When veteran journalist Michael Grunwald set out to write his third book, he was determined not to produce a “Debbie Downer.” And he hasn’t. That’s surprising considering his latest book, We’re Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System, wrestles with an increasingly thorny question: Can the world’s food systems be transformed in time to feed everyone without destroying the ecosystems that sustain us?
The math is brutal. With the global population projected to hit 10 billion by 2050, experts warn we will need to produce at least 50 percent more calories than we did in 2010.
To that end, Grunwald’s new book is a sustained search for the ideas that could kick off the next Green Revolution and provide new, climate-friendly ways of producing food. Many of these solutions, including using farmland to grow crops for biofuels instead of food, regenerative agriculture practices that restore carbon in soil, and replacing meat with fermented fungi, have fallen short, failed, or gone bankrupt. Still, Grunwald makes the case that it’s far too early to call it quits.
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