Beef, the most commonly consumed ruminant meat, is resource-intensive to produce, requiring (20) twenty times more land and emitting (20) twenty times more GHGs per gram of edible protein than common plant proteins, such as beans, peas, and lentils. Ruminants are necessary in a world awash in fibrous plants that cannot be human foods and thus sink to natural resources. Ruminants provide the necessary path to make use of these natural resources bound in fibrous plants by facilitating their conversion to the most healthful, delicious foods in the world, red meats. Limiting ruminant meat consumption is a goal that compromises the need for these foods in human diets with their impact on the environment and their capacity to make large stocks of fibrous plants accessible to humans as foods. Limiting ruminant meat consumption to (52) fifty-two calories per person per day by 2050 about (1.5) one and one-half hamburgers per week would reduce the GHG mitigation gap by half and nearly close the land gap. This is achievable by both limiting over-consumption in the developed world while increasing consumption in the developing world, In North America, a comparison is viable, therefore in current numbers, this would require reducing current beef and lamb consumption by nearly half.

If bio-energy competes with food production by using food or energy crops or dedicated land, it widens the food, land and GHG mitigation gaps. Fibrous biomass is at issue, minimally, in that it is also an inefficient energy source: using all the harvested biomass on Earth in the year 2000 including crops, crop residues, the grass that is eaten by livestock, and wood, therefore, as a sum total would only provide about (20%) twenty percent of global energy needs as forecast in 2050. Phasing out existing biofuel production on agricultural lands would reduce the food gap from (56%) fifty-six to (49%) forty-nine percent. Livestock production per hectare varies significantly from country to country and is the lowest in the tropics. Given that demand for animal-based foods is projected to grow by (70%) seventy percent by 2050 and that pastureland accounts for two-thirds of agricultural land use, boosting pasture productivity is an important solution. A manageable effort undertaking for a (25%) twenty-five percent faster increase in the output of meat and milk per hectare of pasture between 2010 and 2050 could close the GHG land gap by (20%) twenty percent and the GHG mitigation gap by (11%) eleven percent. Future yield and quality growth are essential to keep up with demand.

Conventional breeding, the selection of best-performing crops based on genetic traits, accounted for around half of historical crop yield gains. New advances in molecular biology offer great promise for additional yield gains by making it cheaper and faster to map genetic codes of plants, test for desired DNA traits, purify crop strains, and turn genes on and off. Degraded soils, especially in dry-lands, may affect one-quarter of the world’s cropland. Farmers can boost crop yields in degraded soils, particularly dry-lands and areas with low carbon by improving soil and water management practices. For example, agro-forestry, or incorporating trees on farms and pastures, can help regenerate degraded land and boost yields. Planting and harvesting existing croplands more frequently, either by reducing fallow land or by increasing “double cropping” (planting two crops in a field in the same year), can boost food production without requiring new land, though will require nutrients to for producing an equivalent crop quality. Increasing annual cropping intensity by (5%) five percent beyond the 2050 baseline of (87%) eighty-seven percent would shrink the land gap by (14%) fourteen percent and the GHG mitigation gap by (6%) six percent.

Researchers should conduct more spatially explicit analyses to determine where cropping intensity increases are practical, most feasible, factoring in water, emissions, and other environmental constraints. Customers of EnhancedExchange are not just availing themselves to the safest, most savory fresh, frozen, organic, dried, dehydrated, jarred and canned designer food products™ available in the world today, they are also buying into food streams with their origins resulting from cutting-edge research. This research design is to answer fundamental questions with the goal of providing insight into the development of disruptive production, delivery technologies required to extend these streams into the future. The achievements are through provisioning of future products that have increased precision in exceeding expectations of targeted, discerning markets. These Research and Development (R&D), programs are conducted through both in-house and contracted research. The plethora of nutrition knowledge is making a healthy difference. Contracted research engages the most innovative scientists in the world on projects focused on these fundamental issues.