**6.3 Crop breeding**

An unquestioned need exists for continued advances in crop breeding to produce cultivars adapted for specific habitats and circumstances, including climate change. Whether these techniques should include genetic engineering is controversial. Acknowledging the challenges of sustainable agriculture, many food security experts, such as Fedoroff et al. (2010), strongly advocate GMOs as necessary to the solution. Goals include breeding grain crops that would fix nitrogen, eliminating the need for synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, the most fossil fuel-dependent agricultural input in the developing world. Others, such as Benbrook (2011) take a more skeptical view, especially for developing countries. To the extent that genetically engineered cultivars depend on fossil fuel-dependent technologies, they will fail to meet the coming challenge of increasing fossil fuel costs. Likewise, the profit-driven choice of cultivars, with restrictions on seed saving, local experimentation, and innovation, appears inadequate to address the essential needs of small-scale agriculture that feeds 80% of the world's people.

Regardless of the resolution of the GMO debate, advances in molecular biology have provided powerful tools for advancing conventional crop breeding. One advocate of this approach is the Kansas-based Land Institute. Consistent with the agroecology approach, Land Institute founder Wes Jackson and his colleagues advocate a sustainable "next synthesis" based on cultivation of perennial grains (Jackson, Cox, & Crews, 2011; Glover et al., 2010). Jackson et al. argue that these crops can reconcile ecological sustainability with the productivity needed to meet human needs, in the process providing both a model and metaphor for the material economy.

Fossil Fuel and Food Security 295

Godfray et al. (2010, p. 817) conclude by stating, "The goal is no longer simply to maximize productivity, but to optimize across a far more complex landscape of production, environmental, and social justice outcomes." Figure 12 vividly illustrates the challenge.

Notably, neither of these reviews acknowledges possible fossil fuel scarcity and high costs

Food security goals Environmental goals

Water pollution

Unsustainable water withdrawals

> Food security goals Environmental goals

Food distribution and access Resilience of food system

Water pollution

Minimum goals for 2050

Food distribution and access Resilience of food system

Minimum goals for 2050

Fig. 12. Qualitative comparison of (a) the present state of global agriculture and (b) projection for meeting food security and environmental goals for 2050 (Foley et al., 2011.)

highest consuming nations, particularly the United States.

Smil has written extensively on both food (2000) and energy (2003). He is optimistic that fossil fuels will remain abundant for several decades and that the agricultural system has sufficient inefficiencies to accommodate the needed productivity growth while undergoing transition to a renewable energy base. In *Energy at the Crossroads* (2003), he stresses the fact that an energy transition on the societal scale projected in the coming decades will itself require decades, owing to the massive capital investment required and the time needed for these investments to bear fruit. The same consideration clearly applies to the agricultural system as well. As an optimist about energy supply, Smil does not consider the possibility, as does Heinberg (2009), that the upfront energy investment required for renewable energy technologies and potential limits in absolute energy supply could prevent the needed investments. He does, however, stress the need for more equitable distribution of both energy and nutritional resources at levels intermediate between the current consumption levels of developing nations and of the

nR

F

Biodiversity loss Unsustainable water withdrawals

U

W

as challenges to food security.

a

b

Total agricultural production

Greenhouse gas emissions

Biodiversity loss

Total agricultural production

Greenhouse gas emissions

Real food production

Real food production

**6.6 Other commentaries** 
