The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here

There are over seven billion people living on Earth, meaning the food sector has had to adapt its methods to meet the needs of an enormous population. Jahren questions, “How did we come to be growing three times more food on only 10 percent more land? The answer has to do with gigantic increases in yield—the amount produced per footprint of soil” (31). Scientists and farmers learned to increase plant yields using various methods: powerful pesticides; strong fertilizers; monocrop farms of corn or soy; and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that are resistant to pesticides.

That same adaptation can be seen across food sectors. Meat production in America has increased threefold since 1969, and Americans are eating more meat than ever. In this case too farmers have learned how to feed their animals more, grow their weight faster, fill them with antibiotics, and move them through the slaughtering process quickly. In America, a million animals are slaughtered every hour. Other industries have adopted a similar model, including fisheries. Now, 50% of fish sold around the world were raised in large underwater tanks.

Although increased yields are in many respects a success story because these industries have kept pace with a skyrocketing global population, Jahren remains skeptical. The increased supply of food and meat has only become available to certain populations, who often eat too much while other populations never get enough. The statistics surrounding increased yields embody Jahren’s book title, The Story of More.

Throughout The Story of More, Jahren often divides the global population of seven billion people into two camps: those who have access to food, electricity, and travel, and those who don’t. In particular, she references OECD countries, which are those highly developed countries located in North America, the European Union, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia. The lifestyles of individuals living in OECD countries have a negative impact on those who don’t.

From Jahren’s perspective, people living in OECD countries are downright gluttonous: They eat too much sugar and meat, they hop on planes far too often, they don’t care about overconsuming fossil fuels, and they often care even less about the billion people who lack access to any of these things. For example, OECD countries are 15% of the global population but produce 30% of its food waste. Meanwhile, one out of ten people on the Earth lives in extreme poverty, which deeply bothers Jahren. She argues that there are better options to redistributing food and other resources. “We live in an age,” she writes, “when we can order a pair of tennis shoes from a warehouse on the other side of the planet and have them shipped to a single address in less than twenty-four hours; don’t tell me that a global food redistribution is impossible” (77).

Although the number of people living in poverty has decreased in recent years, the numbers are still bad. In the last half-century, the global map of impoverished regions has not drastically changed. Africa, in particular, “stands out from the others in terms of both the severity of its troubles and their lack of remission” (85). In poorer nations outside the OECD, people are far more likely to die from communicable diseases such as malaria, dysentery, and cholera. As Jahren notes, 50% of people who die from communicable diseases live in sub-Saharan Africa. There are multiple reasons for this high rate of death, including lack of access to medical care, food, electricity, and clean water—all of which are more available to people living in OECD countries.