Source
- Denkenberger, D. C., & Pearce, J. M. (2015). Feeding Everyone: Solving the Food Crisis in Event of Global Catastrophes that Kill Crops or Obscure the Sun. Futures. 72:57–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2014.11.008 open access
Abstract
Mass human starvation is currently likely if global agricultural production is dramatically reduced for several years following a global catastrophe: e.g. super volcanic eruption, asteroid or comet impact, nuclear winter, abrupt climate change, super weed, extirpating crop pathogen, super bacterium, or super crop pest. This study summarizes the severity and probabilities of such scenarios, and provides an order of magnitude technical analysis comparing caloric requirements of all humans for five years with conversion of existing vegetation and fossil fuels to edible food. Here we present mechanisms for global-scale conversion including: natural gas-digesting bacteria, extracting food from leaves, and conversion of fiber by enzymes, mushroom or bacteria growth, or a two-step process involving partial decomposition of fiber by fungi and/or bacteria and feeding them to animals such as beetles, ruminants (cattle, sheep, etc), rats and chickens. We perform an analysis to determine the ramp rates for each option and the results show that careful planning and global cooperation could maintain humanity and the bulk of biodiversity.
Keywords
Risk; Moral hazard; Chemosynthetic bacteria; Fishing; Extinction; Cellulosic biofuels
See Also
Feeding Everyone No Matter What |
---|
Error in widget YouTube: Unable to load template 'wiki:YouTube' |
- Feeding Everyone No Matter What - The full book main page
- Alternative Foods as a Solution to Global Food Supply Catastrophes
- David Denkenberger and Joshua Pearce, Feeding Everyone No Matter What: Managing Food Security After Global Catastrophe , 1st Edition, Academic Press, 2015
- Free Preview: Google books
- Cover on Academia
- Facebook page
- Resilience to global food supply catastrophes
- Dave Denkenberger Publications
- Cost-Effectiveness of Interventions for Alternate Food to Address Agricultural Catastrophes Globally
- Feeding Everyone if the Sun is Obscured and Industry is Disabled
- Cost-effectiveness of interventions for alternate food in the United States to address agricultural catastrophes