#book – the story of more

Notes on The Story of More by Hope Jahren.

Productivity of crops

• Every crop (rice, wheat, soybean, …) around the world became >2x more productive in the last 50 years.

• Yields increased x-fold while farmland only increased relatively little (by 10% compared to 50 years ago).

• The increase in yield while holding farmland constant is the result of 3 factors:

  1. we feed plants better now then we did then (we feed them by adding fertilizer to the soil)
  2. we protect them better (we protect them from bacteria, fungi, animals, weed by adding “pesticides”)
  3. we have improved the plants themselves (we use selective breeding or genetic engineering to have the most productive plants)

“10% of the world’s croplands are planted with GMO crops”

We are already eating (indirectly) genetically modified food.

Farming

Every plant needs water and nutrients to survive and grow.

It gets those from only one place: the soil beneath it. In monoculture farming, the soil is forced to be the perfect environment for monoculture growth. This is achieved by adding nutrients in the form of fertilizers, and water by way of irrigation.

“Because farm fields are loaded with nutrients and water relative to the natural land that surrounds them, they are coveted as luxury real estate by every random weed in the county. In addition, the fields that were plowed for planting were already home to innumerable insects, fungi, and bacteria that are only too eager to eat key parts of our crop plants before we can. To control these pests, farmers use”pesticides”, chemicals that are poisonous to the weeds, insects, and microorganisms that would otherwise compromise the monoculture.”

DNA

DNA is like MORSE CODE.

MORSE CODE has a vocabulary of two tokens: dots and lines. Using combinations of dots and lines, we can code a simple “SOS” or the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy.

DNA has a vocabulary of 4 tokens, the nucleotides A, C, T, G. DNA is a sequence of GENES. A GENE is a combination of A,C,T,G that describes how to make a protein. A GENE is a recipe of how to make a protein. Every PROTEIN is capable of doing a job. Thus DNA is like a long recipe book, where each recipe describes how to make a protein.

• DNA = a sequence of genes
• Gene = a recipe for a protein, written in the language of “ACTG”
• Protein = something that is capable of doing a job
• genetically modified organisms (GMOs) = organisms whose DNA was modified. Maybe a gene was deleted, or a new gene added.

meat

“we need to talk about meat because we are eating so incredibly much of it.” (300M tons meat per year, 3x since 1970)

You never meet your meat, yet the dimensions of slaughtering are ridiculous:

• 1M animals slaughtered for food every hour in US
• 30M cattle slaughtered each year
• 9B chicken slaughtered each year
• 120M pigs slaughtered each year (pigs are more intelligent than dogs, yet we glorify dogs and pretend they’re conscious, all while mindlessly chewing on our bacon)

“these days it is exceptionally rare for an American to meet her meat, even though on average she eats ten food items derived from meat every single day.”

In den letzten 50 Jahren haben wir unsere Tiere überoptimiert:

1. wir füttern unsere Tiere besser
2. wir beschützen sie besser (vor Krankheiten)
3. wir haben die Tiere selbst verbessert (genetisch modifiziert, selektiert, …)

Folglich produzieren wir mit der gleichen Anzahl an Tieren viel mehr Fleisch:

• to get 2x more beef, we slaughter only 0.5x as many cattles as we did in 1979 (cattle got bigger)
• to get 4x more prok, we slaughter only 3x as many pigs
• to get 10x more chicken meat, we slaughter only 6x more chicken
• to get 2x more milk, we get it from 3M fewer cows

Unsere Tiere bewegen sich nicht mehr, denn mit jeder Bewegung verbraucht ein Tier Energie. Diese verbrauchte Energie muss durch Nahrung aufgenommen werden, doch da Futter viel kostet haben wir unsere Tiere und deren Umgebung so modifiziert, dass sie sich kaum noch bewegen wollen oder bewegen können.

Schweine bringen doppelt so häufig Babys auf die Welt. 2x im Jahr statt 1x im Jahr. Gleichzeitig ist jeder Wurf Babys doppelt so groß. Von 5 Babys auf 10 Babys.

“we selectively bred animals for quick maturation, high fertility, low metabolism”

Wir können unsere Tiere nicht noch mehr optimieren. Sie können nicht noch häufiger und noch mehr Babys gebären – mehr ist physisch nicht möglich. Wir können die Zäune auch nicht noch enger schnallen, denn die Tiere bewegen sich kaum noch. Der Spielraum für weitere Optimierungen ist in den letzten 50 Jahren ausgeschöpft worden.

“pigs now give birth to 10 piglets and not 5, and do that twice per year instead of once. We slowed chicken metabolism such that the same food to keep a 2 pound chicken alive in 1957 is the same as a 10 pound chicken today.”

Personal comment: Der Gedanke ist gruselig, dass wir Lebewesen so verändert haben, dass sie für uns “produktiv” sind. Wir haben sie fetter gemacht, dazu gebracht, häufiger und mehr Kinder zu bekommen und ihren Metabolismus verlangsamt. Theoretisch sind solche “Optimierungen” auch beim Menschen möglich… ## sugar

“As of 2010, half of the money Americans spend on food goes to convenience foods.” “By 2005, Americans were getting half of their total calories from restaurants.” In 2004, Americans ate 1.5 pound (=0.7kg) sugar per week. “Every American man, woman, and child still drinks upward of one liter of cola per week.” “Today, sugared beverages are the cheapest (and emptiest) calories that can be purchased and make up a full 10 percent of all the calories that Americans consume.” Corn sugar, HFCS

waste

Bridges, railroads, sewers are not in good shape. Most infrastructure has not received an upgrade for decades, while the amount of stress on these infrastructures has increased (due to population growth).

“…this trend: major infrastructure built in the 1930s, expanded during the 1950s, minor upgrades during the 1980s and 1990s, and not much since.” “…the fact that global population has doubled since 1969. This also means that the amount of human waste produced on planet Earth has more than doubled, given that food consumption has increased greatly within many regions. Our ability to deal with this waste has not kept up, and today, a larger number of people than ever before live within conditions of inadequate sanitation.”

fossil fuels

Fossil fuels are finite. The rate of fossil fuel usage is growing. At current rates of usage, we have left: oil for 50 years, natural gas for 50 years, coal for 150 years (this calculation only considers the known knowns of oil/gas/coal resources).

You have to look at absolute and relative usage of fossil fuels in order to have a full picture. In absolute terms, we are using fossil fuels at an every increasing rate. Every year, in absolute terms, we are using more fossil fuels. In relative terms, the share of energy derived from fossil fuels decreased in the last decade, as we increased the amount of energy derived from solar, wind, and water.

There is a mismatch between who has fossil fuels (e.g. Saudi Arabia has 50% of oil) and who uses it (e.g. America uses most of oil). This changes the relationship of power.

biofuels

Biofuels are made by fermenting crops (e.g. corn in US, sugarcane in Brazil) to create Alcohol, which in turn is mixed with existing fuel in order to extend it.

• To produce biofuels, we take some % of our (partly edible!) harvest and to produce fuels.
• 20% of grain on planet Earth is used for biofuels.
• The rate of conversion is often very inefficient: it takes 20kg of sugarcane to produce 1L of biofuel.
• The reason we produce biofuels is, in parts, political: It is a way to produce domestically, hence reducing the dependency on fossil fuel imports from foreign countries, especially from those in the Middle East. The US produces biofuel from their domestic corn produce.

Our civilization depends on fossil fuel. “We are a fossil fuel civilization” (#TODO: link to Vaclav Smil). We not only burn fossil fuels, but we also make products of it. Most of our bumpers, doors, tires are made of petroleum-derived polymeres.

plastics

Plastics are derived from fossil fuels. Oil refineries convert crude oil (Rohöl) into useful products such as kerosine, diesel fuel, propan, and petrochemical feedstock. And the latter is used to make plastics.

• 300M tons of plastics are produced each year
• most plastic is produced for disposable packaging
• 1 bodyweight per year of disposable plastics packaging wasted every year by an average OECD person
• 10% of disposed plastics finds its way into the sea.
• plastics amounts for 10% of all burned on planet Earth every year

renewables, nuclear

• 1 average-sized nuclear power plant is equivalent to 80 hydro power plants

• US is still big on nuclear. 20% of electricity produced in US is nuclear. The US has 100 power plants.

• almost every (!) power plant (nuclear, hydro, wind, solar) produces energy the same way: by spinning a wheel. There is a pole of iron, wrapped with copper. If you spin that next to a magnet, somehow the mechanical energy is converted into electrical energy (“any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” – Arthur C. Clarke).

• The problem with renewables is that they will never be enough to provide our high electricity usage. To power a city of 100,000 inhabitans, you need:

  • 10 medium-sized hydro plants
  • or 1,000 wind turbines
  • or 1M solar panels

• In contrast, only 500 nuclear power plants are enough to supply all of America’s electricity.

• A large part of cadmium, copper, lead, zinc, lithium, tellerium used in turbines that create electricity comes from two countries: Peru and Chile.

plants, fossil fuels, CO2

Plants need two things to grow: energy and carbon. The energy comes from the sun. The carbon comes from carbon dioxide, a gas that is found in our air. Thus, in the biomass of plants, there is lots of energy and lots of carbon. When we burn plants, we release both that energy and the carbon. This is the problem with burning fossil fuels: Whenever we burn plants to “produce” energy, we release CO2 into the atmosphere as a side effect.

You can think of “burning” plants in a broader sense. When we eat plant-based food, we, in some sense, “burn” plants in order to use its inherent energy.

more quotes

“every single field crop that I rsearched … shared a substantial increase in yield over the last half century”

“10% of the world’s croplands are planted with GMO crops”

“biological DNA codes not for words but for proteins. DNA is one long recipe book. We refer to the individual recipes as”genes”: A sub-chain of links that describes how to make a useful protein. Every gene is a recipe for a protein, and every protein is capable of doing a job”

“In the 1980s, [scientists] perfected a method to alter DNA - a method that didn’t require the hassle of breeding parents and waiting for a new generation to mature. These ‘recombinant’ strategies allowed genetics to directly edit the sequence of links in DNA: they could delete, copy, and paste genes, all within a living plant. They could even take genes from nonplant DNA and insert them into plant DNA, infusing a baby plant with recipes for proteins that it would never have figured out how to make otherwise.”