“Fire-resistant seeds offer promise, at a low cost, for restoring areas devastated by burning in Brazil’s Cerrado savanna, a project by biologist Giovana Cavenaghi Guimarães shows.

Guimarães, a doctoral candidate at São Paulo State University (UNESP), focused on five species of Cerrado-native seeds, including jatobá (Hymenaea courbaril), amendoim-bravo (Pterogyne nitens), mulungu (Erythrina mulungu) and canafístula (Peltophorum dubium). All are naturally adapted to extreme heat.

According to Guimarães, these plants can survive in adverse conditions such as the high temperatures caused by wildfires, which makes their seeds ideal for environmental recovery after such events. The species also have a greater germination capacity: on average, 99% of seeds develop into trees…

According to Guimarães, planting seeds of these native fire-resistant species can be a solution to recover large areas destroyed by wildfires, especially in the Cerrado, the Brazilian biome that burns the most. Data from INPE, Brazil’s national space agency, showed 46.8% of all fire outbreaks recorded in the country in the first 10 months of the year — almost 50,000 — occurred in the Cerrado.”

From Mongabay.

“It wasn’t long ago that America’s fisheries were in a state of collapse, with cratering fish stocks and impractical regulations that threatened a $180 billion dollar industry.

Then, an unlikely alliance of environmental activists and fishermen turned things around, leaving the nation’s 4 million square miles of fishing grounds healthier – and more profitable – than they’ve been in decades…

Today, more than 50 U.S. fish stocks have bounced back from disaster, or are on track to, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In the Gulf of Mexico, renamed Gulf of America by the U.S. government, there are up to three times as many red snapper as estimated in 2009. In Cape Cod and the Gulf of Maine, stocks of adult yellowtail flounder have jumped from 218 metric tons in 2006 to 3,800 metric tons in 2020…

As commercial fishing profits have gone up, 94% of assessed fisheries in the United States are now sustainable, according to NOAA.”

From USA TODAY.

“Researchers at the University of Maryland have identified the gene responsible for a rare type of wheat that forms three ovaries in each flower instead of just one. Because each ovary can grow into a grain, this finding could help boost the amount of wheat produced per acre…

The unusual trait was first seen in a naturally occurring mutant of common bread wheat, but scientists did not know which genetic change caused it. To find out, the Maryland team created a detailed genetic map of the multi-ovary wheat and compared it with that of ordinary wheat. They found that a usually inactive gene called WUSCHEL-D1 (WUS-D1) had become active in the mutant plants. When WUS-D1 is turned on early in the formation of wheat flowers, it enlarges the developing floral tissue, allowing extra female structures such as pistils or ovaries to form.

If plant breeders can learn to trigger or replicate this activation of WUS-D1, it may be possible to create new wheat varieties that produce more kernels per plant.”

From ScienceDaily.

Summary: For centuries, people feared that population growth would outstrip food supply, leading to famine and collapse. Yet wheat tells a different story: production has soared, yields have multiplied, and the cost in human effort has plummeted. Despite wars, droughts, and disruptions, innovation and open markets have made wheat more abundant than ever.

The Reverend Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) got it backwards. In his 1798 Essay on Population he warned that “the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.”

Malthus even added, with no small dose of condescension, that “a slight acquaintance with numbers will shew the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second.”

When Malthus published his essay, the world’s population hovered around 1 billion. By 1960 it had reached 3 billion. Today it stands at roughly 8.2 billion. And yet, instead of mass starvation, food production has outpaced population growth. Consider wheat.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, since 1960 wheat production has surged by 250 percent, while the world’s population grew by only 171 percent. For every 1 percent increase in population, wheat production rose by 1.46 percent. Even more remarkable, this bounty came from just 9 percent more arable land. Wheat yields—the amount harvested per acre—have soared by 271 percent.

But what about the time price? Glad you asked. Since 1960, the time price of wheat has fallen by 85.7 percent.

Put differently, the time it took to earn the money to buy a single bushel of wheat now buys almost seven bushels.

Yes, there have been moments when wheat prices spiked—due to droughts, wars, and politics. Yet with fewer conflicts, relentless innovation, and open markets, wheat has only grown more abundant. If Reverend Malthus could see our world today, I suspect he’d be relieved—and perhaps even delighted—that human ingenuity proved him to be so spectacularly wrong.

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