FoA 265: Climate, Land Use, and Agriculture with Richard Waite of the World Resources Institute

Future of Agriculture

World Resources Institute: https://www.wri.org/

Follow Rich on Twitter: https://twitter.com/waiterich

Recent blog post: https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/08/us-agriculture-emissions-food

More from Rich: https://www.wri.org/profile/richard-waite

Our guest today has spent years diving into this question of the environmental impacts of the food system, and what can be done to optimize the amount of food that gets produced and distributed, while minimizing the negative externalities of that system.

Rich Waite is a Senior Research Associate in World Resources Institute’s Food Program. He is an author of the World Resources Report: Creating a Sustainable Food Future, which focuses on solutions to feed 10 billion people by 2050, including boosting agricultural productivity, reducing food loss and waste, shifting toward plant-rich diets, and protecting and restoring forests and other natural ecosystems. Rich is also the Data Lead for Cool Food, an initiative that helps major food providers reduce food-related greenhouse gas emissions in line with climate science. Prior to joining WRI in 2007, Rich lived in Cameroon for four years, where he served as an agroforestry extension agent with the U.S. Peace Corps and helped coordinate the U.S. Embassy’s international development programs.

Rich and I discuss that, for all the talk about climate change, there has been very little progress to reducing the carbon footprint of the food system. We discuss why actions must be taken, and what the data tells us about what levers can be pulled to realistically make that happen while producing and distributing adequate amounts of nutritious food to people around the world.