Governing the global food system towards the sustainocene with artificial photosynthesis

Abstract

The development of the current global food production system has been predicated on multinational corporate market power coupled with the intensive use of pesticides and carbon-intensive fuels in mechanised, massive scale agricultural and slaughtered animal production and transportation (i.e., tractors, harvesters, trucks and container ships) but also in the production of fertilizer (particularly via the Haber-Bosch process for the conversion of atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia and in the phosphate industry). Our central hypothesis is that this corporatized global food system is fundamentally damaging to the sustainability of our environment and inhibitory of the growth of distributed or decentralised organic farming which is more likely to be the mainstay of food production in a future where humanity individually and collectively flourishes as stewards of resilient ecosystems. In the course of analysing that hypothesis we explore whether appropriate global governance of new renewable energy and climate change mitigation technologies such as artificial photosynthesis may accelerate transition to such a reformed global food system in an epoch conveniently termed the Sustainocene. In particular we examine whether and if so how international food law and policy can assist nanotechnology-based artificial photosynthesis become an 'off-grid' distributed family and community-based combined food, energy, water and climate change solution that establishes stable preconditions for humanity to realise its full potential as an ethical species.