Carla-nice piece! I direct the Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED). We are indeed concerned about tail risks from climate change. We have also considered two different resilient foods for global agricultural shocks related to fungi: mushrooms and fungus grown in bioreactors. Mushrooms have the advantage of the potential to scale extremely rapidly and grow on fiber (e.g. agricultural residues or wood), but they are expensive. Quorn is a fungus that is currently grown on grain, so in a catastrophe, eating the grain would generally make more sense (though Quorn would be better than feeding animals). However, it would be possible to have fungus in a bioreactor grow on fiber, which would be resilient. But unfortunately, neither of these bioreactor options is very economical at this point.
That sounds cool. Happy to see that some of this work is going on and glad to hear that you’re specifically thinking about tail-risk climate change too. Looking at fungi as a food source is obviously only one of the dimensions of use I describe as relevant here, and in ALLFED’s case, cost of the production is surely only one relevant dimension from a longtermist perspective. In general, I’m happy to see that some of your interventions do seem to consider fixing existing vulnerabilities as much as treating the sympoms of a catastrophe. I’ll go through the report you have online (2019 is the most recent one?) to check who you’re already in contact with and whether I can recommend any other experts to you who it might be useful for you to reach out to.
On a seperate note and because it’s not on the Q&A of your website: are you indeed fully funded by EA orgs (BERI, EA Lottery as per report)? I found it surprising that given your admirable attempts to connect with the relevant ecosystem of organisations you would not have funding from other sources. Is this because you didn’t try or because it seems no one except EAs want to grant money for the work you’re trying to do?
Carla-nice piece! I direct the Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED). We are indeed concerned about tail risks from climate change. We have also considered two different resilient foods for global agricultural shocks related to fungi: mushrooms and fungus grown in bioreactors. Mushrooms have the advantage of the potential to scale extremely rapidly and grow on fiber (e.g. agricultural residues or wood), but they are expensive. Quorn is a fungus that is currently grown on grain, so in a catastrophe, eating the grain would generally make more sense (though Quorn would be better than feeding animals). However, it would be possible to have fungus in a bioreactor grow on fiber, which would be resilient. But unfortunately, neither of these bioreactor options is very economical at this point.
That sounds cool. Happy to see that some of this work is going on and glad to hear that you’re specifically thinking about tail-risk climate change too. Looking at fungi as a food source is obviously only one of the dimensions of use I describe as relevant here, and in ALLFED’s case, cost of the production is surely only one relevant dimension from a longtermist perspective. In general, I’m happy to see that some of your interventions do seem to consider fixing existing vulnerabilities as much as treating the sympoms of a catastrophe. I’ll go through the report you have online (2019 is the most recent one?) to check who you’re already in contact with and whether I can recommend any other experts to you who it might be useful for you to reach out to.
On a seperate note and because it’s not on the Q&A of your website: are you indeed fully funded by EA orgs (BERI, EA Lottery as per report)? I found it surprising that given your admirable attempts to connect with the relevant ecosystem of organisations you would not have funding from other sources. Is this because you didn’t try or because it seems no one except EAs want to grant money for the work you’re trying to do?