Charles C. Mann: belief

Transcript context

…What is the status of that? Are you optimistic about that, or? Yeah, they're plugging away. You know, it's a hugely difficult problem, but it's extraordinarily interesting. To get something like C4 rice would be just an absolutely gigantic increase in productivity. But even in drylands areas, there's this method of agriculture that's used in West Africa and places like Northern Mexico called civil pastoral farming where you have ruminants, cows and so forth and trees. To create a system that is way easier on the land, uses way less water, and is almost as productive as annual crops. Almost no research has gone into that. That would be another example of a kind of thing that you could do that I would argue would have a much greater impact than the person trying to get the latest flavor of cherry-flavored nose drops are something–– which is what a huge amount of research is in. There have been people speculating recently that environmental contaminants are leading to a host of bad outcomes in health in the West, especially obesity. How plausible do you think this is?…

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