feedingninebillion

Evan Fraser here (follow me at twitter @feeding9billion): Hi Ells95, we regularly work with nutritionists and in another paper (currently under review) we compare some of the dietary guidelines from other countries. But your point is well taken and here at the University of Guelph we are proud to be home to one of Canada’s foremost nutrition programs.

Evan Fraser here (follow me at twitter @feeding9billion): funny you should ask, PinkLouie, Madhur, myself and a number of colleagues are working on another paper dealing with exactly that issue. Overall, I think there are four broad pathways: 1. Reduce waste; 2. Develop technology that allows us to produce more food with fewer inputs; 3. Eat more fruits and vegetables; 4. Develop proteins, including alternative proteins such as insects (!) as well as plant protein that require fewer inputs to produce.

One major global problem, is that many of our groundwater sources are being depleted quite quickly. The key example of this in North America is the Great Plains aquifer also known as the Ogallala aquifer. This is an immense reservoir of water that was deposited during the last major glacial melt about 10,000 years ago. In many parts of the US, and in particular in areas around Oklahoma and Texas, this body of water is dropping quite quickly and recent data that I looked at suggests that the water table has dropped well over 100 feet in the last decade. But it’s not all bad news, the north end of the aquifer around Nebraska is actually recharging quite well. So from a water perspective, agriculture seems to be fairly unsustainable in the southern parts of the aquifer but doing okay in the northern parts. I believe that the aquifer is under the North China planes are in pretty bad shape, but this is not an area that I have a lot of personal expertise in.

Great question!! Thanks for asking.
The primary way that farmers can protect themselves against drought is by building up soil organic matter. Soil organic matter is important because it allows the soil to act like a sponge, trapping water when it’s abundant and saving it for when it’s needed. Low tillage methods such as seed drilling are pretty good at doing this, as is spreading organic fertilizer. Crop rotation is another really important way of building up so organic matter and protecting crops against drought. Then of course there’s also higher tech methods such as using bio technology to create more drought hardy cultivars.

But of course we have to be careful to avoid “techno-hubris”. Humanity proves itself again and again able to develop useful technologies to overcome the problems of nature. But nature also has a habit of putting us in our place. Often, the really bad things happen when there is a confluence of bad economic conditions and bad environmental conditions at the same time. This is the scenario that really worries me.