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Megan Konar - The Science of Food Networks and Water - Megan is a PhD researcher from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her latest co-authored work Food Flows Between Counties in the US examines movement of food, and the systems, businesses, and interoperability required to get the job done.
Here's a less technical story about the paper. Pete A Turner, sat with Megan when she was in Calif presenting the paper to better understand her work and why it matters. Turns out, without people like Megan, we really are in the dark on an entire complex system and left vulnerable to chance and chaos. |
Haiku
To feed a nation
Resilient or Efficient
Oh and maintenance
Similar episodes:
Dexter Holland
Jeremy McKane
Alex Doman
Join us in supporting Save the Brave by making a monthly donation.
Executive Producer/Host/Intro: Pete A. Turner
Producer: Damjan Gjorgjiev
Writer: Bojan Spasovski
#phd #illinois #researcher #foodnetworks #water #waterusage #breakitdownshow #peteaturnerbreakitdownshow #podcast #episode #smart #civilengineering #megankonar #maps #california #mississippi #yogurt #farmtomarket #centralvalley
To feed a nation
Resilient or Efficient
Oh and maintenance
Similar episodes:
Dexter Holland
Jeremy McKane
Alex Doman
Join us in supporting Save the Brave by making a monthly donation.
Executive Producer/Host/Intro: Pete A. Turner
Producer: Damjan Gjorgjiev
Writer: Bojan Spasovski
#phd #illinois #researcher #foodnetworks #water #waterusage #breakitdownshow #peteaturnerbreakitdownshow #podcast #episode #smart #civilengineering #megankonar #maps #california #mississippi #yogurt #farmtomarket #centralvalley
Transcripts
Pete Turner 0:00
Everybody it's Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of the break it down show. Megan Kohner joins us. She's a civil and environmental engineer, Professor researcher from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Illinois. And what she does is she looks at how food and water move and flow and are used as a resource in the nation. So when we think about things like global warming, like how, okay, we want to get trucks off the road to not move food, but like, Yeah, but trucks are really resilient. And there's always a road adjacent. If a road washes out, we move a lot of food on the Mississippi, but those locks have to be maintained to maintain that and you need that redundancy and all these things this push pull. And by the way, California has all of this food moving around internally, externally. It really feeds the nation and feeds itself as the biggest state in terms of population
Everybody it's Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of the break it down show. Megan Kohner joins us. She's a civil and environmental engineer, Professor researcher from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Illinois. And what she does is she looks at how food and water move and flow and are used as a resource in the nation. So when we think about things like global warming, like how, okay, we want to get trucks off the road to not move food, but like, Yeah, but trucks are really resilient. And there's always a road adjacent. If a road washes out, we move a lot of food on the Mississippi, but those locks have to be maintained to maintain that and you need that redundancy and all these things this push pull. And by the way, California has all of this food moving around internally, externally. It really feeds the nation and feeds itself as the biggest state in terms of population
Pete Turner 0:00
Everybody it's Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of the break it down show. Megan Kohner joins us. She's a civil and environmental engineer, Professor researcher from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Illinois. And what she does is she looks at how food and water move and flow and are used as a resource in the nation. So when we think about things like global warming, like how, okay, we want to get trucks off the road to not move food, but like, Yeah, but trucks are really resilient. And there's always a road adjacent. If a road washes out, we move a lot of food on the Mississippi, but those locks have to be maintained to maintain that and you need that redundancy and all these things this push pull. And by the way, California has all of this food moving around internally, externally. It really feeds the nation and feeds itself as the biggest state in terms of population. So how do you create resiliency, but also efficiency there and there's business efficiency that concerned with but also environment Mental impacts. So as you study all these days, you just have more and more questions, and it's just a fascinating show, you're gonna be able to look up a bunch of her articles. She was noteworthy a couple weeks back with her latest article that kind of shows a matrix of how food moves around the nation. And that's the image for the episode. You probably saw that story in the news because everybody was really fascinated by it. It's such a great graphic. So take a look at Megan's information on Wikipedia and everywhere else and you get an idea of just what she does. fascinating, fascinating conversation. Hey, if you're new to the show, we do things like this. We have PhDs out and they come and they talk about what they're doing. And it blows our mind like Andrew Freeman who talks about cosmology. Sometimes you talk about cosmology and religion. We also have athletes on the show, we've had Tito Ortiz, who's a UFC Hall of Famer and also a wrestling Hall of Famer from his wrestling days. But then we The next day, we might have someone totally different on recently, we had David Daniels on he's a flight nurse who's everybody talks about who knows, like the best nurse they've ever met, no wife and this guy is tip of the spear of nursing guys. So A lot of different things to fill your ears for an hour every day, five days a week. That's the breakdown show. If you love the show already, just keep doing what you're doing. Share the show, buy the shirts, tell people about it suggest the show, those are the things that really help us. It really, really helps when you subscribe, truly, I'm gonna stop putting the show up on Facebook as much it just takes too much time. That's why I really need you guys to subscribe. That way I can do other things, work on news stories and work on other stuff instead of always social mediating, hey, one last thing, save the brave save the brave.org if you go there and you click on the monthly donation tab and put a small amount of money money each month and we will then go and take that money and put it to work. We're already getting veterans in at Lakers games comedy shows with Jay Mohr and Chad Prater. We're already taking him deep sea fishing and this builds this community around these guys gets them invested in their own life again and it gives them purpose over time. It really works. We are truly helping people and you can We could use your help and helping them. Here comes Megan Kohner, lions rock productions.
Unknown Speaker 3:08
This is Jay Morrison. This is Jordan. Dexter from the offspring nakedly Sebastian Yo, this is Rick Murat Stewart COPPA. This is Mitch Alexis. Andy somebody there's a skunk Baxter. Gabby Reese is Rob bell. Hey, this is john Leon Guerrero. Hey, and this is Pete a Turner.
Megan Konar 3:24
Hey, this is Megan Konar, you're listening to break it down show.
Pete Turner 3:30
Megan is she authored a paper that a bunch of my friends and I saw, you know, we're a military crowd. And so your work goes to our, to our military mind. You know, it's been, especially this most recent paper, when you look at the flow of food, in variety of forms, whether it's milk or yogurt, or grain or whatever it is, and how it gets into where it gets to and where it goes out of because that's, that's fascinating. But you also have an interesting background in that you're sort of an engineer though you work in the civil and engineering field. I mean, certainly this paper talks about that. Give us an idea about your background so we can kind of get routed here.
Megan Konar 4:07
Sure, yeah. So I'm in a southern environmental engineering department. But my research is interdisciplinary. Okay. And so I'm interested in, I mostly come I'm interested in water resources, right. But through water resources, I've gotten more interested in agriculture and food systems because most of our water goes to growing crops, which in turn then go into feed supply chains. So I've just gotten increasingly interested in how this water is incorporated into agriculture and then underpins our food supply chains. And I'm interested in you know, do food supply chains lead us to use more or less water? What are the water hazards that threaten food supply chains, water hazards could be kind of short term things like droughts and floods, or they could be long term threats like unsustainable groundwater use that will require that we grow crops in different ways in the future. Once the ground runs out.
Pete Turner 5:00
Right? Okay, what are your degrees in so we can get an idea of what your background is because I want to figure out like how on earth, but when you're sitting there senior at whatever SHERMER High School, and you're like, Ah, you know what I want to be you don't ever think of someone who is a sort of civil engineer who look at the flow of water and supplies and that's not something anybody picks. I would never know it was anything you know. So to get to that point,
Megan Konar 5:25
it is unique and it's been a long and circuitous route, that's for sure. But I started off at UC Berkeley and did environmental science policy and management, okay, UC Berkeley, so and there. I grew up in the Chicago suburbs. And so moving to UC Berkeley was a really eye opening experience because I realized that water is actually the scarce valuable resource that I had taken for granted when I was living in Chicago because we have plentiful freshwater living near Lake Michigan and then I moved to Northern California, you realize that California has a lot of really complex water issues. In politics, and, you know, the south of the state has much less water resources in the north. And so that just really got me interested in water resources.
Pete Turner 6:09
Right. I mean, follow on after Berkeley. Where did you go?
Megan Konar 6:13
Yeah, so then Berkeley I actually took some time off and traveled for a while. So I backpacked for a little bit, which was an amazing experience. And yeah, highly recommend that more Americans do it. A lot of Europeans. Yeah. Other people in other countries do that. But be in such a hurry. Right? Yeah. Cool. It's a great time to see some of the worlds that I worked in Chicago for the US Army Corps of Engineers got some experience managing freshwater resources around Chicago,
Pete Turner 6:41
good water, find you. Where did you find water?
Megan Konar 6:44
I think thinking back it was I was always around freshwater and I was interested in freshwater when I was early. When I was a kid. I remember I must have been about 10 and there was the Great Chicago flood or I would have been 12. I think it was in 1992 but There's a great Chicago flood. And I remember that really was interesting to me. I was fascinated to see the city come to a complete standstill when the downtown area flooded. So I think my boat and I've always loved going to Lake Michigan and I always loved kind of being outdoors. So maybe it was a bit natural, but I've gotten more interested in kind of technical aspects of water the engineering and economic components versus underlay but what about your your post a BA or bs stuff? Where did you go for that? Yeah, I did a master's in England. Okay. Receive Oxford. Fancy and I? Yep, very fancy. Then I came back to the US and did a PhD at Princeton, Princeton because you're no slouch.
Pete Turner 7:45
Yes. Yeah, that's fantastic. What was your PhD in?
Megan Konar 7:49
That was in Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Pete Turner 7:51
So you have an engineer education, but you are a multi disciplinarian? Mm hmm. Yeah, it's interesting. Okay. So looking at how we make Move food. You know, here in California, we've gotten to land bridges, the 80 and the 10. That goes straight across and they push a lot of supplies everywhere. And we grow a boatload know many millions of boatloads of food in the Central Valley. And then along the coast, it makes us basically the breadbasket the fruit and vegetable basket for the nation. In the paper, you talked about, like the counties that move the most, and it was like California, Canada, Canada, all these California counties. And even in this case Maricopa so close to California, it almost in effect is part of the same system or is that not fair?
Megan Konar 8:38
Yeah, I mean, in so part of it is, yeah, so in the study, we did find that a lot of food, the California counties are the biggest movers of food, and that's a lot of reasons. It's because the Central Valley is so productive in terms of its vegetables, also grains. It's because California has major urban centers also. So raw agricultural products are going there and being needed. processed into more processed goods or they're going just to direct consumption or there's a lot of international harbors. So they're being they're studi they're coming in from other countries and being moved around the country from California, or it's leaving the country and being exported out of the harbors. So that's part of the reason. Also, it's a bit mechanical as well, just because Western counties are so much bigger than Eastern counties, right. So we were trying to figure out information that more coarse scale, you're trying to estimate county scale flows. And so just the fact that there's so many fewer counties in the West and the counties are so much bigger, that also has a bit to do with it.
Pete Turner 9:40
I was fascinated by some of the things you talked about in the paper with you and your team, like the processing of the food. So here comes the milk, the milk goes to the plant and gets turned into yogurt and then primarily pushed out locally is and we always talked like Farm to Market kind of thing. Is that the preferred way when you look at how things work or are these big internal National movements of food, a better way to do it.
Megan Konar 10:04
Yeah, and that's, you know, the study, we don't really write have any normative assessment of what's what's good or bad. But we are increasingly interested in looking to try to understand because we would hypothesize that food supply chains are organized to be as efficient as possible, typically, so they're probably trying to be efficient in terms of at least cost trying to get the most affordable products to the consumer. But we're also then interested in figuring out, does that focus on efficiency? Comment, a trade off with being resilient? So does that mean that our food supply chains are vulnerable to disturbance? Or can you have both efficiency and resiliency being optimized so that's something you want to look into
Pete Turner 10:52
and as our system fairly resilient, I mean, I know like you talked about the Mississippi and Ohio rivers now they're big transport highways, but in effect, because To put trucks out to do things on that, or is that just not at all the case?
Megan Konar 11:05
Yeah, so I think we haven't finished this work. But I think we'll find that there is a pretty decent trade off between efficiency and resiliency, just the fact that we do have multiple modes that we can move food around. So so things like green are these very bulky commodities, which are pretty cheap commodities. That's where it's a little bit more tricky because it's very cost effective to move those grains out of the Corn Belt on barge down to the port of Mississippi. So it's, I think would be cost prohibitive to move that much grain on trucks or on rail. So that's why the barge is really important and if you were to have failure along some of those locks, that that might be problematic for me now out of the Corn Belt. I didn't realize how many truckloads of grain fits on one barge Yeah, one barge is equivalent to Thousand trucks. Wow so I no idea how big these barges but they're they move Oh big amount of mass
Pete Turner 12:06
that is crazy. Yeah And is it half the river the size of the Mississippi to move that much stuff for like the Missouri there's so many rivers like do they all have obviously not smaller burgers but like those big ones so they'll have that capability of having big barges like that or?
Megan Konar 12:23
Yeah, I'm not sure at what points they're too small. I think Missouri has some of the big barges. Exactly where where it gets to be too small for that.
Pete Turner 12:32
Yeah, definitely up and down the Mississippi. But these these are likely in terms of the US ancient systems to write like, as long as people have lived along the Missouri they've lived there because you could put a hunk of wood in the water and float it somewhere or at somewhere up you know, and and take a cow to market or whatever it was.
Megan Konar 12:51
Yeah, Mark Twain. A lot of his writing is based on barge and shipping life along the Mississippi.
Pete Turner 12:58
You mentioned those locks On the Mississippi River in your paper, and just now a minute ago, talking about how they're a choke point and and these locks are almost 100 years old now. How long do locks last? I mean, we talked about infrastructure all the time, like bridges and all these things that are really old. I mean, all the projects from the 30s, almost 100 years old, right. So some things are maintained. Well, like the bridges are always getting painted. I'm looked at nothing but the locks. I don't know. Talk to me about that.
Megan Konar 13:29
Yeah, no, it's it's amazing how important this infrastructure is still and it's, you know, yeah, getting on in years, like he mentioned. And I did find out that there has actually been some a lot of work I'm doing by the US Army Corps of Engineers on those locks, locks, 51 and 52, which are some critical locks in the Missouri area for shipping grain out of out of the Corn Belt and I think In my article in the conversation, I said they hadn't been overhauled and some readers luckily corrected me and said that they've actually been doing some maintenance investment. And I'm not sure what the exact current stages but but I think they're
Pete Turner 14:13
working on would you think it was up to date the Civil Engineering Task of repairing or replacing or updating something like that? I mean, that's, that's a significant project, because you're not doing that in two weeks. And you got to shut down that part of the river, I'm assuming, right?
Megan Konar 14:28
That I believe there's ways to do it without with minimal disruption to shipping traffic.
Pete Turner 14:33
Incredible. Incredible. Really? Wow. Wow. So what else was interesting that you guys pulled out? Because there's so much like, there's that one county in Texas, right on the coast. Is that is that a port? It doesn't look like it's a port town that I know of. Do you recall, recall the one there's this one, just like right there on the Gulf and it must be a port that food comes in there.
Megan Konar 14:55
Yeah, it could be overland. Yeah, I think the most interesting thing to me about this paper was just the fact that I actually thought this was one of my more boring technical papers. Yeah. So I've been really surprised with how much interest it's gotten from, from other scientists in the general public. And it really, to me just shows the power of having a really easy to understand and, and, and pretty map thing, just that map really caught a lot of people's attention. And this really surprised me, because I thought this was a really boring algorithm development paper that was going to enable our future work. Yeah, a lot of people have actually been interested just in this paper.
Pete Turner 15:36
Yeah, look at all that alfalfa. Yeah, look where it's going.
Megan Konar 15:40
Yeah. And I think part of it too, is I've just been trying to think why Mises paper, gotten a lot of attention. And I think it's partly just because you can see how interconnected Americans are from this mouth. And that's something that you know, you hear a lot in the news, how polarized or how disconnected American society is right now. So I think Maybe it's nice just having a visual representation of the fact that you know, we actually are really all connected in rural urban. We all need each other.
Pete Turner 16:09
Yeah, yeah. So you guys examine also like livestock movement too. Okay, so even like chickens and turkeys and stuff. That's right. What do we need to know about that? Like, what did you guys determine?
Megan Konar 16:21
So that's we. So we haven't really determined anything other than for all food groups. We've just basically estimated them. Okay, we haven't had the chance to like dig in yet and do any further analysis, right? Just trying to determine. So it was really just coming up with methods. And so that was we use a developed a whole bunch of new methods for mapping all the food groups. So he's done machine learning, right? When you're programming and network statistics, were some of the main tools that we sort of weave together in order to estimate these features. And we had to come up with a different statistical equation, basically for each food commodity group. So we don't estimate for livestock, we don't estimate chicken or pigs or beef into individually, because we estimate what's called the standard classification of transported goods. Okay, so that's for us commodity groupings. So we were restricted to the commodity groupings, and their groupings. There's just seven kind of big mighty groupings for food. And one of them is for all live animals. That would include everything like beef, pigs, chicken,
maybe, maybe
Pete Turner 17:39
two eggs fall into that category.
Megan Konar 17:41
Eggs are in there, they would be in animal products. Okay. Okay.
Pete Turner 17:46
And then the water part is is interesting. I want to go back to that because in your study, you made an article you mentioned that 2012 was a drought year in California, but droughts happen throughout the nation, different time, different places. What's your sense? And I know you guys didn't study that part, you didn't do a multi year like longitudinal study. But what's your sense for the impact of drought? I mean, just California has more water, it produces more food, I'm assuming.
Megan Konar 18:11
Yeah. And 2012 was also a drought year for the US Corn Belt. So it'll be really interesting to go back and well, that we have plans to and we can only look every five years because we're restricted to years that have the freight analysis framework data, which comes out every five years, the years ending in two and seven. So we have it for 2012. And our next step is to go and do this now for 2007 and 2017. And see for estimates are comparable to 2012. We my hypothesis would be that the green belts will be more prominent in the years that it wasn't experiencing a drought, although food is a bit complex, because there is grain storage, right? So it's possible that even though there was a drought occurring, you saw equal amounts of grain moving out of the Corn Belt because it was coming from storage.
Pete Turner 18:58
Are you able to see waste in that system at all? No.
Megan Konar 19:01
Okay, that's a waste. Okay, so other researchers have gotten in touch and they want to try to estimate waste misses. Yeah,
Pete Turner 19:08
we've created new questions, right? By putting this out. Yeah, if we want to go back to water. So in the Central Valley, the farmers are very and they post signs are very antagonistic towards the system, because they need more water. No, I want you know, water grows food. When you look at, you know, a country that or at least a state that has a lot of drought potential, like California does. Do you have a sense for like, where the water needs to move like to reservoirs to, you know, what are your thoughts and knowledge on that?
Megan Konar 19:39
Yes, we did a study a couple years ago where we actually looked at California in particular and the droughts that happened here 2015 to 2018 and tried to figure out basically what was happening with the water situation how how were farmers using water in the house out potentially affecting supply chains or agricultural exports from the central Valley. And so we saw that basically, during that really important drought, there was a lot less rainfall, there was a lot less irrigation available from surface sources. So that basically meant that farmers pumped a lot more groundwater. So groundwater in California is really important to enable farmers to buffer, their agricultural production during droughts are able to still produce crops during the drought. And so then what that meant is if you look at the supply chain, there's a lot more groundwater embedded in the supply chain than you would see in non drought year. So groundwater basically enables those supply chains to still function, right. And during the drought, actually, farmers were able to fallow less productive lands and they were able to switch to more valuable crops. So you actually see that yields go up during a drought because you're not growing on the least productive lands and your crop your water per value of crop. actually improves. But groundwater is really important to in California during a drought. So that was now during that drought. Governor Jerry Brown at the time implemented the sustainable groundwater management plan, which I think is has been hailed as one of the most landmark water bill is in California for the last 50 years or so. I think that the goal is to basically bring bring groundwater used to sustainable levels by 2040. Wow. Yes. Which is, I mean, does that
Pete Turner 21:29
thing, go with the plan to use reclaimed water in more ways, you know, processing.
Megan Konar 21:35
So the way that works is each they've formed groundwater management districts around the Central Valley in California. And each groundwater management district is basically going to have the ability to implement whatever plan they think is most suitable for them to bring their groundwater levels to sustainable limits. So that just means that in the long run, the amount that they're pulling out of the out of the aquifer can't be more than the amount that's going in, okay, so because groundwater you can think of it like a bank, right? So if you're, you know, putting in savings, as long as you're putting in money and you're not taking out more than you're spending, you're gonna have some savings in your account. But if you're pulling out too much money and spending it, then you're depleting your account is the same. So basically, in the long term, you just, they could do things like artificial recharge, where they're pumping water into the groundwater bank, when when they have a lot on the surface so that in a drought year, they'll have groundwater down there to pull out, right.
Pete Turner 22:32
It's just dump water in the ground, and then the water decides where to go, I suppose. Mm hmm. Yeah, that's right. So farmers and I jump up and down the Central Valley and I keep bringing this up for everybody who's listening France and Germany. It's it is a giant area for food production. I've noticed that the crops change pretty rapidly like the farmer like that's it no more whatever we're planting, in this case, almonds and grapes, tonnes almonds and grapes. How does that impact our water usage? And how food moves?
Megan Konar 23:02
Yeah, it's a good question. So finally. So from the farmer perspective, they are able to take a scarce resource like water and create a higher value product because grapes and almonds are higher value than some of the other field crops, like alfalfa, for example. So from a using a scarce resource in the most economically sensible way that that makes sense, but it has the effect of what's known as drought hardening. Because not crops and grapes are our perennial crops, which means that basically, once you make the investment of planting those crops, they typically last a couple of decades, right. So you don't want to let them die if there is a drought. So if there's a drought, you're basically not gonna be able to follow that land and just kind of wait a couple years until the drought leaves you're gonna do whatever you can to basically make sure that your crop survives that droughts, you're not going to. It basically removes flexibility right in our cultural system on the next Drop comes.
Pete Turner 24:01
And then what about like other things as the market evolves? Like people are drinking less orange juice, now they're eating less corn based products? How does that impact things?
Megan Konar 24:11
Yeah, I think farmers definitely are very savvy. And they they will change their crops to basically optimize their their revenue and their profits on the farm given their, you know, constraints. So I think if it's something that they can grow, that's more valuable than
Pete Turner 24:33
movement to like, dammit,
Megan Konar 24:35
keto, yeah.
Pete Turner 24:37
Eat some grains widget. Yeah, because the farmer does have to be smart enough to figure those things out. And maybe they rebrand too. I mean, a lot of times the things we eat are just because they've been marketed. Well, Mm hmm. Yeah. What other kind of papers have you written then? I mean, I talked about the water usage. What else have you written that's out there?
Megan Konar 24:56
Yeah, so I've also done a lot of work on global trade. Okay, and use some network statistics to try to figure out, you know, some of the key nodes and global trade and and figure out if we might be if the global trade system is resilient or vulnerable to shocks. So that's something that we're interested in. Also, I've been similar to that I'm interested in understanding if trade or if supply chains lead us to use water more or less efficiently. So I've been trying to use econometric methods to answer that question. So that's, we've been finding that at least on average, globally, trade leads us use less water. Okay, which is
Pete Turner 25:40
encouraging. And then I saw an article I think it was today where they caught fish in London, shipped it to China, and then pushed it back to London. And that seems extremely wasteful, you know, to do that, but that's, that's how that whole product is manufactured. Is that it? I mean, on the surface, that seems really wasteful, but maybe, I don't know, maybe you just can't have that kind of a plant in London effectively, you know? I don't know.
Megan Konar 26:07
Yeah. Now that's why i doing the call lifecycle assessment, or the getting the full carbon footprint of a good from throughout the entire production chain is really important because sometimes it's surprising but the transportation carbon emissions are actually dramatically less than some of the production carbon emissions. I remember there's a study a couple years ago that if British people ate Lamb that was locally produced in England and had a higher carbon footprint than lamb coming from New Zealand. So just because the lamb the production of lamb is very low in terms of carbon emissions in New Zealand Yeah, and shipping it to London, the that fraction of the carbon emissions was a lot lower. You would never think that that was the case. Yeah.
Pete Turner 26:54
So it isn't always found a market sometimes it's way far away target.
Megan Konar 26:58
Yeah, a lot of times the The transportation for food is very efficient. It's it's things like boats and barges, which are very small carbon emissions per unit or mile traveled. It's not you know, we're not moving green on airplanes. Right,
Pete Turner 27:15
right. And I guess when you so one of the things we've learned along the way is that the biggest cargo ships produce a ton of carbon emissions. And I guess that's not the case with food ships. And maybe those guys don't commingle. But those container ships that weigh a bazillion pounds and have all the stuff that we all buy, getting those things to move. And then also getting them to stop is the biggest part where it just eats up tons of carbon but that's not the case of food. As much yeah,
Megan Konar 27:44
I'm not entirely sure. It could also just be like per amount of food or per unit of food, right? It still is very small. I haven't looked at the shipping part of it, but But yeah, the mode of transportation so moving things on barges and rail In the US is relatively efficient in terms of carbon emissions compared to you know, if we were to fly. Yeah, maybe really high quality sushi, we might we might fly that on a planet that is going to have a much higher carbon emission.
Pete Turner 28:14
Yeah. What if you could change any, like one or two aspects in the nation? What would you want to see us do a better job of in terms of water and food, how those things work together?
Megan Konar 28:31
That's a good question. I think I just really want to make sure that we think about the system and make sure that it's resilient to any sort of disturbance. I'm reading really good book not now called the taste of war. Okay, just talking about how you know food systems can be vulnerable to that you can even think of those as important national security systems. Really important for defense. So I just think it's important to make sure that you think of our food system as a security issue. Okay, it's not just an environmental issue, it's a, it's a food security issue. And so we need to make sure that it's our food system is resilient to any sort of disturbance in the future could be military, or climate change. future climate change might change how and where we can grow food, grow crops, so food systems might need to adapt to basically reorganized depending on where agriculture is going to be able to occur in the future. So that's also something that I think is really important and want to work on some more.
Pete Turner 29:40
Yeah. And I'm thinking like, you know, food as security thing. You when you raise your hand, you're like, it's really important. There's 500 other micro topics that not your topic is small, but there's all these other people are alike and they're all disparate, you know, and they all need attention. They all need money. It's It's such an interesting thing. So how does one raised like these issues like these locks center, we find out they're maintained. But, you know, whatever. Let's say you find some other critical node. How do you elevate that message up? I mean, you know, I found you, you said yes. But Congress isn't looking for you right now. I'm assuming? I don't know.
Megan Konar 30:18
Yeah, no, it's a good point. But I think there is a big consensus that we need to invest in our infrastructure. So I'm not saying anything new. I just want to come up with some methods to help us prioritize investments so that we can be smart when we do get the funds allocated for infrastructure investment, I hope to be able to say well, actually, you know, given funds are, are not infinite. You know, we have finite budgets, you know, where should we most effectively put that money? What are the pieces of infrastructure that you know, we get the most bang for the buck? invest in and where, you know, do we have where do we have the base need, basically?
Pete Turner 30:58
Yeah, when we have a bigger scene What do you think we have the biggest thing
Megan Konar 31:02
that I would have to do to study?
Pete Turner 31:10
What's your sense? Like? Like, if you were gonna do a paper, you'd have a hypothesis, where would you want to? If you were trying to solve that problem? What would things would you want to examine?
Megan Konar 31:18
Yeah, my sense would be, you know, probably, we have a good sense of where the big ports and the big rail terminals and the the big, important locks Sunda on the waterways are Yeah, I would guess, you know, we're probably gonna want to prioritize some of those locks in the Mississippi. The big international shipping ports are very critical, very important. Rail terminals, even Chicago to New York to Colorado, there's a lot of important juncture points for rail. Also juncture points between multimodal transportation between road and rail. So I think also just just figuring out what those exactly are But limited sense. It's, it's where, you know, we move a lot of other freight around. Yeah, well,
Pete Turner 32:07
these systems as you know, they stack and they intermingle. And so you're looking at almost like a, and I'm being unfair, I'm just gonna characterize it as like a slice of a CAT scan. And but it's really this whole thing. And then you're like, Oh my God, this affects it. So I'm thinking about weather and all these other things. What other kind of systems? Do you have to look at at least secondary? Maybe, maybe not tertiary too far? But like, what are some of the outside systems? You're like, I just there's no way for me to study this and this, but I know they go together.
Megan Konar 32:37
Question. Um, yeah, so I guess I'm focusing on infrastructure and food systems and water infrastructure. in there, you know, I'm interested in to some extent figuring out what policies are really important and shaping that system. But you could also think it could just be because my husband's an economist, and he's a finance guy, but I'm also Increasingly realizing that finance is really important elements of, of what goes on in the food system and agricultural systems so right that's a piece that I'm probably not going to touch right now.
Pete Turner 33:11
Yeah, yeah. What is the bang for the buck? Like Where can we actually make a difference and more most reliably everything? Hey, this is Pete Turner from lions rock productions. We create podcasts around here and if you your brand or your company want to figure out how to do a podcast, just talk to me I'll give you the advice on the right gear the best plan to show you how to take a podcast that makes sense for you. That's sustainable. That's scalable and fun. Hit me up at Pete at break it down show calm Let me help. I want to hear about it more most reliably and everything. I had a question I'm gonna think there in a second. Damn it. It was good too. As long as Lance I was in the inner the inner connection. You got me thinking about the finance part. Yeah, but the systems aren't Yeah, they are complex. So finance does Matter, and then how we move these things, the product shifting, there's so many different things to wrap your head around, it's incredible. Are there? Are you overall, like confident with where we're at? And how we're progressing towards, you know, resilience and abundance of food and everything? Or are you? Are you concerned? And then if you are concerned, is it because you're so into the data that you know, like, because in my world, like, all we see is threatened terror, all we see is right in there. You're freaked out. So what's your sense for that?
Megan Konar 34:32
I'm very optimistic, positive person, just generally but then in the system, you know, we haven't had any major disturbances or, or food security issues in in the US and, you know, it's very rare. So, I'm pretty optimistic. I think I just want to make sure that we, you know, do that, that were proactive, and we make sure that something like that can't happen and just been talking to lots of people I'm just surprised that there's not really a government agency that thinks about food systems in a comprehensive way we have government agencies or other agencies that think about lots of other systems and comprehensive ways. So I've just been surprised at sort of the the lack of focus on supply chains as you know, focus on just agricultural production. Right, but not necessarily the full supply chain although I did just go to a meeting in DC last week where they are starting supply chain caucus in Congress so so I think that's there's a realization that supply chains are complex and they merit some Yeah, some thinking about them on their own
Pete Turner 35:41
way. And and again, taking these multiple systems I read that question, and make and managing them because one of the things I read a paper on someone did some great work, you know, like, Hey, we need to understand these greenhouse gases. And we've realized that all of our man made reservoirs are causing even more methane, you know, going into the atmosphere. At the same day, I read some guy like I have the answer for carbon sequestration, it's kill bladders. And I'm like, I don't think so, like, really hard to, you know, because one decision here affects this part of the I have my hand like people can see my hand, this part of the system. But meanwhile, like this other part, you know, you do have multiple local PhDs working and saying, this is, this is the best the system can be. Because if you tweak that, and when you slide that, and we add in here all of a sudden, you know, we get unwanted results, which, you know, happens all the time.
Megan Konar 36:32
Mm hmm. Yeah, unintended consequences is a sort of, you know, buzzword but you know, it's true if you change anything in the complex system, things are gonna happen that you couldn't foresee or didn't anticipate, and you just want to try to minimize minimize those.
Pete Turner 36:49
When it comes to freshwater storage and movement on freshwater and those kind of things. And by the way, it blows me away that we are so fortunate in our country, we have so much fresh water We we use for going to the bathroom. Mm hmm. Wow. You know, people would kill for that and other other places.
Megan Konar 37:08
I should say that I also do research in Zambia. Okay, I'm just always, you know, we should definitely really appreciate the amazing infrastructure we have in the US, after going there and seeing they basically have no ability to buffer. If they have a drought, they don't have grain storage, really. They have just household, each household has their own grain storage bin. They don't have much irrigation, because they're, you know, is a drought. So the infrastructure moving goods to market is they lose basically most talked about food waste there. They have serious post harvest loss, basically getting agricultural crops to market they lose a lot of that because the roads are really poor. So yeah, we definitely have a either appreciate what we have
Pete Turner 37:52
to I mean, there's so many I mean, Afghanistan, Iraq and your life. You drive this every day, like well, I fix it every day. I'm gonna drive it and I fix it. You Like, oh my god, it's so impossible. The other thing this is, this is interesting. So we tried to bring drip irrigation to Iraq, right. And when that did and greenhouses, and what that data was that targeted those farmers, as like you have something, you're in cahoots with the mayor or whatever, right? It made them a target. So we'll bring the water to them caused a lot of problems. And we were also great in trying to bring fresh water, but never thinking about the system of how to get rid of wastewater. So all this fresh water would be there. It's a win except for now you have cholera and all the other problems that come with wastewater that can't be named effectively. It's impossibly complicated. What is Yeah, very interesting. Yeah. So what do you want to do next? Like what papers are in your head that you're like, I just can't wait to get onto this thing. Obviously, the 17 data, but what else?
Megan Konar 38:48
So many? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I really want to try to figure out you know, are we optimizing that trade off between resiliency and efficiency in food supply chains. I want to look at all of our food. infrastructures interconnected system and then figure out, you know, what are the critical nodes that we can prioritize investment in? Yeah. I'm also interested in how various policies have been impacted or shaped or agricultural decision making and how that in turn has impacted water. Yeah. For example, you know, trade with China. How changes to NAFTA have also impacted agriculture and water use in agriculture. So I'm interested in those trade policies and how that's impacted the system.
Pete Turner 39:34
Plus you have the explosion of the Indian and Chinese middle class. They want fresh fruits and vegetables, they want avocado toast, and how does that impact things as the demand for those things goes up around the world?
Megan Konar 39:46
Yeah, I'm trying not to leave in soy. Yeah. Are they? as they've gotten wealthier? They've demanded more meat. And so they're importing a lot of soy for their livestock production. Really?
Pete Turner 39:57
Yeah. And then where do we Put our efforts isn't better if it if food is a security issue, is it better to focus on block 52? Or is it better to focus on some area where there is conflict and you know, it's festering and creating problems potentially for allies or even us directly?
Megan Konar 40:15
Hmm. Yeah, that's, that's a hard question. I don't know if I can answer that.
Pete Turner 40:26
Okay, I have another another question on the food thing. So in terms of, you know, there's the belief, and I'm not saying good or bad. Just there's the belief that if we move towards more of a plant based protein diet, plant based other things, it apparently takes less water to grow broccoli than it does to get milk out of a cow. What is that true? Or are there drawbacks to that system? Do you think do you even know? I don't know.
Megan Konar 40:52
Yeah, just in terms of the water resources and the carbon footprint of food It's typically well understood that animal products and animal protein requires more resources and vegetables as a high up on the food chain and they live a lot longer. So if you think about all the green or all the animal feed that goes into feeding them throughout their lifespan that just accumulates, right? But But you know, there's there's trade offs with everything. So by not eating animal products or switching to other products, you know, there's always going to be trade offs.
Pete Turner 41:30
And what about the modes of transportation? Obviously, air is is not preferred, but rail trucks water, what's what's the best I can you rank them in terms of carbon emissions
engine efficiency, let's just go that route
Megan Konar 41:45
efficiency. Yeah. So I think if you were thinking about the energy or the carbon emissions that the barge and the rail are known to be the lowest per mile traveled, but I think the road network does increase the resiliency of the system because you have fewer to think so when I talk about like a resilient network, or a vulnerable network, you can think of the airline transportation system compared to the road transportation system. So the airline transportation systems organized in a way where you have these hubs. So you have major airline hubs like euro hairs, your Lantos your Dallas, you las Yeah. And so then you have lots of small little airports that kind of feed into these big hubs compared to the road system. It's more like a lattice. So you have a more even distribution of cars moving on this rotation network. So in a hub and spoke transportation system, like the airlines, if you were to have an outage or one of these hubs, then you know, you kind of widespread disruption. So it's more of a network that's optimizing efficiency, but at the expense of resiliency. Now compared to a roadway network where it's less efficient because you have just kind of more even spread have cars traveling across the network. But if you have one kind of road that goes out, there's usually lots of alternative pathways. So it's known for being very resilient. So I think the roadway network, even though it might have more carbon emissions per mile traveled, it does increase the resilience in our system. So that's one component. It's important to think about
Pete Turner 43:20
what you said Dr. Stephen running on the show. He's a climatologist. And yeah, and I just love the heck out of him because he just like, these are the practical things. Let's not do it in fear. Let's figure it out. What What is your big concern in terms of if food supplies it's a security issue? what's the what's the main thing? I mean, is it is it a given lock? Is it a What do you think it is?
Megan Konar 43:52
A good question. I guess I just want to make sure that We're able to that we have the infrastructure in place to buffer any kind of increased extremes in the weather under climate change, or a buffer any, you know, political or economic issues in the future. So that we, you know, interesting food security and water security are so tightly intertwined. Yeah, that it's important and it requires a lot of infrastructure. So it requires some kind of long range planning and investment. And we just have to think about these risks in the future and make sure that we're that we're properly investing in case something does happen.
Pete Turner 44:35
And then are we pretty good at storing water? I mean, there's so much that comes out in the wash. I mean, San Francisco, you have a chance to just go right down the street and into the ocean. Are we pretty good overall at storing what comes down? Or do we need to improve that you think over time?
Megan Konar 44:49
Yeah, we're pretty good at storing water. We've a lot of reservoirs, more dams in this country. And also you can think of groundwater aquifers as a really great way to store water. So I think there's been a lot of attention, you know, saying that we should start, we should start doing more manage recharge and storing more water underground in groundwater aquifers, which would be great. Yeah, and especially in the Central Valley and the High Plains Aquifer, which are huge agricultural bread baskets, and have been depleting their groundwater resources for last couple of decades now. So I think focusing on you know, slowing depletion, getting to sustainable limits in those aquifers, because those aquifers I think you can also think of as strategic national assets that will help us buffer any sort of variability in the future we can, as long as we have those aquifers drawn, you know, we'll be able to grow agriculture in those places. So we don't want to deplete them. Now, we want to have them know for the future so we're good at storing water. And even if you were, I think about the water footprints of things you can think of grain storage almost as a way of storing water. Yeah, because by storing green, you're storing the Water that it took to grow the grain until you consume that grain.
Pete Turner 46:03
Right? That's interesting. Yeah. I always wonder moved into Illinois, you would see some new hunk of pasture, get turned up and stacked up and put houses on and got all this beautiful black soil. Oh, my God, are we doing the right thing? It does make me sad. Yeah. But maybe I mean, the farmers know, like that, you know, this lands worth more as a house than it is to me, you know, growing corn or whatever it is.
Megan Konar 46:27
Yeah. Now, it happens around Illinois around champagne, as well. We have lots of beautiful corn and soy lands that gets turned into housing. And yeah, I think it's a shame because it's such a beautiful fertile soil, but I know that it's going to the most economically valuable use of that land. But yeah, but it's still really nice soil.
Pete Turner 46:49
What questions should I have asked you that I haven't asked you.
Megan Konar 47:03
You've done a good job. Usually my interviews are much shorter. Usually it's like 10 minutes. You've had the chance to be pretty thorough.
Pete Turner 47:14
Well, that's good. I don't think we think that's fine. I mean, it's it's fascinating to me and I think it's fascinating to a lot of people. I think you've experienced that as well. It's just, it's neat to have have these kind of conversations and explore a topic that we've never think about. I mean, the food just shows up there it is safely released. Publix wherever we're at. Presto change o horn. You know, hey, it's June. Where's the corn? Here? It is. You know?
Megan Konar 47:36
Yeah. Well, in general, I just think it's important to also do outreach like this. I think a lot of people don't realize that professors do research. People universities do a lot of
Pete Turner 47:46
research. It's a good research.
Megan Konar 47:49
Maybe not good, maybe bad, no normative statements, but just that we do research because you know, if I am not teaching in the summer, a lot of people will say Oh, are you off for the summer and yeah, I just think it's important for general people to know that professors are doing research. And that's where a lot of our understanding of, of things comes from is from universities. So
Pete Turner 48:11
well, and let me echo what you're saying, because we know a lot of PhDs on the show, especially Dr. Richards, my research partner, and all you guys do is write and try to publish, either to get tenure or to get these important ideas out of your head. I mean, it's all the time and then you're on a committee. And then you're in charge of, you know, all these other things at the school. You guys work to the bone, I'm positive, you're, I don't even know anything about you know, you work super hard. And plus, you're passionate about what you do if you wouldn't get a PhD in something, and spend all this time writing it. And the other thing is, I know from writing peer review papers is you write the thing and you're like, I just presented this to 20 people. Yeah,
Megan Konar 48:52
we did. It's an amazing luxury to be able to work on things that you think are fascinating and interesting and passionate about. So to me that That's a huge perk that you know, I have to sacrifice some salary for but yeah, but it's more just, I just think it's, it's good to to get it out there that Yeah, I'm sure the professors do more than just teaching. Yeah, they do. They don't want people to think that you know, we we have summers off, not teaching
Pete Turner 49:19
guys are all working. Yeah. Thanks for coming on the show rocker shaman.
Megan Konar 49:25
Thank you Thanks for the interest
Everybody it's Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of the break it down show. Megan Kohner joins us. She's a civil and environmental engineer, Professor researcher from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Illinois. And what she does is she looks at how food and water move and flow and are used as a resource in the nation. So when we think about things like global warming, like how, okay, we want to get trucks off the road to not move food, but like, Yeah, but trucks are really resilient. And there's always a road adjacent. If a road washes out, we move a lot of food on the Mississippi, but those locks have to be maintained to maintain that and you need that redundancy and all these things this push pull. And by the way, California has all of this food moving around internally, externally. It really feeds the nation and feeds itself as the biggest state in terms of population. So how do you create resiliency, but also efficiency there and there's business efficiency that concerned with but also environment Mental impacts. So as you study all these days, you just have more and more questions, and it's just a fascinating show, you're gonna be able to look up a bunch of her articles. She was noteworthy a couple weeks back with her latest article that kind of shows a matrix of how food moves around the nation. And that's the image for the episode. You probably saw that story in the news because everybody was really fascinated by it. It's such a great graphic. So take a look at Megan's information on Wikipedia and everywhere else and you get an idea of just what she does. fascinating, fascinating conversation. Hey, if you're new to the show, we do things like this. We have PhDs out and they come and they talk about what they're doing. And it blows our mind like Andrew Freeman who talks about cosmology. Sometimes you talk about cosmology and religion. We also have athletes on the show, we've had Tito Ortiz, who's a UFC Hall of Famer and also a wrestling Hall of Famer from his wrestling days. But then we The next day, we might have someone totally different on recently, we had David Daniels on he's a flight nurse who's everybody talks about who knows, like the best nurse they've ever met, no wife and this guy is tip of the spear of nursing guys. So A lot of different things to fill your ears for an hour every day, five days a week. That's the breakdown show. If you love the show already, just keep doing what you're doing. Share the show, buy the shirts, tell people about it suggest the show, those are the things that really help us. It really, really helps when you subscribe, truly, I'm gonna stop putting the show up on Facebook as much it just takes too much time. That's why I really need you guys to subscribe. That way I can do other things, work on news stories and work on other stuff instead of always social mediating, hey, one last thing, save the brave save the brave.org if you go there and you click on the monthly donation tab and put a small amount of money money each month and we will then go and take that money and put it to work. We're already getting veterans in at Lakers games comedy shows with Jay Mohr and Chad Prater. We're already taking him deep sea fishing and this builds this community around these guys gets them invested in their own life again and it gives them purpose over time. It really works. We are truly helping people and you can We could use your help and helping them. Here comes Megan Kohner, lions rock productions.
Unknown Speaker 3:08
This is Jay Morrison. This is Jordan. Dexter from the offspring nakedly Sebastian Yo, this is Rick Murat Stewart COPPA. This is Mitch Alexis. Andy somebody there's a skunk Baxter. Gabby Reese is Rob bell. Hey, this is john Leon Guerrero. Hey, and this is Pete a Turner.
Megan Konar 3:24
Hey, this is Megan Konar, you're listening to break it down show.
Pete Turner 3:30
Megan is she authored a paper that a bunch of my friends and I saw, you know, we're a military crowd. And so your work goes to our, to our military mind. You know, it's been, especially this most recent paper, when you look at the flow of food, in variety of forms, whether it's milk or yogurt, or grain or whatever it is, and how it gets into where it gets to and where it goes out of because that's, that's fascinating. But you also have an interesting background in that you're sort of an engineer though you work in the civil and engineering field. I mean, certainly this paper talks about that. Give us an idea about your background so we can kind of get routed here.
Megan Konar 4:07
Sure, yeah. So I'm in a southern environmental engineering department. But my research is interdisciplinary. Okay. And so I'm interested in, I mostly come I'm interested in water resources, right. But through water resources, I've gotten more interested in agriculture and food systems because most of our water goes to growing crops, which in turn then go into feed supply chains. So I've just gotten increasingly interested in how this water is incorporated into agriculture and then underpins our food supply chains. And I'm interested in you know, do food supply chains lead us to use more or less water? What are the water hazards that threaten food supply chains, water hazards could be kind of short term things like droughts and floods, or they could be long term threats like unsustainable groundwater use that will require that we grow crops in different ways in the future. Once the ground runs out.
Pete Turner 5:00
Right? Okay, what are your degrees in so we can get an idea of what your background is because I want to figure out like how on earth, but when you're sitting there senior at whatever SHERMER High School, and you're like, Ah, you know what I want to be you don't ever think of someone who is a sort of civil engineer who look at the flow of water and supplies and that's not something anybody picks. I would never know it was anything you know. So to get to that point,
Megan Konar 5:25
it is unique and it's been a long and circuitous route, that's for sure. But I started off at UC Berkeley and did environmental science policy and management, okay, UC Berkeley, so and there. I grew up in the Chicago suburbs. And so moving to UC Berkeley was a really eye opening experience because I realized that water is actually the scarce valuable resource that I had taken for granted when I was living in Chicago because we have plentiful freshwater living near Lake Michigan and then I moved to Northern California, you realize that California has a lot of really complex water issues. In politics, and, you know, the south of the state has much less water resources in the north. And so that just really got me interested in water resources.
Pete Turner 6:09
Right. I mean, follow on after Berkeley. Where did you go?
Megan Konar 6:13
Yeah, so then Berkeley I actually took some time off and traveled for a while. So I backpacked for a little bit, which was an amazing experience. And yeah, highly recommend that more Americans do it. A lot of Europeans. Yeah. Other people in other countries do that. But be in such a hurry. Right? Yeah. Cool. It's a great time to see some of the worlds that I worked in Chicago for the US Army Corps of Engineers got some experience managing freshwater resources around Chicago,
Pete Turner 6:41
good water, find you. Where did you find water?
Megan Konar 6:44
I think thinking back it was I was always around freshwater and I was interested in freshwater when I was early. When I was a kid. I remember I must have been about 10 and there was the Great Chicago flood or I would have been 12. I think it was in 1992 but There's a great Chicago flood. And I remember that really was interesting to me. I was fascinated to see the city come to a complete standstill when the downtown area flooded. So I think my boat and I've always loved going to Lake Michigan and I always loved kind of being outdoors. So maybe it was a bit natural, but I've gotten more interested in kind of technical aspects of water the engineering and economic components versus underlay but what about your your post a BA or bs stuff? Where did you go for that? Yeah, I did a master's in England. Okay. Receive Oxford. Fancy and I? Yep, very fancy. Then I came back to the US and did a PhD at Princeton, Princeton because you're no slouch.
Pete Turner 7:45
Yes. Yeah, that's fantastic. What was your PhD in?
Megan Konar 7:49
That was in Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Pete Turner 7:51
So you have an engineer education, but you are a multi disciplinarian? Mm hmm. Yeah, it's interesting. Okay. So looking at how we make Move food. You know, here in California, we've gotten to land bridges, the 80 and the 10. That goes straight across and they push a lot of supplies everywhere. And we grow a boatload know many millions of boatloads of food in the Central Valley. And then along the coast, it makes us basically the breadbasket the fruit and vegetable basket for the nation. In the paper, you talked about, like the counties that move the most, and it was like California, Canada, Canada, all these California counties. And even in this case Maricopa so close to California, it almost in effect is part of the same system or is that not fair?
Megan Konar 8:38
Yeah, I mean, in so part of it is, yeah, so in the study, we did find that a lot of food, the California counties are the biggest movers of food, and that's a lot of reasons. It's because the Central Valley is so productive in terms of its vegetables, also grains. It's because California has major urban centers also. So raw agricultural products are going there and being needed. processed into more processed goods or they're going just to direct consumption or there's a lot of international harbors. So they're being they're studi they're coming in from other countries and being moved around the country from California, or it's leaving the country and being exported out of the harbors. So that's part of the reason. Also, it's a bit mechanical as well, just because Western counties are so much bigger than Eastern counties, right. So we were trying to figure out information that more coarse scale, you're trying to estimate county scale flows. And so just the fact that there's so many fewer counties in the West and the counties are so much bigger, that also has a bit to do with it.
Pete Turner 9:40
I was fascinated by some of the things you talked about in the paper with you and your team, like the processing of the food. So here comes the milk, the milk goes to the plant and gets turned into yogurt and then primarily pushed out locally is and we always talked like Farm to Market kind of thing. Is that the preferred way when you look at how things work or are these big internal National movements of food, a better way to do it.
Megan Konar 10:04
Yeah, and that's, you know, the study, we don't really write have any normative assessment of what's what's good or bad. But we are increasingly interested in looking to try to understand because we would hypothesize that food supply chains are organized to be as efficient as possible, typically, so they're probably trying to be efficient in terms of at least cost trying to get the most affordable products to the consumer. But we're also then interested in figuring out, does that focus on efficiency? Comment, a trade off with being resilient? So does that mean that our food supply chains are vulnerable to disturbance? Or can you have both efficiency and resiliency being optimized so that's something you want to look into
Pete Turner 10:52
and as our system fairly resilient, I mean, I know like you talked about the Mississippi and Ohio rivers now they're big transport highways, but in effect, because To put trucks out to do things on that, or is that just not at all the case?
Megan Konar 11:05
Yeah, so I think we haven't finished this work. But I think we'll find that there is a pretty decent trade off between efficiency and resiliency, just the fact that we do have multiple modes that we can move food around. So so things like green are these very bulky commodities, which are pretty cheap commodities. That's where it's a little bit more tricky because it's very cost effective to move those grains out of the Corn Belt on barge down to the port of Mississippi. So it's, I think would be cost prohibitive to move that much grain on trucks or on rail. So that's why the barge is really important and if you were to have failure along some of those locks, that that might be problematic for me now out of the Corn Belt. I didn't realize how many truckloads of grain fits on one barge Yeah, one barge is equivalent to Thousand trucks. Wow so I no idea how big these barges but they're they move Oh big amount of mass
Pete Turner 12:06
that is crazy. Yeah And is it half the river the size of the Mississippi to move that much stuff for like the Missouri there's so many rivers like do they all have obviously not smaller burgers but like those big ones so they'll have that capability of having big barges like that or?
Megan Konar 12:23
Yeah, I'm not sure at what points they're too small. I think Missouri has some of the big barges. Exactly where where it gets to be too small for that.
Pete Turner 12:32
Yeah, definitely up and down the Mississippi. But these these are likely in terms of the US ancient systems to write like, as long as people have lived along the Missouri they've lived there because you could put a hunk of wood in the water and float it somewhere or at somewhere up you know, and and take a cow to market or whatever it was.
Megan Konar 12:51
Yeah, Mark Twain. A lot of his writing is based on barge and shipping life along the Mississippi.
Pete Turner 12:58
You mentioned those locks On the Mississippi River in your paper, and just now a minute ago, talking about how they're a choke point and and these locks are almost 100 years old now. How long do locks last? I mean, we talked about infrastructure all the time, like bridges and all these things that are really old. I mean, all the projects from the 30s, almost 100 years old, right. So some things are maintained. Well, like the bridges are always getting painted. I'm looked at nothing but the locks. I don't know. Talk to me about that.
Megan Konar 13:29
Yeah, no, it's it's amazing how important this infrastructure is still and it's, you know, yeah, getting on in years, like he mentioned. And I did find out that there has actually been some a lot of work I'm doing by the US Army Corps of Engineers on those locks, locks, 51 and 52, which are some critical locks in the Missouri area for shipping grain out of out of the Corn Belt and I think In my article in the conversation, I said they hadn't been overhauled and some readers luckily corrected me and said that they've actually been doing some maintenance investment. And I'm not sure what the exact current stages but but I think they're
Pete Turner 14:13
working on would you think it was up to date the Civil Engineering Task of repairing or replacing or updating something like that? I mean, that's, that's a significant project, because you're not doing that in two weeks. And you got to shut down that part of the river, I'm assuming, right?
Megan Konar 14:28
That I believe there's ways to do it without with minimal disruption to shipping traffic.
Pete Turner 14:33
Incredible. Incredible. Really? Wow. Wow. So what else was interesting that you guys pulled out? Because there's so much like, there's that one county in Texas, right on the coast. Is that is that a port? It doesn't look like it's a port town that I know of. Do you recall, recall the one there's this one, just like right there on the Gulf and it must be a port that food comes in there.
Megan Konar 14:55
Yeah, it could be overland. Yeah, I think the most interesting thing to me about this paper was just the fact that I actually thought this was one of my more boring technical papers. Yeah. So I've been really surprised with how much interest it's gotten from, from other scientists in the general public. And it really, to me just shows the power of having a really easy to understand and, and, and pretty map thing, just that map really caught a lot of people's attention. And this really surprised me, because I thought this was a really boring algorithm development paper that was going to enable our future work. Yeah, a lot of people have actually been interested just in this paper.
Pete Turner 15:36
Yeah, look at all that alfalfa. Yeah, look where it's going.
Megan Konar 15:40
Yeah. And I think part of it too, is I've just been trying to think why Mises paper, gotten a lot of attention. And I think it's partly just because you can see how interconnected Americans are from this mouth. And that's something that you know, you hear a lot in the news, how polarized or how disconnected American society is right now. So I think Maybe it's nice just having a visual representation of the fact that you know, we actually are really all connected in rural urban. We all need each other.
Pete Turner 16:09
Yeah, yeah. So you guys examine also like livestock movement too. Okay, so even like chickens and turkeys and stuff. That's right. What do we need to know about that? Like, what did you guys determine?
Megan Konar 16:21
So that's we. So we haven't really determined anything other than for all food groups. We've just basically estimated them. Okay, we haven't had the chance to like dig in yet and do any further analysis, right? Just trying to determine. So it was really just coming up with methods. And so that was we use a developed a whole bunch of new methods for mapping all the food groups. So he's done machine learning, right? When you're programming and network statistics, were some of the main tools that we sort of weave together in order to estimate these features. And we had to come up with a different statistical equation, basically for each food commodity group. So we don't estimate for livestock, we don't estimate chicken or pigs or beef into individually, because we estimate what's called the standard classification of transported goods. Okay, so that's for us commodity groupings. So we were restricted to the commodity groupings, and their groupings. There's just seven kind of big mighty groupings for food. And one of them is for all live animals. That would include everything like beef, pigs, chicken,
maybe, maybe
Pete Turner 17:39
two eggs fall into that category.
Megan Konar 17:41
Eggs are in there, they would be in animal products. Okay. Okay.
Pete Turner 17:46
And then the water part is is interesting. I want to go back to that because in your study, you made an article you mentioned that 2012 was a drought year in California, but droughts happen throughout the nation, different time, different places. What's your sense? And I know you guys didn't study that part, you didn't do a multi year like longitudinal study. But what's your sense for the impact of drought? I mean, just California has more water, it produces more food, I'm assuming.
Megan Konar 18:11
Yeah. And 2012 was also a drought year for the US Corn Belt. So it'll be really interesting to go back and well, that we have plans to and we can only look every five years because we're restricted to years that have the freight analysis framework data, which comes out every five years, the years ending in two and seven. So we have it for 2012. And our next step is to go and do this now for 2007 and 2017. And see for estimates are comparable to 2012. We my hypothesis would be that the green belts will be more prominent in the years that it wasn't experiencing a drought, although food is a bit complex, because there is grain storage, right? So it's possible that even though there was a drought occurring, you saw equal amounts of grain moving out of the Corn Belt because it was coming from storage.
Pete Turner 18:58
Are you able to see waste in that system at all? No.
Megan Konar 19:01
Okay, that's a waste. Okay, so other researchers have gotten in touch and they want to try to estimate waste misses. Yeah,
Pete Turner 19:08
we've created new questions, right? By putting this out. Yeah, if we want to go back to water. So in the Central Valley, the farmers are very and they post signs are very antagonistic towards the system, because they need more water. No, I want you know, water grows food. When you look at, you know, a country that or at least a state that has a lot of drought potential, like California does. Do you have a sense for like, where the water needs to move like to reservoirs to, you know, what are your thoughts and knowledge on that?
Megan Konar 19:39
Yes, we did a study a couple years ago where we actually looked at California in particular and the droughts that happened here 2015 to 2018 and tried to figure out basically what was happening with the water situation how how were farmers using water in the house out potentially affecting supply chains or agricultural exports from the central Valley. And so we saw that basically, during that really important drought, there was a lot less rainfall, there was a lot less irrigation available from surface sources. So that basically meant that farmers pumped a lot more groundwater. So groundwater in California is really important to enable farmers to buffer, their agricultural production during droughts are able to still produce crops during the drought. And so then what that meant is if you look at the supply chain, there's a lot more groundwater embedded in the supply chain than you would see in non drought year. So groundwater basically enables those supply chains to still function, right. And during the drought, actually, farmers were able to fallow less productive lands and they were able to switch to more valuable crops. So you actually see that yields go up during a drought because you're not growing on the least productive lands and your crop your water per value of crop. actually improves. But groundwater is really important to in California during a drought. So that was now during that drought. Governor Jerry Brown at the time implemented the sustainable groundwater management plan, which I think is has been hailed as one of the most landmark water bill is in California for the last 50 years or so. I think that the goal is to basically bring bring groundwater used to sustainable levels by 2040. Wow. Yes. Which is, I mean, does that
Pete Turner 21:29
thing, go with the plan to use reclaimed water in more ways, you know, processing.
Megan Konar 21:35
So the way that works is each they've formed groundwater management districts around the Central Valley in California. And each groundwater management district is basically going to have the ability to implement whatever plan they think is most suitable for them to bring their groundwater levels to sustainable limits. So that just means that in the long run, the amount that they're pulling out of the out of the aquifer can't be more than the amount that's going in, okay, so because groundwater you can think of it like a bank, right? So if you're, you know, putting in savings, as long as you're putting in money and you're not taking out more than you're spending, you're gonna have some savings in your account. But if you're pulling out too much money and spending it, then you're depleting your account is the same. So basically, in the long term, you just, they could do things like artificial recharge, where they're pumping water into the groundwater bank, when when they have a lot on the surface so that in a drought year, they'll have groundwater down there to pull out, right.
Pete Turner 22:32
It's just dump water in the ground, and then the water decides where to go, I suppose. Mm hmm. Yeah, that's right. So farmers and I jump up and down the Central Valley and I keep bringing this up for everybody who's listening France and Germany. It's it is a giant area for food production. I've noticed that the crops change pretty rapidly like the farmer like that's it no more whatever we're planting, in this case, almonds and grapes, tonnes almonds and grapes. How does that impact our water usage? And how food moves?
Megan Konar 23:02
Yeah, it's a good question. So finally. So from the farmer perspective, they are able to take a scarce resource like water and create a higher value product because grapes and almonds are higher value than some of the other field crops, like alfalfa, for example. So from a using a scarce resource in the most economically sensible way that that makes sense, but it has the effect of what's known as drought hardening. Because not crops and grapes are our perennial crops, which means that basically, once you make the investment of planting those crops, they typically last a couple of decades, right. So you don't want to let them die if there is a drought. So if there's a drought, you're basically not gonna be able to follow that land and just kind of wait a couple years until the drought leaves you're gonna do whatever you can to basically make sure that your crop survives that droughts, you're not going to. It basically removes flexibility right in our cultural system on the next Drop comes.
Pete Turner 24:01
And then what about like other things as the market evolves? Like people are drinking less orange juice, now they're eating less corn based products? How does that impact things?
Megan Konar 24:11
Yeah, I think farmers definitely are very savvy. And they they will change their crops to basically optimize their their revenue and their profits on the farm given their, you know, constraints. So I think if it's something that they can grow, that's more valuable than
Pete Turner 24:33
movement to like, dammit,
Megan Konar 24:35
keto, yeah.
Pete Turner 24:37
Eat some grains widget. Yeah, because the farmer does have to be smart enough to figure those things out. And maybe they rebrand too. I mean, a lot of times the things we eat are just because they've been marketed. Well, Mm hmm. Yeah. What other kind of papers have you written then? I mean, I talked about the water usage. What else have you written that's out there?
Megan Konar 24:56
Yeah, so I've also done a lot of work on global trade. Okay, and use some network statistics to try to figure out, you know, some of the key nodes and global trade and and figure out if we might be if the global trade system is resilient or vulnerable to shocks. So that's something that we're interested in. Also, I've been similar to that I'm interested in understanding if trade or if supply chains lead us to use water more or less efficiently. So I've been trying to use econometric methods to answer that question. So that's, we've been finding that at least on average, globally, trade leads us use less water. Okay, which is
Pete Turner 25:40
encouraging. And then I saw an article I think it was today where they caught fish in London, shipped it to China, and then pushed it back to London. And that seems extremely wasteful, you know, to do that, but that's, that's how that whole product is manufactured. Is that it? I mean, on the surface, that seems really wasteful, but maybe, I don't know, maybe you just can't have that kind of a plant in London effectively, you know? I don't know.
Megan Konar 26:07
Yeah. Now that's why i doing the call lifecycle assessment, or the getting the full carbon footprint of a good from throughout the entire production chain is really important because sometimes it's surprising but the transportation carbon emissions are actually dramatically less than some of the production carbon emissions. I remember there's a study a couple years ago that if British people ate Lamb that was locally produced in England and had a higher carbon footprint than lamb coming from New Zealand. So just because the lamb the production of lamb is very low in terms of carbon emissions in New Zealand Yeah, and shipping it to London, the that fraction of the carbon emissions was a lot lower. You would never think that that was the case. Yeah.
Pete Turner 26:54
So it isn't always found a market sometimes it's way far away target.
Megan Konar 26:58
Yeah, a lot of times the The transportation for food is very efficient. It's it's things like boats and barges, which are very small carbon emissions per unit or mile traveled. It's not you know, we're not moving green on airplanes. Right,
Pete Turner 27:15
right. And I guess when you so one of the things we've learned along the way is that the biggest cargo ships produce a ton of carbon emissions. And I guess that's not the case with food ships. And maybe those guys don't commingle. But those container ships that weigh a bazillion pounds and have all the stuff that we all buy, getting those things to move. And then also getting them to stop is the biggest part where it just eats up tons of carbon but that's not the case of food. As much yeah,
Megan Konar 27:44
I'm not entirely sure. It could also just be like per amount of food or per unit of food, right? It still is very small. I haven't looked at the shipping part of it, but But yeah, the mode of transportation so moving things on barges and rail In the US is relatively efficient in terms of carbon emissions compared to you know, if we were to fly. Yeah, maybe really high quality sushi, we might we might fly that on a planet that is going to have a much higher carbon emission.
Pete Turner 28:14
Yeah. What if you could change any, like one or two aspects in the nation? What would you want to see us do a better job of in terms of water and food, how those things work together?
Megan Konar 28:31
That's a good question. I think I just really want to make sure that we think about the system and make sure that it's resilient to any sort of disturbance. I'm reading really good book not now called the taste of war. Okay, just talking about how you know food systems can be vulnerable to that you can even think of those as important national security systems. Really important for defense. So I just think it's important to make sure that you think of our food system as a security issue. Okay, it's not just an environmental issue, it's a, it's a food security issue. And so we need to make sure that it's our food system is resilient to any sort of disturbance in the future could be military, or climate change. future climate change might change how and where we can grow food, grow crops, so food systems might need to adapt to basically reorganized depending on where agriculture is going to be able to occur in the future. So that's also something that I think is really important and want to work on some more.
Pete Turner 29:40
Yeah. And I'm thinking like, you know, food as security thing. You when you raise your hand, you're like, it's really important. There's 500 other micro topics that not your topic is small, but there's all these other people are alike and they're all disparate, you know, and they all need attention. They all need money. It's It's such an interesting thing. So how does one raised like these issues like these locks center, we find out they're maintained. But, you know, whatever. Let's say you find some other critical node. How do you elevate that message up? I mean, you know, I found you, you said yes. But Congress isn't looking for you right now. I'm assuming? I don't know.
Megan Konar 30:18
Yeah, no, it's a good point. But I think there is a big consensus that we need to invest in our infrastructure. So I'm not saying anything new. I just want to come up with some methods to help us prioritize investments so that we can be smart when we do get the funds allocated for infrastructure investment, I hope to be able to say well, actually, you know, given funds are, are not infinite. You know, we have finite budgets, you know, where should we most effectively put that money? What are the pieces of infrastructure that you know, we get the most bang for the buck? invest in and where, you know, do we have where do we have the base need, basically?
Pete Turner 30:58
Yeah, when we have a bigger scene What do you think we have the biggest thing
Megan Konar 31:02
that I would have to do to study?
Pete Turner 31:10
What's your sense? Like? Like, if you were gonna do a paper, you'd have a hypothesis, where would you want to? If you were trying to solve that problem? What would things would you want to examine?
Megan Konar 31:18
Yeah, my sense would be, you know, probably, we have a good sense of where the big ports and the big rail terminals and the the big, important locks Sunda on the waterways are Yeah, I would guess, you know, we're probably gonna want to prioritize some of those locks in the Mississippi. The big international shipping ports are very critical, very important. Rail terminals, even Chicago to New York to Colorado, there's a lot of important juncture points for rail. Also juncture points between multimodal transportation between road and rail. So I think also just just figuring out what those exactly are But limited sense. It's, it's where, you know, we move a lot of other freight around. Yeah, well,
Pete Turner 32:07
these systems as you know, they stack and they intermingle. And so you're looking at almost like a, and I'm being unfair, I'm just gonna characterize it as like a slice of a CAT scan. And but it's really this whole thing. And then you're like, Oh my God, this affects it. So I'm thinking about weather and all these other things. What other kind of systems? Do you have to look at at least secondary? Maybe, maybe not tertiary too far? But like, what are some of the outside systems? You're like, I just there's no way for me to study this and this, but I know they go together.
Megan Konar 32:37
Question. Um, yeah, so I guess I'm focusing on infrastructure and food systems and water infrastructure. in there, you know, I'm interested in to some extent figuring out what policies are really important and shaping that system. But you could also think it could just be because my husband's an economist, and he's a finance guy, but I'm also Increasingly realizing that finance is really important elements of, of what goes on in the food system and agricultural systems so right that's a piece that I'm probably not going to touch right now.
Pete Turner 33:11
Yeah, yeah. What is the bang for the buck? Like Where can we actually make a difference and more most reliably everything? Hey, this is Pete Turner from lions rock productions. We create podcasts around here and if you your brand or your company want to figure out how to do a podcast, just talk to me I'll give you the advice on the right gear the best plan to show you how to take a podcast that makes sense for you. That's sustainable. That's scalable and fun. Hit me up at Pete at break it down show calm Let me help. I want to hear about it more most reliably and everything. I had a question I'm gonna think there in a second. Damn it. It was good too. As long as Lance I was in the inner the inner connection. You got me thinking about the finance part. Yeah, but the systems aren't Yeah, they are complex. So finance does Matter, and then how we move these things, the product shifting, there's so many different things to wrap your head around, it's incredible. Are there? Are you overall, like confident with where we're at? And how we're progressing towards, you know, resilience and abundance of food and everything? Or are you? Are you concerned? And then if you are concerned, is it because you're so into the data that you know, like, because in my world, like, all we see is threatened terror, all we see is right in there. You're freaked out. So what's your sense for that?
Megan Konar 34:32
I'm very optimistic, positive person, just generally but then in the system, you know, we haven't had any major disturbances or, or food security issues in in the US and, you know, it's very rare. So, I'm pretty optimistic. I think I just want to make sure that we, you know, do that, that were proactive, and we make sure that something like that can't happen and just been talking to lots of people I'm just surprised that there's not really a government agency that thinks about food systems in a comprehensive way we have government agencies or other agencies that think about lots of other systems and comprehensive ways. So I've just been surprised at sort of the the lack of focus on supply chains as you know, focus on just agricultural production. Right, but not necessarily the full supply chain although I did just go to a meeting in DC last week where they are starting supply chain caucus in Congress so so I think that's there's a realization that supply chains are complex and they merit some Yeah, some thinking about them on their own
Pete Turner 35:41
way. And and again, taking these multiple systems I read that question, and make and managing them because one of the things I read a paper on someone did some great work, you know, like, Hey, we need to understand these greenhouse gases. And we've realized that all of our man made reservoirs are causing even more methane, you know, going into the atmosphere. At the same day, I read some guy like I have the answer for carbon sequestration, it's kill bladders. And I'm like, I don't think so, like, really hard to, you know, because one decision here affects this part of the I have my hand like people can see my hand, this part of the system. But meanwhile, like this other part, you know, you do have multiple local PhDs working and saying, this is, this is the best the system can be. Because if you tweak that, and when you slide that, and we add in here all of a sudden, you know, we get unwanted results, which, you know, happens all the time.
Megan Konar 36:32
Mm hmm. Yeah, unintended consequences is a sort of, you know, buzzword but you know, it's true if you change anything in the complex system, things are gonna happen that you couldn't foresee or didn't anticipate, and you just want to try to minimize minimize those.
Pete Turner 36:49
When it comes to freshwater storage and movement on freshwater and those kind of things. And by the way, it blows me away that we are so fortunate in our country, we have so much fresh water We we use for going to the bathroom. Mm hmm. Wow. You know, people would kill for that and other other places.
Megan Konar 37:08
I should say that I also do research in Zambia. Okay, I'm just always, you know, we should definitely really appreciate the amazing infrastructure we have in the US, after going there and seeing they basically have no ability to buffer. If they have a drought, they don't have grain storage, really. They have just household, each household has their own grain storage bin. They don't have much irrigation, because they're, you know, is a drought. So the infrastructure moving goods to market is they lose basically most talked about food waste there. They have serious post harvest loss, basically getting agricultural crops to market they lose a lot of that because the roads are really poor. So yeah, we definitely have a either appreciate what we have
Pete Turner 37:52
to I mean, there's so many I mean, Afghanistan, Iraq and your life. You drive this every day, like well, I fix it every day. I'm gonna drive it and I fix it. You Like, oh my god, it's so impossible. The other thing this is, this is interesting. So we tried to bring drip irrigation to Iraq, right. And when that did and greenhouses, and what that data was that targeted those farmers, as like you have something, you're in cahoots with the mayor or whatever, right? It made them a target. So we'll bring the water to them caused a lot of problems. And we were also great in trying to bring fresh water, but never thinking about the system of how to get rid of wastewater. So all this fresh water would be there. It's a win except for now you have cholera and all the other problems that come with wastewater that can't be named effectively. It's impossibly complicated. What is Yeah, very interesting. Yeah. So what do you want to do next? Like what papers are in your head that you're like, I just can't wait to get onto this thing. Obviously, the 17 data, but what else?
Megan Konar 38:48
So many? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I really want to try to figure out you know, are we optimizing that trade off between resiliency and efficiency in food supply chains. I want to look at all of our food. infrastructures interconnected system and then figure out, you know, what are the critical nodes that we can prioritize investment in? Yeah. I'm also interested in how various policies have been impacted or shaped or agricultural decision making and how that in turn has impacted water. Yeah. For example, you know, trade with China. How changes to NAFTA have also impacted agriculture and water use in agriculture. So I'm interested in those trade policies and how that's impacted the system.
Pete Turner 39:34
Plus you have the explosion of the Indian and Chinese middle class. They want fresh fruits and vegetables, they want avocado toast, and how does that impact things as the demand for those things goes up around the world?
Megan Konar 39:46
Yeah, I'm trying not to leave in soy. Yeah. Are they? as they've gotten wealthier? They've demanded more meat. And so they're importing a lot of soy for their livestock production. Really?
Pete Turner 39:57
Yeah. And then where do we Put our efforts isn't better if it if food is a security issue, is it better to focus on block 52? Or is it better to focus on some area where there is conflict and you know, it's festering and creating problems potentially for allies or even us directly?
Megan Konar 40:15
Hmm. Yeah, that's, that's a hard question. I don't know if I can answer that.
Pete Turner 40:26
Okay, I have another another question on the food thing. So in terms of, you know, there's the belief, and I'm not saying good or bad. Just there's the belief that if we move towards more of a plant based protein diet, plant based other things, it apparently takes less water to grow broccoli than it does to get milk out of a cow. What is that true? Or are there drawbacks to that system? Do you think do you even know? I don't know.
Megan Konar 40:52
Yeah, just in terms of the water resources and the carbon footprint of food It's typically well understood that animal products and animal protein requires more resources and vegetables as a high up on the food chain and they live a lot longer. So if you think about all the green or all the animal feed that goes into feeding them throughout their lifespan that just accumulates, right? But But you know, there's there's trade offs with everything. So by not eating animal products or switching to other products, you know, there's always going to be trade offs.
Pete Turner 41:30
And what about the modes of transportation? Obviously, air is is not preferred, but rail trucks water, what's what's the best I can you rank them in terms of carbon emissions
engine efficiency, let's just go that route
Megan Konar 41:45
efficiency. Yeah. So I think if you were thinking about the energy or the carbon emissions that the barge and the rail are known to be the lowest per mile traveled, but I think the road network does increase the resiliency of the system because you have fewer to think so when I talk about like a resilient network, or a vulnerable network, you can think of the airline transportation system compared to the road transportation system. So the airline transportation systems organized in a way where you have these hubs. So you have major airline hubs like euro hairs, your Lantos your Dallas, you las Yeah. And so then you have lots of small little airports that kind of feed into these big hubs compared to the road system. It's more like a lattice. So you have a more even distribution of cars moving on this rotation network. So in a hub and spoke transportation system, like the airlines, if you were to have an outage or one of these hubs, then you know, you kind of widespread disruption. So it's more of a network that's optimizing efficiency, but at the expense of resiliency. Now compared to a roadway network where it's less efficient because you have just kind of more even spread have cars traveling across the network. But if you have one kind of road that goes out, there's usually lots of alternative pathways. So it's known for being very resilient. So I think the roadway network, even though it might have more carbon emissions per mile traveled, it does increase the resilience in our system. So that's one component. It's important to think about
Pete Turner 43:20
what you said Dr. Stephen running on the show. He's a climatologist. And yeah, and I just love the heck out of him because he just like, these are the practical things. Let's not do it in fear. Let's figure it out. What What is your big concern in terms of if food supplies it's a security issue? what's the what's the main thing? I mean, is it is it a given lock? Is it a What do you think it is?
Megan Konar 43:52
A good question. I guess I just want to make sure that We're able to that we have the infrastructure in place to buffer any kind of increased extremes in the weather under climate change, or a buffer any, you know, political or economic issues in the future. So that we, you know, interesting food security and water security are so tightly intertwined. Yeah, that it's important and it requires a lot of infrastructure. So it requires some kind of long range planning and investment. And we just have to think about these risks in the future and make sure that we're that we're properly investing in case something does happen.
Pete Turner 44:35
And then are we pretty good at storing water? I mean, there's so much that comes out in the wash. I mean, San Francisco, you have a chance to just go right down the street and into the ocean. Are we pretty good overall at storing what comes down? Or do we need to improve that you think over time?
Megan Konar 44:49
Yeah, we're pretty good at storing water. We've a lot of reservoirs, more dams in this country. And also you can think of groundwater aquifers as a really great way to store water. So I think there's been a lot of attention, you know, saying that we should start, we should start doing more manage recharge and storing more water underground in groundwater aquifers, which would be great. Yeah, and especially in the Central Valley and the High Plains Aquifer, which are huge agricultural bread baskets, and have been depleting their groundwater resources for last couple of decades now. So I think focusing on you know, slowing depletion, getting to sustainable limits in those aquifers, because those aquifers I think you can also think of as strategic national assets that will help us buffer any sort of variability in the future we can, as long as we have those aquifers drawn, you know, we'll be able to grow agriculture in those places. So we don't want to deplete them. Now, we want to have them know for the future so we're good at storing water. And even if you were, I think about the water footprints of things you can think of grain storage almost as a way of storing water. Yeah, because by storing green, you're storing the Water that it took to grow the grain until you consume that grain.
Pete Turner 46:03
Right? That's interesting. Yeah. I always wonder moved into Illinois, you would see some new hunk of pasture, get turned up and stacked up and put houses on and got all this beautiful black soil. Oh, my God, are we doing the right thing? It does make me sad. Yeah. But maybe I mean, the farmers know, like that, you know, this lands worth more as a house than it is to me, you know, growing corn or whatever it is.
Megan Konar 46:27
Yeah. Now, it happens around Illinois around champagne, as well. We have lots of beautiful corn and soy lands that gets turned into housing. And yeah, I think it's a shame because it's such a beautiful fertile soil, but I know that it's going to the most economically valuable use of that land. But yeah, but it's still really nice soil.
Pete Turner 46:49
What questions should I have asked you that I haven't asked you.
Megan Konar 47:03
You've done a good job. Usually my interviews are much shorter. Usually it's like 10 minutes. You've had the chance to be pretty thorough.
Pete Turner 47:14
Well, that's good. I don't think we think that's fine. I mean, it's it's fascinating to me and I think it's fascinating to a lot of people. I think you've experienced that as well. It's just, it's neat to have have these kind of conversations and explore a topic that we've never think about. I mean, the food just shows up there it is safely released. Publix wherever we're at. Presto change o horn. You know, hey, it's June. Where's the corn? Here? It is. You know?
Megan Konar 47:36
Yeah. Well, in general, I just think it's important to also do outreach like this. I think a lot of people don't realize that professors do research. People universities do a lot of
Pete Turner 47:46
research. It's a good research.
Megan Konar 47:49
Maybe not good, maybe bad, no normative statements, but just that we do research because you know, if I am not teaching in the summer, a lot of people will say Oh, are you off for the summer and yeah, I just think it's important for general people to know that professors are doing research. And that's where a lot of our understanding of, of things comes from is from universities. So
Pete Turner 48:11
well, and let me echo what you're saying, because we know a lot of PhDs on the show, especially Dr. Richards, my research partner, and all you guys do is write and try to publish, either to get tenure or to get these important ideas out of your head. I mean, it's all the time and then you're on a committee. And then you're in charge of, you know, all these other things at the school. You guys work to the bone, I'm positive, you're, I don't even know anything about you know, you work super hard. And plus, you're passionate about what you do if you wouldn't get a PhD in something, and spend all this time writing it. And the other thing is, I know from writing peer review papers is you write the thing and you're like, I just presented this to 20 people. Yeah,
Megan Konar 48:52
we did. It's an amazing luxury to be able to work on things that you think are fascinating and interesting and passionate about. So to me that That's a huge perk that you know, I have to sacrifice some salary for but yeah, but it's more just, I just think it's, it's good to to get it out there that Yeah, I'm sure the professors do more than just teaching. Yeah, they do. They don't want people to think that you know, we we have summers off, not teaching
Pete Turner 49:19
guys are all working. Yeah. Thanks for coming on the show rocker shaman.
Megan Konar 49:25
Thank you Thanks for the interest
