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Feeding Everyone No Matter What: Managing Food Security After Global Catastrophe
Feeding Everyone No Matter What presents a scientific approach to the practicalities of planning for long-term interruption to food production.
The primary historic solution developed over the last several decades is increased food storage. However, storing up enough food to feed everyone would take a significant amount of time and would increase the price of food, killing additional people due to inadequate global access to affordable food. Humanity is far from doomed, however, in these situations - there are solutions.
This book provides an order of magnitude technical analysis comparing caloric requirements of all humans for five years with conversion of existing vegetation and fossil fuels to edible food. It presents mechanisms for global-scale conversion natural gas-digesting bacteria, extracting food from leaves, and conversion of fiber by enzymes, mushroom or bacteria growth, or a two-step process involving partial decomposition of fiber by fungi and/or bacteria and feeding them to animals such as beetles, ruminants (cows, deer, etc), rats and chickens. It includes an analysis to determine the ramp rates for each option and the results show that careful planning and global cooperation could ensure the bulk of humanity and biodiversity could be maintained in even in the most extreme circumstances.
Summarizes the severity and probabilities of global catastrophe scenarios, which could lead to a complete loss of agricultural production More than 10 detailed mechanisms for global-scale solutions to the food crisis and their evaluation to test their viability Detailed roadmap for future R&D for human survival after global catastrophe
The primary historic solution developed over the last several decades is increased food storage. However, storing up enough food to feed everyone would take a significant amount of time and would increase the price of food, killing additional people due to inadequate global access to affordable food. Humanity is far from doomed, however, in these situations - there are solutions.
This book provides an order of magnitude technical analysis comparing caloric requirements of all humans for five years with conversion of existing vegetation and fossil fuels to edible food. It presents mechanisms for global-scale conversion natural gas-digesting bacteria, extracting food from leaves, and conversion of fiber by enzymes, mushroom or bacteria growth, or a two-step process involving partial decomposition of fiber by fungi and/or bacteria and feeding them to animals such as beetles, ruminants (cows, deer, etc), rats and chickens. It includes an analysis to determine the ramp rates for each option and the results show that careful planning and global cooperation could ensure the bulk of humanity and biodiversity could be maintained in even in the most extreme circumstances.
Summarizes the severity and probabilities of global catastrophe scenarios, which could lead to a complete loss of agricultural production More than 10 detailed mechanisms for global-scale solutions to the food crisis and their evaluation to test their viability Detailed roadmap for future R&D for human survival after global catastrophe
128 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 14, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 14, 2018
I have very mixed feelings about this book.
It discusses some moderately unlikely risks - scenarios where most crops fail worldwide for several years, due to inadequate sunlight.
It's hard to feel emotionally satisfied about a tolerable but uncomfortable response to disasters, when ideally we'd prevent those disasters in the first place. And the disasters seem sufficiently improbable that I don't feel comfortable thinking frequently about them. But we don't yet have a foolproof way of preventing catastrophic climate changes, and there are things we can do to survive them. So logic tells me that we ought to devote a few resources to preparing.
The authors sketch a set of strategies which could conceivably ensure that nobody starves (Wikipedia has a good summary). There might even be a bit of room for mistakes, but not much.
The book focuses on the technical problems, with the hope that others will solve the political problems. This makes some sense, as the feasibility of various political solutions is very different if the best political strategy saves 95% of people than if it saves 30%.
It's a bit disturbing that this seems to be the most expert analysis available for these scenarios - the authors appear fairly competent, but seem to have done less research than I expect from a technical book. They may have made the right choice to publish early, in order to attract more support. I'm mainly disturbed by what the lack of expertise says about societal competence.
The book leaves me with lots of uncertainty about how hard it is to improve on the meager preparations that have been done so far.
For example, I expect there are a moderate number of people who know something about rapidly scaling up mushroom production. Are they already capable of handling the needed changes? Or are drastically different preparations needed? It's hard for me to tell without developing significant expertise in growing mushrooms.
There's probably an urgent need for a bit more preparation for extracting nutrition from ordinary leaves. In particular, I expect it to matter what kinds of leaves to use. The book mostly talks of leaves from trees, but careless people in my area might include poison hemlock leaves, with disastrous results. A small amount of advance preparation should be able to cause large reductions in this kind of mistake.
Another simple preparation that's needed is a better awareness of where to look in a crisis. The news media in particular ought to be able to quickly find this kind of information even when they're overwhelmed with problems.
I'm guessing that a few hundred thousand dollars of additional effort in this area would have high expected value, with strongly diminishing returns after that. I've donated a small amount to ALLFED, and I encourage you to donate a little bit as well.
It discusses some moderately unlikely risks - scenarios where most crops fail worldwide for several years, due to inadequate sunlight.
It's hard to feel emotionally satisfied about a tolerable but uncomfortable response to disasters, when ideally we'd prevent those disasters in the first place. And the disasters seem sufficiently improbable that I don't feel comfortable thinking frequently about them. But we don't yet have a foolproof way of preventing catastrophic climate changes, and there are things we can do to survive them. So logic tells me that we ought to devote a few resources to preparing.
The authors sketch a set of strategies which could conceivably ensure that nobody starves (Wikipedia has a good summary). There might even be a bit of room for mistakes, but not much.
The book focuses on the technical problems, with the hope that others will solve the political problems. This makes some sense, as the feasibility of various political solutions is very different if the best political strategy saves 95% of people than if it saves 30%.
It's a bit disturbing that this seems to be the most expert analysis available for these scenarios - the authors appear fairly competent, but seem to have done less research than I expect from a technical book. They may have made the right choice to publish early, in order to attract more support. I'm mainly disturbed by what the lack of expertise says about societal competence.
The book leaves me with lots of uncertainty about how hard it is to improve on the meager preparations that have been done so far.
For example, I expect there are a moderate number of people who know something about rapidly scaling up mushroom production. Are they already capable of handling the needed changes? Or are drastically different preparations needed? It's hard for me to tell without developing significant expertise in growing mushrooms.
There's probably an urgent need for a bit more preparation for extracting nutrition from ordinary leaves. In particular, I expect it to matter what kinds of leaves to use. The book mostly talks of leaves from trees, but careless people in my area might include poison hemlock leaves, with disastrous results. A small amount of advance preparation should be able to cause large reductions in this kind of mistake.
Another simple preparation that's needed is a better awareness of where to look in a crisis. The news media in particular ought to be able to quickly find this kind of information even when they're overwhelmed with problems.
I'm guessing that a few hundred thousand dollars of additional effort in this area would have high expected value, with strongly diminishing returns after that. I've donated a small amount to ALLFED, and I encourage you to donate a little bit as well.
April 23, 2024
Keep this on my shelf as a bargaining chip incase the world ends.
August 5, 2021
An important book outlining how to feed humanity in the aftermath of any number of catastrophic events that lead to mass crop failure.
This area of study -- relating not to how to prevent catastrophes, but what to do about them if they were to happen despite our best efforts -- is highly understudied in my opinion.
A very interesting read.
This area of study -- relating not to how to prevent catastrophes, but what to do about them if they were to happen despite our best efforts -- is highly understudied in my opinion.
A very interesting read.
October 14, 2019
A brief overview of how we could go about feeding people if a nuclear war or giant volcano or asteroid impact darkened the skies enough that we couldn't grow food for years. Very high level academicy but on an interesting problem.
April 11, 2021
Read this book. Share it widely.
December 15, 2023
Yikes. Very bleak. I’m not too sure about eating bugs and bacteria or chewing on wood.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews