Published: Less than 10 min ago
World food production is close to a collapse of the same magnitude as the 2008 financial crisis.
That’s what the author and The Guardian journalist George Monbiot claims, who believes that we need to start dismantling the livestock industry.
– It will eat the world to extinction. It is an existential threat that we face.
He proposes a completely different solution to the problem – bacteria.
George Monbiot is usually columnist on the British newspaper The Guardian and has written several books about the climate and the ecological challenges we face in the future. Now he is in Sweden, current with the book “Regenesis”, which is about the enormous problems that await the world’s food production – but also about an unexpected solution. He meets us at a hotel in the Old Town with a lovely view of the National Museum, Skeppsholmen and Kastellholmen.
However, the future prospects are not as bright. Our way of producing food, globally, is on the verge of collapse. How close? It is difficult to answer, says Monbiot.
– It is very difficult to know, because it has strong similarities with the financial crisis of 2008. In retrospect, we could see that that crisis had been growing for many years, but it still took almost everyone by surprise when it arose. Most people were completely shocked.
Surprised by complex systems
One of the reasons is that we find it so difficult to interpret and understand complex systems – even though everything that is important to us actually consists of complex systems: The brain, the human body, society, ecosystems, the atmosphere, the oceans.
– We are constantly surprised by the collapse of complex systems, but there are a lot of warning signs that both scientists and mathematicians can detect. One of them is the flicker, fluctuations in the “output”. In food systems, we have seen supply chain problems and spikes in food prices in recent years, which very much look like the flicker that precedes a systemic collapse.
In working on his book, George Monbiot read more than 5,000 scientific articles on how our way of producing food is structured and he believes that we are now on the verge of losing all four basic foundations of what makes the system resilient – the reserve capacity, the backup systems, the interchangeability and fuses that can prevent a shock from propagating through the system. All had more or less disappeared because four food giants control 90 percent of the grain trade.
– They have all become “too big to fail”, just like the banks. And what scientists have noticed over the years is that more and more shocks are passing through the system. Rather than being dampened, as in a healthy dynamic system, shocks are amplified as they travel through it, much like what happened to the banks in 2008.
– In the rich countries, we barely notice this, because we are at the front of the queue when it comes to food. We have hard currencies, we have a lot to trade with, so it’s the poor nations that feel this.
Hits with full force
A small disturbance at the top of the food chain, a speculation that causes the price of a commodity to rise or a bottleneck somewhere in the food chain, hits the poor countries with full force.
– And this seems to explain something that is otherwise incomprehensible: From the 1960s to 2014, we have had a steady decline in global hunger. People were already celebrating, “it’s the end of the food shortage”, many said. But in 2015 the trend started to reverse and it has continued ever since.
– And the really strange thing is that at the same time the global food price index fell from 2014 to 2015 and it was below 100 until the middle of 2020. Any economist would say that “everyone will have their food needs met, because food prices are so low “. But what seems to have happened is that the shocks transmitted through the system cause local food price spikes in the poorer countries.
Another problem is the bottlenecks that the transport of food must pass through – the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal, for example.
– Had that container ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal in March 2021, instead got stuck in March 2022, the food chain would have broken. It is about 100 million people for whom the food shelves would have been cleared overnight. We are balancing on a knife edge.
Can’t create more food
During the 2008 financial crisis, the banks could be saved by printing more money, “future money”, as Monbiot calls it, which was basically created out of thin air. It is not as simple when it comes to food.
– We cannot save the food system with future food. Future food does not exist. We can create money out of thin air, we can say that “now we just invented more money”. But we can’t wave a magic wand to create more food.
However, George Monbiot believes that there is a solution in what is called precision fermentation, which he believes can revolutionize food production.
It involves using bacteria that feed on hydrogen or methanol, water, carbon dioxide and a little fertilizer to create a flour that contains 60 percent protein. One report estimates that precision fermentation with methanol requires 1,700 times less land than the most efficient agricultural means of producing protein: Soy grown in the United States.
“This can create a backup system that can produce huge amounts of food, any amount of food with very little water use, very little fertilizer.
“Existential threat”
George Monbiot also believes that if the livestock industry is replaced with this, it may be the last major chance to prevent the collapse of the agricultural system.
We also have problems with soil degradation, the rising heat itself and the lack of water. How urgent would you say it is?
– It is a desperate situation and it is surprising to me that this does not weigh more heavily in the political debates. It is an existential threat that we face. There is no doubt that there are enormous threats to the food system. You mentioned water – this is arguably the biggest threat of all. There is a general scientific consensus that we need about 50 percent more food by 2050 to avoid mass starvation. That can change if we change our diet, if we move away from animal husbandry we need to produce much less. There is also a broad consensus from agronomists that we can increase food production by 50 percent if we maximize harvest. But one study found it required a 146 percent increase in the amount of water we use. That water does not exist!
– Even if you ignored all the other issues around climate breakdown, around land degradation, around the loss of genetic diversity in plants – the lack of water alone would be enough to destroy the food supply.
The world’s population will increase to just under 10 billion people in 2050, and then begin to decrease. In contrast, the world’s various herds of livestock are growing significantly faster.
– In 2050, there will be another 100 million tons of people and another 400 million tons of livestock, says George Monbiot.
– That is the problem. It is the cattle industry that is skyrocketing and it will eat the world to extinction. Getting out of the livestock industry should be a top priority for anyone who cares about the world and its people.