[00:00:35] Bridget Scanlon: Paolo is a professor of natural resources at University of California at Berkeley, and he received his PhD from the University of Padua in Italy. He has published several books including Global Deforestation and Dryland Ecohydrology. Paolo is a fellow of AGU and has received many prestigious awards, including the Sustainability Science Award from Ecological Society of America. Thank you so much Paolo for agreeing to be on the podcast. I really appreciate it.
[00:01:06] Paolo D'Odorico: Thank you for the invitation. I'm happy to be here.
[00:01:09] Bridget Scanlon: And could you give us a description of your work and a little bit to prepare for the discussion?
[00:01:16] Paolo D'Odorico: Yeah, sure. I'm a hydrologist. So I was trained mostly as a civil engineer in the beginning with a focus on hydrology and the natural system. In the last few decades, we looked at the interactions between water and the biota and the role of water in determining ecosystem functions in a whole field which is now called ecohydrology. More recently, I started looking at the role of water in human societies, more at water resources and the questions related to sustainability, water sustainability, the way they intersect with the food and energy security.
[00:01:50] Bridget Scanlon: Thanks Paolo, and I think we'll be focusing mostly on the latter part of your work in this discussion. And I think in one of your studies you indicated that although in the past we've put a lot of emphasis on natural systems, that most systems are not natural anymore. And so we need to look at the human impacts and understand the linkages there between water, food, and energy.
So far now, there's been a lot of discussion recently about the increased energy prices globally and potential impact on food security with grain trades, supply chain issues from with Ukraine war, Russia - Ukraine War, and also with countries stopping exports like India and some Southeast Asian countries and also the impact of energy prices on fertilizer production because some plants in Europe have had to greatly reduce their production, and so that also impacts food production. So how do you think, this is going to impact trade of food and food security globally? And, this is not the first time we've had a food crisis. What have we learned from previous food crises around 2008, 2010, 2011, and earlier?
[00:03:03] Paolo D'Odorico: Yeah. First of all, the, what we learned is that the food system is strongly globalized through international trade, and so we estimated that about 25% in terms of food calories are accessed through international trade on average, which means that when there is a shock in one part of the world, particularly in a bread basket like Ukraine or the entire area of the Black Sea, there are going to be some impacts that are going to affect not only the region, but far regions of the world.
So the easiest thing for us to do at this point is to look at what we learned from recent cases of recent food crisis in 2007, 2011. There was another important food crisis. It was caused by the increasing demand for food and energy products, and particular also the demand for fuels in a period, with some crop failures in some parts of the world.
And so that led to an escalation in food price. There was, at the time some countries reducing their export substantially to control the food prices domestically and this led to some other countries in other parts of the world in a conditional panic. So in the case of the 2007, 2011 surprises, Ukraine reduced its wheat export by 80%, and also Australia reduced its export and the wheat prices were having a shock or a spike of 150% increase.
As a result of that, well, many parts of the world were affected by this global increase in prices, but particularly affected were the regions of the Middle East and all the way even to other African countries like Nigeria, Burkina Faso. And on the other side, it arrived all the way to Pakistan and overall there was an increase in food prices.
Of course, this is particularly serious in case of developing countries. Most big part of the income of a household is spent in the purchase of food. Then there was another important food crisis in 2010, 2011. In that case, Russia reduced its export of wheat. Belarus reduced the export. Then Argentina, they reduced the export of soybeans.
So overall there was a slowdown on the international food market or market of agricultural products. There is several studies then to support the idea that that was one of the contributing factors to the Arab Spring. And so clearly what we are seeing today is unfortunately some of the trade from the exports from Ukraine is resumed is a situation not very different. It affects the same area of the world, and so it's like a very critical supplier of food globally.
[00:05:51] Bridget Scanlon: That's very interesting Paolo. And I think, when I was looking at the data, it seemed like a natural gas price spike, in those years, like 2008 and 2011. And then that impacted and tripled the fertilizer prices during those times. So that would also be a contributing factor. And also I think you mentioned in some of your studies, the effect of dietary changes with increasing middle income countries, they're shifting to more water intensive, energy intensive diets. Maybe you can describe that a little bit.
[00:06:20] Paolo D'Odorico: Yeah, I think this is an important factor. So there is a crisis in this particular situation, a crisis of supply. At the same time, there is a very high demand and the demand for agricultural products has been increasing, not only because of population increase, but also because of affluence. Often comes with increasing consumption of animal products, which require much more water, much more for their production on a per calorie basis, then land food altogether. This led to an escalation in the demand for agricultural products. And also we are at a point where in the previous decades, after World War II, there was this strong enthusiasm for the Green Revolution because it allowed an unprecedented increase in the production of food.
But now clearly other factors that are not only nitrogen supply infer, sorry, fertilization, other factors, which are as simple as land and water become limiting in our ability to sustain an increase in agricultural production. And this combined with an escalating demand by human societies brings us to this very first global food crisis after decades of excessive supply.
[00:07:26] Bridget Scanlon: Right. So that's extremely interesting. So, I mean food trade sort of helps to resolve spatial disconnects between supply and demand, but then you can, if you are an importing country, you can also be vulnerable if the exporting country reduces their exports during critical times. Can you explain how the globalization of food trade has evolved over time?
I know it's been going on for decades and it's been increasing, particularly in the last couple of decades. Maybe you can describe it a little bit, Paolo.
[00:07:56] Paolo D'Odorico: Yeah, I think this is an interesting aspect of the way in which the full global food system has been changing in the last few decades. Of course, as you are indicating there are some pros because at this point, it's possible to sustain the demand in regions, so the world where they supply and the production is limited by, even by natural factors at the same time.
There are some vulnerabilities because there is dependence on production that is not controlled domestically but is abroad and is accessed to international trade. The food trade system has been changing over the decades. Right after World War II, there was a strong control of the United States that are a big, major producer of grain.
This production was partly sustained by subsidies domestically, in a way that the US government was supporting and sustaining a production rate that exceeded the domestic demand. At this point, the US had to place these products in the international market. Right after World War II, they been through the Marshall Plan.
That included some provisions for the European countries to purchase a discount rate for wheat from the United States. At some point then the European countries started to protect their domestic production, and the US started to divert this surplus to other parts of the world in the Middle East and in the developing world.
Which, of course had the impact of displacing local assistance or production or, limiting their ability to develop because of the fact that, there was this competition by relatively cheap grain from the United States subsidized by the US government. And this led to the condition in which, we, if we look now at the distribution of the so-called yield gaps, the gap between actual and potential yields, we see that some regions of Africa and Asia still have a relatively big gap because again, the lack of development of agriculture also inhibited by this competition with exports from the US.
[00:10:01] Bridget Scanlon: These developing countries then cannot compete with the subsidized pool that's coming from the developed countries. So that's really a little bit unfair. Then, reduce their ability to develop their own domestic supplies.
[00:10:17] Paolo D'Odorico: As you suggested, it makes them more vulnerable to situations like those we were talking about in which there is an export ban and then at this point, they don't have enough domestic supply to meet their demand, and so they are more vulnerable than they would've been.
In the absence of this competition with subsidized products from the United States, the US played a very central role in this globalization of food. At some point, even Russia started importing it for some period in the early seventies grains from the United States because of a crisis of production in Russia, which, had the impact of creating, again, an escalation in food prices.
And then we kept going over time. And at some point, the other big change we can see is that when changed from a self-sufficient countries started importing soybeans and staple crops from South America at that point, this is partly related to what we were talking about before, the increasing demand for, animal products.
And so much of this soybean product imports are used as a feed for the livestock industry in China. At this point, if we look at the global redistribution of agricultural products that will trade the US is not central. It's still an important one. It's number two in terms of exporter, but South America is a major exporter and is also much more integrated in the global market of agricultural products. And so this, overall at this point, we have 25% of the food commodities that are accessed through international trade, which is not a trivial amount clearly.
[00:11:49] Bridget Scanlon: Right. I think some of the South American countries are a bit unusual in that Argentina does not provide any subsidies for its agricultural production. It actually taxes them, so, so they're competing at a different level and then the increase in trade from South America corresponds to the agricultural expansion in that region, and then deforestation and impacts on the environment from the agriculture expansion. I think corresponding to soybeans and herbicides and pesticides and, all of these things making large scale production feasible.
[00:12:25] Paolo D'Odorico: Yeah. The whole region of the cerrado, for example, in Brazil has been undergoing major land use changes from grazing land to agricultural land. A lot of loss of these savannas, which also have an impact on habitat and also on greenhouse gas emissions. So some of the impacts of this trade are affecting the producing country to the benefit of the importing country.
[00:12:50] Bridget Scanlon: It was interesting. I was looking yesterday at where Brazil gets a lot of its fertilizers in the last bit in the past has been from Russia and Germany and stuff, so it'd be interesting to see how they're impacted by current issues with the Russian Ukraine war. And energy prices in Europe. You also, I think, have studied quite a bit, the NAFTA agreement, North American Free Trade Agreement and its impact on linkages between the US and Mexico and what effects that has, trade there has on water issues and, and land and stuff.
[00:13:23] Paolo D'Odorico: Yeah, we've been looking at the production of vegetables and berries, so-called healthy diet in the United States. To what extent this requires resources that are in Mexico, including land and water resources. And so one thing we noticed is that since the mid-nineties, there has been an escalation in the production of berries in Mexico in the import the United States with exaggeration. Most of the imports of these berries, US imports, are from Mexico, more than 90%. And so this happens in regions of Mexico where there are limited water resources, where water resources are depleted, particular groundwater. And so there are environmental impacts of trade and some externalities that have remained for a long time understudied and most consumers are not aware of the environmental impact of their consumption habits and where these impacts happen.
[00:14:21] Bridget Scanlon: So Paolo just when you tell us not to eat meat and to eat more veggies and stuff, but then we have to consider where the vegetables are coming from. So it's a quite a complicated system and it can lead, it is difficult for a consumer to figure out what's good, what's bad or or whatever, because you have to consider the source and the climatic conditions of the source of whether it's irrigated or not irrigated, and those sorts of, so this leads, into this issue that when you trade food, then you are also trading water. So this virtual water concept and water footprint, can you explain that to listeners and what it entails?
[00:15:01] Paolo D'Odorico: Yeah. In fact, when we were looking at this impact, and one of the impacts is on water resources and you were alluding to the fact that some of these products use irrigation water, deplete water resources, et cetera.
So the notion of water footprint has been introduced by Tony Allen. To define the water cost of a given commodity, and his focus has been on agricultural commodities because they, most of the water consumption by human societies is in agriculture, and so it's possible to calculate how much water is needed to produce a kilogram of wheat, kilogram of meat and so on.
What we find is that, water consumption for meat production is orders of magnitude greater than the water consumption for plant food. So this is a good metric to have, an ideal, the ideological impacts of our consumption habits. But as you were indicating, we don't know what are the environmental impacts associated with this consumption of water.
Because if a commodity is produced in a place where there is plenty of water without depleting, surface or groundwater, the environmental impacts are relatively small. In terms of water consumption, there are other impacts associated with soil erosion, pollution from fertilizers and pesticides, and so would be important to have a metric of water footprint that accounts for the type of water, if it's irrigation water or rainwater, and where this water is taken from, to what extent this at expenses of environmental flows or groundwater.
[00:16:34] Bridget Scanlon: Yeah. So I mean, the water footprint concept has been usually beneficial in people understanding how much water it took to grow that food. And it's not included in the food right now, but it was evaporated when the crops were growing and then it came the source of the water, whether it's surface water or groundwater, and the conditions at the source are very important also.
But the water footprint concept oftentimes doesn't extend to that level, but I think it's advancing now to consider the source if you're producing the food. For example, in the US we produce maybe 60, 70% of our vegetables from California, then export them to the rest of the country. And the Central Valley in California is essentially a desert. So there's an awful lot of irrigation water used to produce those fruit items for the domestic market. And that of course it leads to overexploitation of groundwater resources. So, I mean, it was interesting to me, there was a World Wildlife Report recently that said, could we move the Central Valley to the Mississippi Basin?
Could we move the food production in the Central Valley? And I mean, it's a lot more complicated than just thinking about growing the plants in the Mississippi Basin, but you also have a lot of socioeconomic issues, labor force, migrant labor force, and all of the things that have evolved over time in the Central Valley to support that agricultural production.
[00:18:00] Paolo D'Odorico: Exactly. And also the type of production and the type of agricultural products is producing water region is not necessarily suitable for another. But for sure we can talk now about the notion of virtual water, which is very strongly related to the notion of water footprint. As you noticed, the water is not contained in the apple or in the kilogram of meat, but it's the water that has been used in a consumption process that has been evaporated, but by trading one commodity from one place another.
So by shipping elements from California to another part of the United States or the world. Virtually we are transporting that water in this notion of virtual water, which was developed by Tony Allen. It has been a very powerful framework to look at the globalization of water, how the globalization of food through trade is associated with trade of virtual water.
This water is not physically present in the commodity, but virtually as if, it were, transported with a commodity from one place to another. And so this means that some parts of the world depend on therefore water. And the typical example Alan used was, again, the Middle East. Because there are so many people in the Middle East with very limited water resources, that water would not be sufficient to feed that part of the world.
And the reason why this is possible is because of the import of grain from other parts of the world. According to Alan, this is an import of virtual water. He quantified virtual water, which is better than the real water down in the Nile River. So this is a very effective way to give us an idea of the magnitude of this phenomenon.
We said 25% of the food on average is traded, similarly. 25% of the water used for food production is virtually traded from one part of the world to another. So through this build water trade, we can really look at where the water resources we use as consumers come from. And where the ideological impacts of consumption habit are perceived and are happening, right?
[00:20:04] Bridget Scanlon: So I think that's very important. This virtual water, which was used to produce the food, and it's not actually imported in the food at this point, but it was used up or evaporated when we grew the food. And so I think, then, because 70% of global water consumption, or 90% of global water withdrawal is for irrigated agriculture, then there's a big emphasis on making agriculture more sustainable.
So people have talked about the concepts of more crop per drop or water efficient irrigation systems, flood versus drip systems and stuff like that. But I think there's also a paradox associated with that, and maybe you can explain that a little bit, Paolo.
[00:20:50] Paolo D'Odorico: Yeah, it's called the Irrigation Paradox. And it's basically if a farmer maximizes the consumption water. And so, for a certain amount of water that is applied through irrigation, most of it is transpired or evaporates into the atmosphere. It means that very little of that water drains down to the aquifer or can contribute to surface run off as a result when farmers switch from a surface irrigation based on canals to a drip irrigation, which has a much higher efficiency, this efficiency has the cost of reducing the flows of water down to the groundwater or, to the surface water bodies. And so as a result, while at the farm scale, this efficiency leads to an improvement in water use. This means that downstream other users will be left without, or with less water than before.
[00:21:40] Bridget Scanlon: That's extremely interesting. And I think there was a paper by Alan MacDonald and his co-authors in Nature recently about canal irrigation in Northwest India greatly recharging and building up groundwater supplies in that region over decades from the early 1900s.
And it's only recently where they've switched to groundwater irrigation in the last couple of decades they've started to deplete the aquifer. But I mean, they've built it up over decades. So, and I know talking to some folks in Australia, like Quentin Grafton, that precision agriculture in the Murray Darling Basin, they spent $5 or $6 billion, but they didn't consider that in lining irrigation canals, these sorts of things that water infiltration from irrigation canals was not a true loss. And then when they didn't take it into account, then they saw the impacts later during drought. So we have to consider the interconnectedness of surface water and groundwater and, and what is the true loss in that full water balance in the basin, not just at the farm fields.
[00:22:49] Paolo D'Odorico: Because if water leaves the land, masses either is evaporation and transportation or runoff. If we increase, enhance the evapotranspiration, then we have a loss in surface or groundwater runoff. So then, we really don't gain anything. We just consume upstream.
[00:23:06] Bridget Scanlon: And then I think, with these increasing efficiency and irrigation, many farmers expanded their irrigated areas and so then they ended up consuming more of water through evapotranspiration.
And so the net benefit of the system of all of these highly efficient irrigation systems shown early on in the southwest US, so very important to consider all of these different aspects. So, we talk a lot about food production, irrigation, import, export, and global trade.
And so I think, considering the energy prices now, fertilizer shortages and all of that, I think a lot of countries are concerned about food security. And in the past, they've also had these issues. So what are some of the ways you have written in detail about land grabs and countries purchasing land in other countries, to increase their food security and also possibly water security.
Maybe you can just define what land grabbing is and then what the implications are for these processes.
[00:24:12] Paolo D'Odorico: Sure. The land grabs are acquisitions of usually large tracks of agricultural land, that happen in conditions of unbalanced power, without involving the current land users or without a democratic process, without even a symmetry in information between those who lose control over the land, those who gain the control over the land, and in the most extreme case, could be also done with the forced eviction environments.
And so in these conditions, the land is taken away often from marginalized groups in the developing world. Typically, the investors are agribusiness corporations, could be government owned companies who could be also investment funds. And there's been an increase in what is called sometimes the land rush since the food crisis of 2007, 2008.
Because of the fact that some countries are not self-sufficient in terms of food production, they wanted to have a more direct control over the agricultural land to secure access to food. A typical narrative, that is being used is that in some parts of the developing world, the yield gaps are big, and so the land is not used to it's maximum potential.
So because of lack of investment in technology, because, the innovation of the Green Revolution has not been adopted. And so because of that, there is the need for some agri-business corporations to make the investment the local farmers have been unable to make. and so invoking of illogical food security, even international organizations have been sometimes supporting this type of investments.
And the theory is that, because of the fact that, there are investments in some regions of developing world through this land acquisition there, according to the so-called trickle down approach, everybody will benefit. The reality has been that often the farmers lose access to the land.
We replace subsistence farming with large scale commercial agriculture. And so production in this acquired land is for the export market and local communities don't have access through this commodities through the market. The other problem is that in many cases, the land has been left idle or not cultivated and was being purchased just as an option for the future. So without even bringing the type of investments that were expected to happen, or it took a long time for this land to be developed. The interesting part of the story is that the investors are often interested in the land, not because they don't have land domestically, but because of lack of water in their own home country. And so this land grab is often associated with the water grab with an attempt to appropriate water resources for agriculture.
[00:27:05] Bridget Scanlon: Yeah, I think some of your work you were describing land grabs along the Nile River, Sudan and other regions and so I guess that they're very interested in the water resources in those regions also.
[00:27:18] Paolo D'Odorico: Definitely. In fact, we have shown in some of our studies that they acquired the land. They usually have preferential access to water, even in terms of distance from surface water bodies or distance from underlying groundwater. Also the investors also tend to target countries that are not expected to be strongly affected by climate change.
The whole world will be affected by climate change, but in terms of water availability for crop production, these regions would not be strongly affected. And so there is clearly an attempt also to invest in land and the enormous water resources.
[00:27:55] Bridget Scanlon: So I think, one of your recent studies, where were you looking at new dams that were constructed over the past couple of decades and you were looking at land use change adjacent to those and irrigation and stuff.
I think you found that most of the land was appropriated by large agribusiness and, and the smallholder farmers were squeezed out. Then it seems like in those countries, maybe they're producing luxury items. I mean like flowers in Kenya or things like that for export market. So it doesn't seem to enhance food security in those developing countries and doesn't seem to help.
[00:28:28] Paolo D'Odorico: The way water grabs can happen and can be either through the acquisition of land or through the development of an infrastructure in an area, or can be well in the aquifer to extract water and heavy control on the access to those water resources and the development of new dams for the construction of new dams for irrigation in Africa has been followed by the emergence of new irrigated areas in the surroundings of these dams.
Mostly larger scale farms, not small-scale subsistence farms. So this means that, those who benefit, from this larger scale infrastructure usually, or often are the agribusinesses, not the rural communities. And, as you are indicating in some of the production is for more luxury products, it can be flour, can be sugar cane and not necessarily staples.
So overall, by doing this, the traditional users of the same water resources lose access to that water. There are several examples, been very well studied, the case of the Omar River in Ethiopia, where the communities, the pastoral communities downstream from the three dams lost access to water resources in a lake there, Lake Turkana, that as a result of agricultural use of water upstream has been shrinking with loss of fisheries on which the local communities were depending.
[00:29:50] Bridget Scanlon: And so if this process, these large agribusiness doesn't, improve food security, how do you think food security could be improved in Africa? Do you think you can help the small holder farmers improve food production and try to close the yield gap with fertilization, limited irrigation and small scale processes and decentralized water stores, things like that. Do you think that has potential? To improve food security in those countries?
[00:30:20] Paolo D'Odorico: Well, clearly, if there are relatively big, yield gaps, the closure of those gaps will really help with an increase in production. There have been two approaches. one approach would've been the Green Revolution or technology-based approach, so bringing the fertilizers, irrigation. And again, this is possible only up to a certain point. If we look at water resources, there is limited to where irrigated agriculture can be expanded because of lack of water resources locally.
And the other approach is instead are based on low technology, more labor intensive, but based on polyculture, still some irrigation and the use of, more labeled to sustain higher product.
The use of organic fertilizers, non-industrial fertilizers, and local instead of big dams, small scale detention ponds for irrigation. And again, this technology is required also by approaches that try to plant the right crop in the right place. So avoiding, water demanding crops in regions that are water limited and improving the crop suitability also the right crop on the right area In a way that it's possible to increase production without requiring these, big investments in technology that are not easily accessible by small holders. And
[00:31:39] Bridget Scanlon: I guess, maybe crop rotations and stuff could help with the nitrogen balance and then trying to improve soil health and these sorts of things, could go a long ways to improving crop yield.
[00:31:52] Paolo D'Odorico: Definitely in fact, those more traditional methods, it's a whole field that is called agricultural trends to focus more on these, let's say, less industrialized methods, so that sustain soil, microbial diversity and crop rotation, and also approaches that try to farm the land in a way that there are less evaporative losses from the land, water is conserved to sustain crop production,
[00:32:17] Bridget Scanlon: like no tillage,
[00:32:19] Paolo D'Odorico: like no tillage, cover crops. These are the methods to reduce soil erosion.
[00:32:24] Bridget Scanlon: Right? And also I think soil erosion because many of these regions are subjected to floods and droughts, so it's, sequence. And so anything that can protect the soil cover from erosion would go a long ways to improving soil health and crop yields.
[00:32:40] Paolo D'Odorico: Yeah, definitely. In fact, that's very important to sustain, to have some sort of sheltering of the soil surface from the actual wind and water in a way that the soil is not lost and the nutrients which are part of the soil are sustained.
[00:32:53] Bridget Scanlon: So we've been talking a lot about human centric subjects, like everything for humans and stuff, but we've also got to consider the environment and I think people are becoming more and more aware of the needs of environmental flows and other things as much of your work focused on those aspects.
[00:33:13] Paolo D'Odorico: Yeah, we've been looking in the past that, aspects are related to land use, loss of forest cover, the extent to which this is affecting the land processes of erosion habitat. To what extent this is affecting also the ideological processes, or increased exposure to the loss of, environmental flows as you were suggesting. So all these aspects are important. Also to what extent the loss of forest cover or other types of wood cover can be irreversible. To what extent this is leading to a permanent loss of habitat. Which is also very important from the point of view of the way in which, very important for the human health.
As we are now in this global pandemic, we always tend to look at the health of humans separate from the health of the environment, health of animals, deforestation has been shown and forest augmentation, important drivers of the transmission of pathogens from wildlife to. And so we studied the case of Ebola in Africa, also foreign viruses.
This is what I'm doing with my colleagues, Christina from Milan. We are looking at the, how this, impact on the habit in that has an impact also on the spillover and the transfer of pathogens, from wildlife to humans
[00:34:35] Bridget Scanlon: And I think it also has a big impact on water quality. I mean, New York City preserves the forest cover in their watershed there so that it results in high quality water.
But for example, Sao Paolo, they did, it was a lot of deforestation and then that results in sediment yield and with erosion and impacts treatment systems and, and those sorts of things. And then the nutrient loading that comes with agricultural expansion. So there are a lot of trade-offs to consider to optimize land management and people are very concerned with trying to improve water quality upstream of major urban settings and those sorts of things.
[00:35:14] Paolo D'Odorico: Yeah. There is in fact the case of Brazil, for example, is very interesting one because, there is, the attempt now to restore the Atlantic Forest. Exactly to improve that, to bring back some of this environmental quality, and this is a major reforestation effort. At the same time, other parts of the world, we talk about planting trees in areas that were not even forested initially, or at least in recent times. This can have other problems related to the water resources and depletion or reduced availability of water resources downstream. So sometimes we deal with a system that is less, some sort of a short blanket. So if you look at the problem from a larger scale, we realize that, on the one hand, looking just at the food system, which is a, is a strong environmental impact. There is a minimum amount of environmental impact also, or impact also on water resources that is needed to feed the world. At the same time, there is also the concern that we might shift or we might reach some tipping points if we encroach too much into the space that should be left to nature.
[00:36:19] Bridget Scanlon: I think one aspect of nature that we should be preserved is wetlands. these play a huge role in water quality and quantity and, and flood mitigation and those sorts of things. I think many urban areas they developed over the wetlands and then they're much more prone to flooding now, and maybe now they're considering restoring some of those and, and this green and gray technology, combining those to, to try to improve water systems.
[00:36:48] Paolo D'Odorico: Yeah, these are ways to go back to look at the function that the biota plays in this specific case, in controlling hydroecological processes. And instead of relying only on gray infrastructure use, go back to, we can go back to some of these, functions. And plant trees or use the natural environment to restore some of those environmental services that are very important for water resources, for environmental quality, control of pollution and flooding, right?
[00:37:17] Bridget Scanlon: So we've talked about a lot of different things and I guess, it'd be nice to try to, and we've talked about some solutions to different issues like smaller farming and food security in Africa, it seems, I often think about, trying to resolve water issues in terms of a water budget, if we have a shortages, increased supply, reduced demand, store more water or transport it. And I think in terms of water, food, we often consider just increasing supplies of these things and don't focus so much on reducing demands or conserving or things like that. What are your thoughts about sort of the solutions that we can use to resolve spatiotemporal disconnects between supplies and demands?
[00:38:03] Paolo D'Odorico: I totally agree on the fact that we shouldn't focus only on increasing production and the supply because there is a limit to that. And probably we are reaching that limit. And so it's time to look at the consumption, our consumption habits, if we look at food, how we consume food, and to what extent we can switch to a food system that is less demand and requires less natural resources, less water, less land. The first thing we can think of is the food waste and food loss, which according to some estimates, accounts between 25 and 30% of the global food production. Of course, we will never be able to reduce it to zero, but we can limit that risk can go.
Down to our individual behavior, in the way we buy and consume food at home. But the whole system can also be restructured and reimagined in a way that can, be more, can reduce that waste. Or if any food is wasted, can be reused to produce energy to fertilize the soil or as feed for livestock, for example.
So the other big one, of course, is the consumption habits directly as the type of food we want to eat. So we already talked about how meat and food and minimal products are more demanding. Perhaps a diet that is less demanding for sure will allow us to reduce or substantially reduce our pressure on the environment.
And interestingly, while the food consumption, the meat consumption has been increasing, the type of meat that is consuming is more sustainable. There is a shift more to poultry and pork and less beef. And the footprints not only in terms of water, but also greenhouse gas emissions. Land use of that type of meat is much less so that's already a good sign. And that could be also part of a conscious decision on consumers.
[00:39:50] Bridget Scanlon: Right. I think you know, in the past I was doing a lecture tour me about 15 years ago at the Birdsall Dreiss lecture tour, and I was saying that most people should become vegetarians and stuff, but then some people would say, well, it takes about a gallon to grow an almond in California, maybe poultry production is not so water intensive. , we need to consider where the food is grown and the environmental conditions there also. And I think we're trying to track things back to the source and the environmental impacts. And that will help us understand what is critical, and I guess intensification versus extensification of agriculture.
I mean, we have very technology-oriented areas, vertical farming or protected farming and things like that, very energy intensive, but, highly productive. Maybe more of a circular kind, where we recycle the water and the nutrients and things like that, but we've got to consider all of these things.
And I think that is what is marvelous about your work is that, you covered the gamut. You covered things from all sides and consider the trade-offs, because most of us just look at one aspect and then we just do that but it's very important to consider greenhouse gases, as you mentioned, and water, and land, and all of these things.
[00:41:08] Paolo D'Odorico: And energy as well, right? Yes. So we can, there is a whole world there that we requires to be improved in the way that, a new energy system that is not competing with a food system and is not demanding water resources in areas where they are not available.
[00:41:24] Bridget Scanlon: Well, I guess that gets to the biofuel question that people have used various terms, cars versus carnivores or food versus fuel and things like that.
But that's mostly reflecting maybe first-generation biofuels or corn grown in the US and things like that. Brazil has done a terrific job of their biofuel program and have a strong industrial chemical industry related to it. And most of the sugar cane that's used for biofuels is grown fairly sustainably it seems like.
[00:41:54] Paolo D'Odorico: Yeah, but at the same time, we did some back of the envelope calculations. If the biofuels require too much water overall, so we will not be able to replace fossil fuels with biofuels. This is why we will need to look at renewable energies that they are not based on fuels. And this could be solar, can be wind or something else.
Biologically, there will not be enough water to solve the energy problem only with biofuels, as you are suggesting. Also for the food in the case of energy, most likely it needs to be a combination of different methods, different solutions. It is going to be a mix of all of them.
[00:42:30] Bridget Scanlon: And so one aspect that I think you have written about a while back is, do we have much food storage to resolve temporal disconnects between supply and demand? If those stockpiles of food have been decreasing out interest in some of the food crisis that our stockpiles of food have been decreasing over time, so we can't turn to those in time of crisis, is that correct?
[00:42:53] Paolo D'Odorico: I think it's important to maintain food stocks and the grain reserves. In fact, what helps us in situations like this one where there is a major crisis affecting a bread basket, having access to reserves that can cover the supply for several months.
Crucial. And so there have been different ways to measuring this global food reserves because there are also, there is some disagreement in, the data, available data. But what is important is that when you simulated and in a model food crisis, having a food stock makes a big difference.
And allows us to meet a remain despite the reduced supply from some of these producing regions.
[00:43:34] Bridget Scanlon: I guess it's just like water storage. We have surface reservoirs, but also groundwater provides a large store of water as a buffer. Then during droughts and things like that. But I guess the biggest issue with energy is that we cannot store it effectively yet.
So that really highlights the differences between these different things. Water, food, and energy. I really admire you, Paolo, for working with a large team of scientists and, and collaborating with various people and talking to economists, decision makers, policy makers, and really sleuthing through data sets.
It's not easy to get data to address many of these topics, but you seem to do a great job of synthesizing the current situation and global issues. What's next on your agenda? What are you looking at these days?
[00:44:24] Paolo D'Odorico: First of all, I have to say that this work is always a work of a team and there is a lot to learn, from these collaborations, with colleagues with different expertise.
And so that's part of the final, working on this research right now, we are still working a lot on this national water grabbing, looking at different pathways of water grabbing that has associated not only with acquisition of land, but other ways to which it's possible to gain control on our water.
And, I'm also interested in looking at this interaction between the human rights to food and water associated to the rights to food and the rights of nature, the way in which, we can, recognize some, the value of nature by itself independently of being instrumental to human action. We can find a way to meet both rights and to what extent instead, these two rights can be in competition between the two of them.
And so there are interesting cases of adjudication of this right between nature and humans.
[00:45:25] Bridget Scanlon: Well, that sounds fascinating. I really appreciate your talking with us today and sharing your insights on globalization of food trade and virtual water related to that, and then potential solutions to addressing some of these issues.
And I hope the current situation won't turn out to be so dire, but at the moment it just doesn't look, very good and I think developed high middle income countries would be able to address that. But, the developing countries, I think are the ones that may suffer, the most. So our guest today is Professor Paolo D’Odorico from the University of California Berkeley. Thank you for listening.
