“The FDA has issued its first ever approval on a safety consultation for lab-grown fish. That makes Wildtype only the fourth company to get approval from the regulator to sell cell-cultivated animal products..

Wildtype salmon is now on the menu at Haitian restaurant Kann in Portland, Oregon, and the company has opened a waitlist for the next five restaurants to stock the fish. It joins Upside Foods and Good Meat, two companies with permission to sell cultivated chicken in the US, while Mission Barns has been cleared by the FDA but is awaiting USDA approval for its cultivated pork fat.”

From The Verge.

Summary: For nearly a century, corn production in the United States has far outpaced population growth, thanks to relentless agricultural innovation. While global elites warn of food scarcity and promote insect-based diets, American farmers continue to feed the nation—and the world—more efficiently than ever, defying the narrative of resource collapse.

Corn has a rich history stretching back thousands of years to Mesoamerica, where it was domesticated from a wild grass called teosinte. Indigenous peoples in the Americas developed corn through selective breeding, making it a cornerstone of their diets, cultures, and civilizations. After Christopher Columbus introduced corn to Europe in 1493, it spread rapidly across the globe, becoming a dietary staple and key ingredient in countless cuisines.

Today, corn is the most widely produced grain in the world, with global production exceeding 1.2 billion metric tons. The United States leads the world in corn production, consumption, and exports—accounting for 31 percent of global output with 377.63 million metric tons, according to the USDA.

Over 95 percent of animal feed for US livestock—such as cattle, hogs, and poultry—comes from corn, which makes up roughly 40 percent of all corn used domestically. Despite this abundance, the Davos crowd would have us believe that our survival hinges on swapping steaks and burgers for worms and insects. Under the banner of “sustainability,” they propose shuttering our Texas Roadhouses, Dickey’s Barbecue Pits, and Chick-fil-As to make way for bug burgers. But are we really running out of beef, chicken, and pork?

Hardly. Corn is a foundational feed for producing those delicious meats. In the 1930s, US corn yields averaged 26 bushels per acre. Today, that number is 179.3 bushels per acre—with top-performing farms reaching an astonishing 624 bushels. That’s a 589.6 percent increase in yield over 88 years. One acre today produces as much corn as nearly 6.89 acres did in 1936, freeing up 5.89 acres for other uses—from conservation to recreation. Yields continue to rise at about 1.75 bushels per year, doubling every 31.6 years thanks to a 2.21 percent annual growth rate.

Meanwhile, the US population grew 165.6 percent between 1936 and 2024—from 128 million to 340 million. Yet every one percent increase in population has corresponded with a 3.56 percent increase in corn abundance. If each American consumed one bushel of corn in 1936, it would’ve required 4.9 million acres of land to grow the crop. Today, even with 212 million more people, it only takes about 1.9 million acres. We’ve reduced land needs by 61 percent. We’re growing smarter much faster than we’re growing people.

Corn was selling for around 68 cents a bushel in the 1930s. Unskilled workers were earning around 28 cents an hour. That would put the time price at 2.42 hours. The USDA currently estimates the season-average corn price at $4.20 per bushel for the 2025-2026 crop year. Unskilled workers are earning $17.17 an hour putting the time price at 0.24 hours or around 15 minutes. The time price has fallen from 145 minutes to 15 minutes, or almost 90 percent. For the time it took an unskilled worker to earn the money to buy one bushel of corn in 1930, they get 9.7 bushels today.

MIT’s Andrew McAfee highlighted this trend in More from Less, predicting continued innovation in agriculture. He’s even backing his confidence with a $100,000 bet: that by 2029, the US will produce more crops than in 2019 while using less land, fertilizer, and irrigation. If you think he’s wrong—and believe the World Economic Forum’s bug-eating future is inevitable—there’s your chance at easy money.

So yes, you could try a worm with your next meal—but there’s no reason to think we’re running out of corn or the land to raise your next steak, wing, or chop.

Find more of Gale’s work at his Substack, Gale Winds.

“Famines are still a major global problem. From 2020 to 2023 alone, they caused over a million deaths.

Yet the long-term trend shows significant progress. In the late 1800s and the first half of the 1900s, it was common for famines to kill over 10 million people per decade. This was true as recently as the 1960s, when China’s Great Leap Forward became the deadliest famine in history.

But as you can see in the chart, that number has dropped sharply, to about one to two million per decade.

This improvement is even more striking given that the world’s population has grown substantially.”

From Our World in Data.

In 1900, the U.S. Census recorded a total population of 76.3 million, including 11 million farmers. Today, with a population nearing 340 million, the number of farmers has dropped to just 2.72 million.

At the turn of the century, each farmer fed 6.94 people. Today, that number has risen to 125. While the U.S. population grew by 346 percent, farmer productivity soared by 1,702 percent. Each one percent increase in population corresponded to a 4.92 percent increase in farmer productivity.

In 1900, life expectancy was just 47 years. Today, it’s around 77. Medicine and sanitation played a role, but the abundance of food made possible by farmers discovering and applying new knowledge was a foundational driver of that gain.

So, who’s going to tell Ehrlich and Thanos they had it backwards? More life discovers more knowledge, which leads to better tools and more abundant resources.

Find more of Gale’s work at his Substack, Gale Winds.