Feeding a world population the United Nations estimates will hit 9 billion by 2050 is only one of the social problems caused by the increasing number of people, Sonny Ramaswamy, director of of the US Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture told the AgBio Summit on Tuesday at N.C. State.

“Population,” he said, “is the mother of all wicked problems.” And it causes lots of “baby problems,” ranging from deliterious effects on the environment to diminsihing water resources.

His keynote was titled “Can Plants Do Everything,” which Ramaswamy addressed briefly before “pivoting” to discuss matters he found otherwise not on the AgBio Summit agenda.

Not quite everything

He did an email survey of scientists, researchers and others, asking them the title question, can plants do everything?”

Responses often depended on the specialty of those who replied, he said, but overall, the conclusion was that “Plants can do many things, but not everything.”

Today, we’re looking at ways to use plants as factories to produce much more than food. “There is a cornocopia of chemicals plants can make,” he said. “It’s mind boggling.” One company is researching an Ebola treatment derived from tobacco plants, for instance, and his own agency funded research into how to deliver vaccines via plants such as banannas.

Cars not only run on fossil fuels from decayed plant matter, today in some the “Headrest, seat back and even bumpers” are made from plant composites.

“We’re still 10 to 15 years from understanding how plants do what they can do,” but when we do, “They’ll pretty much drive everything and we’ll all see the benefits.”

The mother of problems gives birth to others

Then he changed directions to talk about the social problems posed by increasing human population, “the mother of all wicked problems.”

If we were not headed for that worldwide 9 billion population, we wouldn’t have to worry about things such as climate change and growing enough food. China, which avoided having 400 million more people now with its one-child per family policy recently changed it because its population is aging. So China alone is headed for 400 million more people.

Population is also rising in the rest of Asia, India, and sub-Saharan Africa, he noted. Attempts to limit population run up against social, religious, and political considerations.

One study suggests “We’ll need two more Earths to feed that population and if you want to live like an American, four more Earths,” Ramaswamy said.

Technology alone is not the answer

But just looking for ways to use technology to grow more food is not the only approach that could help, he said. “In the U.S., we waste 1200 calories of food a day per person.” We waste half the food we put on the table. He pointed to the food from the generous lunch left on plates of the audience. So, finding ways to reduce food waste at every point of the system is worth pursuing.

One of the major “baby” problems of population growth is our diminishing water resources, he said. “By 2030, only 15 years from now, it’s estimatd that the supply will fall 40 percent short of water needed.”

“Half our water use now literally goes down the drain,” he sadi. Better water use efficiency is necessary.

“Forget all the high falutin’ biotech,” he suggested. “We have low-hanging fruit” that can be plucked via various methods. “We need to double food production? If we’re wasting half our food, do something about that.”

Go for the low-hanging fruit

Such as? Changing “sell by” dates to “Use by” datess (or adding them) is one simple solution that would keep consumers from tossing out perfectly good food, for instance.

Another problem we need to face now, he said, “Is the aging of our farmer population. The average age of the U.S. farmer is just over 58,” he explained. “Fewer people are going into it,” he added.

“Biotech won’t feed the world,” he said. “Farmers will feed the world.”

Technology can certainly help, however. Rice production is currently largely from rice paddies in Asia that produce a lot of climate altering methane, requires a lot of water and is labor intensive. “What if we figure out how to make seafloor plants that produce twice as much sugar?” he asked.

A need for better public education

Finally, he discussed another aspect of our food use not otherwise on the AgBio Summit agenda: health.

“The quality and nutrition of the food we consume contributes to our health challenges,” he pointed out. While a billion people still go to bed hungry every night, in the developed world a billion people go home and take drugs for high cholesterol, diabetes, and obesity. A CDC study estimates that 75 percent of American health care costs are due to changeable life style factors.

We also need to do a much better job of educating the public about technlogically improved foods, he said. For instance, a company has developed a potato lacking carcinogens in others and that doesn’t blacken, but McDonald’s has just announced it won’t sell it.

“People don’t mind technology in their smartphones, but they don’t want it in food,” he said. “We need ways to alleviate that angst.” That means we need to support not just the hard sciences, but also social sciences to study matters such as how people make decisions, he suggested.