8. Improving global food systems Flashcards
Structure of the lecture?
- The past of global food systems
- The present of global food systems
- Measuring the impact of food
- Solutions to the global food challenge
When did hominins began to transform land?
1.1
Around 100,000 ya
The Neumark-Nord site is around 125,000 years old, and shows evidence of burning from hunter-gatherer populations, and the increase prevalence of herbaceous edible plants and herbaceous mammals
When/How did humans began seriously agriculturing?
1.2
Around the last glacial maximum (~25,000 ya), human fires had reduced European forest cover by 30%. This was modelled by studying ash coverage over Europe by Kaplan et al., 2016
What have been the two major agricultural revolutions?
1.3
Neolithic Revolution: 10,000 years ago. Saw transformation from hunter-gatherer to sedentary lifestyle
Industrial Revolution: 200 years ago. Came alongside introduction of engine and Haber-Bosch process
Stats on how agriculture is now the largest terrestrial biome
2.1
Goldewijk et al., 2024
Urban areas occupy 2% of the globe
Cropland occupies 22% of the globe
Pastures/Ranglenads occupy another 32%
Over 1/2 of all available land on Earth has been transformed for agriculture
How is agriculture actually causing environmental damage?
2.1
Release of ~1.6 trillion tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere
Use of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides led to soil damage
Increasing deforestation and monoculture leading to habitat loss and deforestation
Dysregulation of water, nitrogen and phosphate cycles
How is the need for agriculture predicted to increase?
2.3
- Increasing human population size (predicted to be around 9-10 billion by 2050)
- Increasing daily calorie intake (predicted to be around ~3400 daily kcal by 2050)
- Decreasing availability for land due to increasing towns and cities
What are the three main mechanisms we can use to assess the environmental impact of food?
3
- Direct measurements
- Life-Cycle Assessments (LCAs)
- Systems Modelling
How can we use direct measurement to model the environmental impacts of food?
3.1
- Measuring emissions of different compounds in agricultural landscapes (i.e., using pheromone traps to understand insect abundance and biomass)
- Estimating greenhouse gas emissions by measuring a variety of different factors. This is highly variable.
How can we use Life-Cycle Assessments (LCAs) to assess the environmental impact of food systems?
3.2
LCAs allow for the full assessment of the supply chain of a product, farm or country across multiple environmental indicators.
They are important for assessing the overall impact of an entire product, including everything from transport to packaging
Uses metrics like greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, land-use, water-use, pesticides, toxicity etc.,
Different products show high variability, but we can see strong patterns between different groups (i.e., chickpeas are better than steaks)
Poore and Nemecek, 2018
How can we use systems modelling to understand the environmental impacts of food systems?
3.3
A dynamic method that is useful for forecasting future scenarios, and how exogenous factors (like climate change) affect food
Why is it important to quantify the environmental impacts of food?
3.4
Understanding leads to the improvement of our food systems. This allows different products, packaging, transport systsems to improve
Understand the impacts of different countries
Understanding the impacts of different companies
Allows for informed individual, community-level, corporate and governmental choices
Why is it important to incorporate ethics, values, social sciences, traditional knowledge etc., to our understanding of food systems?
3.5
Justifying prioritising certain environmental issues over others (i.e., climate change over soil health?)
Understanding the trade-offs between environmental and social issues (i.e., if we use homegrown products, then farmers will suffer)
Limits on science for quantifying environmental impacts (i.e., sometimes we need to trust indigenous and traditional knowledge, since science is always limited)
Impacts on local communities
What are th 5 major solutions we have to reduce the impact of food?
4.1
- Preventing conversion of land to farms
- Enabling and incestivising farmers to quantify their LCAs
- Encouraging dietary changes
- Reduction in food waste
- Scaling up novel technologies, particularly in low-resstance markets
How can we prevent land conversion to farms?
4.1
Policy and law mostly
Improvement of plant efficiency (i.e., CAM photosynthesis)
e.g., the EU’s new ban on importing deforestation-linked products
How does encouraging farmers to quantify their life-cycle impacts improve global food systems?
4.2
Returning autonomy to farmers, and providing them with the knowledge and incentives to control their own environmental impacts
Important for understanding the nuances of different farms, crops, methods etc.,
How can we promote diet change to reduce impact of food?
4.3
Methods such as informational campaigns, taxes on environmental impacts of food, fundamenta shifts in environmental awareness, changes in the ‘default’ options
Plant-based diets can reduce individual emissions by 28%, and total global land use by 3.1 billion hectares
How can we reduce food waste to improve environmental impact of food?
4.4
Mostly required at the level of large global corporations
How can we use novel technologies to improve environmental impact of food?
4.5
example: 90% of global vanilla production is derived from fossil fuels, but if we didn’t use this, then we would require a country the size of romania to produce natural vanilla.
Can we find a non-fossil fuel alternative?
