Cows, Carbon and Fixing Our Food

Summary

Boiling Point: Cows, Carbon, and Fixing Our Food

Episode Release Date: July 17, 2025

In this compelling episode of Boiling Point, climate columnist Sami Roth engages in a deep conversation with environmental journalist Michael Grunwald about the intricate relationship between agriculture, land use, and climate change. The discussion delves into the profound impact of cattle farming on the environment, the challenges of transitioning to alternative protein sources, and the broader implications for land conservation and climate mitigation.

---

1. Introduction to the Food and Climate Crisis

Sami Roth opens the conversation by sharing his personal struggle with reducing beef consumption despite knowing its significant contribution to climate pollution. He emphasizes the necessity of addressing food and agriculture alongside fossil fuels to effectively combat global warming.

"We as a society are not going to slow down global warming unless we also deal with food and agriculture."
— Sami Roth [00:00]

2. Agriculture as a Land-Intensive Industry

The discussion shifts to the extensive land use required for agriculture, highlighting that two-thirds of the world's agricultural land is dedicated to pasture and livestock. Roth underscores the gravity of converting natural landscapes into agricultural ones, leading to deforestation and loss of carbon sinks.

"Agriculture is eating the earth... two of every five acres of land on this planet are now cropped or grazed."
— Sami Roth [07:57]

3. The Environmental Cost of Cattle Farming

Roth and Grunwald delve into the inefficiencies of cattle farming, pointing out that beef and lamb production utilize vast amounts of land for minimal caloric output. They discuss the disproportionate environmental footprint of livestock compared to plant-based proteins.

"Beef, cattle use nearly half of the world's ag land to produce just 3% of its calories."
— Michael Grunwald [10:13]

4. Water Consumption in Agriculture

Focusing on the Colorado River Basin, Roth reveals that almost half of the river's water is allocated to cattle feed, highlighting the strain livestock farming places on freshwater resources.

"Almost half of the water from the Colorado River goes to cattle feed."
— Sami Roth [11:46]

5. Alternative Proteins: Challenges and Prospects

The conversation explores the fluctuating fortunes of plant-based and cultivated meat startups. Roth shares insights from attending the Good Food Institute conferences, noting the initial exuberance followed by market downturns as consumer acceptance remains lukewarm.

"In 2019, the sense of excitement was sky-high... but by 2023, it was doom and gloom."
— Sami Roth [13:14]

6. Political Opposition to Alternative Meats

Roth discusses the political resistance faced by cultivated meat, citing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' ban on such products and labeling them as "woke meat."

"Cultivated meat... it's illegal in my state because Ron DeSantis banned it."
— Sami Roth [17:09]

7. Regenerative vs. Industrial Agriculture

A critical examination of regenerative agriculture reveals that while it promotes environmentally friendly practices, it often yields less food per acre compared to industrial methods. Roth argues that increasing efficiency in large-scale agriculture is essential to reduce overall land use.

"Farming should produce as much food as possible to minimize land use."
— Sami Roth [24:04]

8. Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and Yield Enhancement

Roth addresses misconceptions about GMOs, clarifying that while they are not detrimental to health, their role in significantly boosting crop yields is often overstated. He highlights advancements like CRISPR for developing more resilient crops as a promising avenue.

"Genetically modified organisms have been exaggerated as a yield magic... but gene editing offers incredible potential."
— Sami Roth [32:01]

9. Personal Commitment to Change

Towards the end of the episode, Roth shares his personal decision to reduce beef consumption, acknowledging the challenges but stressing the importance of individual actions in the broader climate context.

"Eating less beef is the best thing you can do for the climate... better is better than worse."
— Sami Roth [23:15]

10. Conclusion: A Multifaceted Approach to Climate Mitigation

The episode wraps up with Roth emphasizing that no single solution will address the climate crisis. Instead, a comprehensive strategy encompassing energy, agriculture, land use, and technological innovation is imperative.

"There's not one thing that's going to fix it. We need all of the above."
— Sami Roth [38:24]

---

This episode of Boiling Point offers a nuanced exploration of the intersection between agriculture and climate change, challenging listeners to reconsider conventional narratives and embrace a holistic approach to environmental stewardship.

Transcript

[Sami Roth]

This is an LA Times Studios podcast.

[Michael Grunwald]

My name is Sami Roth and I'm the climate columnist for the Los Angeles Times. This is Boiling Point. I'm gonna start this week with a confession. Just like I still drive a car powered by Gasol. Also still eat hamburgers. Not as often as I used to. I've tried really hard to be conscious about eating less beef because I know that cows are a huge source of climate pollution. But truth be told, I love a good hamburger, and I haven't been able to get myself to stop eating them. I like a good Impossible burger, too. And when I'm at a restaurant with Impossible on the menu, I'll order the fake meat version almost every time. But most places don't have that option, and frankly, it's still not quite as good as the real thing. At least to my taste buds. As an energy reporter most of my career, I've mostly focused on fossil fuels in my reporting. Coal, oil, and gas, because collectively they're the main causes of the climate crisis. But we as a society are not going to slow down global warming unless we also deal with food and agriculture. So when I heard that one of my favorite environmental journalists, Michael Grunewald, was coming out with a book about the food problem, I was pretty psyched. Finally, I was going to be able to buckle down and learn what I needed to know about cow farts and soil carbon and all the things that I didn't know, I didn't know. Turns out there was a lot that I didn't know I didn't know. Perhaps most of all, I went into Michael's book thinking about food mostly as a food problem, as in cattle produce emissions. Fertilizer produces emissions, so we need to raise less cattle and use less fertilizer. But as I wrote down in a note to myself on the very first page of the book, this is a book about food, but actually a book about land. If that doesn't make sense yet, totally fine. Michael and I are going to talk about why it is that humans use so much land to plant crops and raise livestock, and why that is such a huge climate problem. We're also going to talk about some solutions that don't always comport with traditional environmental values. And before you start jumping to conclusions and calling anyone a hypocrite, just know that Michael did in fact stop eating beef as a result of writing this book. Unlike me, he's walking the walk. I don't want to spoil our conversation too much, so let's just get into it.

[Jane Coston]

During one of the most severe windstorms Southern California experienced in more than a decade. The Palisades and Eaton fire ignited, leaving heartbreaking losses in our communities. Now, as we build back, we're building stronger, cleaner and more resilient in communities most vulnerable to dangerous weather conditions and wildfires. Southern California Edison is placing power lines underground, hardening the electric system by installing wires with protective coating, and adding advanced technology to help keep communities safe. So when Southern California faces the next storm, the next most severe event copied.

[Michael Grunwald]

Helicopters structures adjacent here at Pipe Road.

[Jane Coston]

We'll be ready. Learn [e-mail] disasterrecovery.

[Michael Grunwald]

Hi, I'm Jane Coston, former writer and podcaster for places like the New York Times, the Atlantic, and National Review. And now I'm here to hang out with you five days a week on what a Day. Crooked's daily news podcast.

[Sami Roth]

That's right.

[Michael Grunwald]

Now, who's respected on both sides? These days, it's hard to separate what matters from all the noise, especially when the noise is an elderly guy mumbling conspiracy theories he heard on Newsmax. That's why every weekday the team and I scour the headlines to bring you the stories that matter most to the way you live. In just 20 minutes. You can listen to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Mike, welcome to the Boiling Point podcast. Thanks very much for being here.

[Sami Roth]

Oh, thanks so much for having me on, Sammy. You do such great work.

[Michael Grunwald]

I appreciate that. And I'm so excited to ask you about your book. Here, I'll pull it onto the screen. You can see my dog eared copy. So, you know, I really enjoyed it.

[Sami Roth]

That's what I like to see. Except it looks like you may have actually like tried to eat it. I don't know.

[Michael Grunwald]

Well, the title is we are Eating the Earth. So you know, I can make out I am eating this book. Joke. No. One reason why I'm so glad that you wrote this and why it was so valuable to read is, you know, I'm a climate reporter, but I've mostly focused on energy in my career. And, you know, I feel like I went in with a really good grasp of how fossil fuels are causing climate change, but have never had quite as strong an understanding of the food side of the equation, despite the fact that, you know, I know like a lot of people at a high level that agriculture and meat in particular is a big contributor to the climate problem. And as, as you very nicely document in this book, fossil fuels are about 2/3 of the emissions problem and food and land use is the other third. But I was Always kind of intimidated by that, of even learning in too much detail about it. Oh my God, this is so big. And if I start to get into this, it's like, how am I going to be able to wrap my mind around all of this? And the book just does such a good job of diving into this. So I'm glad you wrote it. Was it intimidating for you or how did you decide to just go down this super, super deep, big, important rabbit hole? Because I can't imagine that was easy.

[Sami Roth]

Oh yeah, because I was you. Right. I was an energy and climate guy. I even had an energy column at Time magazine for a while. And as you know, I wrote, I was doing a fair amount of climate stuff and I knew absolutely nothing about food. I was spectacularly ignorant. And really the sort of long story short is I realized if I was that ignorant, that probably other people were too and that it was at least their. You know, there are hundreds of energy and climate books and energy in the environment books. And I thought, huh, this would be, this would be kind of interesting. I know it's important and it seems like a fruitful area for study since I didn't know squat. And that was, I think, a little bit of an advantage in that I certainly didn't have any preconceived notions.

[Michael Grunwald]

Yeah. And that's one of the things that I want to get into with you, challenging preconceived notions. Because I think that a lot of the stuff that I would have thought going in, regenerative agriculture, grass fed beef, you know, big ag being, you know, sort of the major villain. You challenged that and did it in really persuasive ways. But, and we'll get into that over the course of this conversation. But you know, to start another really high level question, was this a book about food or a book about land? Because, you know, you immediately start by saying that the food problem is really a land problem. So I'm sort of hoping you can try to just talk a little bit about what this book was really about.

[Sami Roth]

Well, you've, you've kind of caught me. I think my, my dirty secret is that, that it is more, in many ways more of a land book, which, you know, I don't think land books sell very well. So, so, so don't tell anyone. It'll be just between us, okay?

[Michael Grunwald]

Nobody listen. Nobody listened to this podcast, actually. Just go read the food book and don't, don't listen.

[Sami Roth]

But look, when I say we are eating the earth, what I mean is agriculture is eating the earth, right? It's two of every five acres of land on this planet are now cropped or grazed.

[Michael Grunwald]

And that statistic blew my mind.

[Sami Roth]

It's crazy, right? Because, you know, I had written a lot about agriculture, about urban sprawl, right? About cities and suburbs moving into nature. And that's one of every hundred acres or cities or suburbs. And so, you know, we're talking about agricultural sprawl is like 40 times as big as urban sprawl. That this natural planet has really become an agricultural planet. And that on track to deforest another dozen California's worth of land by 2050 if things don't change. So that was sort of the, you know, that's one of those ideas that once you think it, you can't unthink it. That we need to make 50% more food. And we can't keep basically losing a tropical, like a soccer field worth of tropical forest every six seconds. So we have to make more food with less land and fewer emissions. And that's really the challenge. And that is really a land story. That even though, yes, there is, you know, diesel tractors have carbon emissions and the burping and farting cows have methane emissions and fertilizer has nitrous oxide emissions. But the big problem with our food and our agriculture is that we're tearing down trees and draining wetlands to grow it, right?

[Michael Grunwald]

And trees and wetlands are so important, and this is at the heart of what the book is about, because they pull carbon out of the atmosphere and they store carbon. And when we, when we, you know, pave over those or tear down the trees or, you know, destroy the wetlands, that carbon goes into the atmosphere and those lands stop sucking up the carbon that they would otherwise be taking out of the atmosphere. So that, I mean, that's really the crux of this, right? I mean, that is.

[Sami Roth]

You nailed it. I mean, it's like I say that trying to decarbonize the planet while continuing to vaporize trees is like trying to clean your house while smashing your vacuum cleaner to bits in the living room. You're like making a huge mess, and you're all also crippling your ability to clean up the mess. And that's what nature is. Nature is our vacuum for carbon emissions. And it's also storing a lot of carbon itself. And every day we're knocking that carbon up into the sky.

[Michael Grunwald]

Some of the statistics that just totally threw me for a loop in the book the most were the ones having to do with beef and with lamb as well, the cattle statistics I wrote, some of them down here you wrote that beef, you wrote chicken and pork use three times more land and produce three times more emissions per calorie of protein than beans. So, you know, pretty inefficient just at the chicken and pork level. But then dairy is worse than that, and beef and lamb are six times, at least six times worse than dairy. So really inefficient uses of land in terms of just all of the land that it takes to feed beef and lamb for the amount of calories that we get out of them. And then you also wrote beef. Cattle use nearly half of the world's ag land to produce just 3% of its calories. So 40% of the world is being used for agricultural production, and half of that is producing using. Is being used for beef to produce just 3% of the calories. So you mentioned that we frequently think about cows burping and farting and that's what's their climate emissions. But the land use, I mean, it's bigger, right? I mean, this is the bigger issue.

[Sami Roth]

Yeah, they are just extraordinarily inefficient converters of their feed into our food, and they just use an awful lot of land. Two thirds of agricultural land is pasture. And then if you include what, you know, the crops that we grow and then feed to animals, more than three quarters of agricultural land supports livestock.

[Michael Grunwald]

Yeah, I mean, this isn't what your book is about, but I was just reminded that here in the Colorado River Basin, which we're, we're, you know, part of in Southern California, in terms of the water we use, like, almost half of the water from the Colorado river goes to cattle feed.

[Sami Roth]

Oh, yeah, it's all alfalfa farms. And it's just. Yeah, I mean, it's again, like agriculture uses 70% of our fresh water. It's like a huge source of pollution. It's, you know, driving all this biodiversity loss. So it's not even just a. It's not even just a climate problem. And really, like you said, cattle are the baddies. I mean, dairy is bad, but, you know, the cows produce milk like three times. They only produce beef once in their life.

[Michael Grunwald]

You know, you spent several years during the writing and reporting of this book and just your previous reporting, tracking the growth, the sort of, you know, the ups and downs of these fake meat startups, Impossible beyond. And also cultivated meat, which I was less familiar with and which I suspect a lot of folks listening to this conversation are less familiar with. I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about what that was like because you were, you know, you were sort of in the room with the founders of these companies as they were, as they were growing and getting a lot of hype and investors and then as the stocks were crashing and then as they sort of, some of them at least didn't die off and slowly built back up. What did you learn from all of that? How would you, you know, everyone should go read this book because you have like several chapters on this and it's totally fascinating, but what's the high level on how these companies are doing and what you saw?

[Sami Roth]

Sure. Well, I mean, I guess the, you know, you Californians who are familiar with the Gardner hype cycle, that's sort of what fake meat has gone through. Right. They had their peak inflated expectations back in 2019. I went, actually started my reporting for this book at the Good Food Institute conference. And that's kind of the convening of all the different plant based and like you said, cultivated meat, which is made from animal cells and mycelium based meat made from fungi. Basically everybody who's trying to replace meat come to this conference. And it was just, the exuberance was off the charts. Beyond had just gone public. It was like worth a third as much as Tyson, heading towards $250 a share. There were serious conversations at this conference about whether it was going to take one decade or two to get rid of the meat industry. And then of course I went, as I was finishing my reporting, I went back to the Good Food institute conference in 2023 and it was doom and gloom because beyond had gone from $250 a share to $2 a share. Nobody was investing. Cultivated meat hadn't even made it to market. And there was a sen, a fad. You know, what's happening. You know, basically the dogs didn't like the food. And, and I thought that was a little excessive too. I mean it certainly this stuff is not doing very well in the marketplace right now. And I think in 2019, certainly with the plant based stuff, you know, particularly beyond, there was a sense of excitement because it was better than the kind of hockey puck veggie burgers that vegans were used to. And it was better than that, but it wasn't better than meat. So I think a lot of meat eaters tried it and didn't come back to it. And those companies have done pretty badly. That said, the cow is a pretty mature technology and this stuff is still getting better. That's the cool thing about humans. We're not so good at making sacrifices for the planet or being nice to each other. But we're really good at inventing stuff. And there are a lot of smart people working on trying to make this stuff tastier and cheaper and even healthier. And I still have a lot of confidence that they can succeed. And look, from an environmental perspective, this stuff is like 90% better than animal meat. So it's really important that they succeed because again, people really love meat. We eat 350 million tons of it a year. And I don't expect us to suddenly stop just because Michael Grunwald wrote a book saying that meat is doing bad things for the planet. So I think just like Tesla showed that if you kind of build a better mousetrap that people like and that is at least competitively priced, at least some people will buy it, I think that's sort of the hope for that. These alternative meats that they will make stuff that consumers embrace.

[Michael Grunwald]

Yeah. Just don't tell Republicans in Congress about it or they'll put an end to that.

[Sami Roth]

Well, that's the problem, right? I mean, like just as electric vehicles became kind of Obama beals, Obamamobiles. Right. It's like, oh, that's terrible. That's a woke car. You're seeing that with some of these. The plant based meat went through. It's like, oh, that's like a Biden burger. Right? It's woke meat.

[Michael Grunwald]

Well, I'm remembering that press conference from God, I forget what year it was. Probably 2018 or 19. Maybe it was 2020. Remember when Rob Bishop, the representative from Utah, didn't he have a press conference where he got up and like ate a hamburger, live on hamburger, and said.

[Sami Roth]

The Green New Deal is going to ban this? And look, and my governor, Ron DeSantis, actually.

[Michael Grunwald]

Did you live in Florida, for those who don't know.

[Sami Roth]

And cultivated meat, which I've eaten cultivated beef, cultivated chicken, cultivated pork, cultivated sushi, but it's illegal in my state because Ron DeSantis banned it. And not only did he go up and call it woke meat and saying that, you know, these, you know, people are trying to, you know, they're trying to shove insects and, and fake meat down our throats, he also stood up and raised his fist and said, I stand with the Cattlemen, basically, like, we are going to prevent this, you know, this potential competitor to a friendly interest group.

[Michael Grunwald]

And so I think the politics, innovation and competition. Yes, very Republican position there.

[Sami Roth]

Right. It's the free state of Florida.

[Michael Grunwald]

Yeah. So don't give away too much about Tim Surchinger because people really should go and read the book and discover this guy's incredible fun, weird story. I've never read about anyone quite like him. But really, really briefly, why is he the character that your book is about? How did you find this dude?

[Sami Roth]

Well, it's funny, I've known Tim for 25 years and he was actually a really good source way back in the day. Fun trivia is that he gave me the tip that led me to move to the. Move to Florida, write my first book about the Everglades, meet my wife, have. Have a family. So he was a kind of. He was a kind of important dude in my life. But I had really lost. Lost, you know, at least fallen out of touch with him before I called him to ask whether meat was in fact bad for the climate, because I didn't know I was that ignorant. And he said yes. And then, duh. Which is kind of the way you suggested a word.

[Michael Grunwald]

He says a lot. It sounds.

[Sami Roth]

Yeah, yeah. Kind. Kinds of.

[Michael Grunwald]

He's a. He's a professor at Princeton. Right?

[Sami Roth]

Professor at Princeton. Professor at Princeton. And he's a scholar at the World Resources Institute. But Tim is really, in many ways, he's the guy who discovered this eating the Earth problem, and he discovered it initially through biofuels because he realized that all of these studies that were saying that biofuels were going to be this great climate solution and were, you know, better for the planet than gasoline had forgotten about land.

[Michael Grunwald]

Quick pin. Quick pin in that. So biofuels making fuel for gas, you know, blending ethanol into gasoline and diesel fuel and other stuff, which California loves, by the way, despite the fact that the science is super questionable, we're going to do something a little different on Boiling Point this week. We're going to do this extra segment that we're going to be trying to do most weeks now just for LA Times Podcast subscribers. And if you want to become an LA Times podcast subscriber, there will be a link in the show notes. We're going to have a separate discussion just about biofuels and California's low carbon fuel standard and also biomass for energy production, which Mike devotes several chapters to in his book. So Louisiana Times podcast subscribers, tune in separately for that. You'll find it in your podcast feed. So pin in that for now. So anyway, Tim got into the land use and eating the Earth problem through that lens and now is all over climate. Climate.

[Sami Roth]

Exactly. And so then this is. Right. So the long story short, right, is that biofuels are eating a Texas worth of the earth and livestock are eating 50 Texas is worth of the earth and agriculture is eating 75 Texas worth of the earth. And so he essentially realized that this is a, you know, even as he was fighting biofuels as a really spectacular waste of land, he realized that the problem, the eating the earth problem was much larger than that. And he essentially became this sort of self taught, leading global expert on food and climate. And so really the book sort of follows his intellectual journey as I use him as a kind of loud and energetic sort of Greek chorus for some of this stuff.

[Michael Grunwald]

So Tim has a lot of ideas and solutions about how we practically and realistically get emissions down from agriculture, how we stop just consuming more and more land, cutting down more forests, draining more wetlands, which are sucking up carbon out of the atmosphere. You know, I said earlier that I, as a climate reporter have mostly been focused on the energy side of things, not the land and agriculture side of things. But to the extent that that stuff does come up in my work, it's frequently when I, you know, hear from people who just say, we need to stop eating meat. You know, we all need to go vegan or vegetarian. I go to events frequently, climate events, that the menu is all catered. Vegan or vegetarian. If you went to Tim and you said, Tim, this is obviously the answer, we should just all stop eating meat or beef. We all need to go vegetarian. We all need to go vegan. Which by the way, you stopped eating beef during the course of reporting this book, which I want to ask you about in a minute. So we'll get to that. What would Tim's response be to that if you told him that was the answer?

[Sami Roth]

Well, I think you'd say that Most of the 8 billion people on earth are not writing books about food and climate, so they're unlikely to follow my lead. And people love meat. It's sort of not realistic. You could imagine government trying to intervene and they have in a few places. But I interviewed one pollster who said that government restrictions or taxes on meat are the least popular policy he's ever polled. Said it's up there with veterans benefits for isis. So again, I think the idea is that Tim just doesn't believe in this kind of faith based transformation of global agriculture. And what you hear often from people who just say, well, everybody should go vegan or we don't need to make more food, we should just waste less food. Is that. Yeah, sort of. You first. Right? It would, sure. If everybody went vegan, then we would have very different approaches for how to solve this. But everybody hasn't gone vegan yet. And until they do, we probably need to do all of the things. And some of those things are things that people don't always love, such as.

[Michael Grunwald]

Being more efficient with large scale industrial agriculture. I mean, talk about that. And that was one of the most interesting things to me about the book. I mean, you sort of make. Tim makes the case and you ultimately make the case that, you know, as much sort of hype or desire as there is in environmental circles a lot of the time for small scale local organic agriculture, that one of the best ways to stop this expansion of ag lands into cutting down more forests, draining more wetlands and peatlands, which are so important for climate, is to actually work with big ag, basically because they're so efficient. Because when you have that scale, you can be ruthlessly efficient. And ultimately what we need to do is grow more food on less land. So I'm hoping you can explain that in a little more detail.

[Sami Roth]

Yeah, sure. I mean, and yes, I know, like, we all read Michael Pollan and he's a beautiful writer. And so I think a lot of us have these kind of nostalgic, romantic ideas of what farming should look like. And also a lot of us have legitimate gripes with industrial agriculture, right, that it treats animals badly, treats people badly. Their politics mostly suck. Right. They're lobbying against environmental regulation and climate action. Use too many antibiotics. I get it. But as you suggested, one thing that factories do really well is manufacture a lot of affordable commodities. And factory farms are really good at manufacturing a lot of cheap food. And that really is important. I think there's a sense from, again, because we read Michael Pollan, there's this idea that farming is really supposed to be natural and kinder and gentler. Farming is really kind of, kind of good for the environment. But that's not really true. I mean, it is true that there is, you know, these rustic red barn bucolic farms. There is something lost when you transform them into more intensive, you know, industrial farms that are monoculture crops and they're drenched in chemicals. And, you know, the, the animals have numbers instead of names. And that there is, there's no doubt, like you look at the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, that's chemical fertilizer from industrial farm in the Mississippi Valley. There is a cost, but what I keep trying to bang my spoon on my high chair about is that the biggest environmental cost, the real tragedy was the transformation of the prairie and American forests into agriculture, into first place, into those nice Michael Pollen farms. That's when you lost all the carbon. That's when you lost all the biodiversity. And to the extent that these regenerative agroecological farms, organic farms, make, make less food per acre, that means they need more acres to make food. They're transforming more of the prairie, or these days more of the Brazilian Amazon or the Brazilian Serrado, a kind of woody, woody savannah that's, that's just as biodiverse and, and this is really disaster. Like we don't think of it so much in the United States because we can. We deforested our Amazon in the 19th century, right? Indiana was 85% forest. Now it's all corn and soybeans. But I think there's this idea that, like, we want our farms to look nicer and more like nature, but the reason we transform nature into farms in the first place is because farms make more food.

[Michael Grunwald]

We'll be back after a quick break.

[Jane Coston]

During one of the most severe windstorms Southern California experienced in more than a decade, the Palisades and Eaton fires ignited, leaving heartbreaking losses in our communities. Now, as we build back, we're building stronger cleaners and more resilient in communities most vulnerable to dangerous weather conditions and wildfires. Southern California Edison is placing power lines underground, hardening the electric system by installing wires with protective coating, and adding advanced technology to help keep communities safe. So when Southern California faces the next struggle, the next most severe event copied.

[Michael Grunwald]

Helicopters structures adjacent here at Pipe Road.

[Jane Coston]

We'll be ready. Learn [e-mail] disasterrecovery Today is the worst.

[Abby]

Day of Abby's life. The 17 year old cradles her newborn son in her arms.

[Michael Grunwald]

They all saw how much I loved him. They didn't have to take him from me.

[Abby]

Between 1945 and the early 1940, families shipped their pregnant teenage daughters to maternity homes and forced them to secretly place their babies for adoption in hidden corners across America. It's still happening.

[Michael Grunwald]

My parents had me locked up in the godparent home against my will. They worked with them to manipulate me and to steal my son away from me.

[Abby]

The godparent home is the brainchild of controversial preacher Jerry Falwell, the father of the modern evangelical rite and the founder of Liberty University, where powerful men, emboldened by their faith, determine who gets to be a parent and who must give their child away. Follow Liberty Lost on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Michael Grunwald]

One other thing that just kind of sort of startled me because I'd really just never had reason to give this any thought. You bring up Grass fed beef, I mean also GMOs. In this book, I see grass fed beef on a menu because I still eat meat, I try to eat less of it, but I still do enjoy a good hamburger. Like you said, I see grass fed beef on a menu and that sounds nice, it sounds natural, it sounds bucolic, it sounds like that's farming in harmony with nature. But you traveled all over the world for this book. You've been to all of the places that you're describing and you document through the science and through in person reporting that grass fed beef. And I'm going to try to explain this the way you do in the book, but correct me if I'm doing it wrong, that by not giving cows additional feed besides the beef to help them fatten more quickly, it basically slows the process of those cows maturing. And you don't get to, you don't get as many cows to maturity on that land. You're basically not growing as many cows. Am I sort of getting that right?

[Sami Roth]

Yeah, I mean it takes them longer to get to slaughter weight. So they're alive longer burping and farting methane and they just need a lot more land to, to get enough, enough feed to get to slaughter weight. And that's. So they're just, it's, it's less efficient. And that's really important because, you know, if like I said, beef in general is about 10 times worse for the planet and the climate than, than chicken and pork, but if it was only like three or four times as bad, that would be a huge difference. Right. And I saw in Brazil, I went and saw some ranches that, that had been transformed from these very degraded ranches, that cow per five or six acres, to these incredibly efficient ranches that had a cow for every acre. And I should point out that they were doing some stuff that Michael Pollan would like a lot. They were doing some regenerative practices. They had rotational grazing, they would integrate the cattle with their crops. They planted cover crops, they did no till and all that was good. But they also did some stuff that Michael Pollan would hate. They fertilized their pastures, they had a giant feedlot. But in general, by using, you know, say 1 5th, 1 6th because they were five or six times more productive, they were using 1 5th or 1 6th as much of the Amazon.

[Michael Grunwald]

And which leads to ultimately less pressure on other land being converted to agricultural production, which leads to less deforestation, less conversion of wetlands and peatlands, less carbon in the atmosphere.

[Sami Roth]

And that really is the ball game. It's this idea that every acre is sacred. Like if you're going to use an acre for farmland and there's a cost to that, but then you should use it to really make as much food as possible so that we have to, so we don't have to use more acres.

[Michael Grunwald]

Just because I briefly mentioned. Referenced GMOs there for a second. Genetically modified organisms, really complicated subject, probably worth an entire other podcast series. But you bring them up in the book to the extent that they can at times increase yields.

[Sami Roth]

Right, sure, yeah. I mean, until, and it's interesting because there's been, you know, they're probably the most studied substances on earth and they just are not. There's nothing bad for your health about them. There's just zero evidence of that. They're still banned in Europe. I mean, they still feed GMO grain to, you know, they import GMO grain to feed to their livestock in Europe. Because there's just all kinds of hypocrisy about this stuff, but people are very afraid of it. I talk about this. Jimmy Kimmel went to a, went to a. Actually it was an LA farmers market and he interviewed people about GMOs and there was just. Unanimously, everyone agreed that GMOs are terrible and also that they don't know what GMOs are. But look, genetically modified organisms, they have, they have, in some cases they, they have increased yields. They have, they have allowed. There are some. Let me say this again, sorry, sorry, Mary. There's corn and rice that's been genetically modified to basically have insecticides in it so you don't have to spray them. And those have been very successful, especially in places like India that don't have access to as many of these modern chemicals. But I would also say that in general GMOs have been exaggerated as a yield magic. You know, they're, they've, they have helped in some areas, but the kind of people who love them and, and, and a lot of the people who love them just kind of hate the people who hate them. But, but they've often sort of exaggerated the extent to which they've really created massive increases in yields. That said, gene editing these crispr, which is a much more precise form of genetic engineering that has incredible potential to, you know, not only to increase yields, but to allow more drought tolerant crops and heat tolerant crops as global warming gets worse. Flood tolerant crops, you know, those are, those are very exciting and you're already starting to see some, some progress there.

[Michael Grunwald]

That, that sounds, I mean, I thank you for Bringing that up because probably in my mind I had GMOs and I was really thinking of all your gene editing CRISPR discussion because I'm not actually super well versed in this yet, your book being my main exposure. But let's just not leave it up to the people of the Santa Monica Farmers Market to decide whether we do that. No. Jimmy Kimmel, best host on Late Night at the moment, and that's a great segment that he did. I'm realizing that we've been talking for a while and I want to leave some of your book to the imagination and surprise that people will go and read it. But suffice to say, the chapter on regenerative agriculture was one of the ones that also kind of like threw me for a total spin because there's so much I've had a lot of exposure to people who are really, really excited about regenerative agriculture and see this as sort of the silver bullet solution to the agriculture and climate problem. And you do a very good job of undermining that optimism and excitement, including some discussion of what Tom Steyer and his wife Kat Taylor have been up to on their ranch in Northern California. So make that an inducement for folks to go get the book, which is now on shelves and available for order at your publisher Simon and shoe store. So folks should go get the book and just read that chapter.

[Sami Roth]

I did a debate in Berkeley and Alice Waters, I was debating an agroecology regenerative guy and Alice Waters was sitting in the third row and she was glaring at me the whole time. She was not happy with what I was saying about Kiss the Ground and Common Ground and all these celebrity studied movies about, how about if we just farm differently, that all that carbon we've pumped into the sky is going to be magically repatriated in our soils.

[Michael Grunwald]

Alice Water, celebrity chef and well known writer. And I can't imagine, I mean, and for those of you who might be listening to this and thinking, you know, Sammy, what, what went wrong? We used to like, we liked all of your other stuff that you wrote. Why are you interviewing this guy who has these terrible opinions? I want to just mention a quote that you include in the book and the H.L. mencken quote, which I think was something that Tim Surchinger's father liked to quote. And it's a great line. It's for every complex human problem, there's a solution that's clear, simple and wrong. And it just encapsulates a lot to me. Climate change is so big and complicated and scary and so hard to wrap your head around that it's, and I found this in my reporting for a long time, just interacting with readers. It's so easy to try to make climate change something that you can deal with on an individual level by gravitating towards, you know, a silver bullet solution or towards, you know, to just siloing it into. Okay, here's how I can understand this through, you know, my one little narrow lens that makes it easier for me. And as someone who's mostly focused on energy, you know, it's, you know, some, for some people it's, it's, you know, nuclear power. For some people it's rooftop solar or, you know, for some people it's, you know, desalination is going to solve our water problems. And your book does a really good job of showing. Here's why. For agriculture and land use we need a wide range of solutions. We need sort of all of the above. There's not one thing that's going to fix it. And the same frustrations that you've probably gotten. Alice Waters was glaring at you and that I'm sure you'll get more of as you read this book. I get that when I write about large scale solar projects in the desert that chew up wildlife habitat or sometimes end up up Joshua trees getting torn down. I've written stories that say, hey, you have a line in your book about the importance of trade offs and why everything has trade offs and why we need to evaluate those. Honestly, when I write stories to that effect of, hey, we need a lot of large scale solar rooftop, can't do it alone. Realistically, there's going to be trade offs involved here. If we want to deal with the climate crisis, some people get it and other people just go ballistic. What are you talking about? Why would we do one bad thing to address another bad thing? Like it has to be perfect. Same thing with nuclear. I'll write stories that say, hey, nuclear is not a panacea, but it also has a role to play at least with existing nuclear plants that we've got and maybe with some of the new technologies. And there are some people that, that will just drive in insane. And so I imagine you must see some of that in your work.

[Sami Roth]

Oh, absolutely. But I will say after that event in Berkeley, which again was an audience of sort of 200 Michael Pollan readers, so you can imagine that they were prepared to, you know, run me out of town on a rail. But actually it was like, it was really pleasant. And afterwards, Paul Newman's daughter Who runs. Who runs Newman's Own Organic. She came up to me and was like, we had a great conversation about. She'd said it had completely opened up her eyes. And the guy who was the president of Slow Food USA and runs a California group called Roots for Change, he. I shouldn't say this, but. But he did. Well, he said it on his podcast, too. He came up to me and he said, you kicked my guy's ass. And. And then. And then he had me on his podcast. We had a great conversation because I do think part of it is like, we do need to break down some of these silos. I saw it in energy, and now I didn't realize it was also true in food, where you have these kind of like, it's become almost a culture war, these ideological, you know, teams where it's like industrial. The industrial guys against the regenerative guys against the, you know, the vegan guys, and everybody's at each other's throats. Look, I do think, like energy, you know, and again, I was one of you, and I'm sure I will be again, Sammy. But the energy. Energy is complicated. But I do think that the, you know, this kind of carbohydrate problem is more complicated than the hydrocarbon problem. We know what to do about energy, basically. I mean, at some point we got to stop using fossil fuels. We got to electrify our global economy and run it on clean electricity. And we're starting to do it just not fast enough in the U.S. looks like we're about to backslide, but it's, at this point, it's kind of a political question. While the food stuff, you know, we don't even know what to do. Like, you know, we haven't even really grappled with this stuff, and things are still getting worse. So I kind of wrote this book to try to grapple, right? And to say, like, hey, these issues matter and we need to figure them out. That's why Tim Searchinger, you know, say whatever you want about him. He is a figure outer. That is like, what he does. He's a facts guy, a science guy, and that's why he was like a great character to have at the center. And he was also a guy who says things that people don't always like. And. And I have, as you suggest, I am now finding myself on the receiving end as well.

[Michael Grunwald]

Well, you so Searchinger, not Searchinger. So I think I have been saying his. His name wrong, which I. Which I apologize for.

[Sami Roth]

He's a guy who does a lot of Searching. So, you know, you.

[Michael Grunwald]

You've convinced me that the food problem is harder than the energy problem. You've also convinced me that there are a pretty good number of things that we know we should be doing, which you spell out in the book and come from Tim and a lot of other good folks. Last question I forecasted earlier. I foreshadowed earlier that I was gonna ask you this. Talk about your decision to stop eating beef while you reported this. Cause I can't imagine that was an easy decision. And like you said, it's not a decision that most people are probably gonna make. But what was that like for you?

[Sami Roth]

Right? I mean, I don't wanna pat myself on the back too much. Right. I was writing a book about food and climate.

[Michael Grunwald]

It.

[Sami Roth]

It's sort of everybody's first question is whether I'm vegan, and I'm too weak to go vegan. So it turns out that, you know, cutting out beef is about as good as going vegetarian because vegetarians eat, Eat a lot more dairy. Most. Most vegetarians. And, and dairy, as you suggested, is, is. Is even worse than, Than chicken or pork. You know, know, cattle are the problem. And, you know, it was hard. It's, you know, I, I love meat. I love beef. People said I wouldn't miss it. I miss it all the time. I do confess in the book that when I went to Brazil and wrote about those cattle ranches, I. I broke down and ate a couple of exquisite local steaks. And I have not, you know, I've not relapsed since. But I try not to be scoldy about this stuff. I'm. I'm putting out information. I think people, you know, we do vote on these issues three times a day. And I think people who care about food and care about the climate, you know, they should know that, you know, eating less beef is the best thing you can do for the climate. But it's also true that a lot of people aren't going to do that. So again, I tried to. My joke is always that, you know, it's sort of like organized religion. You find the level of hypocrisy that you're comfortable with. And this is what I've done on food. But look, I have solar panels, I have an electric vehicle, but I fly way too much. So we all have an impact on the climate and on the planet. I'm trying to reduce mine, but perfect usually isn't on the menu, but better is better than worse. And that really is an important theme of the book, I think, is that you hear a lot about. If we don't reduce emissions x amount by x date, game over for the climate. But there is no game over for the climate. The game goes on. And if we blow past 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, which it looks like we're going to do, 1.6 would be better than 1.7, 1.65 would be better than 1.7, and all our emissions matter. So I really do try to repeat again and again like fewer would be better and better is better than worse.

[Michael Grunwald]

I couldn't agree more with all of that. And I really like the formulation of we vote on this stuff three times a day so everybody gets to keep that one in mind. Mike, thanks very much for being with us on the Boiling Point podcast.

[Sami Roth]

It's been a pleasure. Sammy.

[Michael Grunwald]

One more thing Thing. Like I mentioned earlier, we're starting a new feature on Boiling Point this week called the Rabbit Hole where I go into the weeds with our guest on a topic that we didn't have time for in the main conversation. If you subscribe to the LA Times feed on Apple Podcasts, you can find this week's Rabbit Hole on your podcast app. Thank you very, very much for support. Thank you for listening to Boiling Point. I'm your host, Sammy Roth. My producers are Mary Knoff and Jonathan Shiflett. Sound design and original music by Jonathan Shiflett. Elijah Wolfson is our editor. Denise Callahan is our Studio manager. Ben Church is our Production manager. Nick Norton is our engineer. Special thanks to LA Times Studio President Anna Mugzon, President and Chief Operating Officer of the Los Angeles Times, Chris Argentieri and Executive Editor of the Los Angeles Times, Terry Tang. Boiling Point is executive produced by Darius Derekshon and created by me, Sami Roth.

[Abby]

Today is the worst day of Abby's life. The 17 year old cradles her newborn son in her arms.

[Michael Grunwald]

They all saw how much I loved him. They didn't have to take him from me.

[Abby]

Between 1945 and the early 1970s, families shipped their pregnant teenage daughters to maternity homes and forced them to secretly place their babies for adoption in hidden corners across America. It's still happening.

[Michael Grunwald]

My parents had me locked up in the godparent home against my will. They worked with them to manipulate me into the steal my son away from me.

[Abby]

The godparent home is the brainchild of controversial preacher Jerry Falwell, the father of the modern Evangelical Rite and the founder of Liberty University, where powerful men, emboldened by their faith determine who gets to be a parent and who must give their child away follow Liberty Lost on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.