Palmer - Hot, hungry planet: the fight to close the food gap

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Dedicated to my family

I am one fortunate author. Not only is this my first book on a subject about which I care deeply, but its a volume that holds hope in stopping a global food crisis in the face of a changing climate.

I owe my greatest debt to Ed Purpura and to my sons and daughter and dogs for keeping me sane and relatively stable. My son Aidan demonstrated the value of a liberal arts education with his innate talent for editing, and he has a bright career ahead of him. My dearest friend, Donna, swooped me up early each morning for long runs to help me avoid getting antsy at my desk.

I am grateful to my warm and loving neighbors, friends, and colleagues at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (supported by an award from the US National Science Foundation, grant #DBI-1052875) for looking after my heart and my head as I was finalizing the book. I thank the Woodrow Wilson Center and its Environmental Change and Security Program for a yearlong fellowship that guided the development of this work, and my assistant, Breanne. As well, I thank the Vermont Law Schools Environmental Law Center, the Society of Environmental Journalists, the Solutions Journalism Network, and the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting for providing critical travel support, professional development, and intellectual guidance.

Some of the reporting for this book appeared in similar or altered form in Yale Environment 360 , Climate Connections , Slate , The Guardian , and Nautilus . Im grateful to all these publications; a special thanks for their meticulous editing to Fen Montaigne and Roger Cohn, and to Bud Ward for patience and guidance.

I cant thank enough my literary agent, Jessica Papin, my skillful editor, Emily Carleton, and her superbly able assistant, Annabella Hochschild, for their vision and support in developing this book.

My travels for this book took me to iconic American farms and to places where few Americans venture, and I was always treated with kindness and generosity. Im especially grateful to researchers and scientists for their unfailing courtesy and forbearance, and to the bighearted farmers of the Valle del Cauca in Colombia for their excellent meals. In India, the curry and masala chai were marvelous. In California, organic fresh vegetables, fruit and fish had new meaning for me.

My deepest gratitude goes to the people the world over, farmers, producers, development and aid workers, researchers, writers, and others who continue to work in this immensely rich cosmos.

In June 2013, I suddenly found myself having a meal in the middle of a field with a scholar from Spain, an environmental lawyer who specialized in water resources, an expert on energy, and an ecologist. I had been awarded a fellowship to attend a Vermont Law School summer session course on the global challenge of feeding the world while protecting forests and other natural landscapes, and that evening I had gone with other fellows, visiting faculty, and staff to the home of John Echeverria, a professor of law who was then the acting director of the Environmental Law Center. The group had come to the summer law program for a range of reasonsto teach, to learn, to interact with others outside our professionsand the Echeverrias gathering, an informal buffet dinner on their porch, was meant to encourage camaraderie among the faculty and students. Halfway through the meal I stood up when I heard what sounded like a lawn tractor approaching, its driver hollering. I looked to the front yard and saw a picnic table on wheels. Are you coming? the enthusiastic driver asked. At Johns urging a few dinner guests joined me in nodding yes. The driver of the all-terrain table introduced himself as Johns neighbor and friend. He was on his evening joyride and had hoped to find a few companions. Both John and the driver suggested those of us new to Vermont take our plates with us for the ride down to an alfalfa field to behold the green landscape.

Which one? I asked with curiosity.

The one next to the river, he said and pointed to the river valley that stretched beyond the front yard. For a moment I hesitated. I was enjoying the historic Victorian farmhouse. The driver prodded: When have you ever been on a motorized picnic table? Never. So I joined in.

It was an amazing ride. We bounced along a tractor path through the field until we rested on a bridge over the Ompompanoosuc River.

The meal was entirely local, prepared with seasonings that gave the food a Latin twist by Johns wife: locally produced pork, squash and beans from a nearby garden, and lettuce and herbs from the Echeverrias backyard. Exhortations to eat local and vote with your fork have become ubiquitous since the mid-2000s, and the bounty before us was enough to make anyone a proponent. In this part of Vermont local food is plentiful, and state policies support and encourage small-scale farming. But could states everywhereand countries everywheresupport policies that encourage their local farms to grow abundant amounts of food for local populations? During this particular idyll in the alfalfa, it was tempting to hope that Vermontits policies and local food culture writ largemight have the answer.

We are on the cusp of a global food crisis. But you may not know it if you are looking at Vermont. Parts of Vermont could best be described as the eat localutopia. In much of the United Statesand the worldcity sprawl, among other issues, means that meeting citizens calorie needs with local production is virtually impossible. And, in just two decades, an additional 2.6 to 4 billion people will be sitting down at the global table wondering whats for dinner, what is dinner, or even if we have dinner. Thats the equivalent of adding the population of New York City to the worlds grocery lines every month for the next thirty-five years.

As we sat in the field, our moving dinner party discussed how a growing population is putting pressure on the worlds water, land, and natural resources like never before. Planning ahead to address this fight to feed humankind is both a numbers game and an urgent social crisis. Calories, climate change, and acreage for farming are some factors on one side of the equation. The 7 billionplus people on the planet now, projected to swell to 9.6 to 11 billion by 2050, are on the other.

How is the global food system meeting the demands of people right now? Of the more than 7 billion people in the world, about 1 in 6 go to bed hungry every night. This is not because we dont have food. This is not because we do not grow enough food. It is, for the most part, because about a billion people, or somewhat fewer, dont have the financial, institutional, or political means to get it. Theyre too poor. Theyre too disenfranchised. Theyre too disconnected from world affairs to exercise power to get this food. They are food insecure. Essentially its a problem of poverty and institutions and not one of agronomy or land-use change or forests.

But in the near and far future, a growing global population with changing tastes will add to food insecurity, putting additional pressure on the food system. More important than population increases is dietary change in the rising middle class. Yes: adding more than 2 billion people to the planet during the next two to three decades is a big issueit means a whopping 30 percent increase in food demand. But consider the increasing wealth of the world, especially the 4 billion people who are now becoming part of the global middle class. That group will increase from 1.8 billion in 2009 to 3.2 billion by 2020 and 4.9 billion by 2030. Most of this growth will come from Asia. By 2030 people in China, Indonesia, Vietnam, and other Asian countries will constitute 66 percent of the global middle-class population and account for 59 percent of middle-class consumption, compared to 28 percent and 23 percent, respectively, in 2009. They are changing their diets and adopting a more Western style of diet. So that means eating more meats, more dairy products, more sugars, fats, oils, and other resource-intensive foods. Population growth is part of the issue, but more important is consumption: how diets will change with increasing affluence. There may now be sufficient food, if it is not wasted, but it is not always affordable. This illustrates a basic paradox of the food supplyonce people have sufficient funds to afford food, they almost immediately want better food, which puts greater strain on the food system.