Ep. 169 - There’s no Eighth Continent to Farm: Mike Grunwald on Feeding Ourselves without Frying the Planet

SHOW NOTES

In this episode, I’m joined by one of America’s most thoughtful national journalists: Mike Grunwald. You may know him from his work at Time, Politico, or The Washington Post, or from his critically acclaimed books about the Obama administration and the history of the Everglades. He’s also now a contributing columnist at the New York Times. But for the purpose of this episode, Mike is here to discuss his third book, We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate.

In this sweeping and deeply reported work, Mike tackles one of the most uncomfortable truths of our time: our global food system, especially animal farming, is a leading driver of climate change, deforestation, wildlife extinction, and more. But rather than simply doomscroll through the apocalypse, We Are Eating the Earth offers a clear-eyed, often witty, and ultimately hopeful exploration of how we might transform our food system to produce more food while using fewer resources.

In our conversation, we discuss some of the biggest food and climate myths—like whether organic or so-called “regenerative” agriculture is necessarily better for the planet—as well as Mike’s views on what will actually work to slash humanity’s footprint on the planet. (Spoiler: eat less meat, waste less food, and use fewer biofuels are among his biggest points.)

Mike also clarifies his views on animal welfare, including the welfare of chickens and pigs, and his (lack of) concern about falling fertility rates. It’s a wide-ranging conversation that’s got something for everyone interested in a future with fewer hungry people and more land rewilded.

DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE

• Mike is the author of three books.

• The UN reports that dozens of species go extinct daily, mainly from habitat loss due to human agriculture.

• Mike recommends reading Sentient Media. 

• He also recommends reading the World Resources Institute’s report, Creating a Sustainable Food Future.

• Paul recommends reading Resetting the Table and listening to our past episode with its author, Rob Paarlberg.

• Paul’s thoughts on why organic ag is often worse for animal welfare.

• The disastrous Sri Lankan experiment with organic agriculture.

• Green revolution architect Norman Borlaug frequently raised alarms about what he called “The Human Population Monster.”

• Chinese per capita protein consumption has surpassed America’s.

• Chinese electric vehicles sales now exceed all US vehicle (of any kind) sales.

• Research to convert rice straw into animal feed using filamentous fungal fermentation. 

• Mike is on a media tour and is doing many interviews (including this one!), but one that I found particularly insightful was his conversation with Eric Schultze on Food Truths.

MORE ABOUT Mike Grunwald

Michael Grunwald is an award-winning journalist and best-selling author who is currently writing a column about food and climate for Canary Media. He was also the co-host of the Climavores podcast. He has won the George Polk Award for national reporting, the Worth Bingham Prize for investigative reporting, and many other journalism honors. After growing up on Long Island and graduating from Harvard College, Mike was a staff writer for The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, TIME Magazine and POLITICO Magazine. In addition to We Are Eating the Earth, Mike is the author of two other critically acclaimed books, The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise (Simon & Schuster, 2006), which was adapted for a PBS documentary, and The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era (Simon & Schuster, 2012), which spent four weeks on the New York Times best-seller list.

TRANSCRIPT

Paul Shapiro: Hello, friend. You are listening to episode 169 of the Business for Good Podcast. Now, normally on this show we feature CEOs or investors from companies seeking to use commerce to make the world a better place, but longtime listeners will know that I occasionally also have on authors who write about topics of interest to the show.

Such as books about entrepreneurship investing in, in the case of today's show, a great new book profiling many of the startups seeking to build a better food and agriculture system for those who listen often, you know that I can be quite a fan of using technology to solve our food and agriculture problems, and that I can also sometimes be quite skeptical of claims about so-called natural or organic or regenerative agriculture offering any real promise to feed the world sustainably.

Well, we all love reading anything that affirms our belief. And the guest for this episode's new book certainly did that for me. It affirmed my beliefs, so how nice for me. In this episode, I am joined by one of America's most thoughtful national journalists, Mike Greenwald. I say he's thoughtful, not just because I often find myself in agreement with him.

That is certainly true, but because Mike really is a data-driven guy who is passionate about protecting the planet while trying to go wherever the math takes him, even if that leads him to hold unpopular opinions about. How best to feed the world without frying the planet. As Mike has said many times himself, you may know Mike from his work at Time Magazine or Politico or The Washington Post.

He's also now a New York Times contributing opinion commentator or from his critically acclaimed books about the Obama administration and the history of the Everglades. He also was a host for a show called Climb AVOs that I really enjoyed while it was on as a podcast as well. But for the purpose of this episode, Mike is here to discuss his third book.

Which is entitled, we Are Eating the Earth, the Race to Fix our Food System and Save Our Climate. The book is now out and you can get it anywhere. Books are sold. In this sweeping and deeply reported book, Mike tackles one of the most uncomfortable truths of our time, that our global food system, especially animal farming, is leading driver.

Of climate change, deforestation, wildlife extinction and more. But rather than simply use the book as an opportunity to doom, scroll through the apocalypse we are eating. The Earth offers a clear-eyed, often witty, and ultimately hopeful exploration of how we might transform our food system to produce more food while using fewer resources in our conversation.

Mike and I discussed some of the biggest food and climate myths, like weather organic or so-called regenerative agriculture is necessarily better for the planet, as well as Mike's views on what will actually work to slash humanity's footprint on our earth. Spoiler, eat less meat, waste less food, and use fewer biofuels are among his.

Biggest points again, eat less meat, waste less food, and use fewer biofuels. That's basically the takeaway. Now, Mike also clarifies in this conversation his views on animal welfare after writing a highly controversial opinion piece in the New York Times that seem to be promoting factory farming. And he talks also about his views on the welfare of chickens and pigs.

And his lack of concern about falling fertility rates. It's a wide ranging conversation that's got something for everyone interested in a future with fewer hungry people and more land rewild. So let me let Mike make the case himself.

Mike, welcome to the Business for Good Podcast.

Mike Grunwald: Oh, Paul, thanks so much for having me. It's great to be with you. Well, I really enjoyed the book but admittedly, any book about agricultural policy that has references both to Monty Python and to the Naked Gun, it, it's my type of book, so I appreciate it.

Paul Shapiro: It's like, it's like very grun, waldy and humor. As somebody who's read actually all of your books and has listened to your podcast I, I feel like I, I know you better than many people who might not have consumed your content as voraciously as I have. So it, along with. The I would call it more like the broccoli of public policy.

You got like broccoli of public policy, but the chocolate of all these jokes in there, so I appreciated that.

Mike Grunwald: Oh, thanks. I I tried to make the medicine go down. Yeah. And and I, I gotta say for your listeners that Paul has been an incredible guide for me on these issues. Like I met you right at the, when I was just starting the reporting, and you've been kind and wise and and I've learned so much.

Paul Shapiro: Oh, that's very generous of you. Yeah, I remember when we first met, it was at a good Food institute event in San Francisco, and we were bonding over our shared lamentation. Of the move away from the use of the term clean for clean meat, and people wanted to move to, at that time, cell-based meat, which thankfully was also later discarded.

Very few people want to eat cells. It turned out who, who knew? But the the idea that clean meat never really took on, you know, still even to this day, years later, seems like a shame to me. But it's a, a very lonely lamentation that I, I have today.

Mike Grunwald: And how crazy was that conference, right? I mean, that was like there were like legitimate debates about whether meat was gonna disappear in 10 or 15 or 20 years, right?

Yeah. My line is that I thought I was gonna accidentally raise a Series A in the drinks line.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, no, it's a good line of, I I, I noticed that line in the book. I definitely liked it. And that was funny. So why don't, why don't we start there, Mike, you know, in the book you chronicle those heady days. Of like, you know, when Beyond Meat iPod in 2019 and then.

You know, you saw them have a huge pop and money started flowing into this space, especially reaching its apex in 2021. Like it was, like this river of cash flowing into alt meat land with projections from experts that you're alluding to here. But I mean, you, you pointed 'em out in the book, like you had some experts saying that within a decade, 10% of meat was gonna be animal free, and there's just gonna be this major takeover.

Now, in, in fairness, you know, at that time, plant-based milk was already over 10%. Plant-based, excuse me, the fluid milk market was over 10% plant based, so I don't think it was like that crazy. But as you point out in the book, all of a sudden, valuations collapse, major layoffs, bankruptcies, investor losses, and more of these.

These projections from 2019 through 2021 did not, or at least so far, have not come to fruition. What's your diagnosis for why this happened? I'm gonna ask you what your prescription is for, how to get the mojo back, but what do you think happened that caused that?

Mike Grunwald: Well, part of it, I mean, right, this is, some of it is classic just like gardener hype cycle, right?

The you know, the peak of inflated expectations to be followed by the trough of disillusionment. But I do think, and I, I tried to emphasize this, some of the book, and this is maybe the larger theme of the book, is that there was this idea in 2019 at that conference, but I think generally re regard regarding.

Alt meat and alternatives to the status quo in agriculture and meat generally that you know, that this cannot hold. Right. I, I remember in, in 2019 there was, there, the fires were burning in, in California and there we were in San Francisco and there was literally a kind of like dark cloud over, over the hotel where we were hanging out and there was just this notion, I mean, this.

There was also a swine flu that was wiping out hundreds of millions of pigs in China. And what I kept hearing was, this stuff has to work. Because ultimately, and this is what we'll talk about, this is kind of, you know, this is what I spent six years working on. But but that animal agriculture, you know, agriculture in general, but an animal agriculture in particular has just.

It's eating so much of the earth, right? That's two thirds of all agricultural land is pasture that three quarters of agricultural land is now is used for livestock in, in some form. And that it's, you know, it's 70% of our fresh water. It's, you know, it's all this water pollution and water shortages and deforestation and wetland drainage that this just, there had to be some kind of alternative.

And suddenly you had Beyond Meat, which at the time was like, you know, it had gone to $250 a share. It was worth a third as much as Tyson. Right. And everybody was like, this is it. This is gonna be, this is great. And nobody had really tried to make vegan food for non-vegan before. Right. And people were like, this is cool.

It's different. A lot of the people saying it were vegans and maybe didn't, you know, could tell it was better than their old hockey puck. Burgers, but but maybe didn't know if it was as good as meat. And it turned out it wasn't. But there was, I think the excitement was understandable. There was real innovation.

But ultimately, you know, I think it, to, to take on meat, you're gonna have to be better and cheaper than meat, just like Tesla was for, for, you know, taking on the internal combustion engine. And that hasn't really happened yet. In alt meat land, as you call it.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. And, and in fairness, Tesla hasn't become cheaper either though, right?

Like Tesla has done pretty well becoming better than conventional cars, but not necessarily cheaper. Right? Like, you don't, it's pretty

Mike Grunwald: competitive though, for a, for a, like an for a sports car for what it is. Yeah. I mean, and and I mean, they've, in any case, they've put together a really excellent product that people want just for the product, not because they're trying to save the earth.

Not because they have anything against gasoline. Right. Just because they think it's a cool, fast, fun to drive, you know, at least somewhat affordable car. Right. And and that hasn't happened yet on the meat side.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, I, I, well, I certainly agree with you that it hasn't happened on the meat side. It is pretty interesting though that Tesla has had the success that it has had without being cheaper yet.

And yet, like if. If you look at the ways that animals have been displaced in the economy in the past, like sometimes it is by something being cheaper. So, you know, you take kerosene, displacing the wailing of of for whale oil, right? Like kerosene was a lot cheaper than whale oil. So people switched over very quickly.

But other types of displacement and, you know, it's not like a car or what was then called a horseless carriage. Was cheaper than a horse. Right? Like cars at first were not cheaper. When metal fountain pens di displaced quills for writing, it's not like metal fountain pens were cheaper. And it wasn't that somebody came up with something that was like a synthetic quill and you couldn't tell the difference, but it just happened to be cheaper.

It was just better. Right? You didn't have to, it was a better

Mike Grunwald: mousetrap.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. You didn't have to dip your quote into an ink. Well, you didn't have to sharpen it. You could write uninterrupted. Like it was just a lot better. Same thing when telegraphs displaced pigeons. Like it's not that it was necessarily cheaper, it's just that it was wayed better.

And so I, I agree with you. I think from a food perspective, like you definitely need to get cheaper. I think so. But what if it were that we could just create products that were much better? Do you think there's a path. To success that doesn't involve getting cheaper? Or do you think that that's necessary?

Mike Grunwald: Well, I think ultimately to compete on a commodity scale, you're gonna have to get price competitive. I mean, you look, Tesla again is a great example, right? Their first car, the Roadster was like $120,000. And then there, you know, the Model S was like 80,000, and then the model three was like. 45,000. And and so it's coming down that cost curve with more volume.

You know, you start to, to get cheaper and you start to appeal to a larger mass market. And I do think that's, you know, you're starting to see it on some of the you know, on the cultivated meat, right? You see like a company like, which is making this this kind of Japanese quail and, and selling it as this.

Kind of fo gras premium product. I do think that you'll see companies like you know, like Blue Nalu is trying to make Blue Fin Tuna Toro, which is maybe a niche product, but it goes for like a hundred dollars a pound. So that's a lot easier to start with than competing with like chicken for a couple dollars a pound.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's of, yeah, maybe so did. That, that's, that is a, you know, look, some of the, some of the biofuel companies thought they could do that, right? They started out selling face creams that were, that were really expensive to replace petroleum. And then the idea was maybe they would come down and do some kind of food to replace hydro, you know, you know, carbohydrates, and then ultimately go get down to hydrocarbons.

And most of 'em, like didn't get past face creams. So, you know, there's no, there's no guarantee. But that is I think a kind of sensible, sensible way to go. Others are starting out trying to develop, you know, pharmaceutical products or mm-hmm. Anyway, I think there, there are a lot of ways to go, but I think ultimately, if you're talking about competing in the food space people are gonna have to, I.

Be able to afford to eat it.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. I, I think there's a big difference between, you know, replacing quills with fountain pens and replacing, you know, burgers with something else. Like it is clearly, I, I think is gonna have to be at least price competitive and probably, actually, right. I mean, as you know, as you

Mike Grunwald: know, I've, I'm you know, I'm not as good as you but I have quit beef.

And because that is like, you know, beef is the badie on the, on these. Things you know, it's like from a planetary perspective not a animal welfare perspective, but it's like, you know, seven to 10 times more land use and more emissions than chicken or pork. But I miss it. Beef is an awesome product.

I mean, like, it's really great. You know, it comes in many awesome forms and and somebody who's going to try to compete with it is gonna have to make their own really awesome product.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. In in fairness though, I mean you point out in the book that beef per capita beef consumption in the US has really plummeted in the last 50 years in the United States, where whereas per capita chicken consumption skyrocketed.

Right? Right. So people have largely switched from beef to chicken in the United States and. It's not like people switch from beef to chicken because they thought chicken tasted like beef. They switched because they thought chicken was cheaper and they had a perception that it was healthier. So the question is like, you know, is there some other non-animal.

Meat that you could create that even if it doesn't mimic some form of animal protein, but even if it was just cheaper and and healthy, would people be amenable to switching? I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. I think that mycelium, I think mycelium is one possible option for that actually.

Mike Grunwald: Definitely. And like you always say, like one of your like, and you have a real. I think beyond kind of tried this, maybe they got out a little over their skis, but trying to sell themselves as a healthy product before they really were. But you got, you really have a good wrap about how you've got Right.

Like more potassium than bananas. And you know, more protein than beef. And yeah. You know, more, I, you'll, you'll, you'll remind me, but you've got a, like, naturally healthy product. And one of the cool things about technology that I always say, people sometimes don't like it when I say this because I think there's this kind of pristine idea that ew, like we don't want technology in our food.

But you can make it healthier. Like, you can put in more omegas, you can you know, you can add more protein, you can do it with less sodium. You can you know, you can experiment. And that's why right, we've got these like devices in our pocket that can, you know, we can chat with anybody anywhere in the world and, you know, take cool video and look up any fact known to mankind and use it as a flashlight.

And a few years ago, nobody. Would've said all of those things are possible. Right. But you know, we have really smart people working on alternatives to meet and you know, maybe they'll come up with some really cool things.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, I agree. And just as an aside, I was talking with somebody recently who claimed that he had the idea that this other company was doing.

But he had the idea first, and I said to him, I was like, you know, it's like me saying I had the idea for a supercomputer in your pocket before Apple. It doesn't mean I made the iPhone. Right. Having an idea, having the idea is the easy part. You know, the idea that you could have something that did all the things that you just enumerated.

Oh yeah. And it's a flashlight and a calculator. It's like, you know, I mean, you know, this is like, this is like every device that Radio Shack sold back in the nineties, all in one device that fits in your pocket. Anyway. Yeah, I, I, I'm with you on that. Yeah. I ask you and look, I mean,

Mike Grunwald: what I should also say, like, this stuff is hard, like when you talk about it, you know, like, you know, we say like, oh, it's easy.

Just make a better meat. It's like, you know, it's like, look, it's hard. You've been working on it and you're doing a great job. But, meat has been, you know, our ancestors started eating it 2 million years ago. You know, we kind of evolved to love it and right. And it's you know, there are all kinds of incumbent advantages.

They have the infrastructure, they have the subsidies. You know, it's gonna be difficult to, to. You know, really move the needle on meat alternatives. But, you know, those, those those problems that my book is about and that we like, talked about in 2019, you know, they're not getting any better, so, so we still kind of gotta fix 'em,

Paul Shapiro: right?

Yeah. Soberly. So, and yeah, trust me, I wish that human nature were different. I would be thrilled if people didn't crave meat as much as we do. But it's obvious that that people do love meat as evidenced by the fact that even most people who become vegetarians stop being vegetarian. Right? Like there's just a clearly Yeah.

You know, it's a, it's a sobering thing sadly, but Right. You mentioned, yeah. I should say,

Mike Grunwald: I, I do admit in the book, like, I quit eating beef four years ago. But I went and did a bunch of reporting on Brazilian cattle ranches and I. I cheated and I had, you know, some really delicious steaks and I've, I've been good.

I've been good ever since. Yeah. But but, but again, like we all, we all kind of find the level of hypocrisy that we're comfortable with.

Paul Shapiro: I like that line. However, the question, Mike, is did you pay for them? Did you pay for the steaks or were they free? 'cause you, you might have been, you might have been like a freegan, like a beef, a beef freegan, if that was the case, if

Mike Grunwald: you pay No, no, I, I paid for that.

Oh, okay. Alright.

Paul Shapiro: So, alright. So, so what, let me, let me just double click on this, Mike, because, you know, in, in some of your interviews and commentaries, it's like you kind of present yourself, you call yourself an eco mercenary, right? Like you. Are, you know, you're saying, Hey, it's not like I'm this environmental fanatic.

I'm, you know, I put the solar panels on to get money. I did the, the EV because I wanted the rebate. But in reality, you know, between us, there's nobody else listening. Like, you know, you know, you, you wrote a book. About the decimation of the Florida ever upgrades. You wrote a book about Obama's Green New Deal, and now you're writing a book about how agriculture is destroying the planet.

And, and you're saying that you try to avoid personal eating beef. Like I get the sense that you actually are somebody who really does deeply care. You're not a disinterested journalist who has no interest in the topic, but that you actually do care about the planet and its future habit habitability for, for humans and for for wildlife as well.

So how did you get interested in this, right? Like how did you actually. Think, oh, I wanna start becoming a journalist who focuses on climate and other environmental issues.

Mike Grunwald: Yeah. You got me. I, I, I guess I actually do care about this stuff. I always say that it's like, this is like a really nice planet. It's got pizza and reliable wifi and breathable air.

Right? We should have, yeah, we should try to protect it. Yeah. No, I mean, I really kind of I stumbled into, you know, I've been a policy reporter for 30 years and, and doing all kinds of, you know, back starting when I was at the Washington Post time Magazine and then Politico Magazine. Writing about all kinds of economic issues, government issues, political issues but really for starting when I stumbled into the Everglades. And even before that I stumbled into the Army Corps of Engineer, thanks to this guy named Tim Searcher, who perhaps we will we'll come up a little a again later.

But but he gave me a tip about the Army Corps of Engineers that I spent a year kicking around there. Crazy environmentally destructive and economically ridiculous water projects in the Washington Post. That really led me into first the Everglades, where as you said, I wrote a book called The Swamp and and became at least a part-time environmental reporter, which, you know, around the time after my first book was done became, that meant being a climate reporter.

And and so like while I was at Time Magazine, at one point I was writing a column about energy. So I knew a, I thought I knew a lot about the climate. But I realized I didn't know anything about the food part of climate, and it's it turns out to be a third of the climate problem. I tell the story in the book of how I did write that, you know, I wrote, I wrote this magazine story about my own green life, about my solar panels and my electric car.

And and I had a throwaway line about how I don't unplug my computer at night. And I, you know, I. Still eat meat. So all these kind of non, you know, I'm not an eco saint like you said, and I realized that I didn't know if eating meat was actually bad for the climate. And this was like, you know, six, seven years ago.

And so I called Tim Searcher, who I knew was doing some, at this point, doing some agriculture and climate stuff. And I had to ask him if meat was bad for the climate. And he said yes. Then he said, duh. 'cause that's kind of how Tim is. And that was really the beginning of my journey. He kind of explained that you know, that.

Meat was a huge part of our problem, that beef and lamb were you know, an outsized part of the problem. That, you know, that agriculture essentially is now two of every five acres of this planet and three quarters of that is for animal agriculture and and that this was this land use issue that, that I had never even thought about.

Yeah. And

Mike Grunwald: it occurred to me that if I hadn't thought about it. Probably most people haven't, and there are a million books about energy and climate. So I figured, you know what, I'll do one, I'll do one about that other third of the problem.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. I, I really it was moving to me, I don't remember the exact statistic from, from the book, but when you talked about the, the percentage of articles about climate that even mentioned food or meat too, it's like single digit, right.

It's just unbelievable how Yeah. Fossil fossil fuels dominate when so much of the problem is agricultural. Yeah. You know,

Mike Grunwald: food is 3% of climate finance. And I like to say it is like oh 0.3% of climate conversation. So yeah. Oh yeah, I'm sure. And then the thing is, we kind of know, like energy is like, it's a big deal.

You know, some of my old energy friends get upset at me 'cause it sounds like I'm kind of poo-pooing it. But no, it's like fossil fuels are terrible and a huge problem and it's still at this point a bigger problem than food. But at least we kind of know what we need to do. Right. We not gotta electrify the global economy and run it on electricity.

And we're actually kind of starting to do that despite all the, you know, despite Trump, despite everything else. Yeah. Food. We don't know squat. We haven't even started working on it. It's still getting worse.

Paul Shapiro: Well, you and I have all the answers. You mean everybody else doesn't know so we'll, we'll get into that.

Mike Grunwald: Of course. Yeah. No, I mean, speaking of of going electric, I actually saw just a couple days ago something that was totally mind blowing to me, which is that there are now more EVs sold in China annually than there are all cars sold in the United States annually, which is just like completely mind blowing to me.

Paul Shapiro: And I would've thought that was completely impossible if somebody told me that 10 years ago that that would be true.

Mike Grunwald: Well, like, you know. People in China and have more money than they did before. There are a lot of people. Yeah. And as we both know, the first thing people generally do when they start being less poor is they start eating more meat.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Really. And that's

Mike Grunwald: gonna be a real challenge.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, yeah. Really interestingly, I also read that Chinese, the per Chinese per capita protein consumption, not meat consumption, but Chinese per capita protein consumption is now higher than American which is shocking to me. But they still only eat about half the meat per person that we do in America.

And so they're just eating a lot of. You know, non meat protein, right? Like soy, like tofu at Mame and other soy products probably. But that was pretty revelatory. I, I couldn't believe it actually. That's fascinating. Yeah. That's really shocking. So let me, let me just get into the, the basic point of your book.

'cause I, I, I read the book to cover, to cover. It's a really great book and, you know, it's, it's very public, it's very public policy oriented. There's a lot on like ethanol policy, which you make. Interesting. I thought like in the same way that like Michael Pollen. Tried to make like corn breeding interesting on the omnivores dilemma, like you made ethanol policy interesting in this book.

But it's currently something that you care a lot about as evidenced by you devoting this first several chapters of the book to this and the foy of biofuels from an environmental perspective. But let me just read you this line, I think is kinda like the thesis of, of your whole book, which you say, I'm quoting you here, you say The greatest challenge.

Facing our species will be to slow our relentless expansion of farmland into nature. Even if we ki quit fossil fuels, we'll keep hurtling toward climate chaos if we don't solve our food and land problems. So what is the land problem that you are referring to here?

Mike Grunwald: Right. Well, like I said you know, like we, I used to write a lot about urban sprawl, right?

About how, you know, how our cities and suburbs are kind of sprawling into nature and you know, and, and how terrible that was. Well, all of our developed areas. Are about 1% of the planet's land agriculture is 38, 30 9%. And as our agricultural footprint expands, our natural footprint shrinks. And that's basically our forest.

That's that's the forest that store our carbon. The forest that soak up the carbon that we pump into the atmosphere with our fossil fuels. And so this is really, this is really the crisis. Of course, these are also the forests that shelter biodiversity. It's it's a problem. I say that trying to decarbonize the planet while you're, you know, continuing to vaporize trees is like trying to clean your house while smashing your vacuum cleaner to bits in the living room.

You're, you know, you're making a huge mess. And you're also crippling your ability to clean up the mess. And that's what's happening right now. Agriculture is expanding and right now it's on track to expand by another couple of Indias over the, you know, by 2050. And by by, and you don't really have another couple Indias.

Paul Shapiro: By India's, you mean the land space taken up by the country of Exactly. India. Exactly. Not, not the human population of India. Right?

Mike Grunwald: Yeah. Like 12 times the size of California. Mm-hmm. We're looking at by 2050. And so, you know, people joke about how, you know, the slogan is that there's no planet B, but for some of these projections, you know, if we don't change our ways, we're gonna actually need a.

Planet B, right? And as we, you know, those of us who saw the Martian, it's like not, not so easy to grow stuff up there. So, you know, that's the, that's the, that's

Paul Shapiro: the, maybe, maybe a better line than there's no planet B is, there's no eighth continent. Maybe that's, yeah. Yeah. There there's no way continent That's right.

That we haven't discovered yet to, to start farming.

Mike Grunwald: No, exactly. Exactly. Well, like you know, mark Twain said they ain't making any more of it, so y

Paul Shapiro: Yes. They're not making any more land. That's right. Yeah. So, you know, interestingly in the book, you, you hit on a point that I, I, I find a very compelling point, which is how, you know, you're basically saying.

How we became very destructive once we started farming. Right. Not after the industrial revolution. That's right. That certainly accelerated things. But you know, you're, you argue that actually when, even long before agriculture was invented, when we were still I guess not you're, you're not arguing before agriculture, but you're arguing that like, you know, basically before the industrialization, even the people who we would consider like.

First Nations or indigenous or whatever you wanna call the people who were before Europeans reached America, that they were farming and deforesting quite a lot. So much so that they even when, when there was the great dying that there was a mini ice age 'cause there was such a heavy reforestation of the continent.

Let me ask you though. Like, it seems, it seems evident to me that the human footprint on on eroding biodiversity even predates agriculture. Like when humans arrived in the Americas, there were major mega funnel extinctions. Every continent that we arrived on, whether it was Australia, whether America.

Europe, there were mega funnel extinctions long before agriculture. So I guess my question is, is it us? Is it really agriculture or is it just us?

Mike Grunwald: Well, well, we seem to be really good at killing stuff no matter, you know, whether we're, whether we're farming or not. Mm-hmm. It was really farming that really started to transform the, you know, the landscape of our planet.

And and that is, that's a really important theme for me, this idea, you know, of farmers get upset that my line, that that I say that every farm is a kind of environmental crime scene, right? Yeah. It's this kind of echo of, of, of the nature that it replaced. But that's not necessarily me. That's not an insult.

Right, because we gotta eat. But the point is that like this was a natural planet. And it's becoming an agricultural planet, and we have not really grappled with that. That's, that's my book tries to grapple.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Ear. Earlier in the conversation you talked about the, per the portion of land that is used for pasture, and as you were saying that, I realized that you were implying that is bad.

Whereas most people, when they hear pasture, they think that is good. Right? Pasture sounds good for the environment, but, but, but you're saying no, it's not. Why, why, why? What's the matter with pasture?

Mike Grunwald: Well, I mean all of these, all of these landscapes, I mean, you know, there is, there is a, there's an opportunity cost and there's a carbon opportunity cost to the transformation of, you know, natural land, which was.

Really great at storing carbon and really great at sheltering biodiversity to agricultural land, which is better at making food but not as good at storing carbon and and sheltering biodiversity. And that's just, that's just a sort of general fact. And it is true that there are some forms of farming that are less.

Less offensive to the environment than others. But but there we have this kind of notion that there's kind of like kinder and gentler natural farming that's really good for biodiversity. And look, you know, Michael Pollen is a really awesome writer, but I blame him for some of this. He's you know, he's kind of.

Fostered this kind of nostalgia, this romanticization of kind of old style farming that was more diverse, where the, you know, the animals had names instead of numbers and the soil was treated very gently. And, you know, the farmers kind of fed their, you know, bailed hay by hand. And these kind of modern industrial monoculture.

You know, chemical drenched, you know, evil industrial farms that are bad and and full of you know, and doing terrible things to the environment. And it's true that there is, there is a cost of intensification. And there is a cost of these chemicals and fertilizers that, you know, you see the dead zone, the size of Connecticut and the Gulf of Mexico, or the algal blooms in the Great Lakes.

This is these are problems and, you know, and I'm not trying to hand wave them away. But the fact is that the real environmental catastrophe is the transformation of nature into those nice Michael Pollen farms. Yeah. And and, and again, and if they don't make as much food, if they, they take, you know, if they make fewer amounts of food per acre, they are gonna need more acres to make food.

And that's how you get, you know, that's how you get this situation today where we're losing a soccer field worth of tropical forest every six seconds. We need more food, not less.

Paul Shapiro: Right. As, as you know, I refer to that style of what is now sometimes known as like regenerative agriculture. I refer to it as mythic culture because it's just, it is like a, a, a, a mythical place where somehow you can produce less food on land and somehow it's better for the environment.

And the, the myth that these, that there's some proof that this is storing carbon as opposed to. You know, just letting a forest grow back there, right? Like we think of a pasture as being natural. Like you're talking about nature turned into pastures. I think a lot of people think that pasture is what's natural.

Right. And, and in fact, these weren't pastures, right? These were forests. Oh, oh yeah. No, they were deforested to turn them into pastures for cattle grazing. 40% of the grazing land on this planet used to be forest. So, you know, you definitely hear a lot about, from ranchers about how you know, oh, you know.

Mike Grunwald: I just, you know, my, my cattle turn grass, we can't eat into beef that we can. You know, and this was this otherwise useless land or marginal land, you hear a lot, but a lot of it's like 85% of Indiana used to be a forest, right? Yes. So we kind of, you know, wag our fingers at Brazil and Indonesia and we say like, this is terrible.

You know, you're deforesting your natural heritage. Yeah, it's kind of like easy for us to say, 'cause we cut down our Amazon in the 19th century. Yeah. So, you know, it's not like we're, you know, what we're doing is, you know, sub substantively different than what they're doing and

Paul Shapiro: Right. Whenever they call it marginal.

Whenever they call it marginal land, I always think, well, it's not marginal to the wildlife who would've been living there. Right? Like they, they, they, you know, like for them it was actually quite critical. Not, not, not marginal. Okay. Mike, I want to get to this very provocative piece that you wrote where you were endorsing factory farming and.

You know, you weren't really just talking about animal agriculture, like really if you read it, you're talking about high yield agriculture, right? Yes. So the use of synthetic fertilizers, the use of big tractors, like all the things that are like industrial ag. So I actually think generally in, in my experience, maybe I live in a bubble, but in my experience, factory farms are generally what we refer to as like, you know.

Animal farms, not necessarily like a, a major row crop of corn. But at the same time, you have been a defender of industrial agriculture in this sense. And I want to, you know, you've also written pieces though, you know, saying we need to eat less meat. Right. You've written pieces that, that were celebrated by the, you know, so-called like natural foodist, which is an eat less meat message.

And then also pieces that were derided by them saying we need to embrace industrial agriculture. Explain yourself?

Mike Grunwald: Well, the first thing I would say, yes I'm I was more pushing high yield agriculture than necessarily industrial agriculture. Like, what I always say is that if, like, you know, when it comes to the regenerative and organic forms of, you know, trying to be gentler to the soil mythic culture,

yeah.

Mike Grunwald: Yeah. I mean, look, I, I don't think it's entirely mythic culture, if I'm honest. You know, and what I, and I write, when I went to Brazil, I, I wrote about some ranches where they kind of combined, I mean, look, it's not like these ranches. Michael Pollan would've liked everything about it. They were fertilizing their pastures.

They had feedlots. But they were also doing no-till and cover crops and they were integrating their livestock with their crops and they were rotation using rotational grazing, lots of regenerative practices that, you know, these, you know, these guys celebrate and they had kick ass yields and so that's great.

I mean, you know, 'cause if you can like. Make, you know, like they were at some cases eight, 10 times as much beef per acre. That means they're using, you know, one eighth or one 10th as much of the Amazon to make beef. And I think that's really important. But that said, I guess my, my critique of of some of these like low yield forms is first of all, as you mentioned, the carbon farming aspect.

This notion that, well, if we just farm gently and nicer and regeneratively. That all this, you know, carbon that we've pumped up into the atmosphere is gonna magically be repatriated into our soils. That's almost entirely bullshit. And I think, you know, I see these movies, you know, the kiss, the ground and common ground.

I see the UN and the World Bank talking about it. I see, you know, Al Gore on the left and Joe Rogan on the right talking about it. I hear General Mills and Archer Daniels Midland, and you know, you name your. Big ag and big food companies. And not to mention, you know, ha half the environmental groups and major philanthropies, everybody wants to make this idea of carbon farming happen.

And at least on the soil side it is, it is really mostly bogus. And then the other thing I would say is just that you know, this whole idea of sustainable intensification that the math really sucks that even if. You know, somehow in the rich world we're able to reduce our meat consumption in half and in the entire world, we cut our food waste in half and we get rid of all those idiotic biofuels that I do devote, you know, a couple of chapters to, we will still need to make more food with less land to feed a growing population by 2050.

And unfortunately, you know, that's happening at a time when climate change is. Gonna be sort of a, a drag on yields and a lot of the Green Revolution technologies that helped boost yields in the past. Right. Like you mentioned, like fertilizer, like pesticides, like large scale irrigation, they have now been widely distributed, so we can't just do that again.

You know, we, like, you can't just give people more fertilizer. 'cause most of them are, you know, using all the, you know, they're already using as much as they can use. So we are going to need, you know. A kind of greener green revolution. And the people who are Sarah saying the first thing we need to do is undo the first green Revolution and have lower yields.

I'm very skeptical of that kind of faith-based approach to transforming the global food production.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. And as you point out, they tried it in Sri Lanka, right. It didn't work. Right. We'll include in the show notes for this episode at Business for Good podcast.com. What happened in Sri Lanka tried to.

Go organic, and it was a complete and total catastrophe. And I really liked what you said about this. It is like, kind of like communism, right? Like people always say like, this is, you know, it just hasn't been tried properly, right? Like, and so that's, that's the, the, the pro organic folks will say that about Sri Lanka.

Right. Yet in reality, like it is just. Very self-evident, like this type of agriculture typically produces less food per acre. Like there's just, I mean, I get the, the, and I don't wanna like, you know, downplay the problems with some of these chemicals, but the fact is that fertilizers help crops grow, and pesticides are really good at.

Mike Grunwald: Killing pests that kill crops. And that if you wanna, you know, get rid of all that stuff you're gonna have yield problems that you have to, you have to deal with. Yeah. You can't just say like, oh, well, we'll solve the problem by stopping food waste, or, you know, we're just gonna get everybody to go vegan.

Because, you know. Where's your plan for that? And

Paul Shapiro: and I know we, we, we've been trying, Mike, we've been trying. Sadly, it hasn't worked.

Mike Grunwald: Well, and I know, and I should say, 'cause like, I know I end up sounding, you, you kind of joked about this at the beginning, that it, sometimes I can sound a little bit like an asshole when I talk about this stuff.

Because like, you know, I know I'm like, I'm the guy with the math. I'm the guy like pulling out the logic and the you know, and, and the sort of the. Hardheaded numbers. And actually I was asked, I did an event in Berkeley where this, you know, it was like an auditorium full of foodies and Alice Waters was glaring at me in the third row.

And and the moderator from the New York Times, she asked me, she's like, you know. You're giving us all this kind of hyper-rational answers, but isn't this a moral issue? And I was like, yes, this is moral. Like these are like, climate change is a moral emergency and and I'm not, you know, talking about.

Like, it's easy for people in Berkeley, or for you and me to say like, oh, we want you know, I want my food to be grown in a, you know, in a sort of regenerative manner or you know, or I don't want to eat this kind of like, high tech food. Or, you know, I'm, I'm offended by these, you know, these factory farms that make 99% of American meat.

Mm-hmm. But the fact is like it's gonna affect. Indigenous people living in the Amazon and poor people living in the floodplains in Bangladesh and smallholder farmers in Africa a lot more than it's gonna affect us. It's like, this is, this is really important stuff.

Paul Shapiro: Right. And, and just, you know, to keep it real, dozens of species go extinct every single day.

That's primarily from habitat loss, from Right. Like you're talking about. Well, what will happen to these groups of marginalized humans at the same time? There are folks who have even less of a say in anything, which is wildlife. That's right. And dozens of them, dozens of species go extinct every single day, largely because of the expanding agricultural footprint.

And for those of us who don't take a merely anthropocentric point of view, who we try to consider the interests of other animals as well. It's hard to imagine anything more of the moral emergency than, than what's happening here. Right? No, that's right. You know, maybe homo sapiens will go extinct. But we know for a fact that what we're doing right now is causing a mass extinction event now.

Right. We've

Mike Grunwald: transformed the we've transformed the natural, like, you know, the animal world from a, you know, a wild world to a, to a livestock world. Right. I think I saw. Now I think the, the weight of livestock biomass is like 30 to one with you know, with wild mammals. Yeah. So again, it's like this is you know, this is something that most of us don't spend a lot of time thinking about because like, you know, maybe when we fly across country and we see all the, like the squares in circles out the window and we're like, oh, yeah.

There's a lot of agriculture out there. But it's, you know, we go to the supermarket and the, you know, the, you know, the food's right there. We don't really think about where it comes from, but there's just this, you know, astounding transformation of our planet happening, you know, in the areas where we're not paying attention.

Paul Shapiro: Right. Those square and circles used to be for us. Right. I mean, that, that's exactly, that's, that's the basic point. You know, or,

Mike Grunwald: or like Prairie and America's, Serengeti, and

Paul Shapiro: you know. So okay. As you know, Mike I am one of the people who cares a lot about animal welfare, including of wild animals who are going extinct because of agriculture largely.

And you have been criticized, and you've talked about the fact that you've been criticized for not caring enough. About animal welfare, because as you recommend to switch from beef to chicken because that's better for climate, it means way more animals are gonna be farmed, and chickens are generally treated much worse than cows are, right?

Like chick, if you had to choose between being a cow or a chicken, even if you're on a feedlot every single time, you choose to be the cow, not the chicken. So let me pin you down here. Where do you stand on the issue? Does the animal suffering matter? Is it only the suffering of wildlife? Is it a biodiversity issue?

Does the suffering of the billions of chickens who are raised for food matter to you, what, where does, what is the grunwald theory on this point of view? I mean, I think part of what I, you know, like I said, I have to kind of come clean and say that the people who care like more deeply than I do about animal welfare and have criticized me for not prioritizing it, they probably have a point.

Mike Grunwald: I think that you know, like the people who say that in 50 years or a hundred years, like, we'll look back at our current selves and be appalled by, you know, that we'll look back at the way we treat animals. Like the way today we look back at the way you know, we look back at slavery. I think that's very possibly true.

And and I guess I, I'm, I guess I gotta plead guilty a little bit. You know, I have three dogs. They're annoying, but I love them. And, and I wouldn't eat them. And can I explain that? I guess this comes back a little bit to the, what I said earlier about how we all find the level of hypocrisy that we're comfortable with.

I'm, I happen to be more focused on this idea that that, you know, we are imperiling our planet. That we are imperiling our natural world that we are ultimately imperiling ourselves. But but I, what, I guess what I would say to people who focus more on the animal welfare side is that like there's an awful lot in our de Venn diagram that we agree about, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And that and that certainly like to the extent that we're both, you know. Committed to this idea of alternative proteins and the problems of animal agriculture, whether it's, you know, the anti, you know, too many antibiotics creating a public health crisis or, you know, pandemic risks. Or the, you know, the crappy politics of the corporations that run these factory farms.

You know, we're like, we're gonna agree about a lot of this stuff. It's a fair point that that, you know, that the, my, the, like I, I have sort of advocated this kind of like, just like the cows and the Chick-fil-A commercials who say like, eat more chicken. And I, I kind of think they're right, but it sucks for the chickens.

And, and, and I did, I did, I did point out like my main character, Tim Searcher, who also takes this kind of, you know, efficiency based approach, but he w we were talking about the what is it, proposition 12 mm-hmm. In in California, right. This is where they've basically they've given, they've given pigs more room to, so that they can kind of turn around in their stalls.

And there is an efficiency hit to that because, you know, you. Give them more room, then you need more room. And also, if they can move around, then they're gonna use more energy and they're gonna need more feed. And that's gonna require more land. But it's a modest difference. And pigs were treated so horribly before, and this makes 'em treated less horribly.

That even my kind of obsess, efficiency, obsessed, main character was kind of like, you know what, that's, that's probably a reasonable trade off. And I do feel that, and I can't, I can't tell you where the line, where to draw the line. But but I'm for less cruelty, but people who say it's not my it's not my overriding passion.

Yeah. Like they've, they've got a point.

Paul Shapiro: So you would've voted yes if you were voting on Prop 12 at the time?

Mike Grunwald: I, I would have, yeah.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. Maybe just, maybe just 'cause

Mike Grunwald: Josh Bach is in my head. I know. Yeah.

Paul Shapiro: It would be, you could not tell him if you had voted if you were vote. It's true. It true. It's true. That's true.

Okay, so I, I wanna ask you, Mike, you know, you. Talk about the Green Revolution and you talk about all the associated gains that, you know, if we hadn't had the Green Revolution, we need, would've needed several South Americas more to farm if we had been going based on the old yields that we used to get.

And so I. You talk about fertility rates in the book, and you talk about how well, you know, beef consumption is going down. In some places in the world, fertility is going down and you imply that these are good for the environment. You don't explicitly say it. In fact, you do have a, a joke in there where you say you shouldn't euthanize your own children.

But you know, even Norman Borlaug, who was the architect of the Green Revolution, when he won the Nobel Peace Prize, he gave a speech in which he talked about what he called the population monster. And he said basically he's bought. Time for humanity, but if we don't get the population under control, all the gains that he and others involved in the green revolution made are going to be for nothing.

Right? And so the population monster, which is, you know, basically the fact that population tends to increase exponentially and oftentimes food. Productivity, like agricultural productivity doesn't necessarily increase exponentially, and that leads to real problems. So you're very explicit in your policy prescriptions when it comes to, you know, getting rid of biofuels like ethanol, eating less meat, supporting high yield agriculture.

Where are you on these fertility issues? Like, you talk about what leads to reduced fertility in the book a little bit, but do you think that, like, is it a, is it a poor message for people concerned about climate to say, Hey, think about adopting children rather than procreating?

Mike Grunwald: I mean, I look, I some of this, I think the messaging is kind of overrated.

But but look, I'm, I'm, I, I, I have found it a little baffling this kind of like this idea that there's some like horrible crisis that the population isn't growing the way it, the way, the way it, the way it was. Right. I mean, that seems to me what if the crisis is

Paul Shapiro: what if the crisis is the inverse that we're gonna go to 10 billion from eight?

Mike Grunwald: Right. But it, but it actually, it's, it looks like it's not it's actually leveling off. The kind of irony is that that the, the reduction in our fertility rates and birth rates that I, that I do describe that's happening almost everywhere in the world except for South. Sub-Saharan Africa that has that is gonna make that is going to make a real difference in the population projections.

The problem for, you know, from a sustainability environmental perspective is that it's not gonna make that much of a difference before 2050. And these climate issues, we really gotta start making some progress before 2050. Or or things are gonna get real bad, real fast. And and so even if birth rates went, you know, went to replacement rates all around the world in, you know, in a few years it would only change the 2050 population and therefore the like 2050 food demand by maybe four or 5%.

A lot of it is already baked into the cake because there are so many women of child rearing age. Right now because of population growth in the past. That said, it turns out that there are really simple ways to increase, you know, to decrease birth rates down to replacement rate. And they are really good things.

It's things like educating girls because educated girls tend to have, you know, fewer children. And at its starting at a later age, it's reducing infant mortality because, you know, families in the developing world don't have to have. Seven kids to make sure that three survive. And and this, like I said, it's happening in all kinds of cultures.

It's happening in, you know, in Bangladesh and it's happening in Botswana and it's happening in Iran even. So so it's not like, you know, it only happens in rich places or it only happens in, you know, western places. It can happen anywhere with some better public policy. And I of course support those policies.

I think when you. When you talk about population growth, sometimes you wanna be like, you end up sounding like you want to be Thanos, right? And just like snap your fingers and half of all life on Earth disappears. And obviously I don't tell people to have, like, for me at least, like having children has been like the joy of my life.

It's sort of. Created meaning for my life. Mm-hmm. And I don't like, I don't think anybody else needs to be like that, but I wouldn't tell people not to do it. Right. In fact, I always say like, have Greta Thunberg. You know? You know, you know, like, you know.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Have a

Mike Grunwald: kid who saves the world.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. In, in, in fairness, my guess is that people who adopt kids also find real great meaning in it, even if they didn't.

Sure.

Mike Grunwald: No, absolutely. And that's, that's, that's awesome. And and again, like on a lot of this stuff, I try, I try not to be prescriptive. I try not to be scoldy. You know, I, I, you've seen, I've been very upfront about my own, like, you know, I feel like Perfect is not usually on the menu. Yeah. Better is better than worse.

Yes. Great. And and look, I. Like, I have solar panels in an electric car, but I fly too much. Mm-hmm. You know, I don't eat beef, but I still eat chicken. You know, I'm not on an all lentil diet,

Paul Shapiro: and, and maybe your flights are gonna be powered by so-called sustainable aviation fuel fuel. Soon also, it'll make it even worse.

So

Mike Grunwald: don't get me started,

Paul Shapiro: man. Yeah, no, I, I, I, I, I don't wanna get you, I don't wanna get you started on biofuels. But

Mike Grunwald: they're bad. Can we just say they're very bad.

Paul Shapiro: They're very bad. Okay. What do you think about burning trees for energy? No, just kidding. Okay. Also

Mike Grunwald: bad.

Paul Shapiro: Got it. All right. Yeah, I was glad you mentioned Iran earlier about fertility rates there, because before we started recording, I joked to Mike that I was gonna press him on his point of view on the Israel Iran conflict, and at least he got Iran into this conversation.

So now at least we've got that there. Okay, Mike, are there resources that you would recommend? Obviously your book is a great one. I endorse this book. It's a great book. I really enjoyed it. And we'll of course link to that. So you can see where you can buy it, but you can buy it anywhere. Books are sold.

But are there other resources in addition to your book that you think the people who are interested in this topic should check out?

Mike Grunwald: Well, you know this, and I don't mean this to be as like a, you know, and like, all consuming. But this was just when, when you mentioned that you were gonna answer this question, I decided I was gonna put in a plug, particularly for your listeners who, you know, who know your background is that Sentient Media.

Which covers, I mean, they cover factory farming and they come from a sort of animal welfare perspective. But I, I assume they're kind of funded by animal welfare people, but they just do great journalism. I found them do. You know, I, I've read a lot of great journalism and I try, in the book, I try to give credit to all these reporters who are on this issue way before I knew anything about it.

And I give, you know, I, so I. You know, kudos to all of them. There's a lot of good food and climate reporting, but I'm always impressed by by Sentient, because I always feel like they're just doing journalism. And I'm sure the editors are hearing from their funders all the time, like, like, Hey, why?

You know, like, this is this isn't biased enough. I found them to be to be a really good source. So I wanna, I wanna put in a plug for them and all right. Maybe some of your readers will check 'em out.

Paul Shapiro: Cool. I, I, I also read their news coverage and I appreciate it, so I'm glad that you brought them up.

I'll also mention after you're done reading Mike's book, we're reading the Earth, I also think people might wanna check out Rob Berg's book, which is called Resetting the Table which is a really good look at agricultural policy with similar prescriptions as to what Mike is recommending here in terms of high yield agriculture.

And looking at the, the realities of what or organic and the crusade against genetically modified organisms and so on are. And we actually. Rob on this show a long time ago. We'll include a link to that in the show notes for this episode at Business for good podcast.com. So that's cool. Sentient Media.

All right. Is there anything else before I get to my final question for you, Mike?

Mike Grunwald: If you wanna be a super dork, I do write about this this World Resources Institute report. That becomes like, I have a whole chapter about it that kind of, it's like 2019, but I think it's a little bit of a Rosetta Stone for some of this stuff.

I mean, it's like 560 pages and like nobody in their right mind would read all of it. But I think skimming it is a good way to kind of get the, the broad sense of all the different, you know, 'cause again, like. My book has like dozens of solutions that are really promising. None of which are really, you know, we're making a lot of progress.

But if you're interested in learning the nitty gritty of biological nitrification inhibition and the idea of transforming crop residues into usable animal feed and you know, this kind of produce and protect approach that I. Sort of talk about for, you know, for transforming global agriculture policy.

I think this is like, it's a, it's a, it's a good overview, a little, hopefully a little bit less entertaining than I, than I made my book. But if you really want to get into the, into the nuggets, it's called God a, creating a Sustainable Food Future.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, we'll, we'll link to it so people can check out, out.

It, it is indeed a good report, even if it is less entertaining than your book. So Mike, you, you chronicle a lot of the companies. A lot of the companies who are trying to do really cool things, both in animal free proteins, in improvements, in fertilizers and so on. Is there anything that you wish existed?

Is there some company idea or some problem that you wish that somebody would take on that isn't being sufficiently tackled right now? I.

Mike Grunwald: So actually I did think of, again, like after you mentioned this, and this is not a specific company, but I guess maybe it's like it's, maybe it's a venture capital fund that doesn't exist, or I don't even know if it's a for-profit or a nonprofit, but like I said, there are just like, well, most.

Paul Shapiro: Most of these for-profit startups make no profit. So it's actually, they're all really, they're good. Yeah, exactly. They're really non-profits actually. It can be an inadvertent non-profit. Yeah. All right.

Mike Grunwald: But I do like, like what I just mentioned, is like there's some guy in Nepal who is trying to turn rice straw into animal feed.

Now, if he succeeds. Now he's got like, you know, he's unbelievably underfunded, but if he succeeds, obviously he could transform global agriculture. 'cause like we grow like 500 million tons of rice dry every year and it just, you know, is mostly wasted. So there are all kinds of. These, these solutions like that, that I write about.

But but they're not getting any money. All of the money right now from governments and philanthropies are flowing into this kind of agroecology craze where you know, I saw the Rockefeller Foundation and the, and the what? The Walton Foundation, they. Put out this report where they want $4 trillion into this kind of like kinder and gentler farming and whatever.

Maybe, maybe somebody will figure out a way to make that work, but it's got plenty of money. And even alternative proteins. There are a lot of people working on it. Some of the food waste companies, there are people working on, but there's just this vast. Array of agricultural solutions that at least right now don't have a business model.

And they're res they're mostly research and deployment. And I wish somebody would start a fund that you know, for the, for a fraction of the money that the Rockefeller Institute and, you know, some of these governments are starting and even these carbon markets are starting to pour into nonsense.

I think like you could really start to move the needle. All right. That's, it's, it's actually unbelievably coincidental that you mentioned this, Mike, because literally yesterday I finished a paper, which is about the history of the use of neuro spora crsa in fermented foods and spora crosses the organism that my own company, that better meco ferments into animal free protein ingredients.

Paul Shapiro: It's like

Mike Grunwald: the most studied fungus, right?

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm impressed that you know that. That's right. It's a good memory. But in 2016 there was actually a paper about converting rice straw into animal feed by fermenting it with rasa and yeah. Yeah, it's really wild. And so I was writing about that study literally yesterday, like literally the day before we were talking about this.

Now you're talking about. Price, straws, animal feed. So anyway. So maybe it's your

Mike Grunwald: company.

Paul Shapiro: No. You know, if, if there's any, your

Mike Grunwald: business model,

Paul Shapiro: is there anything cheaper than meat than animal feed? Like we're already trying to compete on cost with meat. Now we need to compete on cost with animal feed. That would be good.

Yeah. Can we find,

Mike Grunwald: can we find a, a less profitable commodity? Yes. Yeah, exactly.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. We need a, you get to

Mike Grunwald: compete with Cargill. Like, you know, which makes like, you know, a quarter of a cent per ton.

Paul Shapiro: I was just gonna say we need a lower margin industry to compete against. Yes. Alright, well listen, Mike Greenwald's new book is called We Are Eating the Earth.

It's a great book. I recommend it and I hope that you'll go out and read it. And Mike, thanks so much for all that you're doing to try to give humanity and the rest of the animals with whom we share this planet a fighting chance of surviving what we're doing to the earth right now.

Mike Grunwald: Thanks Paul, and thanks for all the great work you're doing.

I got I've, I've got big hopes for, for better meat.

Paul Shapiro: Ha, you're you and me both.