Cost-Effectiveness of Interventions for Alternate Food to Address Agricultural Catastrophes Globally

Source

• Denkenberger, D.C. & Pearce, J.M. Cost-Effectiveness of Interventions for Alternate Food to Address Agricultural Catastrophes Globally. International Journal of Disaster Risk Science 7 (3), 205-215 (2016). doi:10.1007/s13753-016-0097-2 open access

Abstract
The literature suggests there is about a 1 % risk per year of a 10 % global agricultural shortfall due to catastrophes such as a large volcanic eruption, a medium asteroid or comet impact, regional nuclear war, abrupt climate change, and extreme weather causing multiple breadbasket failures. This shortfall has an expected mortality of about 500 million people. To prevent such mass starvation, alternate foods can be deployed that utilize stored biomass. This study developed a model with literature values for variables and, where no values existed, used large error bounds to recognize uncertainty. Then Monte Carlo analysis was performed on three interventions: planning, research, and development. The results show that even the upper bound of USD 400 per life saved by these interventions is far lower than what is typically paid to save a life in a less-developed country. Furthermore, every day of delay on the implementation of these interventions costs 100–40,000 expected lives (number of lives saved multiplied by the probability that alternate foods would be required). These interventions plus training would save 1–300 million expected lives. In general, these solutions would reduce the possibility of civilization collapse, could assist in providing food outside of catastrophic situations, and would result in billions of dollars per year of return.

Keywords

Agricultural catastrophe, Alternate food, Global catastrophic risk, Intervention cost-effectiveness

See also

• Feeding Everyone No Matter What - The full book main page
  • David Denkenberger and Joshua Pearce, Feeding Everyone No Matter What: Managing Food Security After Global Catastrophe , 1^st Edition, Academic Press, 2015
  • Free Preview: Google books
  • Cover on Academia
  • Facebook page
• Alternative Foods as a Solution to Global Food Supply Catastrophes
• Resilience to global food supply catastrophes
• Feeding Everyone if the Sun is Obscured and Industry is Disabled
• Cost-Effectiveness of Interventions for Alternate Food to Address Agricultural Catastrophes Globally
• Feeding Everyone: Solving the Food Crisis in Event of Global Catastrophes that Kill Crops or Obscure the Sun
• Food without sun: Price and life-saving potential
• Cost-effectiveness of interventions for alternate food in the United States to address agricultural catastrophes
• Micronutrient Availability in Alternative Foods During Agricultural Catastrophes
• Preliminary Automated Determination of Edibility of Alternative Foods: Non-Targeted Screening for Toxins in Red Maple Leaf Concentrate
• Open Source Software Toolchain for Automated Non-Targeted Screening for Toxins in Alternative Foods
• Scaling of greenhouse crop production in low sunlight scenarios
• Potential of microbial protein from hydrogen for preventing mass starvation in catastrophic scenarios
• U.S. Potential of Sustainable Backyard Distributed Animal and Plant Protein Production During & After Pandemics
• Global distribution of forest classes and leaf biomass for use as alternative foods to minimize malnutrition
• Long-term cost-effectiveness of interventions for loss of electricity/industry compared to artificial general intelligence safety
• Long term cost-effectiveness of resilient foods for global catastrophes compared to artificial general intelligence safety
• Rapid repurposing of pulp and paper mills, biorefineries, and breweries for lignocellulosic sugar production in global food catastrophes
• Nutrition in Abrupt Sunlight Reduction Scenarios: Envisioning Feasible Balanced Diets on Resilient Foods
• Methane Single Cell Protein: securing protein supply during global food catastrophes

Additional Information

• ALLFED
• Dave Denkenberger Publications
• OSE Wiki "Synfood" (i.e. protein and other dietary components from microbial organisms fed on gas or other hydrocarbons)

Davos IDRC Conference

• Feeding Everyone if Industry is Disabled
• Providing Non-food Needs if Industry is Disabled
• Vitamins in Agricultural Catastrophes
• Integrative Risk Management for Catastrophe Destroying 10-20% of Global Food Supply