The Exchanges

Q you've been thinking and writing about issues related to agriculture and food and climate for a long time, and it's a multifaceted, complex problem. I'll maybe have you start at the highest level, which is, as you think about the intersection of food and land and climate, what are the Multiple variables we are trying to solve for here. Like, what are the puzzle pieces we need to put together?

A Well, that's a great question, because I really have been, uh, you know, in my cave for a few years thinking about this. And, you know, the basic problem is that the world is gonna need a lot more food, uh, by twenty-fifty to feed, you know, nearly ten billion people. And it's gonna have to do it without more land, and with a lot fewer emissions. And The numbers are really gigantic. You know, we're probably at this point gonna need about six quadrillion more calories by twenty-fifty, um, which is, you know, I like to say it's, uh, it's like a dozen Olive Garden, uh, breadsticks every day for every human being on Earth. Um, that's extra. We're gonna have to grow. And at the same time, uh, we're gonna have to do it with no more land where we're on currently on track If, even if we continue to increase farm yields at the same rate they've increased throughout the Green Revolution, um, we're gonna need another two India's worth of land, which essentially means, you know, gonna bye-bye Amazon and Congo rainforests, you know, very much not good. And at the same time, we're gonna have to reduce emissions from food and land, which is about a third of our emissions overall. We're gonna have to reduce it 75, 80%. Um, so the challenge is just enormous, um, And it leads to some real trade-offs, sometimes unpleasant ones.

AI assessment note: “world is gonna need a lot more food... without more land, and with a lot fewer emissions.”

Q Um, what about indoor agriculture? So there's various versions of it, right? There's greenhouse, and then there's fully closed environment agriculture, vertical farming, that kind of thing. The latter, of course, having seen a pretty brutal past couple of years, bunch of company bankruptcies, and so on. As you think about it from a Climate and energy perspective, where does the expansion of indoor ag fit into your mental framework?

A Well, I mean, uh, I've been a bit of a skunk at the indoor ag party, um, and, uh, you know, in many ways, it's, what's awesome about it is that it's a potential solution to all these problems of outdoor ag that I spend so much time banging my spoon in my high chair about, um, right? If you can do it inside, if you don't need the pesticides and the antibiotics and the, uh, you know, and the The fertilizers. Um, if you're, you know, if the birds aren't pooping on your crops, so you don't have those kind of food safety issues. Um, if you don't have to worry about bad weather or climate change or nighttime, um, you know, it's a, it's a very attractive proposition. But I think the, you know, the short answer is that I have, um, Some confidence that it might solve the lettuce problem, and, uh, I think maybe at some point you'll see it solve the strawberry problem, but I don't see a path for it to solve the food problem. You know, you might be able to replace a couple 100,000 acres of global agriculture, but, um, not the twelve billion that, uh, we're currently using.

AI assessment note: “I don't see a path for it to solve the food problem.”

Q Okay, so you mentioned a minute ago, um, how, what would happen if we continue to increase our, our yield per unit land in the future. How much have we increased it historically? Like, what has been the trajectory of our land use efficiency for industrial agriculture?

A Well, since the 19 sixties, uh, with the beginning of the green revolution, which people think of as, you know, the sort of higher yield wheat, um, that Norman Borlaug started to grow. Um, but I think it also includes, you know, synthetic fertilizers and, um, you know, really awesome tractors and, uh, you know, and the, this irrigation projects, this entire, you know, universe of, of yield and, Increasing technologies. Basically, we've tripled yields since the 19 sixties. So we're producing three times as much food, as much calories, as much protein per acre. You know, our livestock efficiency has also increased by a factor of three. And all of those sort of scary numbers I gave at the beginning about, you know, how we are going to need 1.5 billion acres of extra land, um, by 20 50 on the current trajectory, that assumes we continue to increase yields at the same rate. So if we don't increase yields at all until 2050, we're gonna need seven more India's worth of land. So we're gonna need a lot more food.

AI assessment note: “Basically, we've tripled yields since the 19 sixties.”

Q Um, what else are you optimistic about? I mean, I guess maybe if we go back to this, like, what are the next set of things that we can do to increase yields? What do you see on the horizon that might help us get there?

A Well, I'm still optimistic about, uh, about plant-based meat, and, uh, particularly some of the fungi-based meat, the mycoprotein, which I think, you know, you blend that with, uh, with real meat or with plants. Um, I think you're, you know, you're gonna start I think you can make it taste good, and I think you can make it cheap, um, and I think you can get consumers to like it. I'm, I'm pretty optimistic about that. You know, I do think, you know, there are a lot of these biofertilizers and biopesticides that have a lot of promise. Um, I think it's been very sad what's happened with GMO crops, the way consumers have just revolted against them, and regulators have, uh, have put up all kinds of obstacles. Um, but also, I think they've been a little disappointing overall in terms of what they've actually offered. I think CRISPR and some of these other gene editing technologies, um, really do have the possibility of creating super crops, um, where you can see much higher yields. Um, I went to a project where they're, you know, using CRISPR to essentially, and as well as these incredible supercomputers to try to reinvent photosynthesis, which happens to be a very inefficient, uh, Uh, process, even though it's worked pretty well, you know, keeping us alive and all life on earth for the last few billion years, um, it can be improved for, for food production. Um, I do think a lot of t…

AI assessment note: “CRISPR and some of these other gene editing technologies, um, really do have the possibility”

Q if I looked at that chart of yields since the 19 sixties, has it been steady, or are we Hitting an asymptote? Does it look weird like we're hitting an asymptote? Is there an obvious, I guess what I'm asking is, is there an obvious next set of things that are coming down the pike that you could say, okay, this is how we're going to continue to increase yield?

A Well, those, let me take the first question first, because the answer is not so great. Because, uh, if we go back to the 19 sixties, we're going to need two more Indias. Um, but yield growth has actually tapered off a little bit in the last couple decades. And If they only continue to increase at that rate, we're going to need three more Indias. Um, so, so yeah, that's, uh, you know, we're going to actually need more yield growth than we've already had. Um, I think there is a lot of excitement about, you know, some promising new technologies, some of which farmers are just starting to adopt, um, some of which may take some time to adopt, um, but we're going to need it. And essentially what I always like to say, and others say it too, is that we're going to need, you know, not just more green revolution, but a truly greener revolution, um, where, you know, not just more synthetic fertilizers, but fertilizers that can, you know, Get more nitrogen into plants, um, without getting the nitrogen into the Gulf of Mexico and creating a dead zone the size of Connecticut, and without creating nitrous oxide emissions that are 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

AI assessment note: “yield growth has actually tapered off a little bit in the last couple decades”

Q as an example, I think folks who listen to this podcast, we've talked about it before, know part of the problem of, of beef being ruminant emissions from essentially burps for the most part. Um, but I think people talk a little bit less about the land impact. So can you just orient me in terms of what is a good land efficient source of calories and what is not?

A Sure. I mean, the, the best ones are the, you know, it's kind of what you'd expect. It's beans, it's lentils, uh, it's, uh, other pulses. Um, and then, you know, what's also pretty good is soy and, uh, and corn or maize, right? Uh, these, you know, incredibly efficiently grown crops. And now if you're feeding it to, you know, if you're running that soybean through a Chicken. Um, it's not quite as, uh, efficient as eating it in the form of tofu or edamame. Um, but in general, the plants are very efficient. Um, Chicken and pork is less efficient, but beef and other ruminants are spectacularly inefficient. It takes about nine calories worth of grain to produce one calorie worth of chicken meat, and when it comes to cows, which are, you know, much less efficient, dairy is even worse, and beef, it's extraordinary. It can be 30, 50, some people would say a hundred times, um, as inefficient as just You know, eating grain directly. Um, so interestingly, you know, I've cut out beef, uh, basically for, because I didn't want to be such a journalistic hypocrite. I still eat meat because I'm bad and meat is delicious, but, um, going vegan is fantastic, and that's the best thing you can do for your diet for the climate. Um, but, um, Going vegetarian is usually about the same as just cutting out beef, because vegetarians tend to eat more dairy. Um, so beef is such the baddie, um, as, uh, Tama…

AI assessment note: “It's beans, it's lentils... Chicken and pork is less efficient, but beef and other ruminants”

Q but does seem like also a big opportunity and a big issue is food waste. Like, It's not that every calorie we produce goes into somebody's body, right? It's actually a significant fraction that, that doesn't. And so I wonder how you think about the, our ability to minimize food waste and also how big a difference that would make in, uh, in helping us solve this land use problem.

A I mean, that's a great question. I mean, let me, uh, give you sort of two answers because one of the, you know, one of the real Um, complaints with what I wrote in the New York Times about, you know, how we can feed the world with industrial agriculture. You know, a lot of people come out and said, oh, this is ridiculous. We don't need more food. We just need to do a better job of distributing the food we have, or we need to waste less food, or we need to eat less beef or less meat. Um, and those things are all true. We do need to do all of those things. Um, you know, we do make enough food Theoretically, to feed the world if we, you know, all just ate plants and, you know, and we distributed it to the people who needed it, um, and we stopped wasting probably a quarter of it, because when we waste that food, we waste the land that went to grow it, the fertilizer, the water, the labor, the emissions. It's terrible. Um, the first thing I would say is that even if we Reduced our beef consumption 50% in rich countries, and reduced food waste 50% in the entire world, we would still need, you know, the numbers are so bad that we would still need to jack up our yields, um, significantly to, uh, to feed ten billion people by twenty-fifty. Um, the numbers are that bad. We need to do all the things. Um, but that said, food waste is a huge opportunity, um, and there are all kinds of excit…

AI assessment note: “even if we... reduced food waste 50% in the entire world, we would still need”

Q efficacious, if it worked and totally removed those emissions, you'd still have the problem you're describing of how much land we use to grow the crops to feed the cows. So do you think about that stuff as a, as a band-aid that's a distraction, or do you think about it as like a step in the right direction, but it, it alone is not going to do the trick?

A Definitely not a distraction. I'm, uh, very excited about some of these feed additives, but I think you're absolutely right. They're not as important as, you know, basically making beef more efficiently. Um, I've, uh, I've gone to Brazil, um, where a shocking amount of the cattle ranches have almost no cows on them. You know, they're considered degraded, and we're talking about hundreds of millions of acres, you know, several Iowa's worth of land. That's basically being wasted on just a few cows. Um, and it turns out it's not that hard to triple the efficiency, or sometimes even quadruple the efficiency of those cattle ranches, and that moves the needle a lot more than, you know, giving cattle, you know, feedlot cattle, you know, and remember, they're only in the feedlot for a very small portion of their life. You know, I, I'm all for feeding them The, uh, the various additives that can, you know, some people think reduce their emissions while they're on those, on those additives as much as 80%. That's terrific. Um, but like you said, those, those emissions are a very small part of the, you know, of what makes cattle such a climate disaster.

AI assessment note: “Definitely not a distraction. I'm, uh, very excited about some of these feed additives”

Q From an economic standpoint, are you optimistic? Do you think that, do you see a pathway toward cellular ag that approaches the cost of Of animals?

A I do. They've reduced the costs, like, I guess I would say certainly at least 99.9%, um, in the last decade. Um, probably closer to 99.99%. Um, the last mile really matters. They're not competitive yet, and they certainly won't until they start building factories and building and making this stuff at scale, and of course it's hard to make this stuff at scale when they're not Inexpensive enough, which is why I do think, I do think government assistance is going to be, you know, a big part of the solution here. Um, so far, the entire cultivated meat industry has had about three billion dollars worth of investment in its entire history, and right, the Inflation Reduction Act is, you know, building battery factories in Georgia for that, that are going to be twice that, um, And the entire solar industry in the first half of last year, I think, had, ah, about two hundred and fifty billion dollars worth of investment. Um, so, you know, this is, it's made incredible progress in a very short amount of time. Um, that said, You know, I don't know. You know, some people think they'll never make it. I tend to think, look, I, like, walk around every day with a device in my pocket that gives me access to all the world's knowledge, and, you know, I can order something that comes to my house the next day, and I can use it as a flashlight and video chat with somebody on the other side of the wor…

AI assessment note: “I do. They've reduced the costs, like, I guess I would say certainly at least 99.9%”

Q You feel that way about both? Do you, do you differentiate between greenhouse and fully closed environment in that Context?

A Uh, I'm, I'm more bullish about the greenhouse, um, because the sun is really awesome, and, uh, and it seems like a better source of energy than, you know, trying to make your own, um, which is why I think some of those greenhouses are going to solve the lettuce problem, and I think you're going to have these very cool greenhouses in metropolitan areas rather than, you know, growing lettuce in Southern California and Arizona, and it's mostly water, and then shipping it across the country. I don't think that makes a lot of sense, and I do think that will be disrupted. Um, but, uh, and again, I don't want to, you know, have excess confidence relative to knowledge, um, because who knows, maybe somebody will come up with a great answer, and maybe some of these energy problems that are right now the main sticking point for a That work at night as well. Um, maybe they'll be solved, but, uh, I just think it's gonna be a real hard problem, and when I, when I wrote about this, one of the things I was most excited about is a company like AeroFarms, which is, you know, a vertical farming operation, um, but they have basically the most monitored plants in the history of agriculture, so they are learning about how plants grow every day, and I'm hopeful that some of what they learn is gonna help In the great outdoors. Um, it may work better as a laboratory than as an actual factory.

AI assessment note: “I'm more bullish about the greenhouse, um, because the sun is really awesome”

Q So the issues with it are not, not climate issues, but rather cost and regulatory and so on?

A Exactly. It's great for the climate, and I think the, the problems are cost- Taste and regulatory. Now, I've had some, uh, you know, what is often derogatorily, is that even a word? What people, you know, when they're being derogatory, call lab-grown meat. Um, I think the, uh, the preferred term of art these days is cultivated meat. Um, I've had cultivated burger. I've had, uh, cultivated fried chicken. I've had cultivated salmon nigiri. Um, and I'll tell you, I think it's, it's great, and it sends that kind of meat signal of two million years of evolution saying hi in a way that even I've found, you know, I like Impossible Burgers a lot, but to me they taste like a really good substitute. The cell-based meats taste like meat because they're meat, you know, from an animal. Um, just grown, you know, if you can grow Beef without growing the cow and without growing the hooves and without growing the reproductive systems and the breathing and, you know, the pooping and all the stuff that, you know, takes a lot of energy. Um, you can imagine how it could be a really efficient process. Um, now right now they're basically using sort of pharma grade equipment to make food and, you know, it's the economics of growing somebody a new heart are a lot You know, easier than the economics of growing lunch. Um, but, you know, the long-winded way of saying, for the climate, it's fantastic, and …

AI assessment note: “Exactly. It's great for the climate, and I think the, the problems are cost-”

Q that results in more nitrous oxide emissions, which is a powerful greenhouse gas, third, third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world behind the CO two and methane. So yeah, I guess the question is how do we How do we thread that needle of, like, get the yields up, but don't, you know, just play a game of whack-a-mole and create emissions that overcome that somewhere else?

A Right, and, you know, as long as, I really try not to be, like, Debbie Downer about this stuff, because I am excited about a lot of these solutions, but to add a little bit more Debbie Downerism, um, one of the reasons this is going to be so hard is because the Green Revolution has already spread to so much of the world that a lot of the low-hanging yield and emissions fruit has already been plucked. Um, the, a great example there is large-scale irrigation projects. Um, you know, only five to, maybe five to seven percent of the world's agriculture that could be irrigated still needs to be irrigated, um, which is a sort of wonky way of saying that it's going to be a lot harder to increase yields, you know, now that most farmland is irrigated and fertilized than it was when Most farmland wasn't. And at the same time, of course, you have climate change, which is another threat, sort of an ironic threat to yields. Um, you're talking, some scientists will think that it could decrease yield, wheat yields by as much as a third over the next few decades, um, whereas you start to see particularly the heat weights and droughts, but also the worst floods, the worst storms, Um, the spread of pests and diseases to new areas that used to be too cold for them to flourish. You know, there's a lot of bad stuff coming down the pike, which, again, only, you know, emphasizes the needs for us, the …

AI assessment note: “decrease our demand for the most land-intensive products, such as beef and lamb”