For 2.5 million years humans fed themselves by gathering plants and hunting wild animals that lived and bred without their intervention. Homo sapiens ~ derived from Latin terms homo (human) + sapiens (wise) ~ emerged around 300,000 years ago in Africa, migrated globally and replaced other human species, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. Sapiens continued to live by gathering and hunting everywhere they went. All these changes occu – rred around 100,000 years ago, when they began to devote almost all their time and efforts to manipulating the lives of a few animals and plant species. They thought and worked day and night and produced more fruits, grains and meat.

Thus the revolution ushered in human history is called the Agricultural Revolution. The transition to agriculture started around 9500-8500 BC. Wheat and goats were domesticated by approximately 9000 BC; peas and lentils around 8000 BC; horses by 4000 BC; and grapevines by 3500 BC. Some other plants and animals were domesticated subsequently. Yuval Noah Harari, an Israeli medievalist and military historian, wrote in his book entitled Sapiens; A Brief History of Humankind: “Even today, with allout advanced technologies, more than 90 per cent of the calories that feed humanity come from a handful of plants that our ancestors domesticated between 9500 and 3500 BC ~ wheat, rice, maize, potatoes, millet and barley.

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No noteworthy plant or animal has been domesticated in the last 2000 years. If our minds are those of hunter-gatherers, our cuisine is that of ancient farmers.” Each species is an experiment of Nature. Only one such experiment, Homo sapiens, has evolved in a way that has enabled its biological adaptation to be complemented by a capacity for cumulative cultural adaptation.

This unprecedented combination of the usual biologically-based drive for short-term gain (food, territory and sexual consummation) with an intellectual capacity to satisfy that drive via increasingly complex cultural practices is what distinguishes the human experiment. The acquired cultural magnificence and technological mastery has set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. We, the Homo sapiens, can therefore easily be tempted to imagine that we represent a pinnacle, a culmination, of biological evolution. In the succinct phrase of Jacob Bronowski, we fondly contemplate ‘The Ascent of Man’. Indeed, the Agricultural Revolution laid the foundations of modern civilisation. It is also proclaimed that the revolution was a great leap for humanity.

But humans first lost their ‘ecological innocence’. Overkilling of edible or otherwise useful species was a departure from the basic principle of sustainable ecosystems ~ life can only be supported in the long haul by living off the ecosystem’s interest and not by squandering its capital. The Agricultural Revolution, also known as the Neolithic Revolution, initiated by Homo Sapiens is considered a major turning point in history and evolution, marking the transition from small, nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers to larger, agricultural settlements and early civilisation. But some authors and researchers, like Daniel Quinn (Ishmael) and Yuval Noah Harai (Sapiens), have questioned the narrative of the Agricultural Revolution as a solely positive development.

Harari even argues that the Agricultural Revolution was ‘history’s biggest fraud’ because it has caused population explosions, pampered elites, domesticated animals and made life worse for many people. He thinks hunter-gatherers had more knowledge of their natural environment, and they lived more satisfying lives. He even opines that Sapiens did not domesticate plants like wheat. Rather the plant domesticated us. The food systems inherently built up by the Agricultural Revolution comprise all the people, institutions, places, and activities that play a part in growing, processing, transporting, marketing and, ultimately, eating food.

They are critical for ensuring food and nutritional security, people’s livelihood, and environmental sustainability. Over the last 10,000 years, food production and consumption have been rigorously engineered to meet our dietary habits. A growing body of scientific evidence suggests such practices are deteriorating the health of the planet and its people. A September 2020 report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), World Wide Fund for Nature (WWP), EAT and Climate Focus says that the global food systems account for about a quarter (21-37 per cent) of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted every year due to human activities. It means that in terms of pollution, food systems fare worse than transportation (14 per cent of GHGs), building and energy use (16 per cent). Now we may try to gauge the amount of additional emissions as we churn out more to feed 10 billion mouths by 2050, as per estimates.

Over and above emission of GHGs, food systems are responsible for 60 per cent of biodiversity loss on land, 33 per cent of degraded lands, 61 per cent of depletion of commercial fish and 20 per cent of overexploitation of global aquifers. The fact may surprise those who think of plants as carbon sinks. Plants remove CO2 from the atmosphere by the process of photosynthesis. Photosynthesis converts CO2 into energy in the form of sugars that help trees grow and form part of their structures. During growing of plants some of these sugars are exuded into the soil from their roots. When the plants and roots perish, insects, bacteria and fungi etc., living in the soil break down sugar from plants. Some CO2 stays in the soil carbon pool, particularly in the bits of the plant that are harder to decompose ~ these then become part of the soil organic matters. This overall process is what we call the soil carbon sequestration as the soil holds CO2 in the more stable form.

Indeed, globally, there is more carbon in soil than in living trees. Plants release large amounts of sequestered CO2 during de com position and several other stages of food systems. For instance, felling forests to make way for farms and pastures remov es a ma jor carbon sinks, operation of farm machinery using fossil fuels and manufacture of agrochemicals and fertilisers too emit GHGs. The problem with our consumption of livestock is that ruminant livestock ~ cattle, sheep, buffalo, goat, deer and camels produce methane as a by-product of digestion, and methane so produced is released to the atmosphere by the animal. Methane is a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2 because it has much higher heat trapping quality.

On a weight basis it has 21 times the global warming potential of CO2. The vital foodprint measures the environmental impacts associated with the growing, producing, packaging, transporting, storing and retailing of food from natural resources. It is mentioned in the November 2020 issue of Science magazine that our food systems alone could contribute enough GHGs to warm up the planet above the 1.50C threshold sometime between 2051 and 2063. Every year the world produces much more food than the needs of the population, but it is apprehended that it will not be able to meet the SDGs of eradicating hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030 due to inequality in access to adequate and healthy food.

According to a report entitled Food in the Anthropocene published in February 2019 by the EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health, “more than 820 million people have insufficient food and many more consume low-quality diets that cause micronutrient deficiencies and contribute to a substantial rise in the incidence of diet-related obesity and NCD, including coronary heart diseases and stroke and diabetes.” Various estimates report that poor diets are linked to around 11 million deaths per year. Still there is no answer to the question: Can we feed the future population of 10 billion people with healthy diets within the planetary boundaries?

Apart from hunger and malnutrition, the global food system facilitates the spread of viruses from animals to humans, is linked to zoonotic diseases and also fosters antimicrobial résistance. Global food systems are intimately linked to global warming and climate change. The September 2020 assessment report by UNEP says that reducing land–use change and conversion of natural habitats alone could reduce emissions by 4.6 GtCO2e (gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents) a year. Reducing food loss and waste could further lower the emission load by 4.5 GtCO2e. Improving production methods and reducing methane from livestock could lower emissions by up to 1.44 GtCO2e. And replacing animal-based products in human diets with plant–based diet food could result in a massive 8 GtCO2e of emission reduction. But scientifically it is admissible that global warming cannot be limited to 1.50C just by employing any one strategy.

A dramatic food transformation along with a complete transition away from fossil fuels to avert the harmful impacts of climate change is recommended. However, changing food systems is not an easy task. Despite many adversities, experts believe tweaking food systems could be a game-changer. For example, adaptation and mitigation strategies linked to the food systems are not included in Nationally Determined Contribution (NDCs) ~ steps countries take to reduce national emissions.

At present, only some NDCs mention goals such as food loss and waste reduction, and sustainable diets. It is also suggested that nature based solutions like forest protection, grazing management and fertiliser management can help achieve the ideal targets, while reforestation, bio-char and improved agricultural practices have the potential to store up to 9.1 GtCO2e annually, storing 225 GtCO2e by the end of the century. The 26th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Conventions on Climate Change in Glasgow, Scotland in November 2021 saw discussion on lowering the agriculture sector’s contribution to global warming. We have no alternative but to wait and watch how this affects food systems.

(The writer is a retired IAS officer)