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One thing is for sure: The global food system is ripe for redesign. “Agriculture is the biggest driver of environmental impacts on the planet,” said Paul West, co-director and lead scientist for the Global Landscapes Initiative at the University of Minnesota. Agriculture occupies about 40 percent of earth’s ice-free land and accounts for some 70 percent of water use. “And because of all the fertilizer that’s used, it’s the main source of water quality problems,” West said. By 2050, we can expect at least two billion additional eaters, as well as heightened demand for feed crops to support growing appetites for meat and dairy.

At the same time, climate models point to a future of tightening constraints on food systems around the globe. Although warmer temperatures could increase yields in some regions, West said, temperature and rainfall changes alone could slash overall crop yields by an estimated 10 to 40 percent. Expected changes in the frequency of drought, flooding, and extreme weather events could drive those losses even higher, he said.

A variety of reforms can help to address these challenges. Reducing waste, tweaking the location and timing of fertilizer applications, stopping irrigation leaks, and diversifying crop production would offer a good start. Synthetic biology could become part of a solution at some point, West said. But because “what we eat is so heavily influenced by culture, taste, preference, and cost,” he said, “even if something works really well on paper, it doesn’t mean that it’s accepted.”

The trouble is that genetically engineered foods, “ignite a special lightning rod,” University of California, Berkeley bioethicist David Winickoff observed. Unlike drugs produced through biotechnology, such as insulin, we “still have a substitute product that’s quote, ‘pure,’” when it comes to food, said Winickoff, who directs the Berkeley program in Science and Technology Studies

Yet with few exceptions, “almost everything we eat is produced on farms, which is an artificial environment,” said Ronald. What’s more, in an era of climate change and ecosystem-scale restoration, Winickoff said, “it’s harder to maintain an idea of ‘pure’ nature.” If our species has already shaped the state of our planet, might that compel further intervention, he asked, to right past wrongs—or at least adapt to their consequences?

“There have been all kinds of examples of technocratic interventions that have gone wrong, or at least have [had] large social consequences—some good and some bad,” Winickoff said.

“With large interventions, there are winners and losers,” he added. “It doesn’t just have to do with aggregate risk and benefit, but thinking about how risk and benefits are allocated."

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“What synthetic biology should be able to do is improve the efficiency with which we’re converting, ultimately, sunlight into proteins and carbohydrates," said Neil Goldsmith, CEO of Evolva, a company that makes things like synthetic vanilla. The company has generated and screened billions of genetic variations to arrive at the design for a system that runs on sugar, electricity, water and yeast cells containing synthesized DNA. The yeast is removed during production, and at a molecular level, the result is identical to the chemical that gives vanilla orchid seeds their distinctive flavor.