Friday 28 August 2015

The Coming Red Revolution - I

The Coming Red Revolution  - I

Around the end of the 19th century the US Senate was seriously contemplating closure of US Patent Office, as the wise men then in charge of affairs felt that all the inventions that could be made, have already been made and that keeping the Patent Office going was a waste of tax-payers’ money. A lot has happened since then and one can only guess what these wise men would experience if they were to somehow materialize today from whichever world they have proceeded to after their tenure on Earth was over.

Notwithstanding all these developments over the last century, it will be clear to anyone, who is even peripherally aware of scientific developments taking place, that we are just at the beginning of an explosion that is about to occur on almost all the fronts. For quite a few years now, science and technology have been operating on a resonating frequency, each feeding on the advances made by the other, to push the frontiers of knowledge even further. If anything, one can safely say that the pace of development currently being experienced, will only accelerate further. Where that will lead the mankind to, is something that even the best brains find difficult to state with any degree of confidence.

Compared to the other fields, biological sciences have been relatively a slow moving segment till now but that is not true anymore. A lot of important advances in this century and beyond will come from the field of biology. By most important, I mean the ones which affect the common man the maximum. Aided by advances in other fields like the nanotechnology and computational science, the biological sciences have made astounding leaps in recent years. We have already seen the completion of mapping of human genome project. The possible spin-offs from this are still being enumerated. Gene therapy is one area which rightfully attracts the maximum attention due to the possible benefits in treating Cancer and other diseases. Gene therapy alone will require a separate discussion. 

An important area which stands to gain enormously from the genetic engineering discipline is food production.  I am not referring to Genetically Modified (GM) food which is no doubt an important part of technological advance and one expects that once the initial hiccups regarding acceptability of GM technology are sorted out, it will provide a lot of benefits which will encompass better yields, better resistance to various plant diseases and even varieties which can incorporate drugs and nutrients for the benefit of the consumer.  
Let’s take a look at another segment of genetic engineering which can radically alter man’s lifestyle. A few weeks ago, The Times of India carried an article titled “Bistro in Vitro” - about a futuristic gourmet restaurant, a “bistro” which serves food grown “in vitro” in laboratories. Scientists have already reported success in growing meat in laboratory. Of course, today a burger or a steak “made in lab” will set you back by a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars, but if one traces the trajectory of developments in various industries over the past few decades, one can expect that it will only be a matter of a few years before you will have the option of ordering “inorganic” meat rather than a farm-grown “organic” variety.

We are familiar with “green revolution” which pushed up the agricultural yields substantially and the “white revolution”, which made a country deficient in milk (India) into a milk surplus one. Now this “red revolution”, though still in future, promises to alter the global food consumption, agricultural and industrial patterns in a radical way.

In order to comprehend the changes that such an advance could bring about, we will try to take a look at the demand and supply of meat and meat products and various inputs that go into maintaining the entire chain of these products and also the “side-effects” of livestock farming.  This will give us an idea of the changes that will be brought about by this disruptive technology.  The figures may be a bit dated and also a bit fuzzy given the difficulty in getting the correct figures globally but will still serve to provide us a sense of future.

Consumption of Meat:

First of all, let us take a look at the meat consumption habits. Broadly dividing the world into vegetarians and non-vegetarians, FAO statistics state that approx 10% of the world population is vegetarians with about 31% of Indians at one end and about 3% of Chinese and 5% of Brazilians at the other end of the spectrum. All the rest of the countries are clustered in 7% to 13% range. The choice of whether to be a vegetarian or a non-vegetarian seems to be dictated mainly by abhorrence to kill animals for food as preached by various religions and religious sects. It may not be out of place to speculate that, if general populace were to have an option of having “inorganic” meat, the number of non-vegetarians is most likely to go up. Already in India one can see the trend towards more persons eating non-veg as even youngsters from traditional vegetarian families get “converted” into non-vegetarians.

The 2007 FAO figures places the average World per capita consumption of meat and meat products (excluding fishery products) at 38.7 kgs with Luxembourg topping the charts (presumably due to a large contribution from “floating population” of visitors to that small principality). US of A at 125.4 kgs was  the highest consumer, if we disregard the outlier Luxembourg, and was substantially above the figures of any other developed country.

The meat consumption is showing an up trend of 3% pa. Looking at the projections of population the world population is likely to touch 9.5 billion by the year 2050. If the same trends continue., both of increase in rate of consumption and population,  it is not inconceivable that with general increase in living standards in the developing countries, the world meat consumption could almost triple till 2050.

Inputs Requred For Meat Production :

That brings us to the question of various inputs that are required for production of meat and to assess how the world could cater to such demand.

1. Fodder : Farm animals like pigs, cattle, sheep etc convert plants into their body mass and as can be expected, the efficiency of this process of conversion is fairly low. A pig or a head of cattle requires a feed of around 15kgs in terms of corn and other cereals per kg of their “optimum” weight. This is the ratio of feed consumed over its life time to the body mass accumulated till the point of slaughter.  There would be a further processing loss till the meat products are delivered to the table. Probably it would mean around 20-25 kgs of feed per kg of finished product.

 Globally about 60% of the livestock feed required is obtained in the form of grain (mainly maize) and 40% as foraging. It is estimated that about 40% of the cereals produced by the world are required to feed the livestock in one form or other, about 750 million MTs (MMTs)of 2,250  MMTs of cereals produced are directly used for animal feed and some additional quantity as processed animal feed. The end result, worldwide animal feed industry produced 873 MMTs of feed in 2011. 

2. Water : It is estimated that pigs which make up the maximum share in meat products require about 15 litres of water per day on an average (and the global population of pigs is billion plus).  Animal agriculture is a leading consumer of water resources in the United States. Grain-fed beef production takes 100,000 liters of water for every kilogram of food. As a comparison, raising broiler chickens takes 3,500 liters of water to make a kilogram of meat. In comparison, soybean production uses 2,000 liters for kilogram of food produced, rice- 1,912 litres, wheat – 900 litres and potatoes - 500 liters.

Agriculture is one of the main end-use of water and if present trends continue (in all forms of consumption), 1.8 billion people will be living with absolute water scarcity by 2025, and two-thirds of the world could be subject to water stress. Although there is a vast amount of water on the planet, sustainably managed water is becoming scarce. We would soon reach a state defined as “peak water” which will be the point when we reach physical, economic, and environmental limits on meeting human demands for water and the subsequent decline of water availability and use sets in. .

Apart from land and water, fertilizers, pesticides, labour and energy are major inputs to livestock farming.   
There are a number of negative factors which are associated with livestock farming and meat processing. 

A. Land : Livestock requirements account for the single most important utilization of land which adds to the pressure on land.  As per FAO estimates, as far as cereals are concerned, the cereal consumption for livestock production is about 75% of the cereal consumption of humans. Considering that the total land used for cultivation is about 1.5 billion hectares and the land under cereal production is estimated to be around 693 million hectares as per FAO (2013), it would be possible to feed billions more if the cereal production was not diverted to animal feed.

B. Deforestation and Soil Erosion:  Increased livestock production has come at the cost of deforestation and overgrazing of pastures. Loss of forest cover is estimated to take place at the rate of 9 million hectares per year. That means between now and 2050, forest cover equivalent to almost the whole of India, will have been lost. Moreover, this deforestation is happening in the rain forests and tropics which will probably affect the environment more drastically.  Probably equally serious but not noticeable has been the erosion of top soil due to overgrazing. It is estimated to be about 12 million hectares per year.  On lands which are used for grazing, the loss of top-soil is estimated to be on an average 2 MTs per hectare per year.

C.  Contamination of Ground Water : Excess of fertilizers and pesticides which cannot be absorbed by plants drains of into soil and this ultimately leaches into subterranean water, affecting the quality of ground water. Excess consumption of nitrogenous fertilizers is the main cause of the nitrates in groundwater. The pesticides and herbicides, most of which tend to accumulate in the soil and groundwater add to the contamination of the groundwater.

D : Greenhouse Gases : Livestock generate a large quantity of nitrogen oxides and methane as a part of their digestive processes. There are varying figures of how much is the livestock farming adds to the greenhouses, a conservative estimate would be 10% - 12%, thus contributing substantially to the global warming.

E : Energy Consumption : Animal protein production requires more than eight times as much fossil-fuel energy than production of plant protein while yielding animal protein that is only 1.4 times more nutritious for humans than the comparable amount of plant protein, according to a report.

Tracking food animal production from the feed trough to the dinner table, it was found that broiler chickens to be the most efficient use of fossil energy, and beef, the least. Chicken meat production consumes energy in a 4:1 ratio to protein output; beef cattle production requires an energy input to protein output ratio of 54:1. (Lamb meat production is nearly as inefficient at 50:1, according to the ecologist's analysis of U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics. Other ratios range from 13:1 for turkey meat and 14:1 for milk protein to 17:1 for pork and 26:1 for eggs.)

F : Depletion of Mineral Stock : Out of the fertilizers, nitrogen based fertilizers are by and large derived from nitrogen captured from atmosphere but potassium and phosphorus based fertilizers are derived from minerals which have a limited stock.  At the current rate of usage, although potash stocks could last much longer, it is estimated that the (economically) mineable reserves of phosphates would last only between 50 to 100 years. 

G : Introduction of Harmful Chemicals in Food Chain: Animals reared for slaughter are often fed growth hormones, antibiotics  and other chemicals in order to accelerate mass accumulation. Many of these are not metabolised and their residues are found in the meat of such animals. The harmful effects of such ingredients are probably not fully understood as yet but are quite likely to substantial.

Sea has often been touted as an infinite source of food which can supplement the food available from land, but the reality does not support this contention. The total production from all aquatic sources, sea as well as inland fisheries, covering both fish and crustaceans together amounts to 148 MMTs. Out of this 128 MMTs is consumed and the balance being used as fishmeal / animal feed etc. The aquaculture accounts for 47% of the catch. There is not much scope for increase of production in this area as most of the sea catchment areas are reporting depletion of stocks of fish and the inland operations are adding to both pressure on land usage as well as contamination of ground water.

The conclusions are inescapable. We are rapidly moving to a situation where food shortages, water shortages and poor water quality will be the harsh reality which the world will have to contend with. No country is likely to remain free from the repercussions of issues of this nature and magnitude. Replacing animal proteins in our diet by plant proteins is just one way to partially rectify the situation.

One does not see a sudden change of heart occurring in 70% of world’s population to opt for vegetarianism. Nor is it possible to completely abolish livestock farming, deeply intertwined as it is with a number of other activities like dairy, farming, wool  production and even as a part of agricultural waste recycling, organic fertilizer production and many more.

So reduction effected in livestock farming by switching over to vegetarianism is not going to be substantial and we will only be able to postpone the day of reckoning. The solution lies elsewhere. It is to the hard-working twins, Science and Technology, working in tandem with each other, that we must look for salvation. Meat grown "in vitro" is one solution which promises to help us do that. This is one Red Revolution that we must all welcome and embrace.

We will take a detailed look at the status of this Red Revolution in Part II of this paper. As they say, “watch this space”.

LazyBee aka Shirish Potnis

Note : I have drawn heavily on the publications of FAO, USDA and other  official organizations and of course Wikipedia.  



     

Thursday 6 August 2015

Hello! Is Anybody Out There?

Hello! Is Anybody Out There?

Stephen Hawking, who requires no introduction and Lord Martin Rees, Royal Astronomer to Her Majesty, cosmologist and astrophysicist, are few of the names which Russian billionaire Yuri Milner has been able to rope in for his project “Breakthrough Listen”. The $100 million initiative launched earlier in July 2015 aims to survey 1 million star systems and  100 nearest galaxies looking for signs of intelligent life.

The concept that we may be able to receive signals coming from space was recognized by Nicola Tesla in 1896 and was translated into action on ground once we developed the technical capabilities of initiating such a search. Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) was initiated in 1960 under Project Ozma and the search has been on for the past 55 years.  No positive results as yet which is but to be expected though we do keep on getting false alarms from time to time. The telescopes pick up some signals which do not appear to be random in nature but on closer inspection are found to be arising out of some natural phenomenon. Sometimes these “false alarms” too lead to some fresh insights into the cosmos. It is like finding one more piece in the cosmic jigsaw which may one day help us get the complete picture.    

Project Breakthrough Listen has two initial objectives, the first one as stated to study the nearby stars and galaxies and the second one to design a message to beam to the stars; a message which will concisely inform the recipients about “us”. A similar effort had been done earlier with the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft which were launched in 1972 and which carry a plaque containing information about where the spacecraft has originated (Earth, its location in the solar system etc) and about the species which has launched the craft (about ourselves, numbering system followed by us, the chemistry upon which we function etc) to the stars. Similar message was beamed in the direction of globular cluster of stars M13 from Arecibo radio telescope from Puerto Rico in 1974. Both these were very limited one-time initiatives and the scientific community does not have much hope that these messages would ever be received by intelligent beings.

Milner will be launching a separate Breakthrough Message initiative which will study the ethics of sending messages into space and create a message which will used to communicate with other civilizations. It has been reported that the creator/s of such message will receive a prize of one million USD, so if you feel you have what it takes to design a message which the ET will find easy to decipher, just put on your thinking caps. References to both Arecibo and Pioneer messages are given below. These were created by a team consisting of Frank Drake who founded SETI and my favourite science writer, Carl Sagan.

The current initiative will radically increase the time available for active search for ETI. Currently the time available on various telescopes for SETI is pitifully low, only about 24 to 36 hours per year per telescope. Project Breakthrough Listen will provide thousands of hours each on the two telescopes contracted for the project, Green Bank Observatory at West Virginia, US and Parkes Observatory in New South Wales, Australia.  

Drake who is also involved with Project Breakthrough Listen in an advisory capacity was the one who formulated Drake’s equation to estimate the number of possible civilizations that would be in existence concurrently with us. Drake’s equation, at this point of time, has a number of unknowns which need to be estimated to arrive at even a remotely reasonable “guestimate” . And by “remotely reasonable guestimate”, one means a few orders of magnitude. (For a comprehensive discussion on probability of finding intelligent life in the Universe, readers may please refer to “Intelligent Life In Universe” by Carl Sagan and Iosif Shklovsky. I would have loved to provide more details here but as it happens to all good books, my copy was “borrowed” rather permanently by a so-called friend who was immediately thereafter afflicted with selective amnesia as far as that particular transaction was concerned!)

That brings me to an interesting sidelight. It is claimed that around 1992 that is about 20 years after the launch of Pioneer 10, a stone was found in Kupang, Indonesia which message engraved on it which was strikingly similar to the messages sent out via Pioneer and Arecibo.

In my opinion, SETI program which excludes investigations into UFO phenomena is an incomplete one. As an incorrigible UFO-phile, brought up on the diet on Erik Von Daniken’s books in his formative years, the author is one among many enthusiasts who share an unshaken belief in UFOs  and would dearly love some confirmation of existence of ET during our lifetime. Till now investigations of UFOs have  been mainly the precinct of government bodies and an overwhelmingly large number of cases have been dismissed as sightings of moon, Venus, meteors, diffraction in atmosphere, ball lightning, weather balloons, haziness due to fog and a variety of rare natural phenomena. At times the explanations have looked dubious if not plain ludicrous. It will be fitting if a private organization, which operates with a clear mandate of transparency, is given the responsibility of investigating such claims and either verify or debunk the same. After all why go looking around the empty space with a hope that somebody is out there when you can find a calling card left by ET in your backyard here?  

True, a large number of such sightings and narratives of reported encounters of first, second and third kind, would turn out to be hoaxes, but there are a number of instances which clearly warrant some serious introspection. With the proliferation of cameras and cell-phones, the number of recordings of UFO have shot up exponentially. There are sightings from all continents and although a few hoaxes cannot be ruled out, there would be some which cannot be explained away. Physicist Michio Kaku estimates that at least 5% of the sightings are “unexplained”. There are sightings of UFOs flying along jetliners (both military and civilian) captured on video by competent trained personnel who are not likely to be easily deluded. Readers can check many these for themselves by just searching “UFO” on youtube.  
      
I mention here a well documented case which has been recorded by the US Air Force and RAF officers in  Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk UK in 1980. Here over a period of 3-4 days, a number of officers, including Colonel Charles Halt who was in-charge of the RAF station, encountered an UFO and could experience effects like extreme increase in radioactivity, failure of electrical equipment.  Colonel Halt submitted his detailed report in an unambiguous manner about the encounter but as has happened with numerous other incidents, the report was never publicly acknowledged.

Breakthrough Listen, with its hugely influential team, can surely achieve a major breakthrough by accessing the old files in various governments and establishing the truth once for all. I feel an official  acknowledgement of UFOs and encounters with ET will go a long way in generating support for initiatives like SETI and Breakthrough. 

As a small gesture, you can join in seti@home program which will enable you to contribute computer time to SETI for analyzing a part of data which is being collected. Maybe you (or rather your computer) will be the one who will identify that one small message which will change our understanding of cosmos for ever.   

LazyBee aka Shirish Potnis


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uOfO52dl9k Star map on rock, Kupang Indonesia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUa8u8a6Qeo Michio Kaku and UFO sightings over Alaska and Iran.