Opinion Today: What to eat on a burning planet

The future of the food supply is uncertain. Let's look at solutions.

View in browser|nytimes.com July 29, 2024 By Eliza Barclay Climate Editor, Opinion This election season, many Americans are deeply distraught about the cost of food. You hear their frustrations in polls, at rallies and in focus groups — sticker shock is one of the few issues left to unite Americans across the political spectrum. But as painful as foodflation is, it may just be an early ripple of the kind of disruption to the food system that's coming. The scale of these changes will be breathtaking. Their global consequences will be profound. And for most of us, they will change what's in our refrigerators and on our kitchen tables. Already, we can see the early tremors starting to rattle the global food system. As climate change permanently alters weather patterns, farmers are struggling to produce crops in the same huge volumes they once did. In California this month's heat wave turned lettuce yellow. In Vietnam extreme heat has damaged the coffee crop, sending prices worldwide soaring. Consumers will soon see even higher prices and less of the foods they have come to know and love. Like it or not, our produce aisles are on the brink of transformation. At the same time, agriculture itself is putting greater and greater pressure on the environment and the climate. Though the organic and plant-based food movements have helped shift production and consumption patterns ever so slightly, we remain dependent on a largely unsustainable food system that's destroying precious resources as it races to feed the world. A few countries are sensing that they have to innovate: Brazil has an industrial farm that produces record yields with regenerative farming practices. But hardly anyone in the United States is talking about the coming crisis — and how to fix an alarmingly broken system. That's what we here at Opinion want to change. The idea behind What to Eat on a Burning Planet, a new Times Opinion series, is to push lawmakers, scientists, farmers and consumers to confront the growing strain on our global food supply and the natural systems it depends on and to advance a range of solutions. David Wallace-Wells's opening essay, which we published yesterday, is a searing portrait of a food system beginning to backslide. In it he asks tough questions about what it will take to deliver better nutrition to more people without tipping the planet further into climate chaos. In the coming weeks, you'll hear from cookbook authors like Bee Wilson and reporters such as Michael Grunwald, as well as experts such as Jay Famiglietti who are shaping policy in Washington to secure the food we eat and the water we need to grow it. Their pieces will describe how to make vegetables objects of desire; how Australia popularized drought-resistant foods, including the finger lime, the midyim berry and the Kakadu plum; and why industrial agriculture is not the problem but the solution to the current crisis. And they will offer us a glimpse of a future, growing closer by the day, in which our food may be grown in vast, sustainably managed factory farms and water is pumped across the country, from the Great Lakes to California. I hope you'll find ideas to marinate on. For about 75 years, America has been a food powerhouse, and our exports of corn, soy, nuts and fruits have acted as a form of a soft power that has shaped global affairs. That could soon change — and with it, what you'll be cooking for dinner. Read the first essay: Alma Haser David Wallace-Wells Food as You Know It Is About to Change Our food supply is more fragile than you think. By David Wallace-Wells Here's what we're focusing on today: Editors' Picks Guest Essay While the Fed Waits, Our Pain Accumulates The Fed's refusal to lower interest rates is souring the public in an election year, harming vulnerable Americans, hindering the fight against climate change and potentially destabilizing the economy. By Jen Harris More From Opinion What Has Happened to My Party Haunts Me Republicans once proudly proclaimed their reverence for the Constitution; in Milwaukee, they crowned as their leader a man who attempted to subvert it. By Peter Wehner The Conversation Harris vs. Trump Is Taking Shape. And Then There's Vance. It's a whole new era in presidential politics. Right? By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens Guest Essay How 'Twisters' Failed Us and Our Burning Planet When art changes opinions or opens hearts, it changes the world as profoundly as any legislation does. 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By Lydia Polgreen Maureen Dowd JD Vance, Purr-fectly Dreadful Women should bat JD around like a ball of twine. By Maureen Dowd Ross Douthat Kamala Harris and the Audacity of Desperation With the surge of support for her candidacy, you can sense an effort to overcome divisions on the left and to recover the unity of 2020. By Ross Douthat Guest Essay How Kamala Harris Can Win She will need a message that reconnects the Democratic Party with the working-class voters it has alienated in recent decades. By Michael J. Sandel Nicholas Kristof A.I. May Save Us, or May Construct Viruses to Kill Us Managing artificial intelligence without stifling it will be one of our biggest challenges as we adopt the most revolutionary technology since fire. By Nicholas Kristof Lucy Jones letters Toxic Families: Is Breaking Away the Answer? Responses to a Science Times article. Also: The joys of a foreign language; Donald Trump's platform changes; a Long Island militia; understanding sloths. 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