On Agriculture

The first issue is that nearly all studies purporting to show health consequences of eating (usually red) meat or health bene -fits of plant-based diets are observational. Observational studies are the backbone of nutrition science; they outnumber controlled trials in one estimate by more than 7-to-1.

What happens is that countries that have been successful in increasing staple-grain productivity end up with large volumes of staple grains. These grains are relatively cheap, which leads to surplus being used by the processed-food industry, which leads in turn to a drop in the relative price of processed foods. The other issue is oils, sugars, and... See more

I think one big reason for the lack of adoption is that there’s no way to physi -cally differentiate a bio-fortified crop from a non-bio crop. They look the same. The color is the same. And once they’re out in the field, they all get mixed up and it’s hard to tell them apart. As a result, there’s very little price difference.

However, most governments see this as an add-on, not a substitution. Rather than removing the existing supports or reducing the existing supports for staples, governments have just added sup -ports for other crops. That creates some marginal improvement for some of the other crops, but your fundamentals don’t change. The crop-neutrality argument... See more