The global food system isn’t broken, yet it needs fixing.  Agriculture is vital: It produces food for all of us, provides employment for over a billion people, and is central to many developing economies. It also is under a LOT of pressure: In the years ahead, it will need to meet growing demand while minimizing its environmental footprint and coping with a changing climate. If we improve yields on current farmlands, we can meet these needs without more land clearing – a huge contributor to climate change – and even allow some land to return to a natural state.  Technological improvements, from improved farming machinery, to readily available fertilizers, to the hybrid seeds of the Green Revolution, to computer-assisted modern farming technology, have dramatically increased productivity in the past. But how much more can yields be improved? And where? A study my colleagues and I recently published in the journal Nature Food examines this question through the lens of the “yield gap.” The yield gap is the difference between the per-acre or per-hectare crop yield farmers *could* obtain (the “yield ceiling”) and what they *do* obtain (the “actual yield”). Yield gaps aren’t necessarily a bad thing if it means that improvements are coming faster than farmers can apply them.  Take maize in the United States, for example. The yield ceiling has seen steady increase, thanks to research into improved cultivars, inputs, and farming technologies. The actual yield is steadily increasing as well, showing that farmers are adopting new technologies and practices at about the same rate they’re being developed, though with a bit of a lag.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned through my career as a storyteller, it’s this: Everyone has a story, and those stories have power. But in a society that often prioritizes science, data, news of the problem, and traditional voices over personal narratives, this essential truth is easy to overlook. I’d always been drawn to the stories my dad, Moses Scott, would share about growing up as a Black child in Civil Rights Era Virginia. He faced countless obstacles and, in his resilience, was my role model. He showed me that even when people want you to shrink yourself, you have to keep going, and I’ve always been motivated by his courage and fire to prove everyone wrong. When my dad passed away on March 8, 2017, he became the heart of my story, and the reason why I’ve dedicated my career on “passing the mic” to the changemakers who often go unheard. I’d long known that his story and the ways it influenced me were significant. However, it was his death that made me acutely aware that many of us – particularly those from Black and Brown communities – never have our stories told. That’s a key reason I share my dad’s story far and wide to this day; his story, like those of so many others that often go unheard, is full of insights that not only inspire and inform me but that have the power to motivate others. A couple years before his passing, I interviewed my dad about his story. “The way I see my life is taking lemons and making lemonade.” He continued, “That’s what, for me, Prince Edward County was.” The Story of Prince Edward County In 1959, the state of Virginia adopted the anti-integration policy of massive resistance. This blocked the desegregation of public schools ordered by the United States Supreme Court following Brown vs. the Board of Education. Until then, Black students and White students almost entirely attended separate schools, with Black students, including my dad, relegated to substandard conditions. When Virginia’s government closed the schools, nobody – including my dad, who was 16 at the time – would have imagined that some 1,700 students would be left without a formal education for five years. Consider the negative impacts of distance learning due to the COVID pandemic; now imagine learning being put entirely on hold for five years. “When we found out the schools were closed, I wasn’t too concerned,” my dad shared with me in an interview. “I was very happy to get another two months not to study and do whatever I wanted. But then, when it went beyond that… I missed school. School was where I competed, where I’d show that I was just as good as anybody and better than most. That outlet was gone.” In 1960, when given the option to become one of only 70 students to finish school living with complete strangers hundreds of miles away, my dad jumped at the opportunity. By the time the schools reopened, my dad, at 21 years old, was on his way to graduating from Howard University. In the following years, he would serve as a military captain, graduate from Harvard Business School, start a family, and launch his own business. Black history, my history, is filled with these stories of resilience, triumph, and joy. Still, I witnessed our predominantly White community discount my dad, overlooking his real-life superpowers and story. This was nothing new for him. Growing up, my dad cleaned the homes of wealthy, White community members who didn’t see his full potential. He told me, “Everything in that environment motivated me… Ms. Marshall, silver hair, about 80 years old. I used to go up the hill and I’d clean her house. One day, I must’ve been about 9 and she said to me, ‘Moses, if you learn how to make bed good, you might be able to get a good job at a hotel’…That made me mad, too. ‘No way!’ That’s what I said to myself, and this all helped me to be motivated.”  Even 60 years later, I could feel the emotion in his voice. His story taught me that challenging circumstances present us with a choice, a chance to take lemons and make lemonade.  The Stories We Need for a World in Crisis I can see strong parallels between my dad’s story and the treatment of people at the frontlines of the climate crisis. I’ve realized that even when you know that you have something valuable to contribute, people don’t always see your power.  As a young, Black, LGBTQ person, I have often been the only one from any of those demographics in the room in climate change conversations. Scientists, engineers, policymakers, and even storytellers, who are predominantly White men, have shaped the dominant narrative, discourse, and decision-making about climate. That is problematic. To end the climate crisis, conversations must include underrepresented problem-solvers who have thus far been overlooked in popular climate dialogue. We need narratives that center Black and Indigenous communities, communities of color, and others, who already bear the brunt of climate change and understand what just solutions look like. New narratives are critical to shine a light on untapped power.

Now comes the hard part. After decades of inadequate efforts to rein in greenhouse gas emissions and slow climate change, we are running out of time. We need a new strategy.  Every new report and each successive COP, not to mention the daily news, confirms what we already know. Climate change is happening. It is affecting everyone everywhere. It’s damaging and deadly. It’s getting worse. And it’s already really expensive. Scientifically, there is no longer any doubt that we are causing climate change, principally by burning fossil fuels, cutting down forests, and using unsustainable agriculture practices.  The good news is, this means we can fix it. And, in fact, we know exactly what to do to effectively, economically, and equitably cut greenhouse gas emissions to slow, and ultimately stop, climate change.