The Big Ratchet: How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Natural Crisis (36 page)

  
187
   
“. . . [A]nti-science zealotry”:
The title of Borlaug’s (2000) paper is “Ending World Hunger: The Promise of Biotechnology and the Threat of Antiscience Zealotry.”

Chapter 10: Farmer to Urbanite

  
190
   
More than half of us did:
McGranahan and Satterthwaite 2003.

  
190
   
Single, urbanizing species:
Goldewijk et al. 2011. Updated estimates for historical land cover are discussed in Ellis et al. (2013).

  
191
   
Like cooing at babies:
Drewnowski and Popkin (1997) discussed the innate preference for sweets and fats and provided references to other literature.

  
192
   
Chinese than for those in the countryside:
Zhai et al. 2009. The transition to overweight in the participants in the China survey is increasing rapidly in rural areas, particularly among low-income women (Jones-Smith et al. 2011).

  
192
   
Has come fast and furious:
Many works of the nutritionist Barry Popkin describe and document the “nutrition transition” in developing countries, including Popkin (2004, 2006) and Drewnowski and Popkin (1997).

  
192
   
Foraging ancestors’ fare:
Cordain et al. (2005) discussed the evolutionary mismatch between the current Western diet and the Paleolithic hunter-gatherer diet.

  
192
   
Squashed, solid cakes:
Wolf (2007) described the technologies for extracting oils from plants.

  
193
   
To butter and lard:
Nobel Lectures 1966.

  
193
   
Sweeten their diets:
The observers were nutrition officers at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, J. Périssé, F. Sizaret, and P. François. The quotation is from Perisse et al. (1969, 4).

  
193
   
Starch on an industrial scale:
White 2008; Takasaki 1972; Suekane et al. 1975. The Japanese scientists listed on the patent were Mikio Suekane, Shiro Hasegawa, Masaki Tamura, and Yoshiyuki Ishikawa.

  
193
   
Mostly from sugary drinks:
Duffey and Popkin 2007.

  
193
   
Populations of poorer ones:
Drewnowski 2000; Perisse et al. 1969.

  
193
   
Steepest in cities:
Popkin and Nielson 2003.

  
194
   
Twenty-six in a hundred in 2003:
Popkin et al. 2011. For women between the ages of eighteen and forty-nine years old, being overweight is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of between 25 and 29.9; obesity for women in this age group is defined as having a BMI of 30 or above.

  
194
   
Moose, caribou, and a variety of plants:
See Kuhnlein et al. (2004), who analyze the changing dietary patterns and the obesity of the Inuit in modern times as an example of how the Big Ratchet is changing diets even in remote locations.

  
194
   
Traditional, healthy options:
Drewnowski and Popkin (1997) discuss this irony.

  
194
   
More than a billion are overweight:
Popkin et al. 2011.

  
194
   
Eight people were overweight:
Some 870 million people (approximately 12.5 percent) were chronically hungry around the world in 2010–2012 (UN FAO et al. 2012); 1.4 billion people (approximately 20 percent of the world’s population) were considered overweight in 2008, with “overweight” being defined as having a body mass index of greater than 25 (WHO 2013).

  
195
   
Tractors, fertilizers, and pesticides:
Popkin (2006) discussed the underlying global forces for the nutrition transition, including globalization, agricultural practices, supermarkets, and mass media.

  
195
   
Overweight by the year 2030:
Wang et al. 2008.

  
195
   
Diseases related to being underweight:
Hossain et al. 2007.

  
196
   
Dismay, and for good reason:
For example, see Tilman et al. (2011) and Foley et al. (2011).

  
196
   
Contributions to greenhouse gases:
DeFries and Rosenzweig 2010; Foley et al. 2011.

  
196
   
Producing a pound of potatoes:
Fiala 2009; UN FAO 2006.

  
197
   
In the atmosphere climbs:
Hatfield et al. (2011), Lobell et al. (2011), and Morton (2007) are a few sources in the large amount of literature on the impacts of climate change on agriculture.

  
197
   
Sufficient for the coming demand:
See Bogardi et al. 2012 and recommended readings listed in that source.

  
197
   
Fields and pastures to grow food:
In many countries abandonment of agriculture and tree plantations have led to a recovery of some of the lost forest cover (Rudel et al. 2005).

  
198
   
Fast-food chains in the United States:
Kaimowitz et al. 2004.

  
198
   
Chicken, pigs, and cattle:
Maximum exports of palm oil from Indonesia were to India and China, and soybeans were to Spain and China in 2010, according to the United Nations’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAOSTAT),
http://faostat.fao.org/
.

  
198
   
Pushes food prices higher:
Fargione et al. 2008.

  
198
   
Unable to put food on the table:
Many studies have quantified the contribution of biofuels to competition for land and increasing food prices, such as Mitchell (2008).

  
198
   
“Food Security Rattled in 2008”:
Daily New Egypt
2008.

  
198
   
“Riot Warning”:
Al Bawaba
2008.

  
198
   
“Egyptians Riot over Bread Prices”:
London Daily Telegraph
2008.

  
198
   
“Hungry Haitians Expand Food Riots”:
Associated Press 2008.

  
198
   
“Food Riots Will Spread”:
Cleland 2008.

  
198
   
Drawing to a close:
Rosegrant et al. 2012.

  
199
   
Where people have the means:
Popkin (1999) characterized a final stage in the nutrition transition in which people switch to healthier alternatives.

  
199
   
Blow are far from assured:
Clay (2011) and Foley et al. (2011) discussed ways to reduce the environmental impact of food production.

  
200
   
Most obvious and immediate problem:
The English economist William Jevons noted in the 1800s that gains in energy efficiency from coal use during the industrial revolution counterintuitively led to an increase rather than a decrease in demand. This is known as “Jevons’ paradox” (Alcott 2005). A similar paradox is true for food. As efficiencies in food production have increased, the amount consumed has also increased beyond physiological requirements.

  
201
   
Learned to do long ago:
An example of waste recycling comes from Adarsh Vidya Mandir, a college not far from Mumbai, India, with an award-winning experiment in the use of specially designed toilets to recover nutrients from human waste. Urine collects in storage tanks, which gardeners use to fertilize plants on campus (
Clean India Journal
2010). A 2009 law in San Francisco requires local citizens to compost vegetable peelings, eggshells, coffee grounds, and other household food waste. The decomposed waste provides nutrient-rich soil to local farmers. Composting reduces waste and greenhouse gas emissions from methane in landfills while providing nutrient-rich soil (Cote
2009). In the Netherlands, a commercial company sells phosphorus recovered from sewage to an international phosphate producer for reuse (Cordell et al. 2011). Cordell et al. (2011) also provides many more examples of recovery and reuse of phosphorus around the world.

  
201
   
Restaurants and grocery stores:
In the United Kingdom alone, nearly half of all salad and a quarter of the fruit purchased gets thrown uneaten into the garbage (Ventour 2008).

  
201
   
People can buy it in the store:
Godfray et al. 2010.

  
202
   
Forests are cleared for grazing:
The potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by transitioning to diets that are less animal-based is a growing topic in the literature. See, e.g., Stehfest et al. (2009), Gonzalez et al. (2011), Popkin (2009), Macdiarmid et al. (2012), and Carlsson-Kanyama and Gonzalez (2009).

  
202
   
Delivered to your doorstep:
Coley et al. (2009) compared purchasing food from a local food shop and a mass distribution system. The authors concluded that if a customer’s round-trip drive to purchase local organic vegetables is more than 6.7 kilometers, then the emissions from the transportation are likely to amount to more than the emissions from use of a system of cold storage, packing, transport to a regional hub, and final transportation to the customer’s doorstep. There is a growing literature to quantify the impacts of local and non-local foods. The general conclusion is that local food is not categorically superior in terms of fewer greenhouse gas emissions. The way the food is produced, stored, and distributed can override the emissions associated with transport (Edwards-Jones et al. 2008).

  
202
   
Customers in faraway markets:
Garnett 2011.

  
202
   
Current trajectories suggest:
Raynolds et al. (2007) described different kinds of coffee certification. Cohn and O’Rourke (2011) questioned the effectiveness of certification schemes. Geibler (2013) reviewed certification of palm oil, a major and growing commodity.

  
202
   
On worldwide trends:
Msangi and Rosegrant 2011.

  
204
   
World will live in cities:
This estimate is from the United Nations (2012a).

  
204
   
Towns and cities throughout the developing world:
Current urban demographics are discussed in Grimm et al. (2008), Montgomery (2008), and United Nations (2012b).

REFERENCES

Prologue

Macedo, M., R. DeFries, D. Morton, C. Stickler, G. Galford, and Y. Shimabukuro. 2012. Decoupling of deforestation and soy production in the southern Amazon during the late 2000s.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
109:1841–1846.

Posey, D. 1985. Indigenous management of tropical forest ecosystems: The case of the Kayapo Indians of the Brazilian Amazon.
Agroforestry Systems
3:139–158.

Chapter 1: A Bird’s-Eye View

Aanen, D., P. Eggleton, C. Rouland-Lefevre, T. Guldberg-Froslev, S. Rosendahl, and J. Boomsma. 2002. The evolution of fungus-growing termites and their mutualistic fungal symbionts.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
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Bloom, D. 2011. 7 billion and counting.
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