Feeding Everyone No Matter What

Managing Food Security After Global Catastrophe

David Denkenberger, Joshua M. Pearce

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780128023587
• Topic: Technik & Maschinenbau
• Subtopic: Lebensmittelwissenschaft

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 including: 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

Chapter 1

Introduction

Abstract

Many global crises could knock humanity back into the stone age or even cause humanity’s extinction. This chapter provides an outline for how Feeding Everyone No Matter What: Managing Food Security After Global Catastrophe develops engineering solutions for the survival of civilization following agricultural collapse from any of these crises.

Keywords

global catastrophe

food

human extinction

agricultural collapse

survivalism

preppers

food storage

food conversion

collapse

global catastrophic risk

food security

1.1. Introduction to the challenge

The purpose of this book is to answer a simple question: How do we feed everyone on the planet if we lose mass-scale agriculture due to one or several problems from a long list of global catastrophes? We think it is important to answer this question because if global agricultural production is dramatically reduced for several years, then mass human starvation is currently likely. That means you, your friends, and your family would all die – probably in a horrible way¹ – and it is all preventable. Such a situation would follow a global crisis such as: super volcano, asteroid or comet impact, nuclear winter (full-scale nuclear war, like between the United States and Russia, accompanied by burning of cities with the smoke going into the upper atmosphere), abrupt climate change (happening in about a decade), super weed (a weed that out-competes crops), super crop pathogen (disease), super bacterium (disrupts beneficial bacteria), or super crop pest (insects, birds, etc.). These risks are generally known as global catastrophic risks, which could destroy or significantly harm civilizations (e.g., Hanson, 2008; Tonn and MacGregor, 2009; Maher and Baum, 2013). Even more serious are the risks that could cause human extinction or permanent loss of civilization, often called existential risks. It is possible that the agricultural risks above could spiral out of control and end up being an existential risk. This would not just affect the current generation, but all future generations. We believe that the food solutions in this book significantly reduce the risk that this will happen. First, we will summarize the severity and probabilities of such scenarios in Chapter 2 covering worldwide crop death. Then, we will explore the more challenging worldwide crop destruction from the temporary yet extreme multiple-year loss of sunlight in Chapter 3.

The primary historic solution developed over the last several decades for all of these massive problems is simply increased food storage. Modern day survivalists (and their slightly more moderate cousins, the preppers) have embraced this solution.² This technique is useful for lesser catastrophes such as personal financial trouble or even widespread economic system collapse, but stocking up the pantry would be very expensive for the severe catastrophes presented in this book, as we show in Chapter 4. In that chapter, we cover present food supplies and capacity of storing more on a wider scale. Next, we perform a technical evaluation of lone survivalism from a food perspective and for completeness conclude with an evaluation of basic cannibalism mathematics. These “survivalist solutions” are practical only for the most wealthy and thus are not viable for the vast majority of the world’s population including the majority of Americans. Using storage on a large scale can actually make the problem worse, as storing up enough food to feed a significant fraction of the population 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 now. Today, thousands starve because they cannot afford access to food, despite the fact that there is more than enough to feed everyone. Any increase in food prices increases this death rate because of the number of food-insecure people living primarily in the developing world.

Humanity is far from doomed, however, even in the worst of these situations – there are solutions and we provide a wide menu to select from here. The solutions that are viable can take a considerable amount of time to ramp up until enough calories are available to feed a significant portion (all) of the population. We call this in-between time stopgap food production “fast food” and cover numerous short-term bridges between existing stored food and technically viable 5-year food solutions in Chapter 5.

In this book, we provide a technical analysis, accurate to within a factor of 10 for all situations (the necessity of broadening the accuracy of the analysis will become clear as we walk through the state-of-knowledge for the necessary long-term future projections). We compare food requirements of all humans for five years with conversion of existing plant matter and fossil fuels to edible food. We quantify the existing supplies of fiber for conversion to food in Chapter 6. Then, we present mechanisms for global-scale food production from the available resources even in the absolute worst-case global catastrophes in Chapter 7. The options include: natural gas-digesting bacteria, extracting food from leaves, and conversion of fiber by enzymes, mushroom, or bacteria growth. Further options involve a two-step process involving partial rotting of fiber by fungi and/or bacteria and feeding them to animals such as beetles, ruminants (cows, deer, etc.), rats, and chickens. We perform an analysis to determine the ramp rates for each option. The good news is the results show that careful planning and global cooperation could ensure that humanity and the bulk of biodiversity could be maintained even in the most extreme circumstances. In fact, there will be even a little dietary variety, as we are sure that some readers who would do it to survive may not be overly excited about eating bacteria, beetles, or rats – every day for five years straight.

Having the knowledge that we could provide for humanity’s survival in the worst of catastrophes and then actually doing it are entirely different. Chapter 8 covers the practical matters for ensuring that the solutions provided in Chapter 7 can be acted on including evaluations of energy and water needs, nutrition, taste, biodiversity, and the requirements for adequate cooperation. However, the existence of this book creates a moral hazard. That is, if shortsighted leaders have knowledge of a solution (or in this case many solutions), they may be less motivated to reduce risks we have some control over (and as we see in Chapters 2 and 3, these risks are the most probable). We have convinced ourselves that we have overcome this moral hazard, which is why you are reading this book. Chapter 9 discusses this problem and defends our writing this book. In doing so, we lay out some common sense, rational, and remar...