
It’s Time to Fix the Broken Food System - bootload
https://medium.com/@G_stordalen/it-s-time-to-fix-the-broken-food-system-63877ae3465d
======
cwyers
> This week, the countries of the United Nations will sign the most important
> document they have ever produced.

Glad to see that we jump straight to the incredible hyperbole right with the
first sentence.

~~~
nickff
One might also see it as damning by faint praise...

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ucaetano
"Fixing the global food system. The damage this system wreaks is shocking."

If we could only invent a teleportation device...

Also, shipping massive amounts of free grain around the world wreaks havoc in
local markets, driving small farmers out of business in poor countries.

We need efficient supply chains, efficient market pricing and efficient crops,
such as golden rice.

Instead, we get governments interfering in market prices, blocking food supply
chain companies in the name of "tradition" and blocking GMO development and
usage in the name of religion and bogus science.

~~~
super-serial
Over the last few years I've seen many comments on Hacker News that are pro-
GMO. The thing is... I don't understand how any respectable developer could
support programming DNA with current technologies.

You know how they code new organisms? They rip out code from one organism and
then they randomly insert it somewhere in the DNA code of another organism.
They do this thousands of times... 99.999% of the time the cell dies. So they
keep trying to compile random variations of code and it keeps crashing. But
let's say they get lucky one time and the code compiles. The cell lives, and
then they use that cell to create a new organism. If that organism has the one
property they wanted to port over from the new DNA code, they call it a
success. They don't do any unit testing, they can't possibly test every
scenario this new organism would be used in production, and yet no one cares.

Would any software developer use a process like this in a production
environment? No - it's obvious this way of coding would would cause drastic
unintended consequences. With GMOs you get malformed proteins, new
chemicals/toxins, and interbreeding with other plants that could cause even
more unintended consequences.

Usually I'm all for technological progress. But until we understand DNA inside
and out and can precisely edit just the code we want, GMOs seem very
dangerous.

~~~
dragonwriter
Nice scare analogy for GMOs. The problem is that if you do the same thing to
traditional breeding, its even worse: rather than ripping out code that you
know performs the function you are looking for and inserting it into another
code base, randomly or not, _traditional_ breeding (and especially the modern,
accelerated forms) is a variety of different combinations of randomly mixing
code from codebases that each have some of the features you want and inducing
random bit flips throughout the code base, testing for the features you want,
throwing out code that doesn't have them, and hoping you don't have unnoticed
unintended consequences. (And _natural_ breeding is pretty much the same as
traditional breeding, but without the selection for traits desired by humans.)

That's not to say traditional breeding or natural breeding is bad, but it is
to say that if we reason at the level of your scare analogy, we just would
avoid food entirely, rather than avoiding GMO-food specifically; you don't
really provide any reason to think that GMO food is _worse_ than the
alternatives.

~~~
super-serial
I think there's a reason nature doesn't allow a frog to breed with a plant.

You can call it a scare tactic... but with GMOs we're doing things that would
be impossible to try with traditional methods.

~~~
dragonwriter
> You can call it a scare tactic...

I can, because that's exactly what the software development analogy is: a
scare tactic that relies on ignorance of how the alternatives would work if
looked at the same way.

There is _no method available for crop development_ that is analogous, in the
manner that things were framed upthread, to good software development. (And
there won't _ever_ be, unless, through experience with the use of the gene
editing tools we have now, we develop much better tools.)

> but with GMOs we're doing things that would be impossible to try with
> traditional methods.

With "traditional" (which mostly means non-GMO -- the methods that fall under
that label now are often as new, or newer, than the GMO methods) methods we
are also doing things which would be impossible with the traditional methods
available before the time when we started doing GMO.

That's not really surprising, the advance of technology usually involves doing
things impossible with earlier technology.

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DennisP
The first problem they mention is that we waste 30% of our food. A recent
study found that for seafood in the U.S. it's even worse, we waste almost
50%....but that waste is mostly at the consumer level. I don't see how that's
fixable. You're not going to stop people from throwing out leftovers.

[http://phys.org/news/2015-09-seafood.html](http://phys.org/news/2015-09-seafood.html)

~~~
hlfcoding
I wonder how restaurants factor into that, especially fast food. Any place
that preemptively prepares food is very likely to waste a lot of it. Having
worked at an am/pm for my first job, I was blown away by how much food is
thrown out after 3 hrs from when it was cooked.

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gwbas1c
"They require fewer animal proteins and more plant-based foods."

It's very hard to get the general public to reduce animal product consumption.
I tried as a bachelor, but I just couldn't figure out how to make a tasty meal
without a big hunk of meat.

When I met my wife, who is vegan, it suddenly became easy to lower my animal
product consumption. This was because I had a good example to follow.

It's a very strange challenge, because meat is so damn tasty.

~~~
PopeOfNope
> It's very hard to get the general public to reduce animal product
> consumption.

That's because animal proteins and animal fats are vital nutrients the body
needs. It's also the most efficient method of transport for these nutrients;
industrially grown crops cause far more damage than pastured livestock.

[http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/reversing-desertification-with-
li...](http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/reversing-desertification-with-livestock)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI)

------
at-fates-hands
It's interesting the author points out the effects on the environment and
economies, but completely omits how much violent conflicts are direct drivers
of poverty.

[https://microconflict.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/conflict-
trap...](https://microconflict.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/conflict-traps-how-
does-poverty-cause-war-and-how-does-war-cause-poverty/)

 _This year’s World Development Report, published a couple of weeks ago,
emphasises the fact that one of the biggest drivers of poverty in the
developing world is violent conflict. One of the biggest risks for developing
countries, it argues, is that of being caught in a conflict trap – a vicious
circle whereby poverty stokes conflict, and conflict in turn increases
poverty._

Not sure how eating less meat is going to compete with social and religious
conflicts which cause and sustain far more poverty.

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PerfectElement
For those interested in this subject, there's a great documentary that was
just released on Netflix, it's called Cowspiracy.

It was produced independently and now is being backed by Leonardo DiCaprio.
The facts and interesting story behind the movie are covered in this Rich Roll
podcast episode: [http://www.richroll.com/podcast/cowspiracy-how-animal-
agricu...](http://www.richroll.com/podcast/cowspiracy-how-animal-agriculture-
is-destroying-the-planet-what-you-can-do-about-it/)

------
agentultra
Can anyone get us to give up meat? Or at least drastically reduce our
consumption?

I still enjoy a good burger once in a while and a side of bacon with Sunday
breakfast is a slice of bliss. But I find myself the exception; most people I
know expect to have meat with at least one, if not two, meals a day. Animal
based food products are not as easy to scale up as vegetable based proteins.

Interesting work has been going into lighting systems whose spectrum is
optimized for photosynthesis and is being used to grow lettuce in great
quantities indoors[0]. We can make this happen for hybrid plants with the
specific nutrient and protein properties we need.

We can even grow bugs at scale and harvest the meal...

but beef? pork? chicken? Seems to be an intractable problem.

[0] [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/japanese-plant-
exp...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/japanese-plant-experts-
produce-10000-lettuces-a-day-in-led-lit-indoor-farm-9601844.html)

~~~
zaphar
Third world countries with starving children aren't going to turn down mostly
vegetarian food. It's actually a good opportunity to create a larger market
for vegetarian food options.

First World countries are another matter though. Meat is often a staple. I'm
not sure how to fix that one.

~~~
adrianN
Passing laws that prohibit factory farming of animals and thus raising the
price of meat quite a bit would probably go a long way.

~~~
zaphar
You have a catch-22 though. Such a law is probably politically untenable. Due
to lobbying and the simple fact that Americans love their meat.

In order to pass you you probably have to win a culture war first.

~~~
hga
And one should think twice about engaging in a war, cultural or other, _with
the people who supply your food_. There are many ugly ways that could end very
poorly.

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mobiuscog
And not a single mention of Glysophate and how it's killing the environment
(and us) far more.

But Monsanto (and GMO) will save us all, right ?

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jimrandomh
The problem with strengthening government and institutional influence over the
food supply is that the when it comes to nutrition, the big US institutions
are loudly proclaiming that up is down and black is white, particularly with
regard to salt and fat. If we succeed in importing our dietary advice to
poorer countries, we'll cause them to have obesity epidemics, too, without
solving their hunger and malnutrition problems.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
But the evidence shows salt and fat have been demonized. I know, it'll take a
generation (current convinced people grow old and die) before we can kill
those old ideas.

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netcan
There are some problem inherent to coordinating anything on a multi-billion
person scale that are monumental. You could even narrate a history of people
on earth using ability to coordinate at greater scale as your x axis.

I've heard an interesting theory about homo sapien "victory" over neanderthals
and other archaic humans. In some versions it's upper paleolithic culture over
lower paleolithic culture of which neanderthals, early sapiens and all the
grey arrears around those groups.

In any case, the theory/hypothesis/narrative is that the difference between
anatomically modern humans and their close cousins and homo sapiens sapiens
was their ability to coordinate on larger scales than the biologically
determined "band" size. Chimps, Gorillas and presumably earlier hominids live
socially in groups that vary in size within a range determined by their
biology. There are no chimp kings, tribes or limited liability companies, just
troops and bands. Their bonding and cooperation mechanisms are based on
biologically determined behavior. Environment and even culture play a role,
but 250 chimps controlling a territory that would otherwise be controlled by
more smaller troops is not in their repertoire.

Imagine a population of archaic humans who, by use of language, religion,
symbolism, abstract concepts of some unknown kind, oral history or some other
means were able to coordinate 500 individuals, with 200 fighters. In a lot of
contexts (the most obvious being war), that group would be at a huge
advantage. These are our ancestors. It also suggests a gnarly explanation to
the genetic bottleneck question.

This process continues through history. Mega bands become clans and tribes and
super tribes and nations and all sorts of affiliations. They get bigger and
more effectively coordinated. Economic and political dynamics emerge. We get
ideologies and organized religions, feudalism, socialism, slavery, capitalism,
monarchy, nation states, empires, manchester united and political party
nomination betting odds (BTW, Trump is at 3-1).

Anyway.. food.

Based on current grain prices, the daily caloric requirements of a person
costs cents, ¢10-¢50, depending on what you plug into your back-of-the-
envelope calculator.

I'm not bringing this up as proof that caloric deficit is easily solvable, I
mean the opposite. The fact that it persists in the face of this fact means
that it is simply very difficult to do anything on a entire species scale.
"We" here is a very tricky concept. There is no real "we" yet in the practical
sense of an actor with agency.

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tdkl
"Fixing" things on global scale with expectation people won't exercise their
legal rights against the "fix" without any external threat (I'd say influence,
but threat brings more results) is a fairy tale, utopia to be precise.

