Real talk about agriculture and climate

An interview with Michael Grunwald

Michael Grunwald’s book “We Are Eating The Earth” is one of my favorite policy books in a long time because he takes on a problem he’s willing to admit is just objectively very hard — the punishing ecological impact of feeding a world population that is larger-than-ever and richer-than-ever and consequently wants to eat more meat than ever. This is an incredible human development success story, but animal feed and pasture take up incredible amounts of space, fueling deforestation and creating an element of the climate problem that’s so challenging to address that most people either don’t want to talk about it or else pitch obviously unworkable ideas like “maybe everyone will eat bugs instead.

As Grunwald explains in our interview, what makes this even tougher is that there are real policy tradeoffs in this space.

More traditional forms of agriculture are more environmentally friendly in terms of their localized impacts. But precisely because they generate lower yields per acre, using them makes the pressure on land much worse. So-called “factory farming” has many well-documented downsides in terms of animal welfare, runoff, and other problems. But until science fiction ideas like vertical farming or cultivated meat become viable, intensive agriculture is the lowest-impact way to feed the planet when you look at it as a global system.

I hope everyone enjoys the video and paid subscribers will have access to a full transcript as well and I hope you’ll consider signing up.