Amanda Little, author of The Fate of Food, Amanpour and Company Interview
Amanda Little on What We’ll Eat in a Hotter, Smarter World. 07.18.2019
Amanda Little joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss her new book, “The Fate of Food,” and how our heating planet is drastically changing the way we break bread.
Watch interview here: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/amanda-little-on-what-well-eat-in-a-hotter-smarter-world/
Transcript excerpt:
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And as we said, the number of global refugees has hit an all-time high. Severe food shortages, a byproduct of climate crisis displaces millions of starving people around the world. Now, as Amanda Little tells in her new book, “The Fate of Food,” our heating planet is drastically changing the way we break bread, from cloned cows to edible insects, our Hari Sreenivasan checks out what may be on the menu of the future.
HARI SREENIVASAN: So lay out the problem in case for us. Where are we headed with global food supply and demand?
AMANDA LITTLE, AUTHOR, THE FATE OF FOOD: So the central paradox of our food future is essentially that we’re seeing huge increases in population. We’ve heard 9.5 to 10 billion by mid-century. And at the same time, pretty significant threats to global food supply. So the International Panel on Climate Change predicts that we’ll see, I think it’s two to six percent decline in crop production every decade going forward because of different climate change pressures. And they range pretty dramatically from drought and heat to flooding to shifting seasons confusing the plants to invasive insects. And that sort of contradiction, right, of increasing demand, decreasing supply, poses this really interesting challenge to farmers, as well, as engineers, and all of these other folks that are sort of joining this effort to address food security.
SREENIVASAN: This book isn’t necessarily a pessimistic look. You’re actually spending a fair amount of time looking at ways that we’re trying to solve this, and some of them which are scalable.
LITTLE: Yes, this is interesting. A lot of the response has been this book is really optimistic. And that’s been a bit surprising to me, because it, it felt like very hard earned optimism. And I am very interested in the way in which sort of our survival instinct is kicking in and we’re beginning to see that platonic maxim, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” right? The pressures to evolve and adapt, in this sort of — to these new realities, are certainly driving really exciting innovation. And so chapter by chapter, I explore things happening that are very new — radically new in areas like artificial intelligence and robotics, CRISPR, and gene editing, vertical farms, and so on. And also some really old ideas like permaculture and edible insects and ancient plants. And so, you know, it’s not all just tech will save the day. But it’s more how can we blend sort of strategies that are both traditional farming practices, and also these radically new approaches that are coming online.
SREENIVASAN: You can break the book or the structure down into three or four big parts, and we’ll try to go through those. First, let’s take a look at kind of plants and crops. You start out in chapters where you’re talking to an apple farmer in Wisconsin, and you’re seeing the real effects that are happening on his land now-
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDY FERGUSON, FARMER: It takes a special kind of person to grow apples. You’ve got to be able to roll with the punches that Mother Nature throws at you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LITTLE: It was important for me to start out this book in an apple farm in Wisconsin. I traveled to a dozen countries and probably 15 states, and you know, I was excited to tell some of these far-flung stories, but I wanted it to begin sort of, you know, at home, really, and I heard about farmers growing apples and cherries and peaches and citrus all over the country dealing with these– what they call total kill events — which is early blooming in these orchards because of warmer winters. And then a normal freeze comes along and April or May, and kills off these mature blooms and emerging fruits.
SREENIVASAN: The trees are confused because it’s so warm, they decide, oh, this must be spring and they blossom and they lose all that protection from the winter.
Snip...
More at the link.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/amanda-little-on-what-well-eat-in-a-hotter-smarter-world/
