Reaping What We Sow
Breaking down how we can feed the world without trashing the planet.
We have become incredibly good at producing food. In doing so we have transformed our planet. Yet when we go to the supermarket or eat at a restaurant, the supply chains, labour and environmental impacts that went into our food are all but invisible.
Those impacts are huge. Today, humans and livestock make up 96 per cent of all mammals. Agriculture consumes about 70 per cent of global freshwater, and is responsible for some 80 per cent of deforestation. And yet despite producing more than enough food to feed everyone on earth, every day a minimum of 800 million people go hungry, while a fifth of all food produced for human consumption goes to waste.
Clearly, something has got to give. Thankfully, here to help us out of the mess is Dr. Sonali McDermid, a climate scientist. In this episode, she breaks down how climate and ecological crisis threaten our food systems — and how we can feed the world without wrecking the planet.
Dr. Sonali McDermid is a climate scientist and Chair of the Department of Environmental Sciences at New York University. Her work focuses on global food systems in the context of a changing climate, namely interactions between climate change and variability, land-use and agriculture, with an eye towards identifying important feedbacks and uncertainties.
Further Reading
Raj Patel, Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for World Food Systems, Melville House Publishing, 2008.
Weston Anderson et al., "Violent conflict exacerbated drought-related food insecurity between 2009 and 2019 in sub-Saharan Africa", Nature Food, 2021.
Max Ajl, "What lasted for 3000 years has been destroyed in 30: the struggle for food sovereignty in Tunisia", Verso Blog, 2018.
Cecilia Keating, "Are meat and dairy lobbyists the new 'merchants of doubt'?", Business Green, 2024.