An environmentalist for genetically engineered crops

In his recent interview, thoughtful long-time environmentalist Stewart Brand weighs in on topics from nuclear vs. coal to genetically engineered crops... and on the latter, like on nuclear, he ends up opposing the generic hippy environmentalist point of view:

e360: What has been the reaction to your proposals on genetic engineering and food?

Brand: Well, I’m a little surprised that Michael Pollan hasn’t come over because he has busted the industrialization of organic food.

The local growing of basically artisanal food is absolutely fantastic in a country where the basic nutrition problem is obesity. That’s not the major nutrition problem in much or most of the world. [emphasis mine, as this was central to an argument I recently had with an ardent environmentalist in an organic local bakery and coffeehouse] What they need is volume, which is the very thing the Green Revolution spoke to and answered. The second Green Revolution is the next set of good technology in agriculture. Not only green in the sense the first one was — higher yield, lower cost, cheaper food, better distribution and all that — but also green ecologically, environmentally green in terms of climate.

Kind of working backward to what the world wants and needs, and what the climate wants and needs, and ecology wants and needs, then genetic engineering looks like a very important tool.

The land use point alone makes a strong argument for the yield improvement potential of genetic engineering in agriculture, but I like how he adds the point that it can help address goals of minimizing negative environmental impacts as well.

Turning Oil Into Salt (5): Alcohol as fuel

Given the low incremental cost of making vehicles flex-fuel, the key barrier to the liquid fuels half of the Open Fuel Standard aspiration is sourcing the non-oil-based fuel itself. The authors focus on two in particular, methanol and ethanol.

Their section on methanol is OK, but I still have questions around the feedstock. The throwaway line on biomass that “The raw material is plentiful, and most of the biomass products are currently discarded” is facile and unhelpful, as anyone familiar with the economics of biomass-to-power will know (the upshot is, not many plants are being built in the U.S. because the feedstock isn’t free and thus the economics aren’t great). Coal-to-liquids and gas-to-liquids technology is indeed fairly mature, but the current cost is not great and the GHG emissions (particularly for CTL) are terrible. And while the U.S. has abundant coal, their argument on gas sourcing is inconsistent, as I mentioned before.

Their section on ethanol is way off, and the worst part of the entire book. They correctly rail against ethanol tariffs, but become apologists for ethanol subsidies, calculating the absurd claim that $6 billion in ethanol subsidies reduced the world price of oil in 2008 by enough to save the U.S. alone $60 billion on fuel imports (“ten times the subsidy”). They misleadingly quote the energy requirements of gasoline vs ethanol:

The amount of fossil fuel in mega joules needed to make one mega joule of gasoline is 1.19 versus 0.77 for corn ethanol and 0.10 for cellulosic ethanol.

(That 1.19 includes the mega joule of energy from combusting the gasoline, which is why the wording is misleading.)

Even more flawed, though, is their thinking on the “food vs. fuels myth”:

How could that drastic increase in the price of food commodities from fish to rice possibly be attributed to ethanol? Nobody was growing corn in rice paddies or making biofuels out of fish.

Yikes. Agricultural commodities are largely fungible, like oil, from both the supply and demand sides. Increased corn cultivation reduces the land available to grow other cereals like wheat, and higher prices affect the prices of substitutes like rice as consumers shift their consumption patterns in response. Farmed fish are often fed corn, as are industrially-raised cattle, pigs and poultry, which are meat substitutes for fish. Ethanol is certainly not responsible for all of the rise in food prices, but the most credible estimates link it to ~30% of the rise in grain prices (more for corn and less for wheat and rice.

This lack of understanding infects their analysis of CO2 emissions from indirect land use change and deforestation. Yes, Brazilian sugarcane is not grown near the Amazon, but it displaces commercial soy and corn farming, which in turn displaces lower-value farming and ranching activities and pushes them further into the Amazon. Throughout the world, increasing food production in response to higher prices often means extension onto marginal land (which in turn is often forest). Yes, this effect is hard to measure precisely, but that does not mean it doesn’t exist.

Finally, like many others, they take a rich-world-centric view of food price increases (“farm commodity prices have almost no effect on the retail consumers”). Yes in America, but in poorer countries where food purchases account for >50% of income and raw commodities make up >65% of end food prices, that is not the case – food price rises have a huge negative impact on nourishment, nutrition and overall welfare, which is not something to be casually ignored.

GHG emissions of livestock

A new report claims that livestock are directly or indirectly responsible for 51% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. But it is wrong, or, put more colorfully:

I read about 2 pages into the report and then gave up, because its conclusions appear to be hopelessly addled.

I'll guesstimate that the right number must be in the 10-20% range - agriculture and deforestation (which is mostly driven by agriculture, directly or indirectly) combine for about a third of human GHG emissions, and livestock is a significant part of that, the largest components being methane emissions from cows and emissions associated with crop production destined for animal feed.

Livestock is a complicated issue - while its negative environmental impacts are myriad (see the FAO's "Livestock's Long Shadow" report for a detailed assessment), it also plays important economical and social roles, particularly in poor countries with highly rural populations and agricultural economies (like, for example, Ethiopia, where I am now). As this report illustrates, for many smallholder farmers, livestock can provide nutritious food (meat and milk), steady cash income (selling milk or eggs), labor (transport and traction), fertilizer and fuel (manure), while also serving as a store of value and a hedge against inflation. And this does not even include livestock's significant social and cultural roles.

So less meat consumption might be better within developed countries, but on a global scale the questions are more nuanced and the right paths of action are less clear.

Stylized biofuels fact of the day

From a recent speech by BP Biofuels CEO Philip New (couldn't find a link):

The Brazilian government points out that 99.7% of the country’s
sugarcane plantations are as far from the Amazon as the Vatican is from the Kremlin.

And even better news is that the government plans to keep it that way.

Update: A reader asks, "The Amazon river or the edge of the Amazon rain forest?" It's not specified in the speech (found a link), but I believe he means the forest - the river wouldn't make much sense.

Brazil proposes restricting land for sugarcane

The Brazilian government announced on Sept. 17 a proposed law that will restrict the lands permissible for sugarcane farming and processing.

If passed, the bill sent to the National Congress by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will prohibit the construction or expansion of sugarcane farms and production plants in any area of native vegetation, or in the Amazon, Pantanal (Brazilian Wetlands) or Upper Paraguay River Basin regions. Coupled with the areas unsuitable for sugarcane farming, the bill would effectively make 92.5% of Brazil’s national territory off-limits for sugarcane farming and processing.

This is good news for both the local and the global environment (not to mention existing sugarcane growers in Brazil). While the massive deforestation of the Amazon that contributes the lion's share of Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions isn't performed by cane-growers, it is less easy to make the case that growing cane cultivation isn't an indirect cause (by displacing soy, which in turn displaces ranching and lower-value crops - the sorts of things people do cut/burn down the forest to grow).

The research underpinning the proposed law proudly incorporated a relative of the triple bottom line:

ZAE Cana is the largest crop survey in Brazil’s history and the first ever to incorporate economic and social considerations into its proposed model for the sustainable development of the industry.

Having lived in Brazil, I can say that there is an impressively high public and political awareness of environmental issues. Many Brazilians are quite proud of being a flex-fuel nation with predominantly renewable power generation (mostly hydro). And of course you get things like this.

RIP Norman Borlaug

A great man with a controversial legacy, but one could argue that he did more for human well-being than anyone else in the history of the world.

In 1960, before his techniques were widely adopted, the world produced 692 million tons of grain for 2.2 billion people. By 1992, largely as a result of Borlaug's pioneering techniques, it was producing 1.9 billion tons for 5.6 billion people -- using only 1% more land. India and Pakistan are now agriculturally self-sufficient as a result of his intervention.

That's from this LA Times obituary, the first of many I am sure. It has an engaging discussion of his quest to improve crop yields through breeding.

Critics (particularly from the organic agriculture world) see him as the forefather of monoculture-dominated industrial agriculture and the myriad environmental and nutritional damages it has wrought. The jury is still out, but in my mind the burden of proof still lies on those who hold that organic agriculture can scale up to feed the world without bringing massive tracts of new land under cultivation.

Update: Here's a great story from later in Borlaug's life:

Borlaug formally retired from the International Wheat and Maize Project in 1979, becoming a professor at Texas A&M University. But in 1984, he got a call from Japanese industrialist Ryoichi Sasakawa, who offered Borlaug funding for five years of work to aid agriculture in Africa.

Speaking through an interpreter, Borlaug said, "I'm 71. I'm too old to start again." Sasakawa called back the next morning and said, "I'm 15 years older than you, so I guess we should have started yesterday. Let's start tomorrow."

Update 2: World-Grain.com has a good quote from Borlaug's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, showing awareness of the wider world beyond his discipline:

"We must recognize the fact that adequate food is only the first requisite for life. For a decent and humane life we must also provide an opportunity for good education, remunerative employment, comfortable housing, good clothing and effective and compassionate medical care."

It also has the interesting tidbit that Borlaug was a Hall of Fame wrestler at the University of Minnesota.

Update 3: Chris Clayton:

In the U.S., we are blessed so much that debate over agriculture focuses on the quality of food, where it comes from, how it's grown and how it's cooked. With the passing of Dr. Borlaug, perhaps people will be inspired to reexamine the higher calling of agriculture and those throughout the world who still have yet to be touched by the green revolution.

Update 4: A few people try to size how many lives Norman Borlaug saved. The Indian Minister of Agriculture says 245 million. The Liberty Papers says 1 billion. Greed, Green and Grains thinks even 1 billion might be an understatement (and with over 1 billion people currently suffering from undernourishment, I think he could be right).

Update 5: A long and interesting interview with Borlaug from 2000.

Update 6: Here is a provocative but loosely-reasoned piece on Norman Borlaug's complicated legacy. I applaud the author's attempt to explore the rippling ramifications of Borlaug's work, but, as this commenter details, there are "several inaccuracies - some tiny, some major."

Update 7: Here's a longer NYT article, including this reference to Vandana Shiva; I'm sympathetic with Borlaug's response.

In a characteristic complaint, Vandana Shiva, an Indian critic, wrote in 1991 that “in perceiving nature’s limits as constraints on productivity that had to be removed, American experts spread ecologically destructive and unsustainable practices worldwide.”

Dr. Borlaug declared that such arguments often came from “elitists” who were rich enough not to worry about where their next meal was coming from. But over time, he acknowledged the validity of some environmental concerns, and embraced more judicious use of fertilizers and pesticides. He was frustrated throughout his life that governments did not do more to tackle what he called “the population monster” by lowering birth rates.

Pat on the back: Mackay in NYTimes/IHT

David Mackay is in the NYTimes/IHT with an article on the future of energy, featuring his charts and arguments on the land footprint of renewable energy; you saw it here almost a month ago (pats self on back).

Land footprint of renewable energy

I can't award this "killer chart" status because I don't find it very visually appealing, but David Mackay's synthesis brings up a great point (italics are mine):

Conclusion: All countries whose power consumption per unit area is bigger than 0.1 W/m2 are countries who should expect renewable facilities to occupy a significant intrusive fraction of their country, if they ever want to live on their own renewables. Countries with a power consumption per unit area bigger than 1 W/m2 (eg UK, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Belgium) would have to industrialize most of their countryside, if they want to live on their own renewables. Alternatively, their options are to radically reduce consumption, use nuclear power, and/or to buy renewable power in from other countries.

The land footprint of renewable energy isn't much on the radar of the public dialogue around alternative energy - Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air is the only place I see it brought up regularly - and yet it is a serious constraint to any renewables-heavy future, and one not very well understood by most of that future's proponents.

Here is the chart: