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Type Paper
Cite as Citation reference for the source document. Baum, S.D., Denkenberger, D.C., A Pearce, J.M., Robock, A., Winkler, R. Resilience to global food supply catastrophes. Environment, Systems and Decisions 35(2), pp 301-313 (2015). open access DOI: 10.1007/s10669-015-9549-2

Many global catastrophic risks threaten major disruption to global food supplies, including nuclear wars, volcanic eruptions, asteroid and comet impacts, and plant disease outbreaks. This paper discusses options for increasing the resilience of food supplies to these risks. In contrast to local catastrophes, global food supply catastrophes cannot be addressed via food aid from external locations. Three options for food supply resilience are identified: food stockpiles, agriculture, and foods produced from alternative (non-sunlight) energy sources including biomass and fossil fuels. Each of these three options has certain advantages and disadvantages. Stockpiles are versatile but expensive. Agriculture is efficient but less viable in certain catastrophe scenarios. Alternative foods are inexpensive pre-catastrophe but need to be scaled up post-catastrophe and may face issues of social acceptability. The optimal portfolio of food options will typically include some of each and will additionally vary by location as regions vary in population and access to food input resources. Furthermore, if the catastrophe shuts down transportation, then resilience requires local self-sufficiency in food. Food supply resilience requires not just the food itself, but also the accompanying systems of food production and distribution. Overall, increasing food supply resilience can play an important role in global catastrophic risk reduction. However, it is unwise to attempt maximizing food supply resilience, because doing so comes at the expense of other important objectives, including catastrophe prevention. Taking all these issues into account, the paper proposes a research agenda for analysis of specific food supply resilience decisions.

Keywords[edit | edit source]

Global catastrophic risk, Food security, Resilience, Alternative foods, Nuclear winter, Volcanic winter

See also[edit | edit source]

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Feeding Everyone No Matter What
Foodweb.png

Additional Information[edit source]

Davos IDRC Conference[edit source]

FA info icon.svg Angle down icon.svg Page data
Authors Joshua M. Pearce
License CC-BY-SA-3.0
Language English (en)
Related 0 subpages, 38 pages link here
Impact 464 page views
Created May 11, 2015 by Joshua M. Pearce
Modified February 28, 2024 by Kathy Nativi
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