Strategies for a Changing Planet: Food
Calorie Calculus David ArkyIt won't be easy, but there are ways to make the food production math add up Climate change is already happening, and it's time to get ready. Here's how we could adjust our most basic needs--food, water, shelter--to survive. The calculus of human sustenance is simple: to feed the planet's seven billion people, farmers must generate at least 12 trillion calories' worth of food every day. And even as the world's growing population demands ever more of those calories, climate change is making them harder to produce. How can science change the equation? ADD SEEDS Farmers will need drought-resistant, flood-resistant, heat-resistant, frost-resistant and insect-resistant crops that they can grow in saltier soils and an atmosphere filled with more carbon dioxide and ozone. Researchers are developing seeds that can do all of those things, and genetic modification will play an important role in their work [see ". . . By...