CLIMATE CHANGE AND FOOD PRODUCTION Glenn Stone Part 2 1
Slide 3
Global Warming and Agriculture 1.Will GW lead to reduced global
food production? Possibly. 1.Will GW lead to less nutritious food?
Almost certainly. But industrial agriculture has been making our
food less nutritious for many years anyway. 2.Will GW lead to
isolated food crises? With absolute certainty; in fact it already
is. The worst problems will come not from agriculture being
backward, but the lack of safety nets. 3.Will agricultural
technology companies meet the challenges of GW? Probably not.
Industrial agriculture will continue to contribute to GHG emissions
and promote input- intensive agriculture. 2
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FACE (Free Air Carbon dioxide Enrichment) Experiments 3 So can
we count on agricultural science to develop ways to reverse the
declining nutrients? Maybe with breeding or genetic
modification?
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MICRONUTRIENTS DECLINE as crops are bred for raised production
Garvin, D. F., Welch, R. M., & Finley, J. W. (2006). Historical
shifts in the seed mineral micronutrient concentration of US hard
red winter wheat germplasm. J. Science of Food and Agriculture, 86,
2213-2220. Agricultural science has been making foods less
nutritious anyway 4 Fe, Zn and Se in U.S. wheat through time
PROTEIN TOO Scientists developed technology to make bread with
lower-protein wheat, which allowed them to increase wheat yields.
This benefitted the producer but "it was as if the customer
unconsciously adapted his taste to the type of bread best suited to
mass production and rapid turn-over". Breeders always say they
breed for quality but it is for certain qualities. (paraphrase of
pp. 118-22, L Busch, W Lacy, J Burkhardt, L Lacy 1991 The Political
Biology of Wheat. In Plants, power and profit: social, economic,
and ethical consequences of the new biotechnologies. Blackwell,
Cambridge MA.)
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MICRONUTRIENTS DECLINE PROTEIN DECLINES Isnt this just science
doing its best to raise production to feed America? I dont think
so. Some of the biggest drops were during the 1930s when there were
wheat surpluses and also grinding poverty
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Daviss team studied changes in 13 key nutrients in 43 garden
crops (basically vegetables) over the last 50 years. The results:
breeding for rapid growth led to significant decline in 6 nutrients
ranging from 5-38%. J Am Coll Nutr. 2004 Dec;23(6):669-82. 6
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Consider economic animal changes Salmon mostly raised in
offshore farms Fed ground up fish which concentrate toxins And
increase toxins in nearby wild fish And produce much lower levels
of healthy Omega- 3 fatty acids And higher levels of Omega-6 fatty
acids And develop pale flesh that is colored by feeding fish
synthetic pigment (canthaxanthin) Color picked by SalmoFan And how
are salmon being genetically modified? 7
Slide 9
Global Warming and Agriculture 1.Will GW lead to reduced global
food production? Possibly. 1.Will GW lead to less nutritious food?
Almost certainly. But agricultural technology developers have been
developing less nutritious foods for a long time. 2.Will GW lead to
isolated food crises? 3.Will agricultural technology companies meet
the challenges of GW? 8