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Palm Oil Detectives Jan 20, 2024

Food Without Agriculture

In an article published in Nature Sustainability, researchers write that food production can be more sustainable by focusing less on traditional agriculture and more on alternative methods, like chemical and biological processes.

The article highlights a specific example where dietary fats can be produced with significantly lower CO2 emissions compared to current methods used in palm oil production in Brazil or Indonesia. While acknowledging challenges like potential impacts on agricultural economies and the need for consumer acceptance, the abstract suggests that these new methods could greatly reduce the environmental impact of agriculture, especially in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, land, and water use in the next decade.

Davis, S.J., Alexander, K., Moreno-Cruz, J. et al. Food without agriculture. Nat Sustain (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01241-2

#Research paper in @Nature Sustainability: Dietary #fats can be produced in a lab with significantly lower #CO2 emissions/#climate impact compared to current #palmoil production in #Brazil and #Indonesia #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2024/01/21/food-without-agriculture/

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#Research in @Nature finds switching to lab-produced #palmoil has enormous potential to reduce #GHG emissions, #deforestation, water use. Reducing the climate impact of #agriculture over the decades #Boycottpalmoil 🌴🚫 #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2024/01/21/food-without-agriculture/

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https://youtu.be/M1sArNV-ENM

Davis, S.J., Alexander, K., Moreno-Cruz, J. et al. Food without agriculture. Nat Sustain (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01241-2

Abstract

Efforts to make food systems more sustainable have emphasized reducing adverse environmental impacts of agriculture. In contrast, chemical and biological processes that could produce food without agriculture have received comparatively little attention or resources. Although there is a possibility that someday a wide array of attractive foods could be produced chemosynthetically, here we show that dietary fats could be synthesized with <0.8 g CO2-eq kcal−1, which is much less than the >1.5 g CO2-eq kcal−1 now emitted to produce palm oil in Brazil or Indonesia. Although scaling up such synthesis could disrupt agricultural economies and depend on consumer acceptance, the enormous potential reductions in greenhouse gas emissions as well as in land and water use represent a realistic possibility for mitigating the environmental footprint of agriculture over the coming decade. Read original

Plain English Summary of Results

Proteins, fats, and carbohydrates can be made without traditional agriculture by using different carbon sources and a variety of chemical and biological methods. This article compares how much energy each process uses, with some details still uncertain. The processes vary in their continuous or batched nature. The article also discusses the challenge chemical methods face in distinguishing between molecular forms, unlike bioenzymatic methods which are more precise but limited to conditions suitable for life. The focus is on fats because they are simpler to make, have been produced at scale in the past, are a basic calorie source in many foods, and the production of oil crops like soy and palm has a huge environmental impact.

Synthesizing fats from natural gas or air-captured carbon using renewable energy could greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to traditional agriculture. Finally, the potential environmental benefits of synthetic fats are highlighted, showing that replacing a portion of soy and palm oil with synthetic alternatives could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and land use, particularly in countries where these crops are intensively farmed.

Plain English Summary of Discussion Notes

Producing macronutrients without traditional agriculture can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and land use, especially for dietary fats. Even using coal-based electricity for production can be more climate-friendly than some current agricultural methods. Beyond environmental benefits, such as reduced water use and pollution, synthetic foods can improve food security and lessen the need for labor-intensive farming jobs. This opens up possibilities for reforestation and biodiversity improvements.

However, there are challenges. The estimates are based on data that might not capture all relevant factors, and more detailed analysis is needed. The cost of synthetic foods could be higher than agricultural products, and social acceptance is a major hurdle, given the public’s skepticism about synthetic foods and potential unforeseen environmental impacts. The shift to synthetic foods could also impact the global labor force, especially smallholder farmers in the global South, as agriculture employs a significant portion of the world’s workforce.

Synthetic food production could lead to a smaller environmental footprint for agriculture, requiring much less water and can be produced anywhere with the right resources. This could make food systems more resilient but might also create new dependencies. Sustainable synthetic food production would ideally use renewable energy and atmospheric carbon.

Finally, the move towards synthesized foods prompts a reevaluation of humanity’s relationship with nature. The domestication of plants and the Haber-Bosch process for nitrogen fixation were pivotal in human history. Now, with the majority of habitable land and water used for agriculture, synthetic food offers a path to reduce the environmental burdens of agriculture and align food security with ecosystem restoration.

Read original

Davis, S.J., Alexander, K., Moreno-Cruz, J. et al. Food without agriculture. Nat Sustain (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01241-2

ENDS

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Take Action in Five Ways

1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.

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2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.

Wildlife Artist Juanchi Pérez

Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings

Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao

Health Physician Dr Evan Allen

The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert

How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy

3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.

https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20

https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20

https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20

4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.

5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here

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#Agriculture #biotechnology #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #Brazil #Climate #climateChange #CO2 #deforestation #fats #food #GHG #Indonesia #industrialAgriculture #PalmOil #palmOilDeforestation #palmoil #ReasonsToBeHopeful #research

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DoomsdaysCW Aug 28

A more pessimistic outlook, based on 2023 recalibrations... (From #Resiliency.org)

#LimitsToGrowth was right about collapse

By Andrew Curry, May 20, 2025

Excerpt: "Downhill from here

"The last chart assembles something from the data that wasn’t done in the original Limits to Growth work because the concept hadn’t been developed. But it is possible to assemble a #HumanDevelopmentIndex from the data, and reference it against the original model and the revised version. It doesn’t come out well.

(Source: Nebel et al, 2023, adapted Klement)

"On this last chart, Klement is most depressed, and I think with good reason:

" 'If [this chart] is true, it says that today is peak human civilisation, from now on we are going backward on a global level in terms of human development and quality of life, While some countries will continue to improve, other countries and the planet as a whole will start to go backward, ultimately dropping back to similar levels of human development and quality of life as in 1900 by the end of this century.'

"Tipping point

"The overall conclusion by the article’s authors is:

" '[T]he model results clearly indicate the imminent end of the exponential growth curve. The excessive consumption of resources by industry and #IndustrialAgriculture to feed a growing world population is depleting reserves to the point where the system is no longer #sustainable. #Pollution lags behind industrial growth and does not peak until the end of the century. Peaks are followed by sharp declines in several characteristics.

"They also note that the cause of this turning point is resources, not ‘pollution’:

" 'This interconnected collapse… occurring between 2024 and 2030 is caused by resource depletion, not pollution.

"They also have an interesting caveat. This is that the way the #World3 model works is a through a set of connections that exist within an environment of growth. In an environment of decline, they are likely to reconfigure themselves in different ways. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be a decline—just that the current lines in the model that describe it may not follow quite the same patterns.

"But one final note from me. Economists get over-excited when anyone mentions ‘#degrowth’, and fellow-travellers such as the Tony Blair Institute treat climate policy as if it is some kind of typical 1990s political discussion. The point is that we’re going to get degrowth whether we think it’s a good idea or not. The data here is, in effect, about the tipping point at the end of a 200-to-250-year exponential curve, at least in the richer parts of the world. The only question is whether we manage degrowth or just let it happen to us. This isn’t a neutral question. I know which one of these is worse."

#Capitalism #CorporateColonialism
#Warning #Extinction #ClimateCrisis #EnvironmentalCollapse
#Resources #Ecocide #Technology #SocietalChange #Collapse

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DoomsdaysCW Aug 28

So, something else that is a key element of ensuring #HumanWelfare remains in the SW range is to make sure folks are fed -- without destroying the environment! That's where #RegenerativeAgriculture , #SustainableAgriculture, #FoodForests, #CommunityGardens, etc., come into play. But #Rewilding and restoring key natural systems are also very important!

7. #Wildlife faces #extinction cascades as #ecosystems collapse.

"Vertebrate populations have declined by an average of 69 percent since 1970, with some regions experiencing losses exceeding 90 percent as habitat destruction, climate change, #pollution, and direct #exploitation combine to trigger ecosystem-wide collapse that eliminates the #biodiversity necessary to maintain stable #FoodWebs. Species extinction rates now exceed background levels by 100 to 1,000 times, representing a mass extinction event comparable to the asteroid impact that eliminated the dinosaurs but compressed into a timeframe measured in decades rather than millennia.

"The collapse of insect populations threatens #pollination services essential for agricultural production, while marine ecosystems face #acidification, warming, and #overfishing that eliminate entire trophic levels and destabilize ocean food chains supporting billions of people. Domestic animals face parallel threats as #IndustrialAgriculture concentrates genetic diversity into vulnerable #monocultures while climate change disrupts feed production and increases disease pressure on livestock populations already stressed by intensive production methods designed to maximize short-term yields rather than long-term #resilience."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/mit-warns-society-could-collapse-by-2040-and-the-signs-are-already-here/ss-AA1LevRc?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhoverent&cvid=67506a067e5a4905be298b0a363777ec&ei=35#image=8

#Collapse #Change #TheLimitsToGrowth #PlanetaryBoundaries #WaterIsLife #NatureIsLife #Extinction

MSN

Palm Oil Detectives Aug 9

Corporate Control of Food Harms Us All

Around 800 million people in our world go hungry each day. Yet around the globe we have enough food to go around. So why the discrepancy? Market concentration and corporate monopoly of our global food system means that corporate giants control everything from access to seeds, access to land, #workersrights, #greenwashing and wages. Mergers and acquisitions take place at all stages of the global food system – from seeds and fertilisers to machinery and manufacturing. This is what contributes to bad health outcomes and food inequality. Learn how you can boycott big brands causing the corporate crush and other solutions. #Boycott4Wildlife

Corporate control over global food #supplychain harms us all, causes #hunger, #food #poverty. Learn about #corporate power grabs behind seemingly innocuous #supermarket items. Reject the system 🥩 🥓🌴🚫 #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://wp.me/pcFhgU-8UV

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Written by Liam Keenan, Assistant Professor in Economic Geography, University of Nottingham; Dariusz Wojcik, Professor of Financial Geography, National University of Singapore, and Timothy Monteath, Assistant Professor, University of Warwick. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Across the world, over 800 million people spend their days hungry. More than 2 billion have limited access to food. Yet today’s global food system produces enough to feed every person on the planet.

This imbalanced situation can be explained in part by the effects of things like natural disasters, war, fragile supply chains and economic inequality. These are all significant factors which highlight the problems of a truly global food system, where shocks spread quickly from one place to another with sometimes devastating results.

But they do not provide the full picture and cannot fully explain the rise of ultra-processed foods, the financial difficulties facing farmers, or why the world has failed to address the harmful environmental impacts of food production.

To account for these trends, we need to look at market concentration, and how a small number of very big companies have come to dominate the production, greenwashing and supply of the food we all eat.

For the global food system has become much more concentrated in recent years, partly through an increase in mergers and acquisitions, where large firms buy up rival companies until they completely dominate key areas.

High levels of market concentration mean less transparency, weaker competition, and more power in the hands of fewer firms. And our research reveals that a rise in the number of mergers and acquisitions is taking place at all stages of the global food system – from seeds and fertilisers to machinery and manufacturing.

This is all part of food being increasingly seen as a source not only of human sustenance, but as a profitable investment – or what is known as the “financialisation of food”.

And while people have been buying and selling food for a very long time, the global system has seen a major incursion of big finance in recent decades. Pension funds, private equity and asset management firms have invested heavily in the sector.

The logic is simple. Everybody needs food, so the sector promises safe and potentially lucrative returns.

But feeding the world while looking after the planet costs money, and unfortunately, big financial actors are all about the bottom line. They aim to maximise returns, provide value to shareholders, and meet the expectations of markets.

This makes mergers and acquisitions an attractive business proposition. Why make risky, long-term investments in sustainable food solutions, when you can buy your competitor, increase your market share, and potentially make a lot of money in the process? By boosting share prices and removing competition, buy-outs have been used widely throughout the global food system as an easier way to achieve further growth.

Food for financial thoughts. Billion Photos/Shutterstock

Hunger games

This has resulted in more concentration and fewer, more powerful firms. One report revealed that just four firms control 44% of the global farm machinery market, two companies control 40% of the global seed market, and four businesses control 62% of the global agrochemicals market. This trend is matched in food retail, with four firms – Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, and Morrisons – estimated to control over 64% of the UK grocery market.

This level of concentration and power affects everyone. It means less bargaining power for farmers, who are forced to negotiate with powerful conglomerates. Workers across key stages of the global food sector face downward pressures on wages, rights, and conditions. Local communities lose autonomy over how their land is cultivated and how the rewards are distributed.

And the negative effects are not limited to those working in food.

Fewer firms and less transparency can lead to higher prices. And research on Europe has shown that places with higher food market concentration, including the UK and Germany, sell more ultra-processed food.

The global food system also plays a big part in climate change. Too much corporate power limits the opportunities for communities to tackle environmental issues, and move towards sustainable provision of healthy food for everyone by producing more food themselves.

With so much at stake, improved regulation should surely be on the menu. Our research revealed the majority of food system mergers and acquisitions take place between firms of the same nationality. This could provide an opportunity for governments to prevent further market concentration within their borders – and even to seek to dilute what already exists.

International arrangements are more complicated, and would require a coordinated, international approach. However, this may prove difficult given the first-ever UN “food systems summit” in 2021 remained “strategically silent” on the issue.

We believe market concentration must become a defining feature of food system reform. To address climate change, provide a fair deal for workers, and eradicate hunger, we need power to be less corporate – for the benefit of the entire global community.

ENDS

Read more about human health, veganism, nutrition and why you should #Boycottpalmoil, #Boycottmeat for your own and the planet’s health

Blonde Capuchin Sapajus flavius

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Deforestation Devastates Tesso Nilo National Park’s Endangered Creatures

Tesso Nilo National Park in #Sumatra, #Indonesia, has lost 78% of its primary forest between 2009 and 2023, primarily due to #palmoil plantations. This #deforestation threatens the habitat of critically endangered species like…

Savage’s Glass Frog Centrolene savagei

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Corporate Control of Food Harms Us All

Around 800 million people in our world go hungry each day. Yet around the globe we have enough food to go around. So why the discrepancy? Market concentration and corporate monopoly of our…

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Take Action in Five Ways

✓ Subscribed

Wildlife Artist Juanchi Pérez

Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings

Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao

Health Physician Dr Evan Allen

The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert

How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy

https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20

https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20

https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20

4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.

5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here

Pledge your support

#BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottMeat #BoycottPalmOil #corporate #diet #food #greenwashing #health #humanHealth #hunger #industrialAgriculture #meatAgriculture #meatAndSoyDeforestationInBrazil #nutrition #PalmOil #plantBasedDiet #poverty #saturatedFats #soyDeforestation #supermarket #supplyChain #supplychain #WorkersRights

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Paul Wermer, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 May 27

@ianjames

Introducing TerraDeforming, brought to you by #AnotherMarketFailure and #unsustainable #IndustrialAgriculture

Weary Wulf May 21

[P] I admit, Nintendo wasn't on my Hiverarchy Awareness bingo card.

https://youtu.be/eawj_oOdeDA

I'm seeing some starting to perceive hiverarchy and it's Nintendo's pricing that did it.
[Th] See, I always figured it'd be how hiverarchian homunculi are ignoring greening oceans, cow fart doomsday, plastic in our fuckin' brains or some shit that'd do it.
[P] Yeah, well, it is what it is.

#psychology #humans #climatecatastrophe #plasticpollution #industrialagriculture #nintendo #videogames

BREAKING: Rich Man Thinks Video Games are CHEAP!

YouTube

MárciaW 🇸🇩Mar 18

"Technology is not neutral - The School of Agroecologies of the South collectively analyze industrial agriculture, accelerated in its version 4.0 or agricultural digitalization." Very good material inSpanish from the ETC group https://www.etcgroup.org/

https://www.biodiversidadla.org/Recomendamos/Cuaderno-1-La-tecnologia-no-es-neutra

#FoodSecurity #Agroecology #FoodColonialism #IndustrialAgriculture

ETC Group

monitoring power, tracking technology, strengthening diversity

ETC Group

Bicycling Monterey 💚🌎🌍🌏Mar 18

Viewed and recommend: “Food and Country.” https://www.foodandcountryfilm.com/

Ask for it at your local library, e.g., it’s at Monterey Public Library https://www.montereylibrary.org/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=460084&query_desc=kw%2Cwrdl%3A%20food%20and%20country.

#FoodAndCountry #USA #FoodSystem #IndustrialAgriculture #SmallFarmers #FamilyFarms #Ranchers #FoodProduction #agriculture #farming #chefs #WhiteOakPastures #KnuthFarms #OrganicFarming
#Greenwave #BrenSmith #RiseAndRootFarms #StratfordAngus

Food and Country

Food and Country: trailblazing food writer Ruth Reichl reaches across political and social divides to report on the country's broken food system and the innovators risking everything to transform it.

Food and Country

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Earthworm 🐌Feb 21

I second this sooo much.

There are different reasons why vertical farms are still a thing. They are rooted in technocracy, academia and capitalism*.

- technocracy: technology changed many aspects of our lives, so people tend to think that there are technological solutions for everything. Academia and public funding strongly prefers tech-solutions over system solutions.

- The epistemology of natural sciences (= the idea that everything mechanism can be observed and understood individually). This hampers the ability of natural sciences (including agronomy) to understand the complexity of biological systems. Therefore, scientists shy away from truly interdisciplinary real-world agroecosystem science (cooperating with farmers for #agroecology? what a hassle!) and feel way more comfortable doing lab-experiments. And what is more lab-like than a lab-greenhouse?
Plus, if you resolve the problems of the world, maybe people will call you saviour and this is what the ego of us scientists makes us crave for.

- capitalism (or however you want to name this shit): small-scale farming systems don't work so well with neoliberal scaling ideologies.And we have many large capitals pushing into agriculture, either because they are greedy asshats (or simply don't care) or, even worse, because they want to be the good guys: Many pension funds, churches, governments, wealthy individuals with a pinch of bad consciousness are receiving pressure from society to shift towards "sustainable" investments and green their portfolio. Since you can't easily invest in small-scale farmers, "green" tech-solutions are the main remaining possibility to invest in agriculture. And this is why there is an endless stream of money pouring into any start-up that promises to resolve the problems of agriculture.

- Cheap energy and and a lack of understanding what "resilience" and "food sovereignity" means.

Ok, I forgot some other drivers: urbanization (the proportion of people living in megacities continues to grow) and the fact that industrial agriculture has a really shitty environmental record and this is known. So people are looking desperately for easy and market-compatible solutions.

We need more #Solarpunk, folks!

@big_louse

*Here we could go deeper and identify also colonialism and patriarchy and so on, but I hope you get my point here.

#Agriculture #UrbanFarming #VerticalFarming #IndustrialAgriculture #Agroecology #GreenInvestment #SustainableInvestments #SustainableAgriculture #SoilLessCultivation #Horticulture

Tim Moore Feb 17

Through this arrangement the customary link between the natural resource and its user was interrupted - abruptly disowning the traditional ecological knowledge of this ancient people. The pastures, not managed and protected anymore by the tribes, started to be over-grazed by free-ranging pastoralists.

A major role in this unfolding disaster was played by affluent urban investors who threw thousands of livestock into the steppe turning the grazing into a large-scale, totally unsustainable, industrial practice.
#desertification
#SyrianCivilWar
#bedouin
#traditionalKnowledge
#industrialagriculture
Over-grazing and desertification in the Syrian steppe are the root causes of war https://theecologist.org/2015/jun/05/over-grazing-and-desertification-syrian-steppe-are-root-causes-war

Over-grazing and desertification in the Syrian steppe are the root causes of war

Civil war in Syria is the result of the desertification of the ecologically fragile Syrian steppe, writes Gianluca Serra - a process that began in 1958 when the former Bedouin commons were opened up to unrestricted grazing. That led to a wider ecological, hydrological and agricultural collapse, and then to a 'rural intifada' of farmers and nomads no longer able to support themselves.

The Ecologist