Our Food Supply Is a National Security Issue

Social issues, economics, and foreign policy won’t matter anymore if we all starve to death

Have you received the latest bulletin from addicts of Dystopian Porn? Disaster is right around the corner! Food shortages and surging grocery prices shall descend upon us like a plague. And then there’s the question that nobody seems to be asking…

What can we do to halt this impending disaster?

I’ve been very clear about what I believe American priorities should be as we get ready to pass the 2023 U.S. Farm Bill. A lot of these fixes can be implemented through the little-known Office of Urban Agriculture & Innovative Production — which was established and funded as part of the most recent Farm Bill, in 2018.

But let’s delve deeper into what these solutions might look like, in practice. How exactly would they respect the sanctity of our planet? And, more palpably: why will applying them save us from worldwide chaos?

Supply-Chain Mitigation

Last February, agri-analyst Sara Menker told Yahoo!News that the global supply-chain disruptions created by the COVID-19 pandemic may only get worse, in coming years. Menker emphasizes the need for better long-term planning to make our own food systems more resilient. She cites the growing trend of other countries that reduce their exports in order to manage food prices within their own borders. When different nations are dependent on each other for specific commodities, shortages rear their ugly heads…as do price spikes, with demand outpacing supply.

How do we lay the groundwork for Menker’s call-to-action? Well, some have already been doing it.

We can look to the West Coast, which provides 15%-20% of America’s fresh produce, to study examples of how America should self-actualize its potential for agricultural independence. Out of necessity, many California farmers began to modify their business models to get out ahead of a post-pandemic world. This has included marketing direct-to-consumer supply boxes of their harvests, diversifying operations to include expanded CSA participation, and planning PPE and social-distancing protocols that can benefit their farmworkers in anticipation of future pandemics. Oregon’s Local Food Marketplace and Washington’s Salmonberry Goods, now allow consumers to buy directly from local farms. Such platforms will forge closer relationships between farmers and customers even during times free from pandemics.

The USDA hasn’t been sitting idle, either. In October of this year, $3 billion was allocated by the department for water management projects that assist drought-stricken farmers, as well as funding prevention and mitigation of livestock diseases (such as African swine flu). Some of this money will be invested in R&D while partnering with the private sector to develop new innovations in fertilizers, proteins, feed additives, and manure management.

Thousands of companies have experienced shortages due to shipping gaps and raw material availability. Relief funds will be provided to help offset those costs, along with providing breakfasts and lunches to students in underfunded schools. Additional USDA funding has been earmarked to invest in biofuels that will boost transportation needs, plus solar farms to contribute toward picking up the slack with rising energy costs.

But crisis may give way to opportunity. As the planting of cover crops becomes more ubiquitous, new jobs can arise. Additional vendors and manufacturers will be needed to provide extra seeds. Truckers must be commissioned to haul that product to nearby regions. Farmers themselves have to be trained by experts to master unfamiliar types of equipment — and that equipment could be assembled and sold, stateside. The last Farm Bill established RBICs (Rural Business-Cooperative Services) to expand capital investment to rural communities. This economic program gives farmers access to private equity investors so they can attain credit for upgrading their technology.

New Products, New Revenue

There are other job creation sources in the works throughout agricultural sectors. Most of these industries haven’t become mainstream. If, however, we use social media influencing and other public platforms to make consumers aware of them, the resulting demand may turn them “mainstream.”

Consider something as seemingly basic as raw materials for shelter-building, food proteins, or household supplies. Reusable beeswax is an eco-friendly alternative to saran wrap, tinfoil, and single-use sandwich bags. We can ditch plastic straws for more durable suction made from glass, silicone, agave, seaweed, bamboo, or even raw noodles. A Dutch company called Avantium has engineered plant-based bottles that degrade within a year.

Good Housekeeping even has a gift-giving guide containing all of these products — along with compost bins, reusable grocery bags or produce bags, zero-waste cosmetics, and novelty items made from organic materials.

Robust and distinctive industries could emerge as we find creative uses for subtle materials. Australian researchers are working on perfecting a “faux-plastic bag” made from the fleshy trunks (pseudostems) of chopped-down banana trees. Food scientists are looking at the tobacco hornworm caterpillar as a source from which to process imitation seafood. Hemp farming could expand to provide home/building insulation, with its initial plantings improving soil health as a carbon-sequestration resource. Pongamia is a legume tree that thrives in Florida and Hawaii, from which its beans can become a base for livestock feed, biofuels, and vegetable oil. Kelp, as farmed by Connecticut fisherman Bren Smith, serves as an ingredient for cosmetics, fertilizer, biofuels, and in food products (sometimes as a thickener for meat or dairy).

Bringing all of these commodities to scale is key. It will only happen by spurring competition and facilitating avenues for them to be produced domestically, so they can be marketed with authentic Made-in-America veracity.

And this will, holistically, halt the acidification of Earth’s oceans. That means we continue to have drinkable water, consumable seafood, plentiful oxygen, and a habitable climate.

Cutting-Edge Technology

The way we revolutionize is to elevate what’s already been done. We just need to begin doing it bigger, better, grander, and smarter.

Indoor farming is the wave of the future. Utah’s Grov Technologies has pioneered a technique for growing livestock feed on indoor seed trays. Vertical farming — particularly through hydroponics, aquaponics, or aeroponics — has already caught on. The challenge, now, is to make vertical farming facilities more energy-efficient, create new crop genetics that are more compatible with indoor growing conditions, and mitigate the high startup costs for these operations. Although Robert Paarlberg (whose lackluster book I recently reviewed) seems hostile to indoor farming, he does endorse the concept of lab-grown meat for the purpose of conserving water, rationing land acreage, and reducing pollution.

With any of these vocational shifts, the risks could include job losses and more centralized food processing. But such drawbacks might be offset as artificial intelligence (A.I.) plays a greater role in agriculture. According to futurist Nikolas Badminton, we should be considering all of the new vocations that can be created through scientific evolutions such as laboratory gene-editing, facial recognition for livestock, solar panels, wind turbines, and A.I.-fueled data-surveying of farms. In fact, robotic automation is one answer to generational labor shortages, especially with the rise of precision seeding and clean energy grids. LettUs Grow, an agri-tech distributor based in Southwest England, has mastered A.I.-controlled aeroponics to cultivate herbs and leafy greens that eliminate the need for pesticides.

The main hurdle, here, is cost-effectiveness. We must embrace grants, loans, and cost-sharing programs that will help smaller farmers afford this technology in order to remain competitive with their larger counterparts.

Climate-Friendly Innovations

Last spring, I wrote about the amynthas, which is a parasitic “jumping worm” that gobbles up nutrients and moisture in a way that dries out soil quality. This type of threat from the natural world can be sidestepped once we normalize the lesser-known solutions…and develop new ones.

Brooklyn-based Gotham Greens produces lettuce and herbal condiments using hydroponic greenhouses, as does Jon Shaw’s Karma Farm in Northeastern Maryland that grows carrots, gourds, botanical berries, and specialty herbs. West Baltimore’s Green Street Academy provides student training for sustainable careers along with having an onsite farm and fish hatchery. Irving Fain, CEO of Bowery Farming (which operates across the Eastern Seaboard), tells Baltimore Magazine that he has long-term plans for scaling his vertically-stacked bok choy, kale, and arugula to be grown and distributed all over the world. He plans to deliver this by building local growing facilities operated with sensors and algorithm-driven surveillance.

One of the reasons why microgreens flourish indoors is because their cultivators know how to provide them with good air circulation and proper drainage. When breeding fish and crustaceans indoors, an incredible synergy between vegetables and ocean harvests can be maintained.

Along with raising its produce and seafood, The Farmory — a yellow perch hatchery in Green Bay, Wisconsin — teaches people how to operate permaculture and aquaponics at home. Or, there’s the Norwegian company known as Nordic Aquafarms, which is eyeing operations in both Maine and Northern California. This aquacultural facility uses Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS), which consists of closed-loop water recycling and filtration. But current RAS technology isn’t without challenges. Laura Poppick of Anthropocene Magazine points to the need for more energy-efficient pumps (which could be done with better solar panels), expanded research to identify the best plant-based sources for sustainable fishmeal, and constant A.I.-monitoring to prevent system backups.

One model for harnessing solar energy to grow crops could be that of Jack’s Solar Garden, which runs the Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center out of Boulder. Here, Byron Komenik’s massive solar farm generates a grid of electricity to provide power to hundreds of clients throughout North-Central Colorado. Underneath these solar panels, crops thrive while naturally cooling the voltaic cells in symbiosis.

TZR’s Yola Robert offers tips on home-based gardening and fish-harvesting. She introduces her online guide by highlighting the pride that people can take in not having to be dependent on a nearby supermarket for all of their dietary needs. And from a citizenship perspective, I’d say there can be a lot of American exceptionalism gained from upgrading the ways in which we grow and sell food — especially if we do so while reducing carbon emissions and working in solidarity with Mother Nature.

For example, a group of high school students from Central Washington State developed, as part of a science competition, mealworm and superworm larvae that eat Styrofoam. Another advancement in trash decomposition appears to have come from a French biochemistry company called Carbios. Partnered with British scientists, they are conducting research into enzymes that consume heated plastic waste.

The U.K. seems to be on the forefront of scientific breakthroughs, including the tutelage of “green ammonia” — an energy source created when converting ammonia into a hydrogen/nitrogen mix. If its controlled storage can be perfected, it will undoubtedly arise as a cleaner fuel source. In the same vein, biochar is a biomass charcoal that comes from manure, wood debris, plant clippings, and decayed roots. Rendered through burning, this substance can be used as a soil additive, fertilizer, sewage treatment, black ink, or ingredient for construction materials.

Modeling Agronomics

A necessity for us, as the American electorate, is to shift the way in which we think about food systems when enacting policy. At the beginning of this year, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff visited an urban farm at Washington D.C.’s Kelly Miller Middle School. While his tour of the property was largely symbolic, it should be a motif for how a pro-business mindset can be fused with sustainability.

One such forward-thinking company is Love & Carrots, a D.C.-based mobile service that installs agri-tech equipment and provides instructional coaching for residents who want to establish gardening operations at private homes or across other public spaces. Over in Minnesota, a statewide Lawns-to-Legumes initiative provides workshops and cost-share incentives for homeowners wishing to transform their landscaping so it becomes more pollinator-friendly.

Iowa farmers have been calling for more education on how to integrate sustainable cover crops into their harvests. Fiscally, they stress how livestock grazing practices that increase the health of grasslands and soil must be coupled with cost-sharing programs. In the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky, the burgeoning hydroponic tomato producer App Harvest has branched out to sponsor a “container classroom” at Lexington’s Frederick Douglass High School that will teach high-tech growing skills to young people.

Internationally, other countries are getting in on the “agripreneurship” game. Better Life Farming Centers are found throughout India, Bangladesh, and Indonesia; these hubs pool both private and public resources to provide entrepreneurial skills, technical training, seed access, equipment, insurance, and lines-of-credit to small farmers. Back in the U.K., eco-chef Douglas McMaster’s restaurant Silo in Brighton has moved to London. “Zero-waste restaurants,” of which Silo is one, are eateries in which containers, bottles, and food waste get recycled and composted, while the chefs use local farmers as suppliers.

As I wrote about in my “debut piece” on Medium, we tend to view agriculture and food security as being independent from social issues and economics. In reality, however, they are deeply intertwined.

Food policy, by itself, won’t solve every global problem…but it will certainly fortify us for long enough to have the opportunity to tackle other longstanding challenges.

If you believe in stability and cooperation amongst the international community, you’ll support agri-sustainability.

If you care about keeping food-borne or livestock-borne illnesses from jumping continents and infecting human bodies, you’ll support agri-sustainability.

If you want to tackle the intersection of malnutrition and BIPOC oppression (in the name of eradicating racial strife), you’ll support agri-sustainability.

If you’re a capitalist who loves the ideal of free-market competition, you’ll support agri-sustainability.

If you’re a socialist who believes in robust public welfare to bolster the common good, you’ll support agri-sustainability.

If you value job creation that can prevent our society from devolving into civil unrest, you’ll support agri-sustainability.

If you want to keep the jet streams under control while bodies of water continue to absorb carbon dioxide, you’ll support agri-sustainability.

This isn’t my “pet issue” (even though my passion for it may convince observers that it is).

It’s the defining issue of our lifetimes. Famine, heat waves, flooding, and toxic air won’t help the causes of environmental stewards, global diplomats, or entrepreneurial savants.