Science Friday - Degrees of Change: Food and Climate. July 12, 2019, Part 1

Episode Date: July 12, 2019

A quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from putting food on the table. From the fossil fuels used to produce fertilizers, to the methane burps of cows, to the jet fuel used to deliver your fresh asparagus, eating is one of the most planet-warming things we do. In our latest chapter of Degrees of Change, we're looking at how to eat smarter in a warming world. Plus, we’ve launched a new way for you to add your voice to the show: the SciFri VoxPop app. Download now for iPhone or Android. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. The climate is changing, and because we need to deal with it now, we open the fourth chapter of our series, Degrees of Change, where we are exploring the challenges of a changing climate and how we as a planet and a people are adapting. And this week, we're talking about how a changing climate affects what's on your plate and how what you eat affects the climate. We've been taking your questions and comments all week on Twitter and Facebook and through our new, very new app called SciFri Vox Pop. You can join in the conversation for a searching for a sci-fry vox pop. That's V as in Victor O-X-P-O-P- Wherever you get your apps. Let's begin with a comment we got from David Church in Jacksonville, Florida, who was wondering how beef stacks up to plant-based patties.

What about plant-based meat alternatives? They're highly processed. I think that would take up a lot of resources. Very good question, and we will have an answer for that. But first up this week, residents all along the southern coast have been keeping their eye on tropical storm Barry. The storm is predicted to hit Louisiana on Saturday, and the governor just said today that he expects it to be a hurricane force when it does. New Orleans has been keeping a close watch. Governor Edwards has declared a state of emergency for the entire state.

How will the levees hold up and how has climate change played a part in this storm? Scott Waldman is here to fill us in on this story and to check in on the gatekeepers, the decision makers, the controllers of the purse strings. He's a White House reporter with Energy and Environment News and Climate Wire based in Washington. Welcome back. Thanks for having me, Ira. So the governor is really getting the state ready. That's right. I think this is going to be potentially a pretty serious storm, and it's really, you know, they've certainly dealt with worse storms down there. But this is going to be a Hurricane 1, so they've been hit by Hurricane 5, of course. But the problem is going to be the flooding. They're already experiencing pretty high levels of flooding right now in the Mississippi River. And this storm is certainly going to drive quite a bit of water onshore through its storm surge, but also the heavy rains could basically overtop. some of the levees that surround the city and lead to pretty serious flooding in parts of New Orleans and elsewhere.

So this is like a triple whammy, really a perfect storm coming in. It is. And it's also worth noting that this is exactly what scientists say is going to be part of our climate future. You have an excessive rainfall this past spring that has caused the Mississippi River to swell to its current levels. And then, of course, you have rising sea levels, which makes the whole area more vulnerable to any sort of storm. surge. So it's going to be sort of a perfect storm in the worst sense. Yeah. Are they expecting the levees to top over on this? Well, it's going to be really close. I think it's really a matter of inches. The predicted, right now the predicted levels of the Mississippi River tomorrow are going to be around 20 feet, and that is the level of the lowest levies.

So it's going to be very close. And if it overtop some of those levees, that is going to lead to flooding. And it doesn't even mean that the levees themselves fail. They're not expecting that. that, but if it floods over the top, there's very little they can do to stop it. Well, we'll be watching it with you. Thank you. Let's move on to our next door again about the climate. President Trump made a speech addressing the environment. What were his key points? Well, this came across really as more of a campaign speech. There was no new environmental policy ideas that he proposed, and he really focused on air and water pollution and claims that the U.S. has improved in both of those categories. He sort of puts forward the political argument

that if we have these, you know, improved air and water pollution levels, then we can continue to increase, you know, our fracking and our reliance on natural gas, which is what his administration has been pushing all along. There's a lot of people that question the numbers that the administration used, whether air pollution truly has gotten better under his term. And, you know, There's evidence, including from within the administration that it's actually gotten worse, carbon levels increased last year in 2018. You know, it's really interesting. I bring this up often because I'm so astonished about how much the environment and specifically climate change has become a political issue in just two years. Two years ago, no one talked about it.

And now it's rising, right, among people's concerns. That's right. And it's worth noting that in this 45-minute speech by Trump and the head. heads of the Interior and EPA and others, there was no mention of climate change even once. So what we've seen, there was recent polling that showed that it ranked Trump on about eight issues, you know, health care and the economy and other aspects of his policy. And climate change was the one where he did the worst. Only 29% of the country approves of what he's doing when it comes to climate change.

And there's a growing number of Republicans that are worried about what he's doing, a growing number of independence. These are votes that he needs to lock in in 2020. So clearly this speech was a nod to that, a recognition that the perception of his climate policy and environmental policy at large is that it's going backwards. He's trying to rewrite the narrative. You know, and speaking of going backwards, we reported on a few weeks ago about a supposedly, a supposed review panel called the Presidential Committee on Climate Security. What ever happened to that? Well, I reported this week that it's for now dead.

And again, this goes to concerns within the administration as well as with the campaign that this is not an issue. They really want to go really far afield from the science on. Obviously, the president's point of view has been pretty clear. He does not believe, he does not accept, I should say, climate science. But the death of this panel indicates that they're not willing to go to the extremes, at least right now before the election. We'll see if it gets revived after the election.

But there's plenty of people within the Trump administration, within the White House, that do not want to see this panel revived. And basically what it would have done is just conduct what they called an adversarial review of climate science where they try to knock holes in the tremendous level of certainty that we have around climate science and try to create the impression that there's more doubt than there really is. Scientists have been in agreement for this for a very long time that humans are the primary drivers of climate change. And the administration has been scrubbing climate change from the U.S. Geological Survey Studies, right? That's right.

I reported this week that the Interior Department in the USGS has been basically removing mentions of climate change from the press releases that it puts out about its own work. And in Obama administration, for example, in 2016, I think they had 13 press releases just around climate change. There have been zero that explicitly mentioned climate change in the headline for their releases since Trump took office. And I reported on one study in particular from just a few months ago that looked at the California coastline and potential environment or excuse me economic impacts of sea level rise. And it's going to be potentially $100 billion a year by the end of the century that all the information was removed related to that study from the press release. So that if you looked at it, the press release just described the methodology behind the study, which is not what press releases ever do. You're supposed to put out the top line findings. And this is, of course, not political at all.

This is something that coastal planners need in California. This is something that politicians need to make good policy. And it's basically being quietly buried on the USGS website. Now, on the Democratic side, the Democrats have declared a climate emergency. What does that mean for that? Well, this is basically just a resolution. And it should be noted that this is expected to go nowhere in the Senate with Mitch McConnell at the helm. But in the House, it could certainly pass.

And this would put us on par with Canada and with the UK and with Ireland in terms of recognizing climate change as an emergency. What it does was would sort of force the federal government to recognize in more policy that climate change is a dire threat and needs to be addressed across a wide sector of policy areas, including, of course, the economy, the environment, public health, just a broad-based approach to it. Bernie Sanders said he basically wants, he's one of the sponsors of the resolution, he wants it to look like the way the country prepared for World War II. He wants to do a similar thing for climate. Yeah, he said he was going to come out with a new, you know, because the candidates are slowly, right, the Democratic candidates at least, are slowly coming out with their own environmental, their own climate plans, aren't they? That's right. And he actually, it's kind of notable that he has not. Most of them have come out

with fairly strong climate policies. He, in the last election, had a far stronger policy than Hillary He actually called for a ban on fracking, which was seen as pretty radical at the time. So it's going to be interesting to see how he's actually going to try to stand out in this field where people have gone way beyond what he's done in the past. I'm not even sure how much further he can go if he wants to top climate policy, which was an issue he's sort of owned here in Washington and certainly on the campaign trail last time around. Do you think we're going to see a climate change debate among the Democrats at all? I think the chances are certainly higher than ever. That's the question. I think a couple months ago we weren't going to, but activists have really pushed this.

They've protested at the headquarters of the DNC, Sunshine Movement, and Extinction Rebellion. And most of the candidates in the debate have called for it. So next month, they're going to have a vote at the DNC to see if they're going to bring this up as a policy, excuse me, as a debate topic just on its own, which would be fairly unprecedented to have an entire debate around one issue. So I think, you know, anybody that does political predictions in this era walks a, difficult line, but I do think that we'll see certainly something that will be a climate debate. Well, I'm very happy to invite all the candidates to come on Science Friday. We'll give them all an hour. They can all debate if they want to. And, you know, we had Governor Inslee on before. He was the first one to come on, but so far no one else has really wanted to come on and talk about it. But here's an open invitation.

And I'd love to ask them all the questions about it. Well, you can, okay, you can sit it on. He said it on behalf of one of the moderators. I do know that I saw a news release that Gizmodo and the New Republic are trying to put something together this fall when the UN meets in New York. Yes, Emily Ackin from the New Republic and Brian Kahn over at Gizmoto, or they've actually planned their own debate where they would be the moderators or other folks would and they would ask just the climate-related questions. So they're sort of trying to move the ball forward. They've invited the candidates. I think that's just another level of pressure for the DNC to step up and do it themselves. Because certainly I think a lot of candidates, especially Inslee, will participate in something like that.

And it seems like we're going to have a debate one way or the other. Well, we'll try to get it going as much as we can. Thank you very much. We'll have you back, Scott also to talk about it, okay? Thanks for having me. It's a date. Scott Waldman, White House reporter with E&E News and Climate Wire. We're going to take a break, and afterwards we're going to continue with our degrees of change series

with a focus on food and climate change. If you have a question about what's on your plate or how it affects the planet, give us a call. Our number is 844-724-8255. That's 844-Sai Talk. Of course, you can also tweet us at SciFRI. And we have a new app out that you can download wherever you get your apps.

It's called SciFri Vox Pop. SciFri Vox Pop, you know, the Latin Thri-Fri-Voxpop, you know, the Latin vox populi, V-O-X-P-O-P-O-P-C-F-R-P, you can actually verbally speak into it and send us your opinion. We'll put it on the air. In fact, coming up in the next segment, you're going to hear some folks who took advantage of vox pop and hear what they had to say as we continue our Degrees of Change series after the break. Stay with us. This is Science Friday.

I'm Ira Flato. We're continuing with the next chapter of our Degrees of Change series. about the challenges of a changing climate and how we as a planet and a people are adapting. And this time we're looking at what's on our plates. A huge slice of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, a quarter of the total, comes from putting food on the table. And as the effects of climate change intensify,

we're seeing more flooding rains, more heat waves and droughts, which endangered the future of food, of growing, farming. Science writer Amanda Little examines that future in her new book, The Fate of Food, from supermarkets to fisheries to coffee fields and vineyards, and she uncovered a lot of innovative ways that we are adapting to. There might be a way out of this if we rethink how we put food on the table, she says. And that's what we're going to be talking about for the rest of the hour, taking your questions and calls at 8447.7.

7248255, 8447248255. And you can tweet us, as usual, at SciFRI. And if you've got our SciFri VoxPop app, we want you to tell us, have you changed your diet to lower your carbon footprint? We'll kick it off with Ed in Tallahassee, who sent us this vox pop. About two years ago, my wife and I went to an all-plant-based diet, cold turkey. We'd been moving to a vegetarian diet to limit our carbon. footprint, but upon doing more research on the health benefits of a totally plant-based diet, and me having a cholesterol problem, made the switch. We haven't regretted it one bit. That was a vox pop from Ed in Tallahassee. Let me introduce my first guest. Amanda Little is

Professor of Investigative Journalism and Science Writing at Vanderbilt in Nashville and the author of The Fate of Food, What Will Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World. We have an excellent. serped up on our ScienceFriday.com slash website up there, science friday.com slash fate. Welcome, Amanda. Thank you. Ira. It's a total pleasure to be here. Thank you. It's very nice to have you because you've written something that's quite important for all of us to talk about. Well, this was a five-year adventure into the lands and machines and minds working on the future of food. And it stunned me to realize that the main way

most people on Earth will experience climate change is through its impact on food. So I appreciate your bringing this topic to your audience. All right. Let's get right into it. You've said that climate change is becoming something we can taste, a kitchen table issue. What do you mean by that? So many of the problems that climate change poses to our food system are sort of in the next 30, 40 years, right? The IPCC predicted that by mid-century, and I quote, the world may reach a threshold of global warming beyond which the current agricultural

practices can no longer support large human civilizations. That's from one of the reports. And there could be a 2 to 6 percent decline in global crop yields every decade going forward, but population meanwhile is expected to soar to $9.5 billion by mid-century. So it sounds like it's an problem, but disruptions in food supply are already evident, almost anywhere. Right now, we've heard about the soy and corn farmers in the Midwest who haven't been able to plant their grains because of massive storms flooded their fields. We've heard in recent months and years about extreme weather disrupting olive production in Italy. I think the headline was Italy's running out of olive oil. Also, you know, citrus and peach orchards in Florida and Georgia, apple and cherry orchards in Wisconsin and Michigan, avocados in Mexico, coffee, cacao and so forth in equatorial.

and livestock operations the world over. So it's really a very diverse and complex story. It's a hard story to tell, but it's true that this sort of common thread is climate change is becoming something we can taste. It is a kitchen table issue literally and otherwise, and I loved your point earlier, that we are now beginning to hear it discussed as a politically, you know, as a political priority and a kitchen table issue in that sense. And you're right. absurdly, the greenhouse gases that now threaten the future of the world's farms are also largely produced by the farms themselves, especially the big mechanized ones. Right.

So it's interesting. I mean, in some ways, big mechanized farms create a lot of efficiencies, and they can do, you know, certainly economic efficiency, but there are some efficiencies environmentally too. But the key problems are, of course, huge flows of fossil fuels that go into mechanized food, production that go into the fertilizers, the agrochemicals that go onto these farms. And most notably, those chemical fertilizers can also evaporate into the air to form nitrous oxide, which is a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. We also hear a lot about the methane emissions from livestock. Anyway, there's, again, many different ways in which agriculture is influencing climate change,

as you said, a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions coming from our food reduction. But, you know, it's also probably more vulnerable than any other aspect of our lives to these impacts of climate change that are becoming more intense. Is there one factor of climate change that's worse than all the others for agriculture? Is it heat waves, flooding rains? What would you say? This is what's so interesting. You know, you'd think it was drought, right?

I went into this kind of assuming it was drought. And instead, I found that it is so various. Drought, heat, flooding. I mean, who would have thought that the middle of the country, which is nowhere near a major body of water, you know, is flooding from intense rains and super storms that can destroy crops or even unexpected hailstorms, whether volatility itself, just the shifting seasons can confuse trees and crops. And, of course, invasive insects and diseases. We hear a lot about these new fungi that are affecting, for example, coffee. production. So it's really diverse. That's quite interesting. Let's bring on another person on now who's using robots and machine learning to tackle this water issue in California

vineyards. Stefano Carpine is a professor of computer science and robotics at UC Merced. Welcome, Stefano. Thank you. Good afternoon. Where did this robotic inspiration come from? It came in 2015 during the last California drought. We were talking with some wine. growers and they were expressing their pains with the price of water that time. And they were wondering if there could be a way to adjust the amount of water that goes to every vine grape to every vine because it's essential both to save water and to deliver the right amount of water to every vine for increasing quality. So you use robots to send them out into the vineyards and what do they do?

How do they adjust the water for each of the vines? That's right. So the idea is to retrofit the existing irrigation infrastructure with extremely simple variable rate emitters that cost pennies, and then to shift the complexity and intelligence on a robotic system that consists of an unmanned aerial vehicle that flies over a vineyard, collects imagery, and then we pass the collected data through a machine learning pipeline, and we have trained it so that it can infer how much water is in the soil and in the plants. Then we present that to a farmer who then indicates how to adjust whether there is overwatering or underwatering. And then we send out a fleet of robots. These are small boxes, two by three feet with wheels and an arm on top. And they slowly move through the vineyard, and they will make adjustments to match the desired condition to the current condition. We are in the second year of a four-year project funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. So we had a bunch of preliminary results, and we look forward.

to continue for the rest of the two years. And so are you finding that you're saving water? We are not finding that yet, because we are not at the point where we can make these measurements. Unfortunately, you have to deal with season, so you can only collect data three months or four months per year during from April, let's say, to August. But the preliminary data that they collected last year about being able to predict how much water is in the soil from the aerial imagery is very promising. How big an issue is irrigation?

Where does irrigation fit into the bigger picture of climate change adaptation? Well, I believe it's a big part for us in California. We have experienced an extreme drought from 2011 to 2015. So it became something that was touching us on a daily basis. And when we went out and talked with farmers, and we were asking, what are your pain points? Water was the first thing they would mention all the time. So it is front and central. Amanda, you write about artificial intelligence and robotics in farming, and it goes beyond irrigation, doesn't it?

It does. I was astounded to see how AI and robotics are transforming agriculture in different areas. And I looked at one particular innovation by a company called Blue River Technology that has developed the world's first robotic weeder that can weed crops with sniper-like precision. They sprays tiny jets of herbicide onto weeds when they're very young. And this could end the practice of broadcast spraying of herbicides across millions of ephemers, across millions of eerie. acres of crops. And I went to the maiden voyage of this weeder called Sea and Spray, which is the first product on the market. And it was learning as it went. And now the field results are showing up to 90% reduction in the use of agricultural chemicals on the field with this highly precision technology.

Stephanie wine seems like sort of a luxury product if you're just trying to put food on the table in the future. I imagine that you can apply this to other plants and crops. Correct. As a matter of fact, it is with CEDs as applicable to what we call high-value prenatural crops. So, for example, also when it comes to almonds, there is an issue about the amount of chemicals that go in

that should be customized on a per tree basis. So while right now we are focusing on water for grapes, there is broader applicability of this technology down the road. I want to thank you for taking time to be with us today, Dr. Carpene. Thank you. Stefano Carpene is Professor of Computer Science and the Robotics at UC Merced. Still with us is Amanda Little, author of The Fate of Food, What Will Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World, 844-8-255. As you can imagine, a lot of people have questions. right to the phones. Let's go right to

Amy and Manhattan. Hi, Amy. Hi there. I was wondering if there's any source online or otherwise that looks into and maybe rates different kinds of foods, maybe in different companies like shopping for a better world does on several issues.

This is something that where people could easily find out what the impact of different, not only different foods, maybe even different brands. Okay. Is on, yeah. Amanda? Well, there are, in fact, we have put a number of links on the Science Friday website that can steer you toward some really interesting information on this.

There's, what's, what's hard, it's very hard to give specific examples because it all depends on the way in which the meat is raised or the vegetables are raised. For example, there is air-fraided asparagus and other sort of tender, high-nutrient vegetables and fruits that can have a higher carbon impact than chicken or pork, for example, because the carbon dioxide costs associated with sending, flying those crops to their point of purchase is so high, air freighting takes 50 times the energy of shipping by sea. So that's a major, major cost, but we don't see that when we go and think we're virtuous buying the berries and the asparagus, not knowing how it got there. In fact, it actually

could have a higher carbon impact than your chicken nugget. And so it's hard to say, but there's really almost no, there's no debate as to whether beef and lamb are the most carbon-intensive foods by a long shot. And we can get into that. But there's a lot of data on that. And in part, it's the, you know, it's the methane emitted by ruminants. They're also, you know, environmentally intensive from a water perspective. A third of all the grains grown in the United States go to livestock. So certainly, for the most part, the biggest change you can make as a consumer is to really examine how much meat you're eating and what kind of meat you're eating. Okay.

I'm Ira Flater. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. And speaking of meat and beef and alternatives, we played a clip earlier from David Church in Jacksonville, who asked us on sci-fri vaux-pop about how beef stacks up to plant-based patties. What about plant-based meat alternatives? They're highly processed. I think that would take up a lot of resources. And Amanda, that's what you're saying, is you really have to look at the total carbon footprint? You do.

I mean, there has been some interesting research on this, and I know there's a lot of concern about the meat alternatives that are coming out in terms of the human health and environmental impact. But if you look at Beyond Meat, which is the leading brand in plant-based proteins in grocery stores, it runs its peak. proteins through this process of heating, cooling, and pressure, which is what creates this very fiber structure that makes it taste meaty, or the texture meaty. It does take processing, but the ingredients are fairly simple, and it's certainly more sustainable and humane than conventional meats. The study I was referring to compared the production of Beyond Burger to a quarter-panned U.S. Beef Burger and found that it took, and this is critical, 99% less water. which is a major concern going into an era of greater water scarcity,

93% less land and about half the energy. And according to this study, the production of a Beyond Burger emits about 90% fewer greenhouse gas emissions. So, you know, we have to look into this in greater depth. You know, we can talk about lab-based meat or cell-based meats, lab meats, and the, you know, concerns and opportunities there. But, you know, there's no getting around the fact that the current meat production is unsustainable, especially as we add, you know, this demand to meat.

One critical, just quick point is global population has doubled in the last 50 years, and meat consumption has tripled. So it's not just that we're adding more. But you're also saying that all meat is equal? It's not. No, no. And that's true. Ruminant meat from cows and sheep in particular. is much more carbon-intensive than chicken and pork.

And so if you're going to choose one and try to have a smaller carbon footprint, stay away from the beef is what you're saying. That's right. And I mean, I'm a meat eater, and I know how hard it is. I live in Nashville, Tennessee. This is, you know, land of barbecue. I know how hard it is to, you know, think about moving to these alternatives. But, you know, the environmental benefits are pretty staggering.

Well, if the cattle producers want to call in, we're very happy. to talk to them. We're going to have to take a break and come back, and we will talk lots more with Amanda Little, author of The Fate of Food, what will eat in a bigger, hotter, smarter world. You can call us 844-8255. You can also go to Vox Pop. Yeah, our Vox Pop is SciFri Vox-P if you want to send us, continue to send us your own vocal questions and comments. Also, on social media, we're taking our tweets at SciFrii-4-4-724-8255. with lots more with our degrees of change series after the break. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Continuing our degrees of change series about the challenges of a changing climate and how we as a planet and a people are adapting. And our focus is what's on your fork. Our guide is Amanda Little, author of The Fate of Food, What Will Eat in a Bigger, Hutter, Smarter World. And we've been

taking your questions all week long with the SciFri Vox. app. It's a new way for you to contribute to your voice, your voice to our program. You can search for SciFri Voxpop. Wherever you get your apps, that's SciFri Voxpop fee, as in Victor. And go ahead and tell us, have you changed your diet to lower your carbon footprint? And we got a question on SciFri Vox Pop from Ed White House in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. What is the time frame for lab-grown meat to be rolled out and be affordable? Amanda, you investigated an eight lab-grown meat for your book.

Can you answer Ed's question? Yes. Well, I did eat a duck breast that was freshly harvested from a bioreactor in a laboratory in Berkeley, California. And I can say that it was, in fact, edible. I did not begin quacking or growing feathers or anything. So the product is actually in the world, but it's in. in, you know, still in laboratory stages. In terms of when it will come to market, the time frame generally ranges from a couple of years to five to ten years.

There's a cell-based is what the industry folks are calling it. It's also called cultured meats and, you know, lab meats. But this cell-based product can be, you know, applied to beef, chicken, also fish. There's a startup called finless foods that has said that, has said, to have a product ready for market in the next year or two. They're now being a little bit more vague and saying, you know, we're not going to give a public timeline. But generally, the range has been sort of in the next, you know, three to five years or so. And the biggest brand and cell base to meet Memphis meets, this is where I, you know, visited and ate the product,

has been very careful not to give a rollout date because it's, you know, not just a question of quality. It's a question of cost. The cost of cultured meats has come down pretty dramatically from, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars to hundreds of dollars in recent years per pound. So it's still pretty expensive. But there's little doubt that with economies of scale, this is going to, you know, become cost competitive and if not cheaper than conventional meats. Here's a tweet from Sarah who says, should there be a push for more small local farms, if you want to continue to eat meat. Would that make a difference in the environment?

And I want to, that's a great point. I want to expand on that about having a home garden. I'm a home gardener, and I produce vegetables in my garden. Am I creating a larger carbon footprint by all the, you know, creating the garden and feeding the garden, my little plot of land versus buying it from a local, a larger farm, where you might have the economy of scale being better? Yeah, I can relate, Ira. I am also a somewhat troubled backyard farmer.

In fact, part of the reason why I began to report and investigate this book five years ago as I tried to grow my first backyard garden and failed pretty miserably. And I thought, how are we going to solve these problems not only existing in our food system but that are coming if we can't rely on a critical mass of backyard farmers to solve from the ground up. So, yes, the answer is there are certainly efficiencies in large-scale farming, certainly cost-efficiencies, but there are some potential emissions efficiencies. It really depends on how the farms are managed, right?

If you, you know, over-apply, for example, fertilizers and other agrochemicals on small or large-scale farms, you're going to get serious environmental problems, right? I mean, it's hard to bring it down to a size issue. because there are very well-managed large-scale farms and there are very poorly managed small-scale farms. The other question is, you know, agricultural intensivity, right? There's a lot of the concern is, can we increase the amount of food produced per unit of land?

And then on poorly managed or fallow farmland, can we reforest that land? So, yes, increasing the efficiency and pre-reason. productivity on large-scale land while also creating carbon sequestration on other farm agricultural lands would be optimal from, you know, from an environmental standpoint. Let's go to New Orleans to Marguerite. Hi, welcome to Science Friday. Hi, thanks for having me. Go ahead. Yeah, calling from New Orleans, and I think probably a lot of people know that we have a storm closing in on us right now. and we had really bad flooding two days ago for like a large part because our coast is no longer able to buffer intensifying storms.

And that has a lot to do with application of fertilizer and like overapplication of fertilizer and runoff coming down the river and creating sort of an imbalance in our coastal ecosystem. But all that's to say that I think we need to be talking about how we support farmers and transitioning to more sustainable growing practices because capturing carbon and reducing chemical inputs This is a really hard transition for a lot of large-scale farmers. And I really support what you're saying about transitioning large, poorly managed farmland into reforested area. But we could also transition a lot of that land into better managed food-producing farms. Kind of all of these thoughts is, I'm a farmer myself, and that's what led me to run for Commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry for the state.

And I just think we need to be electing more officials that will help with those transitions because they're not going to be easy on farmers. Thank you for calling, Marguerite. What do you say about that, Amanda? It's so essential. I'm so glad that listener called in and shared that. It's so essential to support and elevate and strengthen the support for small and mid-sized farms and for food webs, local food webs. It's crucial, and we can't lose sight of that. And, you know, that there's just totally inadequate.

support for small and mid-sized sustainable farming right now and helping with that transition. It's also critical to make the point that, and I make this in the book, it's not just, you know, high-tech whiz-banggery that's going to save us, right? It's human innovation, which marries new and old approaches to food production that can help redefine sustainable food on a grand scale. So I looked at, you know, new and old ideas, you know, robotics and CRISPR and vertical farms and a lot of these ideas. Well, let me bring on somebody with a new idea. I'm glad you brought that up because that's a good sangway because one of our biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions in the food supply is how much food we throw away.

40% of the food goes wasted in the U.S. You know, imagine coming home and just throwing half your groceries in the trash. That's especially, essentially, what we're doing by letting the lettuce get slimy, the beef go bad, the, the vegetables. fish get, well, fishy. And I want to bring on another guest who's working to keep our food fresher, while also preservative free, through new kinds of packaging. Dr. Julie Goddard is a professor in the Department of Food Science at Cornell University in Ithaca. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you so much for having me.

It's a pleasure to be here. So tell us about this packaging. Why focus on packaging as a solution to food waste? Well, so, you know, you've talked about the quarter of the total greenhouse gas emissions are coming from putting food on the table, and 40% of that food that's produced doesn't get consumed. That's a huge challenge for all the energy, water, and natural resources that go into making that food to begin with, right? And so, you know, you can think about on-farm work and we have some more efficiencies in the manufacturing facility, but an awful lot of that 40% of the food that's produced that's wasted happens post-production. So I try to think of it from, okay, we've made the food, we've produced it through good sanitary means, we've got a good quality product, then it's packaged, sent out to distribution retail, and then into the consumer's hands. So how in that post-production, once it's packaged setting, can we get some new technological innovation to try to prevent it from going bad?

And for many, many years, what the industry has done is use a number of food-approved, non-toxic additives to prevent common. color loss, nutrient loss, microbial spoilage, and all these kinds of things. So at the same times, we're trying to prevent or mitigate the environmental impact of our food supply. We're also having a strong consumer demand to reduce some of these additives from our food products. So that's kind of a contrary challenge, where if you take out all the things that keep our food good for a long period of time, they're likely to have a shortened shelf life, and you're actually going to unfortunately probably see an uptick in that food waste figure.

So what we're interested in doing is seeing if we can take packaging materials and actually integrate to the polymer structure the functionality of some of these preservatives. Is this packaging best suited for any special kind of particular food? Well, what we're currently working on is best suited for a liquid, semi-liquid, or kind of gel-type product. So anything from a beverage to almost a mayonnaise of consistency. But there's other so-called active packaging technologies that we and others are working on. that could be used, for example, to keep bread from molding. And you mentioned about different meats and fish and produce to keep it fresh or longer. Amanda, the NRDC has done work showing that the people who eat the healthiest diets tend to be the most wasteful.

That was fascinating to me. Yeah, there's a great report by the NRDC Natural Resources Defense Council that called wasted that analyzed waste streams in three cities. And they found that most food waste in the United States, about 35 percent is generated by households. This is a really critical thing for many of us, not just from an environmental standpoint, but from a cost standpoint. The value of food wasted in America each year has been estimated between 162 billion and 218 billion. So we're, you know, throwing away not just resource-intensive food, but also money. And I think that we're, think the average American throws out more than a pound of food a day, right? So it's pretty

amazing. And a lot of it is these very high nutrient perishable foods that we get, you know, ambitious. I'm going to buy that big bunch of kale and either our kids, you know, won't eat it, or we just, it molders and before we can use it. So, yes, it's pretty amazing how complicit a lot of us are in the problem. That's interesting. And Julie, what's next for you. You get this new packaging on the shelves. What happens to the packaging? Is it recyclable? Is it biodegradable? Those are excellent and important questions. And so just like a product lifecycle, packaging has a life cycle, right? And so how we can improve the environmental sustainability of packaging materials, that can happen at multiple points. The Holy Grail, of course,

is biodevrived, biodegradable materials with excellent barrier properties and performance, right? And that's a little ways off. We're working toward it in some biodegradable research that we're doing. But yeah, so the idea would be that you could create this new packaging material that would have a similar performance, but with this added benefit of this preservative quality, and still fit within current recycle streams. That's very important, of course. Amira Flato, this is Science Friday from WNIC Studios. Let me get down to the, we always end our degree of change show with a look at what our listeners can do. Amanda, can you give us a few recommendations on food and our carbon footprint. Yeah, so I'd say three things that I've been looking at in my life. And again, I'm not a

very virtuous eater. I have not succeeded in backyard farming. And so I don't say this as someone who's, you know, really managed to, you know, eat a zero-carbon diet bunny stretch. But the key things are, number one, let's look at our meat consumption. Let's begin to, you know, substitute pork and chicken, for beef, if we can, and if not, go to these plant-based alternatives that are coming online and have so many advantages. Number two, food waste. This is, you know, a huge thing for many of us, first, just observing it and coming to terms with it.

Is your composting making it easier for you to go ahead and chuck that, you know, old remain? Is there something you can do to actually just freeze some of those, you know, wilting veggies and throw them into, you know, some kind of soup or something else. Can you use your leftovers better? Can you maybe use glass Tupperware instead of plastic, which preserves it a bit longer and just makes us feel a little bit better about what we've put in the fridge sometimes? And third, I think probably most importantly, think about the public figures that we're electing to office. And are they taking climate change seriously? And will they,

help us usher in a new era of climate legislation at the federal level. Dr. Goddard, do you have any recommendation? You don't like to tell people. Yeah, I mean, I think she hit on some really amazing points and certainly about electing officials that are going to continue promoting funding for projects like ours that's funded by the United States Department of Agriculture. I think that's incredibly important because that's really what can look at some 5, 10, 20-year-out research that could help to improve the environmental sustainability of our food supply.

Are you both optimistic that we can actually have an impact on this? Can it go somewhere, Amanda? I am. I think the story of climate change has been too often told as a narrative of despair, followed by denial from non-believers, followed by more anger and despair, and there's plenty of reason to despair, no doubt. But exploring the future of food allows us to see how climate will most directly and personally impact our lives, while also embracing the instinct for survival and innovation that has made it possible for our species to survive countless challenges for many millennia.

How do you address the argument, and this is a tweet that came in, that a warmer globe would expand the area of farmable land in colder regions? Have you heard that before? I have. I don't know if you want to jump in, but yes, I mean, unfortunately, whatever benefit you might have in added CO2 that would boost plant growth will be severe. offset by problems of, you know, severe drought, invasive insects, flooding, and so on. So, yes, we're really, really kidding ourselves if we think that climate change is going to improve food availability. I'd like to thank both of my guests, Howard Julie Goddard, Professor in the Department of Food Science at Cornell and University in Ithaca, and also Amanda Little, who is author of the

new book, Fate of Food, What Will Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World. We have an excerpt on our website, ScienceFriday.com slash fate. Thank you both for joining us today. Thank you so much. And a reminder to our listeners, you can leave us your comments all week long with the SciFri Vox Pop app. It's really, as I say, it's a new way for you to add your voice to our show. You can search for CyFri Vox Pop wherever you get your apps, SciFri Vox Pop, the V as in Victor. And we'd love to hear from you on this topic.

go ahead and tell us, have you changed your diet to lower your carbon footprint? You can just leave a message there, and we will listen to it, maybe put it on the air. Charles Berkowitz is our director, senior producer Christopher and Taliatta. Our producers are Alex L.N., Christy Taylor, Katie Feather, with production help from Lucy Wong. Our intern is Camille Peterson. And we had technical and engineering help today from Sarah Fishman, Kevin Wolfe, and Rich Kim, BJ Leatherman, composed our theme music. And, of course, we are active all week on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all social media. Hey, I have a speaker.

You can ask it to play Science Friday whenever you want to, you know. So every day now is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato in New York.