ASH CLOUD

The concern is not just climate change itself but how climate change relates to other parts of our society. Our current political and societal system is not able to deal with the complex interactions between all the issues. Population growth, climate change, the pandemic, economic crisis, energy transition, supply chain disruption, and the conflict in Eastern Europe are all being dealt with reactively and as components, with security implications for our country and our region. 

Many current solutions being discussed amongst the agricultural community are at the tactical level, focusing on what a farmer should do without looking at the risks to agriculture as a function. Then outside this is another layer that includes climate, water, energy, cyber, national infrastructure, sea trade, and the economy. These all need to be addressed on a national and regional level. 

The projected climate impact on food, water, and fishery security for the 260 million Indonesians to Australia’s north will likely result in political instability and mass migration. A coherent food and climate security policy needs to also consider the regional impacts of climate change.

While technology certainly has a role to play the most important issue is cultural change. John found the most successful technology adoption required a combination of top-down design combined with allowing the younger generations to experiment with emerging technologies, and vitally, all the technology effectively communicating with all other parts of the system.  

John has adapted thinking that looks at what makes a military force resilient to identify key characteristics and attributes that make a resilient society. Number one is what the military call shared situational awareness, this is understanding the risks and having an honest conversation about where we are now. The second is teaming, these problems will not be solved by an industry group, scientists, or community action, they will require broad and sustained collaboration. The third and final is preparedness and mobilization, so how do we prepare for the reality that we are likely to miss the 1.5C mark and how do we mobilize our society to manage the short-term impacts and develop long term solutions. 

I recently caught up with John to hear more about his work. You can listen to his conversation here. 

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When a delegate stood up and said to the audience “I just can’t understand why a strategy of cheap food could ever be wrong,” at a 1995 Common Agricultural Policy conference no one questioned the wisdom of this statement.  Almost 30 years later, this and other well ingrained paradigms are being re-evaluated. The big questions are whether cheap food is sufficiently valued by our society and how much does cheap food drive increased food waste. Current USDA estimates are that between 30-40% of food is wasted. This is a radicle change from only one generation ago where all table scraps and leftovers that were not eaten where either fed to pigs, chickens or even the household pets. 

 Mary Shelman’s insight and thinking on our food and agricultural systems stems as much from her time leading the Agribusiness Program at Harvard Business School and leading the development and implementation of Ireland’s nations food sustainability programme, Origin Green, as it does from growing up in rural Kentucky and spending time with local farmers. 

We all know the challenges that have emerged around the urban rural divide. What is less discussed in the generational challenges and opportunities facing our societies around food and agriculture. Around 70% of young people today suffer from climate anxiety. Bringing young people into the conversation and leveraging their passions and concerns must become a key component of any food sustainability program. 

I recently caught up with Mary to hear more about her work. You can listen to his conversation here. 

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There’s a battle going on in the rumen of all cattle over hydrogen. When the methanogens are winning, livestock methane emissions rise, and milk and meat production decrease. When the acetogens win, milk and meat production increase, and methane emissions decline. The best opportunity available to limit the climate impact of our food systems and provide highly nutritious food to the world’s population is to resolve this hydrogen war within our cattle and sheep.

Professor Sharon Huws is a rumen microbiologist at Queens University Belfast who is leading global research teams working to develop solutions that benefit the climate and farmers. “If you can shift the biochemistry a little so that some of that the hydrogen is shuttled to energy, that will also reduce methanogenesis because there will be less hydrogen available.” Sharon said. 

Sharon and her team are using Omics technologies to improve their understanding of the rumen microbiome. These are the same technologies that have revolutionised cancer treatments over recent years. The plan is to identify microbes that can act as a hydrogen sink, microbes that capture the available hydrogen before the methanogens. They are then looking at identifying the most effective microbes that could then be made into probiotics or direct fed microbials.   

The team is not starting from scratch as nature has given them a head start. There is a lot to learn from termites, wallabies, and kangaroos. They all produce very little methane because they have reductive acetogens that act as a hydrogen sink, capturing the hydrogen and converting it to energy. 

Methane emissions account for 5-15% of energy consumed by cattle and sheep. Winning the rumen hydrogen war will provide an economic benefit to farmers by increasing productivity and reducing feed costs, at the same time as mitigating the climate impact. This creates the vital win-win for farmers and the climate that is necessary for widespread adoption of new technologies. 

Sharon is optimistic that her research will provide an additive benefit by improving the performance of other livestock methane reducing technologies such as 3NOP and Asparagopsis. These technologies have shown efficacy reducing methane but do not improve productivity, leading to the conundrum of who is going to pay for them. 

I recently caught up with Sharon to hear more about her work. You can listen to our conversation here. 

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High tech production systems can produce highly nutrient dense foods. Food processing is a technology, it’s an enabler. It’s the formulations that are usually the conundrum.  

Every component in food has an important role to play. There are thousands of biologically active compounds above and beyond the few dozen essential nutrients, vitamins, and minerals. These all work together to impact our health. We are only starting to scratch the surface on understanding how these all work together. A huge part of this is the interconnections between our heath and our microbiome. Whenever we eat, we are feeding both ourselves and our microbiome.   

Dr Anneline Padayachee is a nutrition scientist at the University of Queensland who has been studying the relationships between the nutrient density of our diets, our farming systems, our health, and the health of our microbiome.  Her work focuses on not just understanding these relationships but also linking the cultural, emotional, and political aspects of what we eat to human behaviour.

The role of nutrient density in our food has been ignored for centuries. The first three food revolutions, from the ancient Egyptians to the Industrial revolution and the green revolution of the mid 20th century all focused on providing cheap and abundant food made from ever cheaper ingredients. This has resulted in the massive acceleration of in chronic health diseases such as diabetes, cholesterol, and heart disease. We are now entering food revolution 4.0 which is nutrition and health innovation where health must be the focus of product development. Nutrient density in food is absolutely essential. This is irrespective of whether the foods are eaten straight off farm or processed using emerging technologies. 

I recently caught up with Anneline to hear more about her work. You can listen to his conversation here. 

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One or two healthy chickens can significantly improve the health and prosperity of marginalized communities. Poultry recycle food scraps and garden waste, forage insects and worms to produce eggs which provide much needed protein and income. The Kyeema Foundation (https://kyeemafoundation.org/) is working with some of the world’s poorest communities to protect household poultry from disease. Kyeema started out vaccinating village chickens across Africa and the Pacific to protect them from disease. They have more recently expanded into restoring coral reefs and mangroves to revitalise local fisheries. 

 Small holder farmers provide food to around 80% of the world’s population. It is only through developing a deep understanding of these communities and leveraging local expertise, traditions, and capacity that Kyeema can work to improve food and nutrition security for some of the poorest communities.

There are more than 608 million family farms around the world, occupying between 70 and 80 percent of the world's farmland and producing around 80 percent of the world's food in value terms. Around 70 percent of all farms, operating on just 7 percent of all agricultural land, are less than one hectare, while another 14 percent of farms, controlling 4 percent of the land, are between one and two hectares, and another 10 percent of all farms, with 6 percent of the land, are between two and five hectares.
https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/1395127/icode/

I recently caught up with Anthony to hear how he and his team are improving the reliance and health of their communities through sustainable local protein production. You can hear our conversation here. 

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Food, movement, social engagements, play, and stress.  These are all key drivers of how well our brain’s function and how cognitive function declines with age. It’s also the same for our dogs and cats. At a cellular level its largely about maintaining mitochondrial function, managing inflammation, and managing oxidative stress. What that means for the less technical of us is that exercise, social function, cognitive training, and a good diet are hitting multiple pathways in your brain to help it in 1000 different ways. To maintain cellular health in our brains we must feed our mitochondria and help our bodies manage inflammation. 

Dr Liz Head is a Neuroscientist who has been studying dementia, Alzheimer’s, and cognitive decline in dogs and humans. Her research began assessing brain aging in dogs as a model for human Alzheimer’s. This has expanded to examining how diet, behaviour, and inflammatory disease impact the activity of the brain’s mitochondria. Liz is at UC Irvine where she her team is examining various molecular pathways engaged in the aging and Alzheimer disease process to identify interventions that may improve cognition. 

I recently caught up with Liz to hear more about her work. You can listen to his conversation here. 

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With $500 billion how would you design a completely new city and food system from scratch, to feed and house 3 million residents? The city of NEOM is being built on the Red Sea coast in Saudi Arabia. There are no legacy systems to deal with, no existing infrastructure that needs considering and maintaining. The city is literally rising out of the desert and you have an open book when it comes to planning sustainable food production and linking that with sustainable energy and water use. Funded by the Saudi Sovereign Wealth with an aim of 100% renewable energy and no ultilzation of ground water the project aims to be the city of the future.  

Ray Moule is leading agricultural development for NEOM. His team is planning a food system to feed the cities predicted 3 million residents and 5 million visitors. Their plans include research needs, what new technologies will improve the sustainability of the food system, how to sustainably source water and nutrients for agriculture, creating circular economies, and how food systems are linked to health. He also has to balance what food to grow locally and what food to import.  

With an average annual rainfall of 15-20 mm (less than 1 inch) and temperatures regularly reaching well over 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) throughout the summer new production techniques and technologies are critical to developing a sustainable food system. 

I recently caught up with Ray to discuss the amazing opportunity to build a food system from scratch and the challenges in doing so in a harsh desert environment. You can listen to our conversation here. 

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Anastasia Volkova discusses sustainable farming, incentives for behavioural change, and  the importance of understanding the farming system when implementing regenerative agriculture. 

When it comes to sustainable food production, we are all responsible. 

The world forced farming to be this way because we wanted to support growth that is not sustainable. 

Regrow is the infrastructure for decision support and incentive exchange in sustainable agriculture. Regrow is working with farmers and food supply chains across over 200 million acres in 45 countries to reduce the climate impact of agriculture and improve yield resistance. 

I recently caught up with Anastasia Volkova, Regrow CEO and Co-Founder, to discuss the challenges, opportunities, and myths in transforming global food systems. Her deep understanding of their markets, customers, and the science guides how Regrow creates value across the whole supply chain. She explores the nuances around regenerative agriculture, which is a huge opportunity but must be applied in context. She also discussed the potential perils of limiting the sustainability conversation to carbon and overly simplifying the system. Anastasia dispels the myths that farmers are unwilling to share their data, declaring all that is needed is the right incentive. 

In this conversation we explore how realistic is cheap food and the why the current impact on the global food system due to the war in Ukraine should not be a surprise to those following history. You can listen to our conversation here.

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We don’t understand what it is we are eating! Our health is directly connected to the soil health in which our food is grown.

Research is showing that the nutrient composition of foods can vary over 100 times between two identical looking food items. A tomato is not a tomato and an apple is not an apple. The research is showing that the greatest determinant  of nutrient density is cover cropping as part of the system. Livestock productions systems also greatly influence the nutrient composition of meat wth the quality and variability of pasture leading to an increase in nutrient density. 

Eric Jackson is the Board Chair at the Bionutrient Food Association where they are studying nutrient density variability in foods and investigating what are the drivers of this variability.  He is bringing the medical and agricultural communities into the same room to tackle both food sustainability and the huge burden metabolic disease is having on our societies. 

I recently caught up with Eric to discuss the connections between human health, soil health, the health of the environment, and how intimately they are linked. 

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Joe McFadden Discusses – Collaboration, the value of existing research, innovative ways of leveraging the energy and passion of students to get the most of Cornell’s new respiratory chambers. 

Livestock sustainability is a much more complex issue than inhibiting methane production. Holistic solutions are needed that also maintain nutrient digestibility, reduce nitrogen pollution, maintain efficiency, are scalable across different production environments in the developed and developing world and are acceptable to the public. After coming to Cornell University in 2017 solving these critical issues have become the core focus of Prof. Joe McFadden. 

Cornell is building new climate-controlled respiration chambers, unique to the Unites States, to accelerate their research on livestock methane emissions. Not wanting to reinvent the wheel, Joe’s team is building on research conducted over the last 50 years. His team is planning on using the new chambers to test compounds with proven in vitro methane inhibition data in live animals to determine how they work in North American production systems and other environments across the world.  

Joe understand we have to invest in people first and foremost to really drive solutions.  A key part of his plans are transitioning to a problems-based approach to sustainability where he is leading efforts across universities, states, and internationally to improve collaboration. To accelerate the approval process for feed additives he is collaborating with an environmental NGO and the FDA to develop new approval methodologies and he has developed a new program to educate both students and the public simultaneously. 

I recently caught up with Joe to hear more about his work. 

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