October 25, 2017
How to Feed the World in 2050
Without Destroying It
Tim Searchinger
Research Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson School
Gordon Douglas and Tim Searchinger
October 25, 2017
Minutes of the Seventh Meeting of the 76th Year
President Jock McFarlane called the meeting to order at 10:15 a.m. in the Maeder Auditorium at Andlinger Center.
Arthur Eschenlauer led the invocation and Richard Sarle read the minutes of the Oct. 18 meeting.
One hundred and five members attended. There were three guests: Michael Mathews introduced his wife, Cecilia Mathews; BF Graham brought Dr. Julie Elward-Berry; Charles Taggart introduced his wife, Sydney.
President McFarlane announced that the speaker at the next meeting, on Nov. 1 at the Friend Center, would be the Police Chief Nick Sutter, speaking about “Contemporary Issues in Princeton Policing.”
Gordon Douglas introduced Tim Searchinger, highlighting his impressive career through law (Yale Law School), environmental activism at the Environmental Defense Fund, where he directed work on agricultural policy and wetlands, to environmental science, leading him to his current position as a research scholar at the Woodrow Wilson School with a focus on the role of agriculture in feeding a growing world population while working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Although much attention has been devoted by environmental activists to the role of energy consumption in climate change, by comparison relatively little attention has been paid to the extremely important role of global agriculture. Mr. Searchinger quipped that in effect he is the agricultural department at Princeton University!
The world’s agricultural system faces an enormous balancing act: by 2050, it must simultaneously produce far more food for a population expected to exceed 9.6 billion, provide economic opportunities for hundreds of millions of rural poor, while at the same time reduce potential negative environmental impacts, such as widespread ecosystem degradation and high emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen compounds.
Sustainably feeding the projected 2050 population could be a great problem. Note that today about 10 percent of the world population is undernourished. Where will the required increased food production come from? Almost all of the world’s arable land is already under cultivation. How about clearing currently forested land? The problem is that the effect of clearing more land is to enormously increase atmospheric greenhouse carbon loads, in part because forests sequester large quantities of carbon.
Agriculture also requires water, and water resources globally are essentially maxed out. As for fish, there are essentially no more wild fish than currently being harvested.
Does this ominous scenario mean that we should just give up and crawl under our bedcovers? Mr. Searchinger was cautiously optimistic.
He said that a combination of technological, cultural and political changes could greatly mitigate the potentially rapid increase in release of greenhouse gases, pointing out that cultural changes can be quite effective, citing as an example the rapid, marked decrease in human fertility rates in many developing countries, in large part attributable to educating girls, lowering infant mortality and providing access to family planning.
Here are some suggestions -- currently championed and actively worked toward by various members of the environmental community -- for increasing food production while reducing greenhouse gas emissions:
Respectfully submitted,
David Egger
Arthur Eschenlauer led the invocation and Richard Sarle read the minutes of the Oct. 18 meeting.
One hundred and five members attended. There were three guests: Michael Mathews introduced his wife, Cecilia Mathews; BF Graham brought Dr. Julie Elward-Berry; Charles Taggart introduced his wife, Sydney.
President McFarlane announced that the speaker at the next meeting, on Nov. 1 at the Friend Center, would be the Police Chief Nick Sutter, speaking about “Contemporary Issues in Princeton Policing.”
Gordon Douglas introduced Tim Searchinger, highlighting his impressive career through law (Yale Law School), environmental activism at the Environmental Defense Fund, where he directed work on agricultural policy and wetlands, to environmental science, leading him to his current position as a research scholar at the Woodrow Wilson School with a focus on the role of agriculture in feeding a growing world population while working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Although much attention has been devoted by environmental activists to the role of energy consumption in climate change, by comparison relatively little attention has been paid to the extremely important role of global agriculture. Mr. Searchinger quipped that in effect he is the agricultural department at Princeton University!
The world’s agricultural system faces an enormous balancing act: by 2050, it must simultaneously produce far more food for a population expected to exceed 9.6 billion, provide economic opportunities for hundreds of millions of rural poor, while at the same time reduce potential negative environmental impacts, such as widespread ecosystem degradation and high emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen compounds.
Sustainably feeding the projected 2050 population could be a great problem. Note that today about 10 percent of the world population is undernourished. Where will the required increased food production come from? Almost all of the world’s arable land is already under cultivation. How about clearing currently forested land? The problem is that the effect of clearing more land is to enormously increase atmospheric greenhouse carbon loads, in part because forests sequester large quantities of carbon.
Agriculture also requires water, and water resources globally are essentially maxed out. As for fish, there are essentially no more wild fish than currently being harvested.
Does this ominous scenario mean that we should just give up and crawl under our bedcovers? Mr. Searchinger was cautiously optimistic.
He said that a combination of technological, cultural and political changes could greatly mitigate the potentially rapid increase in release of greenhouse gases, pointing out that cultural changes can be quite effective, citing as an example the rapid, marked decrease in human fertility rates in many developing countries, in large part attributable to educating girls, lowering infant mortality and providing access to family planning.
Here are some suggestions -- currently championed and actively worked toward by various members of the environmental community -- for increasing food production while reducing greenhouse gas emissions:
- Stop clearing forest land, especially tropical forest land, in part by providing economic incentives for more efficient use of currently arable land.
- Periodically drain rice fields.
- Find ways of more efficient fertilizer use.
- End programs to produce biofuels.
- Reduce meat consumption (especially beef) and convert grazing lands to more productive use.
- Work to increase the consumption of plants, artificial meat or even chicken (beef consumption decreased by one-third in the United States since 1960, largely because chicken is cheaper).
- Restore and protect peat bogs.
- Massively support research and development to increase crop yields on existing farmland, including judicious use of genetic engineering.
- Work to reduce total food costs (including transportation, distribution, etc.).
- Try to find livestock feeds that markedly reduce methane production (e.g.: bovine belching).
- Reduce food wastage.
Respectfully submitted,
David Egger