Journalist Mike Grunwald discusses the global calorie production increase needed to feed nearly ten billion people by 2050.
Opinion
Grunwald: Extreme Land Efficiency Justifies Supporting Industrial Agriculture
“There are many, many reasons to not like industrial agriculture, but there's one really good reason to like it, and it's that it makes food extremely efficiency, efficiently, and we need efficiency.”
Insight
Grunwald: Less Intensive Farming Requires More Land and Harms Biodiversity
“First of all, to the extent that regenerative or organic or basically more natural Kinder and gentler forms of agriculture make less food per acre. They're gonna need more acres to make food. You know, land agriculture that is less intensive needs to be more e…”
Prediction Held up
Grunwald: Feeding 2050 Population Needs Two Indias' Worth of New Land
“If, even if we continue to increase farm yields at the same rate they've increased throughout the Green Revolution 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…”
Assertion Supported
Grunwald: Going vegetarian is climate-equivalent to only cutting beef due to dairy
“Going vegetarian is usually about the same as just cutting out beef, because vegetarians tend to eat more dairy.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Grunwald: Halving Beef and Waste Won't Eliminate Yield Gap by 2050
“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 significantly to feed ten billion people by twen…”
Assertion Supported
Grunwald: Sri Lanka's Agrochemical Ban Immediately Crashed Crop Yields
“Well, we saw what happened in Sri Lanka, where they banned them, and immediately farm yields crashed. Sri Lanka could no longer feed itself. And essentially started outsourcing not only its food production, but the pollution and emissions from that production.”