If you have been following the news, your conscience might have pricked as you ate your tuna sandwich this morning: around the world, 46 million tons of fish is wasted every year, nearly 90% of fish stocks are now fully exploited, overexploited, or even depleted, and gone with them are the source of income for approximately 820 million people.
Now let’s move on to the bread you used for your sandwich (because you’re making your meals now, having learned the negative impacts of takeaways and food deliveries in our previous newsletter). Unless you bake your own, chances are you have consumed something that disguises as food but is made with chemicals such as bleach.
Oh, and the cucumber or lettuce you added to your sandwich is less nutritious than it was decades ago, due to soil depletion as a result of modern intensive agriculture methods, such as monoculture – an environmentally detrimental farming method that threatens biodiversity and the survival of farmers, and causes health hazards.
Well, that was a lot to stomach! In case you are wondering, this article does not aim to outline and address all the problems in the modern-day food system. It instead intends to highlight some of the major challenges, and how the combination of human intelligence, technological innovations and traditional wisdom can revamp parts if not the entirety of the system to benefit people, planet, and profits. Read on!
Global population is estimated to reach 10 billion by 2050, meaning there will be three billion more mouths to feed than there were in 2010, which can be a massive challenge with the destabilizing effects of climate change – already, farmers from the US to India are grappling with increasingly unpredictable weather events, losing production and productivity as a result. And with agriculture responsible for approximately one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, how can we grow 56% more food by 2050, while racing to cut emissions to keep global temperature rise at 2°C?
According to a new report, there are technical opportunities and policies “to meet food, land-use, and greenhouse gas emissions goals in 2050 in ways that can also help to alleviate poverty and do not exacerbate water challenges”. The 22-item “menu of solutions” includes anything from reducing food loss and waste, diet change, reforesting former farmland, improving wild fisheries’ management, focusing on realistic options to sequester carbon in soils, and many more.
Food waste reduction is a great way to lower greenhouse gas emissions. From the UK to Hong Kong, the US to Finland, more restaurants are taking measures to go zero-waste by sourcing seasonally, maximizing the uses of food ingredients, and composting leftover food. This restaurant in the Netherlands even goes as far as to serving meals made with the surplus food it rescues every day.
Enabling better food waste reduction and prevention are technological innovations such as Apeel, an edible plant-based coating that could extend the life of food while reconfiguring supply chains in a way that reduces costs and emissions. Zest Labs, on the other hand, is an AgTech company that collects data through its wireless IoT temperature sensors to ensure pallets of more ripe contents are sent to the nearest store or restaurant to avoid food waste, and Winnow uses artificial intelligence to help restaurants measure, monitor and cut food waste.
While digital marketplaces such as Full Harvest and Misfits Market help farmers create new revenue streams by selling their “ugly” but no less tasty and nutritious produce to businesses and households at a discounted price, some argue that these startups could do real harm to community organizations, and social enterprises committed to tackling food inequality and food waste, such as FoodCloud, may be a better solution.
On a national level, South Korea shows how government policies can help citizens recycle up to 95% of food waste. As individuals, we all can start with smaller fridges and plates, which go a long way in reducing food waste. Meanwhile, businesses and scientists are working to turn food that would otherwise be binned into new food and beverage products, packaging and cosmetic products, therefore preventing the emission of methane and the waste of the energy and resources that went into producing the food.
You would have heard that cutting meat consumption is one of the best ways to combat climate change, and there are reasons to believe so. For example, the production of animal products is responsible for up to 78% of total agricultural emissions, and a significant size of the carbon-sequestering Amazon rainforest is cleared every minute, mainly to create new pastures for cattle.
“Diet change, not climate change” is easier said than done for many (and unrealistic for the world’s poor). But that challenge presented itself as an opportunity for the founders of plant-based meat companies Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. By growing animal stem cells and developing a plant version of heme (which gives beef its color and taste), these plant-based meat alternatives that cook, look and taste like real meat were designed to combat climate change and to reduce meat consumption, if not eliminating animal agriculture altogether.
It certainly looks like these plant-based meat alternatives are reducing meat consumption (at least 90% of their customer base aren’t vegans or vegetarians), but their potential to combat climate change remains uncertain, and a new study even suggests that they might be worse for climate change.
Also, less known behind the “plant-based” label and health claims is the fact that these meat alternatives are highly processed, scientifically engineered food, with Impossible Foods’s use of genetically modified soy protein casting further doubt in the health value of these products. What’s more, we don’t yet know how these meat alternatives are made because their recipes and production methods are withheld as intellectual property.
Nature’s Solution
We now know that agriculture, when done in a way that improves and revitalizes soil health, can be a scalable and affordable way to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Increasingly, farmers are realizing the need to stop treating farmland as an inorganic entity that can be dominated with chemicals and machinery, but to respect it as an organic, symbiotic and robust system capable of regenerating itself instead.
Regenerative agriculture is a system of farming principles and practices that can turn atmospheric carbon into soil carbon while enriching the soil; increase biodiversity, profitability and resilience; and reverse climate change, not least by absorbing up to 75% of annual global emissions.
But a systems-level change is needed to transition global agriculture to regenerative practices. What if farmers are rewarded financially for removing atmospheric carbon? And what are the potential incentives for consumers, companies and governments to support this transition? Join the conservations on this climate-positive food production system in Australia, Scotland, the US, Central America, Hong Kong, Canada, India, South Africa, Belgium, and elsewhere in the world.
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