this feat, at least not most of it.  Cows (and other ruminants like sheep, goats, bison, camels, llamas, yaks, water buffalos…) can only make this conversion because of the bacteria that they house in one of their stomachs.  In the whole world, there are only a few bacteria and a few fungi that have the capability of turning cellulose (the main structural polymer of all plants) back into the energy-rich, glucose sub-units of which it is made (bacteria also do that job for termites!).

I can relate to why many people have ethical issues with aspects of how beef or milk is produced today. But that does not, at least for me, mean that we should abandon the idea of harnessing the remarkable microbial process that has allowed ruminant animals to be such an important part of the human food supply in diverse cultures for millenia.  In fact I would like to see us refine not just the “animal wellness” aspect of this industry, but also its greenhouse gas issues.  

Fertility rates are declining around the world and most of what is written about this trend casts it in a positive light.  The cover story of last November’s Economist magazine carried the headline: “Falling Fertility - How the Population Problem is Solving Itself.”  It claimed that countries like China are enjoying a “demographic dividend” over the coming decades.  As positive as an end to human population increase might be for the planet, the question that is not getting much attention is, “what next?”  After population reaches an inflection point and begins to decline, what will society be like?  I won’t live to see this, but my grand daughter who was born last month certainly will.

My good friend John sent me a link to the IIASA website (International Institute for Applied System Analysis) where it is possible to download data from their models of global demographic trends (I’ve made some graphs of that data).  Most such models stop at 2050 but this one goes out to 2100.  If these models are correct, there are some major challenges ahead for humanity.  The most immediate is how to feed the population that will continue to increase until about 2060.  The next is how to deal with a population that is getting very old.  If you are an American, the trends in the following graphs should be seriously unsettling.  We have a dysfunctional, hyper-partisan-dominated, political establishment that is chronically unable to find reasonable solutions to the challenges of medical costs, Social Security insolvency or immigration reform, and yet addressing these very issues will become even more critical in the future pictured in these graphs.  

Fewer and Fewer Children

The first thing that strikes me (see graph above) is the declining proportion of children.  This global trend is well under way in the developed world and is only slightly less so in North America because of immigration.  I wonder at what point colleges will start competing for the few remaining students?

The Image above is corn growing in Zimbabwe.

There was a scholarly article published late last year by Dr. Robert Paarlberg entitled “The Ethics of Modern Agriculture.”  I would encourage anyone concerned about both the environment and about feeding people to read it.  It raises some important questions about the ethics of even well intentioned anti-technology activism.

Paarlberg is a professor at Wellesley and also an associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard.  He has no ties to agricultural interests or technology companies, but he has spent a lot of time thinking about the ethics of opposition to technologies that could help feed the poor people of the world.  His book “Starved for Science” is a detailed review of how the precautionary principle thinking of the rich countries (particularly in Europe) has largely kept agricultural technologies out of Africa including ones that would help feed poor people there.

I’m doing a series of posts about why wheat has been an orphan crop.  Today I want to talk about UG99 Stem Rust.

In 1999 a new strain of Stem Rust, a severe wheat disease, emerged in Uganda.  It was named UG99, and since then it has spread to other wheat growing areas in Africa and Asia but is expected to spread further.  It is a serious threat to the global human food supply because it causes severe yield losses.

There have been many great articles, blog postings and websites about this important plant disease, so today I will talk about how I think this situation will play out.

I’ll wager that the worst potential from this disease will NOT actually occur. This is not a casual wager - the health or even survival of millions of poor people around the world is at stake.  Some of my wheat breeder friends might not like me to say this (because they legitimately need more funding), but my bet is is still that the breeders will prevail against all odds (and get little credit for it).

I base that qualified optimism on having seen what a remarkable group of scientists called “plant breeders” have been able to achieve in the past.  I’m even more encouraged knowing that they have access to some new tools based on biotechnology.

Last month, Canada, the United States, and Australia announced unprecedented plans to join forces and commercialize genetically-engineered wheat, saying that biotechnology was crucial to the future of the wheat industry. The National Farmers Union of Canada, however, immediately refuted the tri-country claim, pointing out “the overwhelming majority of farmers in Canada are still opposed to the introduction of genetically-modified wheat.”

On June 1, fifteen organizations across Canada, the United States and Australia publicly confirmed that opposition with the release of “A Definitive Global Rejection of Genetically Engineered Wheat“, a powerful document speaking out against biotech wheat.

But the battle against GM wheat is not a simple one, nor is it restrained to select countries.

The chemical giant Bayer — the same Bayer which brought you aspirin, heroin and mustard gas, and currently manufactures a wide variety of pesticides, herbicides, polyurethanes and other questionable chemicals — has wrapped their toxic fingers around our rice.

This is nothing new. The company’s glufosinate-resistant LL62 genetically modified rice isn’t commercially grown, but that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t already entered the global food supply.

Catholic Healthcare West (CHW) is a San Francisco, CA based system of 41 hospitals and medical centers in California, Nevada, and Arizona.

This national leading Catholic hospital system is now leading the nation in more ways than one.

CHW has made the decision to use food suppliers who have agreed to seek out alternatives to foods made with genetically engineered (GE) ingredients or cloned animals.

Included in CHW’s new food policy is GE sugar beets, which just recently have been introduced into the nation’s food supply, as well as meat and dairy products from cloned animals, which the FDA has decided to allow.

Editor’s Note: I was in Houston, TX, last week, celebrating the International Year of the Planet at the first ever joint meeting between the American societies of Soil Science, Geology, Crop Science and Agronomy. With a significant focus on biofuels, this conference was rife with interesting materials.

The Challenge: Find biofuel crops that are “pro-poor.”

One Answer: Crops that can be grown with limited resources by small-scale farmers, can be converted to biofuel with existing cheap technology, and can simultaneously provide food, fuel, and livestock feed.

In my last post I discussed how agriculture could regain its rightful place as the keystone of civilization due to the rise of biofuels over the next 30 years or so. But, in what seems a ridiculously colossal conundrum, hundreds of millions of impoverished people worldwide could face starvation due to competition of fuel land with food land.

Editor’s Note: I’m in Houston, TX, this week, celebrating the International Year of the Planet by posting on topics covered at the first ever joint meeting between the American societies of Soil Science, Geology, Crop Science and Agronomy. With a significant focus on biofuels, this conference should be rife with interesting materials.

In a wide-ranging session on Tuesday dealing with global biofuel, food security and poverty issues, there was plenty for the presenters to disagree about — but the one thing they could all concur on was that the biofuel genie is out of the bottle and he’s here to stay.

Several times during the session the presenters highlighted the fact that biofuels have finally brought an inherent value to agriculture that was previously missing. This, more than anything else, is why biofuels are not going to go away. Up to now, the lack of agricultural value has caused a deep deficiency in the level of funding and investment that governments worldwide have provided for their agricultural security and infrastructure.