
Nutrient deficiencies in rice grown under higher carbon dioxide - pizza
https://phys.org/news/2019-07-nutrient-deficiencies-rice-grown-higher.html
======
jacobra2
This is the same study that the publishing scientist quit the USDA in protest
over.

[https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/05/ziska-usda-
climate...](https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/05/ziska-usda-climate-
agriculture-trump-1445271)

~~~
ptah
that is outrageous. it looks like the trump administration's paranoia about
politics in science is taking a toll

~~~
sambull
We have to accept we at this point are unable to address reality. There is a
side not acting in good faith, and it is at a time where pressure will rapidly
ramp up from that very reality, what will be blamed will be witchcraft, the
others and everything else. But addressing reality would destroy their
identity.

------
sedachv
I previously made the observation that global warming induced nutrient density
loss correlates with the mammal obesity trend:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18949373](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18949373)

Everyone here commenting about the great news about how yields have increased
is totally wrong. Droughts, prolonged heat waves, and flooding will wipe out
whatever small percentage in yields from higher atmospheric CO2 have/will
result. Not to mention the health effects: people that are paradoxically at
the same time obese and malnourished.

~~~
nosianu
> _people that are paradoxically at the same time obese and malnourished_

I don't see the paradox? "Energy" and "nutrients" both are in food but they
are not the same (okay, unless somebody wants to start arguing about word
definitions in which case I refer them here:
[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7X2j8HAkWdmMoS8PE/disputing-...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7X2j8HAkWdmMoS8PE/disputing-
definitions) \-- you guys know exactly what I mean). If your body wants
(certain) nutrients but they are always accompanied by way too much energy
that ends up being stored as fat than you end up hungry as well as fat. No
paradox.

Also using "energy" and "nutrients" like I just did:
[https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fs176](https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fs176)

Many discussions about obesity are accompanied by comments "they just need to
eat less because calories in > calories out - it's just physics" ignore that
energy is just one of many aspects of why we eat.

~~~
primroot
"A calorie is a calorie" violates the second law of thermodynamics
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC506782/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC506782/)

~~~
wysifnwyg
That's really hilarious that the article title is completely in rejection to
the conclusion. I don't see many articles that do the same in the medical
field.

------
vichu
This is why I'm a proponent of genetically modified organisms in agriculture.
The world needs to be fed and needs to be fed properly, and it is pure
privilege to deny use of tools in our toolbox that abet solutions to global
hunger. I won't deny the issues around the corporatization of farmland,
vendor/seed lock-in and IP issues, and the litany of other issues around its
use - but damn is it a viable solution for vitamin deficiency and a way
forward through changing environments.

~~~
epistasis
Side note to your main point: the IP issues around GMOs are little different
than the IP issues around other types of agritech, so I don't think it's a
huge concern.

Governments and non profits are free to make GMOs that are available to all
without IP issues, too, as has been done with golden rice.

~~~
sambull
golden rice isn't free if you want to make money off of it (more than $10k it
seems). And none has ever been grown for consumption it seems.

~~~
epistasis
I'm not finding anything like what you're talking about in my web searches,
could you expand on that a bit with some sources?

~~~
aaronbrethorst
[http://www.goldenrice.org/Content1-Who/who4_IP.php](http://www.goldenrice.org/Content1-Who/who4_IP.php)

underneath "The essence of the Sublicensing Agreement"

~~~
epistasis
Great, thank you! Is this an attempt to decommodify food (in the Marxist
sense)? Do non-corporate farmers typically make more than $10k/year in
developing countries?

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Beats me. I literally just googled _golden rice 10,000_ , found what you were
looking for, and dropped in a link.

------
phkahler
Maybe it's because the plants grow faster with the same fertilizer, and
there's not much of value in the soil any more.

~~~
08-15
Or the plants grow faster and contain exactly the same "nutrients" "diluted"
in more starch. (The scare quotes are there because large parts of the world
need those so-called empty calories even more than the vitamins.) The article
talks about concentrations, not total amounts, after all.

------
abootstrapper
Past time for a tax on carbon.

------
raverbashing
An important thread that is related:
[https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/101867427349651865...](https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/1018674273496518656)

Context starts here:
[https://twitter.com/davidorlo/status/1018616684603691013](https://twitter.com/davidorlo/status/1018616684603691013)
(it's what the 1st tweet links to)

~~~
graeme
This has been downvoted, but it appears to be highly relevant. It is a tweet
thread from a crop scientist (scroll down, there are many tweets, not just the
one linked).

The gist is that in the co2 studies, fertilizer etc to plants are not
increased. Analogous to keeping human food constant even if a body is growing
faster.

She says this makes sense for the experiments: it lets us isolate effects of
components on plants. But in real life farmers add more fertilizer if plants
grow faster.

This appears to directly address the linked study and warrants consideration
and a reply.

~~~
kaitai
Yeah, I think it's an interesting read although I disagree with some of her
remarks. She's right that in the past we just threw fertilizer at plants (more
is better until you burn the ground), and she's right that increasingly US
farmers for instance are practicing targeted fertilization and maybe can make
up for some of this.

She doesn't seem to be taking into account the situations in the poorest parts
of the world, where this is not being done -- and where rice is a far more
important staple than in the US. She says, "Folks who are getting all their
nutrients from plants generally eat at least some concentrated forms of
plants, especially concentrated plant proteins: tempeh, seitan, nut milks &
butters, etc." Um, I was literally talking on Thursday with a woman who was
describing her childhood and the comfort she takes in a big warm bowl of rice,
which was a majority of her meals growing up because she could cook it in the
rice cooker without her parents' help while they were at work. My spouse also
grew up eating big bowls of plain rice, although he did get to put soy
sauce/ketchup/sriracha on top. They sure as (&^ were not eating seitan and
tempeh on top. _I_ can walk down to the Whole Foods 10 blocks away and buy
some, uh, spirulina and salmon and whatever the cool kids are eating these
days... chia? or is that passe? but that's not the situation for subsistence
farmers or the vast swathes of people in cities living on the above-referenced
bowls of imported rice. And these vast swathes of people often don't have
great healthcare access, either, and so are more vulnerable to some of the
cascading problems that result.

Last, I don't know how much she knows about nutrition. I'm glad she pays
attention to iron content in the tweet series... but that's not the sum of
micronutrients. The roles of vitamin D, chromium, biotin, and thiamine in
development of type 2 diabetes are discussed here:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3313629/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3313629/)
Micronutrient deficiency and obesity has been in the nutrition literature
since at least 2009 at this point. I could link you to 10 more peer-reviewed
articles but they're all behind a paywall :( Here at least is an editorial
from 2010 with some review of articles recent at the time, and in particular
some remarks about micronutrients and "clinically relevant weight loss" in
Asians and perhaps others.

Anyhow, thanks for defending the tweet thread :) It was interesting!

~~~
raverbashing
A lot of nutritional deficiency doesn't "come" from the plant, rather, the
processing/refining of the plant before consumption

Example [https://medium.com/war-is-boring/eating-too-much-rice-
almost...](https://medium.com/war-is-boring/eating-too-much-rice-almost-sank-
the-japanese-navy-f985772c81a6)

------
gholap
"Is Our Food Becoming Less Nutritious?: Veritasium"[1] is a good short video
that puts this into context.

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl_K2Ata6XY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl_K2Ata6XY)

------
b_tterc_p
At what point does the rice just die from too much heat?

~~~
sedachv
Enzymes involved in photosynthesis break down with heat starting at around 20
degrees Celsius, and by 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) break down almost
completely. Plants can use their stores of carbohydrates when photosynthesis
is not possible. Given a long enough heat wave, plants will use up their
stores of sugar and die, even if they have enough water available. Even if
they do not die outright, the yield of crops will be reduced to a fraction of
what it should be (autophagy when they should be growing).

Rice is very water intensive, and droughts are likely going to be a much
bigger problem for rice crops before prolonged heat waves become normal.

[https://sciencing.com/effect-temperature-rate-
photosynthesis...](https://sciencing.com/effect-temperature-rate-
photosynthesis-19595.html)

~~~
silveroriole
How can that be right? 20c is on the low end of room temperature. So a plant
is actually bad at photosynthesising when it’s warm and there’s the most
sunlight? Why? Wouldn’t this mean greenhouses are BAD for plants?

~~~
krageon
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC396144/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC396144/)

Is the closest thing to a real source I could find at short notice. I found
this surprising as well, I guess it merits some more casual research!

------
lazyjones
Well, today it was easy to spot the daily anti-car and climate panic articles.
This is not why I read HN...

------
el_don_almighty
Should be an easy fix, easily accomplished well before 2050

~~~
crygin
Simply purchase your single-generation seed from Monsanto at exploitative
prices, and you can continue to subsist without major nutritional
deficiencies.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Well, you could just never release it, making it basically illiquid. Venezuela
and Zimbabwe of recent come to mind...

------
oneepic
Risk of what? Just say it in the headline.

~~~
amadeusw
Vitamin B deficiencies, shortened lifespan and more issues in fetal
development

------
jcampbell1
The paper feels full of lies by omission to leave out the caloric yield
increase and only discuss the vitamin density side. This is likely a case
where vitamin production per acre are unchanged in a elevated CO2 enviroment,
and calories per acre increase by 20%.

~~~
cwingrav
That's the point of much of this research. The elevated levels of CO2 enable
the plants to grow faster, but absorbing the same nutrition, and then we
absorb the same amount of calories, with a lower nutrition level, so we become
malnourished.

~~~
radford-neal
The increased yield should lower the price. Poor people might then have enough
surplus income to buy more nutritious foods. (And perhaps less rice - which
may be what's called a "Giffen good".)

~~~
peterwwillis
Not necessarily. For one, increased yield doesn't always result in lower
prices, because the free market generally isn't that free (most of our
agriculture is heavily subsidized by the government). Another problem is that
access to nutritious food is extremely limited for poor people, for a variety
of reasons. Overhead and supply chain economics influence whether local
businesses can survive. Marketing/advertising and industry pressure on
politics increases the likelihood that cheap, non-nutritious, shelf-stable
foods will be more prevalent in stores. And then there's the general self-
medicating-through-salt-sugar-and-fat cyclical effect, and overall lack of
education on healthy eating and cooking. Even when you can find it and afford
it, poor people have less free time to cook.

Rice is a food that is shelf-stable, cheap, and (when enriched) provides a
bare minimum of nutrition. Reducing the already-bare-minimum nutritional
level, or increasing the heavy metals already found in many varieties, will
have a significant effect on already vulnerable populations.

~~~
radford-neal
For subsistence farmers, prices and markets are irrelevant. The effect of
higher yield would be that less of their land needs to be devoted to growing
rice, leaving some free land for growing other foods.

In anything approaching a free market, it is hard to imagine that lower
production costs won't reduce the price of a heavily-traded commodity with
millions of producers.

In a communist system of collective farms, or a fascist system of government-
mandated prices with monopolistic distribution networks, it is anyone's guess
what political decisions will be made. Such systems regularly produce
politically-motivated famines, so slightly lower nutrient levels will be the
least of their worries.

------
aldoushuxley001
This article is pretty bunk and politically/ideologically motivated.

~~~
jacobolus
Here’s the study,
[http://doi.org/10.1029/2019GH000188](http://doi.org/10.1029/2019GH000188)
which builds on
[https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaq1012](https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaq1012)

What part did you think was “bunk”?

It seems fairly predictable/uncontroversial that substantially changing the
composition of the air plants are grown in would affect their growth. These
studies are part of an effort to figure out precisely what changes result from
expected current/near-future changes in the atmosphere and what potential
impact those changes might have on the global food supply and health.

It is important to know about these effects so that we can try to mitigate the
harms involved, e.g. by switching to new crops or crop strains, adopting
alternative agricultural methods, supplementing at-risk diets with other
foods, etc., instead of just letting millions of people suffer dangerous
nutrient deficiencies.

~~~
nkurz
On a quick read of the paper (thanks for the link) I was bothered that I found
no mention of the fact that the per-acre yield also goes up with increased
CO2. Each grain of rice (likely) has slightly less nutrients, but more grains
of rice are produced in a given field. From other articles I found, it looks
like the yield is expected to increase by about 13%. Omitting any mention of
this feels like a political decision.

It's also worth noting that the paper doesn't really try to prove that
nutrition levels will drop, but instead concentrates on showing that _if_
nutrition levels in rice drop that more people may experience deficiencies. In
particular, it cites a paper that actually did the experiment, and found no
decrease in nutrients other than Nitrogen: [http://sci-
hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fcr.2004.01.004](http://sci-
hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fcr.2004.01.004). This experiment implies
that it's at least possible to grow rice under high CO2 levels without
experiencing the drop.

I also thought the mitigation section was odd. It points out that only a few
countries currently fortify rice with Vitamin B. It notes that fortification
is inexpensive and effective, although it would require a major effort to
begin doing so in other countries. The paper also shows that nutrient
deficiency is already a large problem, and that increase caused by a decrease
in foliate levels in rice would only be 1.5%. Maybe a better conclusion would
be that these countries should really be fortifying their rice?

I didn't think it was a bad paper, and it wasn't "bunk". I agree that knowing
what sort of changes to expect from an increased CO2 level is a good thing.
But it did seem like it might be pushing an agenda more than just trying to
lay out the scientific conclusions.

~~~
sedachv
You need read up on agriculture basics before posting junk comments.

> From other articles I found, it looks like the yield is expected to increase
> by about 13%. Omitting any mention of this feels like a political decision.

That is because CO2 enrichment as a way to increase yields is decades old
common knowledge and a widespread practice in greenhouses. Just because you
did not know that, does not mean there is a conspiracy here.

> It's also worth noting that the paper doesn't really try to prove that
> nutrition levels will drop

Because nutrient density decrease is something that has already happened:
[https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-
nutrie...](https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-
carbon-dioxide-000511)

~~~
kaitai
While... blunt... your comment is exactly right. I don't mention the
definition of degree of polynomial when I write an algebraic geometry paper.
The knowledge that CO2 increases yields is universal among scientists reading
this paper.

~~~
nkurz
Perhaps obviously, I disagree. It's not that every paper has to mention
everything that's obvious, but my point was that the choice of how to frame
the problem can be a political decision. There was no attempt to explain why
micronutrient per serving of rice was the right metric, and I think using it
can be misleading if the amount of rice grown changes for the same reason that
the nutrients are dropping. And while "everyone knows" that yields will
increase, there is disagreement on whether the increase in yield is dependent
or independent of the change in nutritional value.

By the way, I liked your comment elsewhere in this thread about eating plain
rice. But rather than lamenting that all the references are behind paywalls, I
personally think it's better just to give the DOI's and a link to [http://sci-
hub.tw](http://sci-hub.tw). Or even better yet, just link to the papers,
profits of publishers be damned. The world is better off when more people read
the actual science.

