Moonstruck…

Why an emphasis on technological “moonshot” left me cold…

It’s official folks: 2024 was the hottest year on record!

Four different agencies - the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), NASA, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) - have confirmed it over the past week.

Not only was 2024 “the first calendar year with a global mean temperature of more than 1.5°C above the 1850-1900 average” (pre-industrial level), “each of the past 10 years (2015–2024) was one of the 10 warmest years on record”, they said.

Here’s the kicker from NASA about the independent analyses by NOAA, Berkeley Earth, the Hadley Centre (part of the UK’s Met Office) and C3S: “These scientists use much of the same temperature data in their analyses but use different methodologies and models. Each shows the same ongoing warming trend.”

While they don’t make for pleasant reading, I’d urge you to visit these pages, which have clear and vivid data and visualisations on what’s happening.

Now, on to this week’s issue, which I am embarking on with a significant amount of trepidation but decided to do because I feel very strongly about it. Besides, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to appropriate the title of one of my all-time favourite movies.

Photo by me.

First off, let me say I wasn’t planning to rehash the same, tired arguments I made last week, especially on why we need to think beyond food insecurity and my conviction that modern-day hunger is a result of political failure.

Yet, here we are…

Earlier this week, I saw an article in The Guardian whose sub-heading made me pause.

The sub-heading that made me pause.

Having spent years reporting on hunger, malnutrition and problems with our food systems, the phrase “immediate ramping up of food production” didn’t sit right with me. It sounded myopic and… dare I say it? Slightly misleading.

But my first thought was that perhaps it was a result of overzealous editing. My second thought was, “Thin, who are you to disagree with 153 Nobel and World Food prize laureates? You’re just a lowly journalist.”

After all, the signatories read like a who’s who of food and science, including many I admire: the big bang theory physicist Robert Woodrow Wilson, CRISPR/Cas9 scientists Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, economist Joseph Stiglitz, NASA climate scientist Cynthia Rosenzweig and even the Dalai Lama. It was coordinated by Cary Fowler, joint 2024 World Food prize laureate and US special envoy for global food security.

So I dived into the article, the original open letter, and the press release. I’m sorry to say, however, that repeated readings did little to change my first impression.

Indeed, the letter made some really important points: that 700 million people are food insecure and desperately poor, that humanity is headed towards “an even more food insecure, unstable world by mid-century”, and that “increasingly common extreme weather events associated with climate change will only make matters worse”.

Additional factors “such as soil erosion and land degradation, biodiversity loss, water shortages, conflict, and policies that restrict innovation, will drag crop productivity down even further”.

It identified the lack of investment in agricultural R&D, which requires long lead time, as a key challenge that is tying “our farming systems and our fate to the past and to ever increasing use of diminishing non-replenishable resources to feed humanity”.

The luminaries called for “planet-friendly “moonshot” efforts leading to substantial, not just incremental, leaps in food production”.

These include: “enhancement of photosynthesis in crops such as wheat and rice, biological nitrogen fixation of major cereals, transformation of annual to perennial crops, development of new and overlooked crops, innovations in diverse cropping systems, enhancement of fruits and vegetables to improve storage and shelf life and to increase food safety, and the creation of nutrient-rich food from microorganisms and fungi.”

“Today’s challenges of access to food will be exacerbated by production challenges tomorrow,” it warned.

While I appreciate the letter for highlighting a critical issue, and have zero doubt it is well-intentioned, I couldn’t help but feel it was a wasted opportunity to start a much-needed and nuanced discussion about the current state of our food systems.

I was sad the focus was on a ‘tragic mismatch of global food supply and demand’. I wish, instead, that the experts have acknowledged these points:

That AVAILABILITY is just one out of four pillars of food security.

There also needs to be economic and physical ACCESS to food, the ability of our bodies to UTILISE such food to make the most of various nutrients, and the STABILITY of the other three dimensions over time.

Lately, food systems experts have made the case to expand this framework to include two more dimensions: AGENCY and SUSTAINABILITY.

Agency refers to the capacity of individuals and groups to exercise voice and make decisions about their food systems. Sustainability refers to the long-term viability of the ecological and social bases of food systems.

The Emerging Hunger Hotspots series I coordinated for The New Humanitarian in 2022-2023, which covered eight countries across four continents, clearly showed this.

Hunger was increasing in all these places, but in every single case, there was no shortage of food. It was just that the prices were out of reach of many citizens. However, all are seeing changes in cropping seasons, rainfall patterns, and the availability of water, all of which threaten future food production, like the Open Letter warned.

That a lack of political will (or intentional neglect) is a key cause of modern-day hunger and malnutrition.

Perhaps I’m overly pessimistic or insufficiently worshipful of technological advances, but I see them as plasters over a deep wound, when what we need is surgery. Besides, they will often go only as far as the powerful want them to go.

Just have a read of the stories in “The Starving World”, a brilliant series from Reuters about “the faltering global war on famine” which I’ve highlighted in previous issues.

Whether we’re talking about Sudan, Myanmar, or Gaza, the root causes of hunger in many of these worst-affected countries go beyond food supply and demand. In all three cases, it is the governments who are wilfully withholding food aid or the warring parties who are blocking food from reaching the other side.

In other words, food is being used as a weapon of war. I’m not entirely convinced that producing more food alone will alleviate the situation in these countries.

That the problem is much more complex than producing more food.

It was this LinkedIn post by the great Jennifer Clapp, a food systems expert I deeply admire, that gave me the courage to write this week’s newsletter when I was agonising over whether I had any right to respond to an admittedly well-intentioned effort by people who are so much smarter than me.

I reached out to Jennifer, whose book on industry concentration in agriculture is coming out in a few weeks, and she shared more of her thoughts with me.

“The letter is correct that we have over 700 million people facing chronic undernourishment in the world today, and that conflict and climate change are making the situation worse.

“But by focusing almost exclusively on promoting research and development for technological “moonshot” innovations to produce more food, it simplifies the issue and portrays hunger as if it’s simply a production problem that technology alone can solve.

“Such an approach does little to address the leading drivers of world hunger such as conflict, economic shocks, and inequality in food systems.

“While some of the technologies mentioned in the letter are worth pursuing, such as research into perennial grains and orphan crops, unless these kinds of ‘moonshots’ are accompanied by policies that address the main political and economic drivers of hunger in the world today, then sadly food insecurity is likely to persist.”

Paul Behrens, author and professor at Oxford Martin School who is currently advocating for the passing of the Climate and Nature Bill in the UK parliament, also has some misgivings.

“I really appreciate them drawing attention to climate impacts on agriculture and I do agree that innovation would be really beneficial (possibly necessary even with a full food system transformation, given the climate future we are facing).

“But like you, I was very disappointed that it didn’t mention that innovation must be on top of a core effort to drive a great food transformation that reduces loss & waste, shifts towards healthy diets, and increases equity in the food supply chain.

“It would have been possible to call for innovation while acknowledging the fact the global food system needs a rapid transformation. Innovation is extremely important and urgently needed, but on its own it will be more papering over the cracks in the global food system.”

That focusing on production has contributed to the triple planetary crisis (climate change, biodiversity loss, & air pollution) we now face.

Both the open letter and the press release mentioned the Green Revolution in passing but failed to acknowledge its unintended negative consequences.

Yes, the introduction of high-yielding varieties of rice and wheat, fertilisers and many of the modern farming techniques averted widespread famine in Asia and Latin America and improved farmers’ incomes.

It also led to environmental degradation from the overuse of fertilisers and pesticides, excessive pumping of groundwater for irrigation needs, and the loss of agricultural biodiversity due to a narrow focus on a few major cereal varieties.

I do see the Green Revolution as a good thing but I would also like to see some recognition of the limitations of research, innovation, and technological solutions, as noted in this 2012 paper by Cornell professor Prabhu Pingali.

He wrote that the negative consequences were “often not because of the technology itself but rather, because of the policies that were used to promote rapid intensification of agricultural systems and increase food supplies. Some areas were left behind, and even where it successfully increased agricultural productivity, the (Green Revolution) was not always the panacea for solving the myriad of poverty, food security, and nutrition problems facing poor societies.”

It’s also worth keeping in mind the recent nexus assessment from the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) which looked at the nexus of biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change.

If the world prioritises food production through “unsustainable intensification of production and increased per capita consumption” (page 16), there will be negative impacts on biodiversity and water, the report warned.

That confronting power is a must if we truly care about a sustainable future for the developing world.

In the open letter, the experts wrote: “Agricultural research enjoys extremely favorable returns on investment when all its benefits are considered, but there are multiple market failures when it comes to providing the people of the developing world with a nutritious diet in a manner that is resilient, environmentally sustainable, and cost-effective.”

Shouldn’t these nutritious diets also be inclusive and socially sustainable? A lot of the things I’ve pointed out above essentially come down to one big giant elephant the letter seems intent on avoiding: inequality in our current food systems.

I wrote at length last week about the unfairness of it all, including the concentrated nature of modern food and farming sector. I wrote about the pervasiveness of this inequity. I wrote about how difficult it is to change this power imbalance because often it is a challenge to even admit the imbalance exists.

That, perhaps, is what upsets me most of all.

That 153 of the world’s most eminent voices cannot acknowledge these power dynamics and the importance of confronting them.

Thin’s Meager Pickings

Europe versus the US? Or people versus billionaires? - Nicholas Shaxson

Pithy piece by the author of Treasure Islands, Poisoned Wells, The Finance Curse, and co-founder of the Balanced Economy Project, on why what’s happening with the tech bros and Trump isn’t a Europe vs. America or even a fight between left and right.

“This is a global-scale conflict between ordinary people everywhere, versus billionaires and oligarchs.”

As always, please feel free to share this post and send tips and thoughts on bluesky @thinink.bsky.social, mastodon @ThinInk@journa.host, my LinkedIn page, or via e-mail thin@thin-ink.net.