When you’re walking on a path and you come upon a cliff, the next step is more important than the last 50. Such is the case with agriculture. Even with its usually dependable and occasionally gobsmacking advances, agriculture can’t continue on its current path and deliver what we need from it a short 25 years from now. That sobering and unprecedented need is to double agricultural output by the early 2040s. There is an urgent need to raise more food and, here’s the rub, we can’t raise resource consumption commensurately.
In an article today in ENSIA I write about how fish farming is an excellent way to do exactly that. Because they are cold-blooded they don’t use precious calories to heat their bodies. Because they live in a weightless environment they don’t use precious calories to grow thick sturdy bones to keep themselves upright. What they eat turns into what we eat. Their frugal use of environmental resources make them key to raising more food with less resource consumption. You can read the article here.