Jacob Cates and Aron Mill: Scaling industrial food production in nuclear winter

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Jacob Cates and Aron Mill, research associates at the Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED), explore the scope for industrial production of food should the sun become blocked from soot in a nuclear war. ALLFED considered two methods for constructing facilities producing suitable alternative foods, such as cellulosic sugar: new construction and retrofitting existing plants. Jacob and Aron share how ALLFED compared the costs of these options, estimated the build time and production rates, and concluded that a significant fraction of the global diet could come from these food sources within one year. This talk was filmed at EA Global: London 2019.

In the future, we plan to post a transcript for this talk, but we haven’t created one yet. If you’d like to create a transcript for this talk, contact Aaron Gertler — he can help you get started.