Society's Resilience to a Total Loss of Agriculture

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential for society to survive catastrophic disruptions to agriculture by rapidly scaling up nonagricultural food production, focusing on feasibility, resource requirements, and strategic interventions.

Contribution

It evaluates the feasibility of emergency nonagricultural food production, specifically using bacteria grown on natural gas, as a survival strategy during total agricultural collapse.

Findings

Some countries could potentially produce enough food without agriculture in an emergency.

Feasibility of bacteria-based food production for the US requires significant resource allocation.

Strategic interventions can improve society's resilience to agricultural disasters.

Abstract

While technology and trade have made modern food systems increasingly resilient to disruptions, it is unknown if human society could survive the most extreme threats to agriculture, such as from severe climate change or nuclear/biological warfare. One way that society could withstand such disruptions is to make food without agriculture. Here, I evaluate the feasibility of rapidly scaling up nonagricultural food production in response to a disaster. I find that even in an idealized worst-case scenario where all current agricultural production ends instantaneously and cannot be restarted, it may be possible for at least some countries to begin producing enough food without agriculture to feed their populations before existing food supplies run out. As a proof of principle, for the US, producing edible bacteria grown on natural gas appears to be one feasible option for quickly making food without agriculture. Feeding the US population this way would require about 16% of US annual natural gas production, 6% of US annual electricity consumption, and $530 billion (1.9% of US GDP) worth of food production facilities. Several key findings from this report remain uncertain, and if a disaster hits at the worst possible time with respect to annual variation in stored food supplies, there may not be enough time to scale up other food production options. However, this report suggests that some countries are close to, or may already be at, the point where they could survive just about any agricultural disaster, as long as modern industry remains intact. I find that there are several interventions that could more thoroughly close this window of vulnerability: designing and piloting alternative food production facilities in advance of a disaster, improving the nutritional quality of alternative foods through research and development, and increasing crop stock levels.