Today, Explained - Table for 10 billion, please

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

Feeding the world’s growing population is an increasingly difficult challenge, and climate change won’t make it any easier. Vox’s Kenny Torrella visited the Netherlands, a small country with big ideas about the future of food, to find out more about how the country is approaching the problem. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Help keep this show and all of Vox's journalism free by making a gift to Vox today: bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today explained Sean Ramos from late last year, we brought you an episode with some huge news. Humanity had just hit a big milestone. According to estimates, there were for the first time ever, 8 billion of us. We were only about 1 billion people 220 years ago or so, about 1800. So that's a really fast amount of growth in a fairly small period of time. This is really just the last 200 years that we've just, boom, taken off the way we have. And humanity is not slowing down. By 2050, there's projected to be

nearly 10 billion people alive. On the show today, we're gonna ask how we're gonna feed 10 billion of us. Not only will we need to grow more food, we'll also need to do it with less land. We'll need to do it more efficiently because if we don't, we'll need to clear more and more land for agriculture. Lucky for us, there is a country where the future of food is already here.

Vox's Kenny Torella takes us there momentarily. This NFL season, get in on all the hard-hitting action with FanDuel, North America's number one sportsbook. You can bet on anything from money lines to spreads and player props, or combine your bets in a same-game parlay for a shot at an even bigger payout. Plus, with super-simple live betting, lightning-fast bet settlement, and instant withdrawals, FanDuel makes betting on the NFL easier than ever before. So make the most of this football season and download FanDuel today. 19-plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca.

Ciao. Sto ascoltando, oggi spiegato. Today explain, explain, explain, explain. Okay, so humanity is going to be 10 billion big by 2050 or so. We've got deforestation driving climate change, making it harder to grow food. We've got some big, huge problems. Kenny, you've been searching for big, huge solutions, which brought you to the Netherlands, which seems like a small country to go searching for big solutions.

Don't at me. It's very small. It's a tiny country. It's about half the size of South Carolina. But it's become a global leader in agriculture. These greenhouses are in the southwestern section of the Netherlands, and they enable farmers to grow crops the year round. They've really cracked the code on growing more food with less land.

Farming under glass, another example of Dutch ingenuity. In fact, that's kind of their rallying cry, is grow twice as much food with half as many resources. Wow. I thought they just grew like a bunch of flowers over there, like tulips and stuff. Oh, they do. I saw a lot of flowers, a lot of flower seeds. But they also grow a lot of fruits and vegetables, and they develop the technology that's used around the world to grow food more efficiently.

But they're also doing it at home. The Netherlands grows 6% of Europe's food supply with just 1% of Europe's farmland. Very interesting. Okay. And I'm guessing you took a tour? I did. Can you take us on a tour? I can.

Take it away. So it all starts with getting more food out of each seed planted in the ground, or in the case of the Netherlands, planted in greenhouses. Okay. So the first place I went is called Seed Valley. It's a play on California's famous tech hub, Silicon Valley. I've been. But you know instead of developing software and semiconductors, they are growing the seeds of the future. Nice. So the first place I want to take you on the tour is Enzozaden, a seed genetics company. So I'm Shana Fervai and I'm the global manager of cell technologies at Biotech at Ensozana. Her company helps breed new varieties of fruit and vegetable seeds to be more productive and resistant to viruses. And a good example of what they do actually came up recently because of a new virus called tomato brown rugose fruit virus.

Sounds kind of delicious. This virus has been destructive in the last five years in crops all across Europe, Middle East, you know, U.S., Mexico, many, many different places. So these are not even, you know, the farmers in Africa or Southeast Asia. These are large growers that if that virus gets into your greenhouse, you have to wipe out everything. Okay, so it sounds totally awful. It is. And so as this virus is ravaging tomato crops around the world, Enzazaden jumps into action. And they do what farmers have been doing since the dawn of agriculture 10,000 years ago.

They're breeding different varieties of crops with one another until they can eventually make one that can resist this virus. We went into our gene bank. So that's where we keep all our jewels, let's say, all our genetic jewels. And said, OK, is there some more wild material that is resistant to this virus? So what's really impressive is that just a couple of decades ago, it might have taken a company like Enzazaden 10 years to develop a new tomato variety that could resist this virus. But today, thanks to a number of new technologies, they've cut that time in half. They developed this new

resistant variety in just five years. So one of these technologies is called marker-assisted breeding, which is done by simply tearing off little pieces of a plant and quickly scanning its DNA for a genetic marker that's associated with a particular trait. That could be anything from the crop's color to its texture or its ability to resist a certain virus. And then you can really test this gene and see if it indeed gives that resistance. And what it does, then you can indeed put a little flag, which we call a molecular marker, and then that molecular marker can actually be used during breeding to say, is the gene

there? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. No, no, no. And then when you test it with an infection, the yes corresponds to a resistance, the no corresponds to a disease. And that's how you start really making steps in knowing which gene can be that resistance. So it sounds like what they're doing at Enza Zayden is sort of genetically engineering crops and seeds. Is that right?

Well, they're not exactly doing genetic engineering. They're doing conventional crop breeding, but using new technologies that just speed up the process. They're skipping steps. They're skipping steps. They can much more quickly identify what in a plant might give it the trait that they're looking for. Nice. And this is mostly, at least thus far, about beating viruses like the delicious but totally destructive tomato virus you told me about. What about, let's say, climate change? What about a warming planet? Right. Climate change is just going to make farming increasingly unpredictable and challenging. For one, the geographic range of viruses and insects that kill crops, that geographic range

is going to expand over time. But climate change will also mean more extreme weather events like floods, hurricanes, and droughts, which will destroy crops. In fact, when I was in Seed Valley, I met Girthon Vandebunt. And you focus on beans? Beans, yeah.

Wow. Beans. A seed breeder with the company Popbreend. Snap beans. Snap beans, yeah. Not dry beans, but snap beans Beans, yeah. Wow. Beans. A seed breeder with the company Pop Green. Snap beans. Snap beans, yeah. Not dry beans, but snap beans. Right, right. Okay.

It's a different selection area, dry beans compared to snap beans. Yeah. He works on green beans, and he said that back in the late 1990s, farmers in Florida and Georgia started struggling to grow green beans because it was getting too hot. Let's say, on average, one plant can make 10 good pots per plant. But then what happens when you have a lot of flower abortion during the heat, you might end up with only two or three pots per plant.

So a few years ago, Gerthan and his company came up with a new kind of heat-resistant green bean. And now with the newer genetics, they are able again to get good yields out of the beans. I mean, this does sound very nice, but it has me wondering, Kenny, how expensive this all is. I mean, a lot of countries grow food but can't afford the tech that you're talking about here that's coming from like the Dutch, you know, Silicon Valley-esque seed valley agricultural hub. That's right. These high-tech seeds are commonly used in poorer countries in the global south, where they're arguably most needed and where crop yields tend to be much lower and farmers have a harder time facing these viruses. And the main barrier is what you alluded to, cost. These expensive, high-performing seeds that seed companies like Enzazaden and others in Seed Valley develop, they will drop in yield over time if they're saved and reused. And so farmers have to buy new ones each year to keep those crop yields

high. And cost isn't the only factor. There's another issue for countries outside of the U.S. and Europe. What is it? There is just a huge mismatch between what, say, a subsistence farmer in Ethiopia might need and what big seed companies develop. Oh, we're talking about the actual seeds here. Right. So the seed industry, you know, it's highly consolidated. It's concentrated in Europe and the U.S. and it focuses on high-margin, internationally traded vegetables and fruits like cucumbers, tomatoes, you know, not the staple crops that so much of the global South relies on for calories like yucca, sweet potatoes, or millet, to name just a few. And so the lack of resources devoted to developing new, higher-performing seeds for these crops, these staple crops, it's earned them the nickname orphan crops.

Wow, so sad. It's really sad. Lisa, I want some more. Yeah, and it's especially unjust when you step back and consider that the global South is far less responsible for climate change, and yet they're going to suffer disproportionately from it. Kenny, we've been talking about crops, and I know from a previous episode we made with you that you're big on vegetables, but there are still a lot of meat eaters out there. So if we're talking about the future of food,

we probably need to talk about meat. Where's the beef? Well, that's a big question in the Netherlands. And actually, to be more specific, it's where's the cheese? Huh? Yeah, the Netherlands is thinking a lot about the future of meat and dairy

and maybe more than any other country. And a lot of it boils down to their cows. What do they call it? They call it a royale with cheese. Royale with cheese. That's right. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family, and Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame.

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What? Today Explained, Sean Ramos-Verm back with Kenny Torella, and we are in our DC studio, but Kenny was recently in the Netherlands where they are not only pioneering technology related to agriculture and seeds, but also dairy related stuff. Kenny, tell me more. That's right. Yeah. The Netherlands raises almost four million dairy cows. Cheese is a point of national pride in the country everywhere you go. There's huge wheels of cheese like the size of a Roomba.

That's how I kept thinking about it. Please charge Roomba. And as a result of decades of government policy, you know, promoting agricultural efficiency above all else, the Netherlands now has the most densely concentrated livestock population in all of Europe. Huh. So there's 4 million cows, but there's also 11 million pigs and 100 million chickens. This is a lot for such a tiny country.

How many people do they got? 17 million people. Huh. So they're definitely outnumbered. Far outnumbered. Do they have room for all those animals? No. In fact, there are too many animals.

Huh. Livestock production account for about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions and beef and dairy in particular make up a big part of that. But it's not just about climate change. The Dutch's huge livestock population has led to extremely high levels of nitrogen pollution. But these are people with money, with agricultural tech hubs. They got solutions. What are they doing about their nitrogen problems and their spatial problems? So far, the big solution has been radical policy change. Ooh. So the government and courts have been going after

the production side of this, but success has been mixed. This dates back to 2019 when the European Union's highest court ruled that the Netherlands' nitrogen pollution levels were out of control. And a Dutch court agreed, ultimately putting thousands of construction projects on hold, including new livestock farms, because most of the country's nitrogen was coming from its farms, its cow poop, its animal manure. But that was just the beginning. Now the government is taking even more stringent

steps to fix the problem. The first has been aiming to reduce the number of farmed animals in the country by a third. And it's willing to spend over $26 billion to pay farmers to either change their practices, to reduce the number of animals they have, or just to buy them out of their land altogether. I imagine these policies from the government would upset many a Dutch farmer. How is it going over? You're right. The whole thing has been incredibly polarizing. Not an unusual sight in the Netherlands these days. Tractors on the streets of The Hague joining a protest. And what that protest has looked like is pretty intense. Livestock farmers have jammed up highways with their tractors. They've set fire to manure and hay bales.

They've even blockaded access to supermarket distribution centers. We hope that the government will understand that the Netherlands can't exist without farmers. The Netherlands needs farmers. We are producing the most sustainable food worldwide. So without us, I don't know who will feed all these people. You know, when I was in Amsterdam, I saw a number of upside down Dutch flags, which have been a symbol of protest against these regulations. Wow. Yeah.

Sounds a little like capital insurrection adjacent, Kenny. Even Donald Trump has taken up support for Dutch farmers. Our Donald Trump? Our Donald Trump. Cares about Dutch farmers? He does. As we speak, farmers in the Netherlands of all places are courageously opposing the climate tyranny of the Dutch government.

Can you believe this? Which wants to dramatically cut Dutch farm production despite growing food shortages. They're saying you can't farm your land. We're not going to give you fertilizer. You have to get rid of the cattle. Some on the far right in the Netherlands have pushed this idea out, with zero evidence of course, that this is a plot by the government to take the land from Dutch farmers and use it to house immigrants. Half of your cattle they want out. You'll be next. You'll be next. Wow. Sounds like a real red meat issue. Yeah. And pretty shortly after I left the Netherlands, a political party that was formed in part by those angry farmers, they shockingly won a lot of seats in provincial elections. So there's a great deal of political pushback to reducing nitrogen output there.

BBB, which was set up to challenge nitrogen pollution policies, took 15 of the 75 Senate seats. The ruling four-party centre-right coalition of Prime Minister Mark Rutter lost eight seats. The result could curb the Prime Minister Mark Rutter lost eight seats. The result could curb the prime minister's ability to push reforms for the remainder of his term. Are there any policies to fix this land scarcity, nitrogen pollution, too many cows and chickens issue that aren't so red meat, that aren't worthy of Trump getting involved? Yeah, so while the farmers are revolting and people have all sorts of feelings around telling farmers what to do, the Dutch have been surprisingly open to policies to shift what they eat, you know, the consumption side of things, not the production side.

And that really took off in 2018 when an environmental advisory board to the Dutch government recommended Oh, yeah. has been making its way into local and national policy with pretty strong public support. So the first thing is simply just developing better meat and dairy alternatives. Years ago, the world's first lab-grown or cultivated hamburger, I don't know if you remember the one that cost the price of a house, it was like $325,000. Oh, I remember.

I was expecting the texture to be more soft. There's really a bite to it. It's close to meat. It's not that juicy. That was created by a Dutch scientist back in 2013, a guy named Mark Post. And now the Dutch government has invested $65 million into research to develop better alternatives, and they say more money is

going to come. But that's not all. A lot of cities are getting involved in this. For example, the city of Harlem, yes, it's called Harlem, banned meat advertisements and advertisements from other industries with high levels of pollution. Last month, the city of Altina, they launched a program to influence their 55,000 residents to eat more vegetarian meals. And there's also a national push. Last month, the Ministry of Agriculture in the Netherlands announced the goal that by 2030,

they want to double the country's consumption of legumes, like beans and lentils. Interestingly here, Kenny, I asked you what is not upsetting Donald Trump, but I would imagine telling people to eat less meat would actually upset Donald Trump who loves his cheeseburgers. Could this ever work in a country like the United States? At this point in time, there's no way it could work in the U.S. When there are even just whiffs of policy measures that might restrict or change meat production or consumption, people revolt.

But the Europeans are much more open-minded to these kinds of policies. You know, you see similar policies playing out in Denmark and the Netherlands' neighbor, Germany. One poll found that around three quarters of the Dutch believe that they need to eat less meat and dairy. So there's just much stronger public support. There's a lot more open-mindedness to changing how people eat across the pond.

Seems enviable. Yeah, they're much more level-headed. Okay, so things sound really idyllic in the Netherlands, in Denmark. Good for them. Congratulations. Are they going to use any of their money and seeds to benefit us on this dairy front? Do they have any technology that we could at least use, since we don't always have the best politics in this country?

Well, they're taking a lot of different approaches to reducing their nitrogen pollution. One of the flashier ones is the cow toilet. The cow toilet? Yes, the cow toilet. Tell me more. So I heard about the cow toilet from a guy named Case Deconing. If you combine the faces and the urine, if you put it together, you get ammonia. He is a dairy veteran. He runs the Dairy Campus, which is a big dairy research facility run by Wageningen University and Research. If I can separate, you will get less ammonia. So the idea is to separate the faces and the urine.

With the cow toilet, the cow enters a feed station. After she's done gobbling down her feed, a bucket rubs a nerve above her udder that triggers a urinating reflex. She starts to pee. The bucket catches all the urine. And that's important because that's where a lot of cows' nitrogen comes from, their urine.

Huh. The urine is then stored in a tank, and the company that develops it, called Hanskamp, says that this can catch about 50% of a mature dairy cow's urine throughout the day. Amazing. We have a lot of technology nowadays that can help a farmer to reduce ammonia emissions. I wonder, you know, you traveled halfway across the world to the Netherlands to see the future of food production. Now that you've seen it, how confident are you that we're going to be able to feed 10 billion humans by, you know, the middle of the century on an even hotter planet. Well, it gives me a lot of hope that the Netherlands, you know, such a tiny country,

can marshal its resources and become a global leader in agriculture. But it should also serve as a cautionary tale as to what happens when a country prizes efficiency above all else. You know, the fight that it's now having over livestock farming and pollution, it's really messy and difficult,

but it's not going to be constrained just to the Netherlands. This fight is going to play out, whether we like it or not, across the West in the coming decades, as we have to reckon with the high levels of pollution and global greenhouse gas emissions that come from our incredibly high meat and dairy heavy diets. If you want to make an omelet, you're going to have to break some eggs.

That's right. Hopefully they're artificial eggs so that no animals were involved. Yep, we'll see. Thankfully, they sell those now at the grocery store. They do. Yeah. Kenny Torello. Find his writing at Vox.com.

Kenny's also a musician. All the music you heard in today's show is his. Find his music on Bandcamp. He goes by Torello. T-O-R-E-L-L-O. Our program today was produced by Miles Bryan. He had help from Matthew Collette and Laura Bullard and Paul Robert Mounsey. The rest of the team here today explained includes Avishai Artsy, Hadima Wagdi, Siona Petros, Halima Shah, Amanda Llewellyn, and Victoria Chamberlain. Our supervising producer is Amina Alsadi.

My co-host is Noel King. And we get lots of help from Jolie Myers and Patrick Boyd. We are on the radio in partnership with WNYC, and we are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. you