Resilient foods research
How can we prepare to feed everyone in the event of a global catastrophe?

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This profile is tailored towards students studying agricultural sciences, biological sciences, business, chemical sciences, economics, engineering, media and communications, political science, psychology and cognitive sciences and sociology, however we expect there to be valuable open research questions that could be pursued by students in other disciplines.

Why is this a pressing problem?

How can we feed everyone in the event of a major disruption to global food production? Food insecurity is currently growing due to the interaction of various catastrophes, including the COVID-19 pandemic, war and supply chain disruptions, but the situation could worsen in future in the event of even more severe shocks to food systems.

Extreme weather events could become an increasing threat due to climate change. Advancing biotechnology could increase the risk of a terrorist attack targeting crop health. An abrupt sunlight reduction event – caused by the collision of a large asteroid or comet, a supervolcanic eruption, or nuclear war – could also be catastrophic. Other events might damage the technology and infrastructure on which food production and distribution depends, such as extreme solar storms, pandemics, cyberattacks, and high-altitude electromagnetic pulses caused by nuclear attacks.

These events could have catastrophic consequences unless resilient food solutions have been developed that can be quickly scaled up.

Watch the talk below on events that could cause catastrophic disruption to food production and possible strategies for mitigating the damage.

Explore existing research

This and this paper give an overview of the importance of creating resilience to global food shocks, and this paper analyses the deployment of multiple resilient foods in the event of a global catastrophe.

You can see a list of all ALLFED’s research publications to date here.

You can find a curated collection of research papers here to build your knowledge about some of the problems resilient foods research is trying to solve and some of the solutions proposed so far.

Feeding Everyone No Matter What by David Denkenberger and Joshua M. Pearce provides an introduction to this area. Note the book was published in 2014, and therefore some sections are no longer up to date.

Find a thesis topic

If you’re interested in working on this research direction, below are some ideas on what would be valuable to explore further from ALLFED’s agenda of suggested thesis topics and research projects list. If you want help refining your research ideas, apply for our coaching!

You could explore these questions from the Cambridge Existential Risks Initiative:

  • “Warming in the world’s primary food production areas may cause the areas of optimum climate for staple crops to shift slowly towards the high latitudes – how can farmers adapt to this and what are the difficulties with supplying continuing growth in global food demand despite this shift?”
  • “Despite the risks [of climate change to global food supply], adaptation techniques such as enhanced irrigation or genetically modified crops resistant to heat could potentially mitigate this risk. However, work on this topic is limited – for example, it is very unclear how fast sufficiently heat resistant crops could be developed and rolled out, or the degree to which irrigation can add additional risk reduction.”

Research topics suggested in ALLFED’s research agenda and list of projects include:

  • There are a number of reasons why we may have higher [than preindustrial levels of] agricultural productivity without industry, using knowledge acquired in the last two centuries. Therefore, new theses could investigate the effect of incorporating the different response interventions, such as  the efficacy of pest control without industry, or of alternative low-tech fertilizer production methods.
  • Grow crops in simulated nuclear winter conditions. This could be cold-tolerant crops such as potatoes in plant growth chambers. Experiments may also be possible in greenhouses in winter simulating the first year after a nuclear war before the Earth has fully cooled down.
  • Doing initial food production scaling calculations (like those done in Feeding Everyone No Matter What) for additional resilient foods such as mushrooms growing on coal, oil or peat, algae in ponds/enclosures, deep ocean fish, etc.
     

See ALLFED’s research agenda and list of projects for more topics.

Research topics suggested in ALLFED’s research agenda and list of projects include:

  • Genetic engineering/crop breeding to make new plants that could grow well in a nuclear winter in the tropics. Especially promising would be plants that use spores to reproduce, either naturally like ferns, or genetically engineered into existing crops. This is because spores are much smaller than seeds, so the storage cost would be much less. Furthermore, each plant could produce more like 1 million spores, versus 100 seeds, so scaling would be far faster.
  • What resilient food combinations will best provide the most variety of nutrients and how can we ensure people around the world have access to this level of variety? (We’ve begun answering this question, but there’s more work to do.)
  • In a scenario of reduced sunlight, how much would resilient foods reduce species extinction? (We’ve begun answering this question, but there’s more work to do.)
  • What are all of the crops that can be grown in different regions if sunlight is reduced, and what would it cost to produce and distribute them? (We’ve begun answering this question, but there’s more work to do.)

See ALLFED’s research agenda and list of projects for more topics.

Research topics suggested in ALLFED’s research agenda and list of projects include:

  • Develop a business case (possibly insurance) for funding resilient foods.
  • In many instances, solutions might be more affordable as a result of partnerships with business and industry…What are the most compelling business cases for industry involvement?

Research topics suggested in ALLFED’s research agenda include:

  • Investigating ways to convert the residue from leaf protein extract into sugar at the household scale, including having bacteria grow on it and leaching the sugar out (bacteria excrete enzymes that break the cellulose into sugar outside the bacteria) for a few leaf types. One possible way to make this more practical is to engineer the bacteria to produce much excess sugar (ideally the edible 6 carbon type, and the bacteria use the human-inedible 5 carbon sugars for energy). Another option is figuring out how to pretreat biomass (typically with acid) and use enzymes (perhaps from fungus) at household scale.
  • Demonstration of natural gas eating bacteria at the household scale. See here and here for how these bacteria can be used as fish food (and in a catastrophe, perhaps human food).


See
ALLFED’s research agenda and list of projects for more topics.

You could explore these questions from the Cambridge Existential Risks Initiative:

  • “Warming in the world’s primary food production areas may cause the areas of optimum climate for staple crops to shift slowly towards the high latitudes – how can farmers adapt to this and what are the difficulties with supplying continuing growth in global food demand despite this shift?”
  • “Despite the risks [of climate change to global food supply], adaptation techniques such as enhanced irrigation or genetically modified crops resistant to heat could potentially mitigate this risk. However, work on this topic is limited – for example, it is very unclear how fast sufficiently heat resistant crops could be developed and rolled out, or the degree to which irrigation can add additional risk reduction.”

Research topics suggested in ALLFED’s research agenda include:

  • Produce better cost estimates of different resilient foods. Current prices have been estimated here, some catastrophe prices here (Figure 4).
  • Analyze scenarios that cannot be handled by a general equilibrium model, perhaps breakdown of money, which is replaced by bartering.

See ALLFED’s research agenda and list of projects for more topics.

Research topics suggested in ALLFED’s research agenda include:

  • Demonstration of natural gas eating bacteria at the household scale. See here and here for how these bacteria can be used as fish food (and in a catastrophe, perhaps human food).
  • Develop a prototype and open-source plans for people to be able to feed themselves without very much labor assuming they have a cow (1.5 billion cows are enough to be draft animals for all farmland). Even without industrial power (e.g. tractor), one person could feed 20 with wheat with machines pulled by cows (plow, planter, cultivator, harvester, mill, etc). This could help people in less-developed countries right now. This could be a thesis for each piece of equipment, and there should be a scale up calculation to see if it could be done in time before stored food runs out (a few months). Some specialised equipment may be needed to cover the major staples of wheat, corn, rice and potatoes. You could explore the possibility of working with Open Source Ecology.

See ALLFED’s research agenda and list of projects for more topics.

Research topics suggested in ALLFED’s research agenda include:

  • How can we ensure that government officials and the general public have the information they need to develop and access resilient foods before, during, and after a catastrophe? How can we do this if we lose electricity?

See ALLFED’s research agenda and list of projects for more topics.

Research topics suggested in ALLFED’s research agenda include:

  • What can we learn from existing research on conflict and cooperation during disasters, especially at regional scales, to make informed suggestions regarding resilient food production and distribution in specific regions in an extreme food catastrophe?
  • How will existing inequalities impact who has access to resilient foods, and how can we overcome these?
  • How can we ensure that government officials and the general public have the information they need to develop and access resilient foods before, during, and after a catastrophe? How can we do this if we lose electricity?

See ALLFED’s research agenda and list of projects for more topics.

Research topics suggested by ALLFED include:

  • How will mental health after a catastrophe affect how people respond to the recovery period? Will there be unforeseen impacts that make it harder to cooperate and or to have a willingness to eat uncommon foods?


See
ALLFED’s research agenda and list of projects for more topics.

Research topics suggested in ALLFED’s research agenda include:

  • What can we learn from existing research on conflict and cooperation during disasters, especially at regional scales, to make informed suggestions regarding resilient food production and distribution in specific countries?
  • How will mental health after a catastrophe affect how people respond to the recovery period? Will there be unforeseen impacts that make it harder to cooperate and or to have a willingness to eat uncommon foods?
  • How will existing inequalities impact who has access to resilient foods, and how can we overcome these?


See ALLFED’s research agenda and list of projects for more topics.

Further resources

ALLFED has a list of resources including videos, books, podcast episodes, articles, reports and links to other projects if you want to keep learning about this research direction.

Related podcast episodes

If you’re interested in working on this research direction, apply for our coaching and we can connect you with researchers already working in this space, who can help you refine your research ideas.

You can also apply to join our community if you’re interested in peer connections with others working in this area.

Apply for our database of potential supervisors if you’re looking for formal supervision and take a look at our advice on finding a great supervisor for further ideas.

If a suitable local advisor cannot be found, David Denkenberger (who co-founded and runs ALLFED) and Joshua Pearce are professors who could potentially advise or co-advise a thesis or dissertation.

Dr David Denkenberger, the Co-founder of ALLFED, is currently recruiting for a PhD student in mechanical engineering at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Apply here!

Our funding database can help you find potential sources of funding if you’re a PhD student interested in this research direction.

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Contributors

This profile was last updated 4/10/2022. Thanks to David Denkenberger, Juan Garcia Martinez and Vasco Grilo for help creating this profile. All mistakes remain our own. Learn more about how we create our profiles.

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