Hi David. I'm an "everything electric" enthusiast and a farmer. I listen to every podcast you produce and I've been very impressed with your work so far. I think you should be careful taking Michael Grunwald at his word. The agri-chemical industry and the fossil fuel industry have a lot of crossover. I think the type of industrial farming he is an advocate for relies on massive amounts of toxic inputs to function and is rapidly degrading soils and natural ecosystems globally. I don't think Michaels understanding of the total energy input vs. output of industrialized farming is very holistic, and misses a lot of the nuance of what functioning soils can produce without inputs. I think the reason a lot of people can and should stay out of the food and farming debate is because natural systems are just so much more complicated than any of the science around wholly man made products like EV's. When we try to apply our reductive logic to agriculture we end up wrong almost all the time. I think that instead of asking why so many philanthropic organizations and pillars of the progressive intellectual community are wrong about the regenerative movement, you should be asking, is a guy like Michael Grunwald (who seems to get a lot of attention for being a contrarian) missing some very critical factors in the equation. I urge you to look at this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/587916.Dirt to get some context on where intensified agriculture has led civilizations throughout history.
Agreed! "Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life" is also a critical read, and I think David R Montgomery's best book, for explaining the demonstrated potential of Regenerative Agriculture. There are people showing it does bring higher YIELDS, and can STORE carbon.
David - soil health and regenerative Ag it is a really fascinating nerdy topic that just takes a couple of good books to get a handle on. I would love hearing you weave the ideas together in the smart way you do with electrons ;).
Gread pod. I have taken short courses in regenerative ag and life cycle analysis and I have a degree in food science. Here are my random comments:
1)thank-you for the biofuel debunk. Even without the land-change issues, rule of thumb should be: if oil and gas thinks it's a good idea, then it is probably just about extending their runway with incremental effects on actual GHG emissions.
2)the methane capture from garbage and other wastes is kind of BS. The best-use case is to use that captured methane on-site for power. But, what is happening is that it is being used to create a new "renewable natural gas" (RNG) industry where these "avoided" emissions are "sold" to help lower natural gas GHG content. Again: just another ploy to extend the natural gas runway. Also, now there is a financial incentive to improperly manage waste to enhance methane emissions, which is being done.
3)Regenerative agriculture is very protective of biodiversity and uses no fertilizer or pesticides, so this avoids multiple environmental hazards of agriculture. The question of CO2 sequestration is a good one. I have seen discussions where farmers had only 1-2% carbon in their soil and increased this a few percent, typically by composting and all the other little practices. Other farmers have more like 10% carbon content in their soil. This suggests to me that there is a carbon sequestration opportunity here, especially when multiplied by millions of acres of farmland. I believe a huge caveat to using soil to store carbon was simply finding a good methodology for accurately measuring carbon in soil over time, partly due to representative sampling.
4)I would like to see data showing that regenerative ag farms have lower yields. I have trouble believing this actually, since they also typically have multiple crops per year. As alluded to in the pod, scale up and research on regenerative methods is very early days.
5)Cultured meat: Life cycle analysis of this approach might reveal a very high GHG footprint: the media used to grow the meat, the space, the electricity used for processing and all that stuff. Like, for example: there is glucose and amino acids in the media. Where do those come from? Probably from a farm ultimately.
6)Trends in beef and dairy consumption are flat for the last 10 years for both the US and Canada. However, interestingly, in Canada (and the EU) consumption is HALF that of the US. Why? Prices. This tells me that this is a more moveable variable than some think. There are lots of people who care about climate, and they are desperate to find ways to make a difference.
7)The problem with genetically modified crops is not that they might be bad for people but that they create a chemical dependence in farmers, add tons of chemicals to the environment, and require farmers to buy seed every year. In poorer countries, this means they are no longer self-sufficient. They cannot collect their own seed to use year after year. Also, there is a loss of crop diversity as other different crop variants--some of which might be higher yield or have properties like drought resistance-- are lost.
David good interview. I was disappointed with the cursory way you guys addressed precion fermentation. All my research points to an efficient way to grow proteins. You seemed to lump ittogehter with kab grown meat.
"there's been a lot of objections to GMOs and as far as I have heard, no research whatsoever showing physical health harm."
David do you actually realize how research is controlled by industrial agriculture and how much research is done by industry friendly scientists? Do you understand there's no one pouring millions into independent science? Also to say all GMOs are safe because some have been "tested" is to say the least uninformed. Would you say all chemicals are safe if one is? When these GMOs were originally brought to market, they got a free pass because they were ruled "substantially equivalent".
Glyphosate (Roundup and its cousins) is now the number one pesticide applied on the planet thanks to GMOs that rely on it. It's health affects and environmental affects are not so easily dismissed.
Dave and anyone else here will not like this, but the key variable no one wants to acknowledge is population size. That's ok, some damage will be done, but as the carbon pulse fades, regression to mean will happen.
Here's what I wish had been asked - or is it perhaps in the book?
He spoke with strongest advocacy for re-wilding land. But "rewilding" all the ranchland, after the cows are given up (or vatgrown), means returning the land to 65,000,000 bison?
Recognition of the asset value of the forests avoided CO2 , in even a simple baning, supports a TAC-optimizing economy. Including farm prices. The local grassfed beef, processed in the UNR slaughterhouse in Reno, contains low transportation costs, and none of the large TAC expense of the N-fertilized feed of Big Beef. The land-cost of my awesome burgers must contain the alternate cost of restoring the seasonal wetland status of some of the pastures (while delivering more water down the Feather); these wetlands are very productive carbon capture systems, whose TAC asset values also belong (and can be recognized) on the Balance sheet(s).
The big deal is peeking out through the tules here. All land that once stored carbon, in big trees and in the living wetlands, carries that alternative value to agriculture.
This may be the single most important feature of the forests-driven carbon economy in the climate crisis.
In the carbon economy, money grows both on and under trees... This solution is radical right from its roots... I do accountant jokes also. Also suboptimal.
I did a little napkin math, and figured the land used for corn ethanol would generate nearly *double* current electrical consumption in the US. And *then* I recently heard the numbers are comparable for *soy*! So, now we're in the neighborhood of meeting *all* projected 2050 energy demand, as long as there is storage, and everything is electrified.
Fine, prioritize putting Solar on land lost to desertification, salty irrigation, (results of poor stewardship, BTW) and all the other brown fields, but saying solar is displacing food is total BS.
I think David missed a trick in failing to connect the land use of clean energy to that of agriculture. Apart from nuclear (and maybe geothermal), energy abundance *also* competes for increasingly scarce land. The vertical farm is the clearest illustration--one acre of scyscraper farm sounds fantastic for land use until you think about the number of acres of solar panels needed to run it.
Very true, although in principle much of that carbon intensity will go to zero as things get electrified and the electricity gets cleaner. But even then, the land footprint of the clean energy will remain.
Just to say that I'd be very interested in hearing some positive stories from this sector. I.e. podcasts on lab grown meat; precision fermantation; Solein....
I sometimes take the option to buy ethanol-free gas at the pump, but clearly there are a lot of subsidies to ethanol since it costs an extra $0.75 to go without.
In any case, I guess I need to peruse his work, and that of Tim Searchinger. I've been suspicious of the CCS claims of regen ag, which is very, very popular among green young (and old back to the land type) activists. They are suspicious of solar, wind, batteries, transmission, anything remotely "industrial" or "toxic."
Maybe we (at least many Americans) can just eat a tad less. Michael Moore was on to something in "Supersize Me." Despite recent howls about prices we had food cost deflation for years and years, leading to waistline inflation. That's probably the major cause of the "chronic disease epidemic" that the MAHA types try to pin on everything else. Look at a movie from the '60s and it looks like most folks are 30 lbs lighter than today. Not just Hollywood stars, the folks in the background in documentaries.
In any case, ten billion people on Earth is a lot of mouths to feed.
All GMOs should only occur in higher order polyploids to create a vertical gene barrier to ensure heirloom and wild plant populations aren’t polluted, especially as people start putting more and more genes in each plant. That’s so simple. It’s frustrating that it’s not a well established part of the process.
Trees benefit the environment, grow on soils where annual crops can’t, and make timber and food. The “big five” should include honey locust and chestnuts, both can be fed to humans or livestock.
As to carbon farming, trees exploiting the oxalate carbonate pathway, such as breadnut, brosimum alicastrum, is a legitimate way to sequester carbon at scale while also producing timber and food. Since trees make food without having to be planted each year, it’s less input energy.
One species of chestnut has high protein, and is fundamentally a meat substitute.
Honey locust is up to 36% sugar, and is the only ethanol possible crop that doesn’t degrade quickly. It can be processed out of season.
In your discussion of the climate impacts of food, you should also discuss the work of agricultural scientist Joanne Chory, who is genetically modifying major cash crops to draw down far more CO2 and then store it underground much more efficiently than is done currently. If this becomes used by most industrial farming, it could greatly reduce the effects of climate change.
Hi David. I'm an "everything electric" enthusiast and a farmer. I listen to every podcast you produce and I've been very impressed with your work so far. I think you should be careful taking Michael Grunwald at his word. The agri-chemical industry and the fossil fuel industry have a lot of crossover. I think the type of industrial farming he is an advocate for relies on massive amounts of toxic inputs to function and is rapidly degrading soils and natural ecosystems globally. I don't think Michaels understanding of the total energy input vs. output of industrialized farming is very holistic, and misses a lot of the nuance of what functioning soils can produce without inputs. I think the reason a lot of people can and should stay out of the food and farming debate is because natural systems are just so much more complicated than any of the science around wholly man made products like EV's. When we try to apply our reductive logic to agriculture we end up wrong almost all the time. I think that instead of asking why so many philanthropic organizations and pillars of the progressive intellectual community are wrong about the regenerative movement, you should be asking, is a guy like Michael Grunwald (who seems to get a lot of attention for being a contrarian) missing some very critical factors in the equation. I urge you to look at this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/587916.Dirt to get some context on where intensified agriculture has led civilizations throughout history.
Agreed! "Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life" is also a critical read, and I think David R Montgomery's best book, for explaining the demonstrated potential of Regenerative Agriculture. There are people showing it does bring higher YIELDS, and can STORE carbon.
The definition of "regenerative Ag" may seem fuzzy but its being really defined right now!! The Rodale Institute along with other orgs, has started a certification for it! https://rodaleinstitute.org/why-organic/organic-basics/regenerative-organic-agriculture/ There are specific parameters.
David - soil health and regenerative Ag it is a really fascinating nerdy topic that just takes a couple of good books to get a handle on. I would love hearing you weave the ideas together in the smart way you do with electrons ;).
Gread pod. I have taken short courses in regenerative ag and life cycle analysis and I have a degree in food science. Here are my random comments:
1)thank-you for the biofuel debunk. Even without the land-change issues, rule of thumb should be: if oil and gas thinks it's a good idea, then it is probably just about extending their runway with incremental effects on actual GHG emissions.
2)the methane capture from garbage and other wastes is kind of BS. The best-use case is to use that captured methane on-site for power. But, what is happening is that it is being used to create a new "renewable natural gas" (RNG) industry where these "avoided" emissions are "sold" to help lower natural gas GHG content. Again: just another ploy to extend the natural gas runway. Also, now there is a financial incentive to improperly manage waste to enhance methane emissions, which is being done.
3)Regenerative agriculture is very protective of biodiversity and uses no fertilizer or pesticides, so this avoids multiple environmental hazards of agriculture. The question of CO2 sequestration is a good one. I have seen discussions where farmers had only 1-2% carbon in their soil and increased this a few percent, typically by composting and all the other little practices. Other farmers have more like 10% carbon content in their soil. This suggests to me that there is a carbon sequestration opportunity here, especially when multiplied by millions of acres of farmland. I believe a huge caveat to using soil to store carbon was simply finding a good methodology for accurately measuring carbon in soil over time, partly due to representative sampling.
4)I would like to see data showing that regenerative ag farms have lower yields. I have trouble believing this actually, since they also typically have multiple crops per year. As alluded to in the pod, scale up and research on regenerative methods is very early days.
5)Cultured meat: Life cycle analysis of this approach might reveal a very high GHG footprint: the media used to grow the meat, the space, the electricity used for processing and all that stuff. Like, for example: there is glucose and amino acids in the media. Where do those come from? Probably from a farm ultimately.
6)Trends in beef and dairy consumption are flat for the last 10 years for both the US and Canada. However, interestingly, in Canada (and the EU) consumption is HALF that of the US. Why? Prices. This tells me that this is a more moveable variable than some think. There are lots of people who care about climate, and they are desperate to find ways to make a difference.
7)The problem with genetically modified crops is not that they might be bad for people but that they create a chemical dependence in farmers, add tons of chemicals to the environment, and require farmers to buy seed every year. In poorer countries, this means they are no longer self-sufficient. They cannot collect their own seed to use year after year. Also, there is a loss of crop diversity as other different crop variants--some of which might be higher yield or have properties like drought resistance-- are lost.
David good interview. I was disappointed with the cursory way you guys addressed precion fermentation. All my research points to an efficient way to grow proteins. You seemed to lump ittogehter with kab grown meat.
"there's been a lot of objections to GMOs and as far as I have heard, no research whatsoever showing physical health harm."
David do you actually realize how research is controlled by industrial agriculture and how much research is done by industry friendly scientists? Do you understand there's no one pouring millions into independent science? Also to say all GMOs are safe because some have been "tested" is to say the least uninformed. Would you say all chemicals are safe if one is? When these GMOs were originally brought to market, they got a free pass because they were ruled "substantially equivalent".
Glyphosate (Roundup and its cousins) is now the number one pesticide applied on the planet thanks to GMOs that rely on it. It's health affects and environmental affects are not so easily dismissed.
Dave and anyone else here will not like this, but the key variable no one wants to acknowledge is population size. That's ok, some damage will be done, but as the carbon pulse fades, regression to mean will happen.
I=PAT.
Here's what I wish had been asked - or is it perhaps in the book?
He spoke with strongest advocacy for re-wilding land. But "rewilding" all the ranchland, after the cows are given up (or vatgrown), means returning the land to 65,000,000 bison?
Recognition of the asset value of the forests avoided CO2 , in even a simple baning, supports a TAC-optimizing economy. Including farm prices. The local grassfed beef, processed in the UNR slaughterhouse in Reno, contains low transportation costs, and none of the large TAC expense of the N-fertilized feed of Big Beef. The land-cost of my awesome burgers must contain the alternate cost of restoring the seasonal wetland status of some of the pastures (while delivering more water down the Feather); these wetlands are very productive carbon capture systems, whose TAC asset values also belong (and can be recognized) on the Balance sheet(s).
The big deal is peeking out through the tules here. All land that once stored carbon, in big trees and in the living wetlands, carries that alternative value to agriculture.
This may be the single most important feature of the forests-driven carbon economy in the climate crisis.
In the carbon economy, money grows both on and under trees... This solution is radical right from its roots... I do accountant jokes also. Also suboptimal.
Great post! I can’t believe we can’t get rid of ethanol. Reading this definitely made me want to buy some farmland
I did a little napkin math, and figured the land used for corn ethanol would generate nearly *double* current electrical consumption in the US. And *then* I recently heard the numbers are comparable for *soy*! So, now we're in the neighborhood of meeting *all* projected 2050 energy demand, as long as there is storage, and everything is electrified.
Fine, prioritize putting Solar on land lost to desertification, salty irrigation, (results of poor stewardship, BTW) and all the other brown fields, but saying solar is displacing food is total BS.
I think David missed a trick in failing to connect the land use of clean energy to that of agriculture. Apart from nuclear (and maybe geothermal), energy abundance *also* competes for increasingly scarce land. The vertical farm is the clearest illustration--one acre of scyscraper farm sounds fantastic for land use until you think about the number of acres of solar panels needed to run it.
And building skyscraper takes a lot of carbon too! ("embodied carbon" is how construction industry is referring to it)
Very true, although in principle much of that carbon intensity will go to zero as things get electrified and the electricity gets cleaner. But even then, the land footprint of the clean energy will remain.
Hi David....
Just to say that I'd be very interested in hearing some positive stories from this sector. I.e. podcasts on lab grown meat; precision fermantation; Solein....
Thank you for all your work...
This fit well with his interview on Shift Key. Very informative.
I sometimes take the option to buy ethanol-free gas at the pump, but clearly there are a lot of subsidies to ethanol since it costs an extra $0.75 to go without.
In any case, I guess I need to peruse his work, and that of Tim Searchinger. I've been suspicious of the CCS claims of regen ag, which is very, very popular among green young (and old back to the land type) activists. They are suspicious of solar, wind, batteries, transmission, anything remotely "industrial" or "toxic."
Maybe we (at least many Americans) can just eat a tad less. Michael Moore was on to something in "Supersize Me." Despite recent howls about prices we had food cost deflation for years and years, leading to waistline inflation. That's probably the major cause of the "chronic disease epidemic" that the MAHA types try to pin on everything else. Look at a movie from the '60s and it looks like most folks are 30 lbs lighter than today. Not just Hollywood stars, the folks in the background in documentaries.
In any case, ten billion people on Earth is a lot of mouths to feed.
All GMOs should only occur in higher order polyploids to create a vertical gene barrier to ensure heirloom and wild plant populations aren’t polluted, especially as people start putting more and more genes in each plant. That’s so simple. It’s frustrating that it’s not a well established part of the process.
Trees benefit the environment, grow on soils where annual crops can’t, and make timber and food. The “big five” should include honey locust and chestnuts, both can be fed to humans or livestock.
As to carbon farming, trees exploiting the oxalate carbonate pathway, such as breadnut, brosimum alicastrum, is a legitimate way to sequester carbon at scale while also producing timber and food. Since trees make food without having to be planted each year, it’s less input energy.
One species of chestnut has high protein, and is fundamentally a meat substitute.
Honey locust is up to 36% sugar, and is the only ethanol possible crop that doesn’t degrade quickly. It can be processed out of season.
Thanks for giving me a whole new area to have to think and worry about! Do appreciate all of your posts!
In your discussion of the climate impacts of food, you should also discuss the work of agricultural scientist Joanne Chory, who is genetically modifying major cash crops to draw down far more CO2 and then store it underground much more efficiently than is done currently. If this becomes used by most industrial farming, it could greatly reduce the effects of climate change.
Dr. Chory passed away recently (sob!). However, her work is being continued by the Salk Institute's Harnessing Plants Initiative, which she founded.