CHRIS BARRETT: So the report is intended
to explore how we can navigate from the system we have
presently, which is wildly successful on the terms
under which it was created, to try
to maximize the productivity of farming and fishing
so as to meet the immediate caloric and protein
needs of a growing population.
But that system is also completely unsustainable.
We will outstrip the capacity of the Earth
to support the systems we have now
if we just keep scaling them as populations and incomes grow.
So how do we transition the system
through productive innovation so that we
can have a stable, sustainable system that
takes good care of everybody?
That's the core challenge that we tackle in this report.
All technologies generate both winners and losers.
To take a very current example, we're
seeing phenomenal advances in developing meat substitutes.
Many people are familiar with Impossible Burgers or Beyond
Meat or OmniPork or other products
like that that are increasingly close to the sorts
of livestock-sourced animal proteins we're used to.
And the costs of production of these substitutes
is falling very quickly, to the point that now, there's
virtually no cost difference between many
of the meat-like products made available without using
livestock and the traditional meat products we're used
to seeing in grocery stores and restaurants.
But those gains potentially come at a cost.
Because as the cost of production of these substitutes
falls, that increases the competitive pressure
on feed-crop growers and livestock producers
and the farmworkers who make their living
in those industries and the rural communities that
depend upon those industries.
Rural towns that depend upon employment
in a meat-packing plant are directly
threatened by the rise of these meat substitutes.
So how do we navigate towards ensuring
that we enjoy all the benefits of the innovations
without imposing very painful costs on some sub-populations?
We do that by bundling innovations,
by advancing innovations that help the rural populations that
could be imperiled by the rise of meat substitutes,
innovations in renewable energy capture,
innovations in capturing carbon in soils
and being able to measure it and pay
rural landowners for that resource,
innovations that create good jobs in rural towns for things
other than meatpacking or dairy processing
so that as we bundle these innovations together,
we can reduce the opposition to the emergence
and scaling of important things that are
arising from new technologies.
And we can ensure that we don't leave anybody behind,
that everybody gets to enjoy the fruits of innovation.
This year, the Food and Agriculture Organization
of the United Nations predicts we
will have a record global harvest of crops.
But we will also see an increase in the number of people
undernourished and the number of children who are severely,
acutely malnourished.
Why?
Why this strange juxtaposition of record
harvests with increasing numbers of people going hungry?
Because people are having a hard time keeping their jobs.
Businesses are closing.
Waiters and waitresses and school bus drivers
and janitors at hotels are losing their jobs, or at least
losing hours.
And they struggle then to be able to feed
their families adequately.
Kids who depend upon the meals provided for free at schools
aren't getting those meals when the schools close,
and they don't have a way to go get free food as a substitute.
Having a good safety net is absolutely
imperative to ensuring that all people have access
to a healthy diet at all times.
And those social protection measures
are also important to build people's confidence
that as innovations change the technologies under which we
produce the foods we consume, they will
have some fallback options.
So we need social protection to ensure in the moment of crisis
that everybody's taken care of.
But we also need social protection
to ensure that there is broad-scale support
to harness the fruits of technological change
to help everybody.
Our panel very much hopes and believes
that it is feasible for people to come together,
to cooperate and innovate in ways
that will deliver a healthy, equitable, resilient, and
sustainable agrifood system.
But that doesn't happen automatically.
It's going to take leadership.
It's going to take cooperation.
It's going to take good information.
It's going to take holding each other to account,
and it's going to take a generation that
is scientifically literate but also willing to spend time
understanding that it's ultimately
the humans in the system that are
both the cause of the problems and the source of the solution.
So the science is critical, but the humans are paramount.