Taking Stock: Poverty buster
Extreme poverty drops in India | Reducing bird flu risk | Who's using AI writing tools | Technology solves need to destroy male chicks | North-South gap in livestock methane reduction
A farmer harvesting sweet sorghum in Andhra Pradesh, India (photo credit: ILRI/Stevie Mann)
India has undermined a popular myth about development—The Economist
India has undermined a popular myth about development. Extreme poverty in the country has dropped to negligible levels
‘Thirty years ago Siddharth Dube, a writer, visited a small village in northern India near the site of a historic peasants’ revolt. He found plenty that remained enraging: mud huts, primitive ploughs, “barefoot old men” and “bone-thin children”. One older villager, Ram Dass, recalled the bitter deprivation of his younger years, when he would work long days on someone else’s land for the meagre reward of 1.5kg of grain. On cold nights, the poor stuffed rice stalks into old clothes to keep warm. “What did we know what a quilt was?” A man was lucky to own a single pair of shoes from his wedding to his death.
‘At the time of Mr Dube’s visit in 1995 almost half of India’s population still lived below the international poverty line, according to the World Bank. Mr Dube lamented India’s lack of progress: the number of poor people in the mid-1990s exceeded India’s entire population when it escaped British rule five decades before.
‘How has India done in the three decades since? . . . The most recent survey, which covers the year to July, shows that only 1% of India’s households fell below the international poverty line in 2024 . . . .
India has, therefore, all but eliminated the most extreme forms of poverty.
‘This is wonderful news in its own right. But India’s success also calls into question a common assumption about development: that the eradication of poverty requires a manufacturing miracle, drawing masses of peasants out of the farms and into the factories. More than 40% of India’s workers are still employed in agriculture. Perhaps people can leave poverty without leaving the land. That is also one conclusion of a new paper by Vincent Armentano, Paul Niehaus and Tom Vogl, all of the University of California, San Diego, which examines some of the paths out of poverty taken by five big emerging economies—China, Indonesia, Mexico and South Africa, as well as India—from 1984 to 2017.
‘Their paper is distinctive in its focus not on time periods (such as the 1980s) or age groups (such as the elderly), but on generations (such as people who were young in the 1980s and are now elderly). . . . Surveys that follow the same people over time show that many were able to escape destitution without leaving agriculture. Of the people who left poverty in the Chinese surveys, some 37% moved from farming into something else. That figure was only 13% for Indonesia, 10% for Mexico and 7% for South Africa. Part of the reason is that the $2.15 line is so low that a modest improvement in landholdings, crop yields or rural wages can be enough to clear it. Migration to the cities may also have helped indirectly by increasing the scarcity value of rural labour, raising wages for the people who remained in the countryside.
‘Messrs Bhalla and Bhasin argue that, in India’s case, the lowest international poverty line of $2.15 has now outlived its use. Since almost everyone is now above it, the measure will fail to capture future progress. India has plenty of scope to grow and develop, but not much room to reduce poverty below 1%. Messrs Bhalla and Bhasin therefore recommend a new poverty line set high enough to capture the bottom quarter or third of the population.
‘Although the poor, by this definition, might have shoes, quilts and enough to eat, they would not be free from deprivation. . . .’
economist.com | @TheEconomist
H5N1 avian influenza: technical solutions, political challenges—The Lancet (h/t Lynn Brtown and Brian Perry)
‘It has been almost 1 year since the detection of an unprecedented spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza A(H5N1) in dairy cows in the USA. Although there is still no evidence of human-to-human transmission and human deaths have been rare, concern over the potential impacts on human health remains high. The B3.13 genotype has predominated in cattle and human beings, causing largely mild disease, but there have been worrying recent developments. In the past couple of months a new genotype, D1.1, resulted in the death of a person in Louisiana—the first death in the USA from H5N1—while a teenager in Canada was critically ill for several months. On Jan 31, the US Department of Agriculture announced the first detection of D1.1 in dairy cattle in Nevada, followed by another independent introduction in Arizona.
The risk to the general public is still considered low, but the range and sustained infection of mammals, seemingly independent spillover between species, and potential for severe disease, demand urgent action. Animal welfare, public health, and commercial trade are at stake.
‘The Food and Agriculture Organization and World Organisation for Animal Health have published a new 10-year global strategy for avian influenza which calls for better surveillance, data collection and sharing, protection of poultry through biosecurity, vaccination of birds, zoning and compartmentalisation, and other changes to poultry production to reduce the risk of infection and transmission, all under the rubric of One Health. This will require enhanced surveillance, diagnostics, and laboratory capacity, as well as the rollout of medical countermeasures and changes to agricultural practices and cultures. These are important technical solutions, but there are substantial political challenges. . . .
‘Negotiations on the much-delayed pandemic preparedness treaty continued in Geneva last week, with concern still over how effective its language may be—if any is agreed at all. Although many national and supranational agencies across human, animal, and environmental health have already been working together on avian influenza in the spirit of One Health, an effective binding treaty could formalise responsibilities and establish obligations. Yet some countries see One Health as code for actions that will harm their livestock industries. Better surveillance is needed, but reporting of infections leads to culling. Vaccination of livestock is banned in many countries and can affect international trade. The USA and Canada have only recently eased a ban on French poultry after vaccination of ducks against bird flu with concerns that vaccination might mask infections. How can these perverse incentives be changed? Certainly, the economic costs of failing to contain infection are substantial.
41·4 million birds were culled because of influenza exposure over December and January in the USA. As of November, 2024, the US Government has spent $1·25 billion in indemnity and compensation payments to farmers and egg prices have soared.
And there are examples of how farming practices can be changed in the face of commercial pressures, to prioritise animal and human health. In response to concern over rising antimicrobial resistance, several countries have introduced policies and legislation to reduce antibiotic consumption in animals, despite the immediate commercial benefits of liberal use of antibiotics.
‘The technical solutions for lessening the risk of zoonoses from food animals are known but putting them into practice comes with substantial political and economic hurdles. Unless those challenges are confronted and overcome, then we will struggle to make a substantial impact on the risk of avian influenza, or any other potential pandemic, spreading and evolving further.’
thelancet.com | @TheLancet
Researchers surprised to find less-educated areas adopting AI writing tools faster—Benj Edwards (h/t Julien Colomer)
Stanford researchers analyzed 305 million texts, revealing AI-writing trends.
‘Since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, experts have debated how widely AI language models would impact the world. A few years later, the picture is getting clear. According to new Stanford University-led research examining over 300 million text samples across multiple sectors, AI language models now assist in writing up to a quarter of professional communications across sectors. It's having a large impact, especially in less-educated parts of the United States.
‘Our study shows the emergence of a new reality in which firms, consumers and even international organizations substantially rely on generative AI for communications,’ wrote the researchers.
‘The researchers tracked large language model (LLM) adoption across industries from January 2022 to September 2024 using a dataset that included 687,241 consumer complaints submitted to the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), 537,413 corporate press releases, 304.3 million job postings, and 15,919 United Nations press releases.
‘By using a statistical detection system that tracked word usage patterns, the researchers found that roughly 18 percent of financial consumer complaints (including 30 percent of all complaints from Arkansas), 24 percent of corporate press releases, up to 15 percent of job postings, and 14 percent of UN press releases showed signs of AI assistance during that period of time.
‘The study also found that while urban areas showed higher adoption overall (18.2 percent versus 10.9 percent in rural areas), regions with lower educational attainment used AI writing tools more frequently (19.9 percent compared to 17.4 percent in higher-education areas). The researchers note that this contradicts typical technology adoption patterns where more educated populations adopt new tools fastest.
"In the consumer complaint domain, the geographic and demographic patterns in LLM adoption present an intriguing departure from historical technology diffusion trends where technology adoption has generally been concentrated in urban areas, among higher-income groups, and populations with higher levels of educational attainment.". . .
[T]he researchers say their reported adoption rates could substantially underestimate true levels of generative AI use. . . The researchers suggest that AI writing tools may serve as a leg-up for people who may not have as much educational experience’ and ‘as equalizing tools in consumer advocacy.
‘. . . When examining corporate press releases by sector, science and technology companies integrated AI most extensively, with an adoption rate of 16.8 percent by late 2023. Business and financial news (14–15.6 percent) and people and culture topics (13.6–14.3 percent) showed slightly lower but still significant adoption. . . .
‘The researchers noted that the plateauing of AI writing adoption in 2024 might reflect either market saturation or increasingly sophisticated LLMs producing text that evades detection methods.
They conclude we now live in a world where distinguishing between human and AI writing becomes progressively more difficult, with implications for communications across society.
‘"The growing reliance on AI-generated content may introduce challenges in communication," the researchers write. "In sensitive categories, over-reliance on AI could result in messages that fail to address concerns or overall release less credible information externally. Over-reliance on AI could also introduce public mistrust in the authenticity of messages sent by firms."‘
arstechnica.com | @arstechnica | @benjedwards
One actually good piece of news about eggs, briefly explained—Kenny Torrella
America’s egg industry is starting to address one of its worst problems.
‘Since the start of 2025, over 27 million egg-laying hens—9 percent of the entire national flock—have died from the bird flu or have been (horrifically) killed to slow the spread.
‘It’s led to egg shortages and price spikes, with a carton of a dozen eggs today costing double what it did in early 2022, when this latest bird flu outbreak began.
‘Because of its impact on grocery bills, the mass killing of egg-laying hens has received far more attention than the more routine cruelties in the egg industry. But each year, whether there’s a bird flu outbreak or not, far more chickens are brutally killed for an entirely different purpose.
‘The egg industry hatches around 650 million birds annually, but because half of them—the males—can’t lay eggs, egg companies kill them the day they’re born. They’re typically shredded alive or gassed with carbon dioxide. Undercover investigations into hatcheries by animal rights groups have revealed this dark but little-known side of the business. Even for the already cruel factory farm industry, it’s created an image problem for egg producers.
‘But here’s the good news: Technology to end this grisly practice is finally coming to the US.
‘Known as “in-ovo sexing” (“in-ovo” is Latin for “in the egg”), the technology detects the sex of a chicken while still in the egg so that companies can dispose of them before they hatch to avoid the shredding and gassing. There are two main ways to do it: using hyperspectral imaging to see inside the egg without puncturing it, or making a tiny hole in the egg and extracting fluid for rapid analysis. And the technology hardly raises the cost of production, at just a few pennies per carton.
‘Over the last few years, in-ovo sexing has swept the European egg industry, covering approximately 20 percent of the continent’s egg supply as of April 2024, according to an analysis by Innovate Animal Ag, a nonprofit that advocates for technological solutions to animal welfare problems. The shift was spurred by a mix of technological advancements, pressure from animal welfare groups and consumers, and several country-level laws that ban killing male chicks.
‘In the next few years, the technology might soon be embraced by the US egg industry. . . .
‘The grisly practice of mass killing male chicks may not end altogether anytime soon, as only a handful of high-end egg producers have adopted or committed to in-ovo sexing so far, and none of the big players have. But it’s often the premium companies that are the first movers in improving animal welfare and, later, large companies follow. . . .’
vox.com | @voxdotcom | @KennyTorrella
Methane reduction in livestock: Confronting the North-South gap—Robert Paarlberg
‘Methane (CH4) is a colorless, odorless gas with powerful heat-trapping properties. It accounts for roughly 30 percent of the rise in global temperatures experienced since the industrial revolution. There are many sources of methane, but roughly one-third of all human-induced emissions come from domestic ruminant food animals, especially beef and dairy cattle. These emissions increased by more than half between 1961 and 2018. The animals burp out methane due to a fermentation process in their extra stomach (their rumen), with a single cow in the United States belching out 220 pounds of methane a year, equal to 4,620 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalents. This is roughly 40 percent of the annual emissions from an average gasoline-powered vehicle.
‘This methane threat forces us to reexamine an important climate change assumption. Most emissions of CO2 come from today’s rich countries, but that is not the case for methane from livestock. The rich Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries produce 73 percent of the world’s milk, and the United States is the world’s largest producer of beef, but the Global South is the source of most methane emissions from beef and dairy cattle. As of 2022, according to Food and Agriculture Organization data, 71 percent of all dairy emissions and 77 percent of beef emissions originated in the non-OECD world. South Asia is now the leading regional source of methane from dairy, with 27 percent of the global total, more than either Europe or North America. This is a 147 percent increase compared to 1980, and India by itself accounts for 17 percent of the global total, up from just 8 percent in 1980. For beef, Brazil stands out as the leading methane emitter, responsible for 21 percent of the global total, up from just 12 percent in 1980.
The Global South has overtaken the Global North as a livestock methane threat for two reasons.
The first is continued population and income growth, which has increased consumer demand for beef and dairy products. The second reason is less obvious but far more important, especially when looking for a remedy.
The Global South lags badly in the modernization of its livestock production systems.
‘Too many unimproved breeds of cattle are being fed on low quality pastures. In the Global North over the past half-century livestock producers have gained from scientific animal breeding, improved feeds, and housing systems that bring feed to the animals instead of the other way around. These upgrades reduced production costs and increased producer income, but they also significantly reduced methane emissions per unit of output. The cattle devoted more of the energy they took in to weight gain and milk production, and less to simply staying alive, reducing the quantity of methane emitted relative to total milk and meat production. It also reduced the number of animals needed to satisfy consumer demand.
Cattle herds in the Global South are rapidly expanding to keep up with consumer demand, but they have been shrinking in the Global North.
In 1944, the United States was milking 26 million dairy cows. That number has fallen today to only 9 million cows, even as total milk production continued increasing. The OECD countries together still provide 73 percent of global milk production, but they are now home to only 20 percent of the world’s dairy cows. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. methane emissions from enteric fermentation in dairy cattle dropped 26 percent relative to milk output between 1990 and 2022. For beef production, cattle numbers in the United States have declined by one-third since 1975, while enteric methane emissions from beef fell by 32 percent.
These declines in methane emissions from cattle in the Global North have been achieved through improved animal genetics plus a replacement of most pasture feeding with feeds delivered to the animals under controlled conditions.
These conditions are far more humane than the concentrated feeding operations used for raising pigs, broiler chickens, and egg-laying hens. Beef cattle in the United States spend their first 6–12 months unconfined outdoors, feeding first on mother’s milk and then pasture. Only later do they enter a feedlot—which is still outdoors—for a final six months of fattening (“finishing”) on high energy feeds. Dairy cows in the United States also live most of their life minimally confined, walking daily from covered dry lots or temperature-controlled buildings to milking parlors.
In the Global South, most cattle are still unimproved by modern breeding and poorly fed on low-quality forage from thin or degraded pastures.
Some of these animals receive supplemental feeds, a valuable first step toward higher productivity and lower methane intensity, yet the North-South gap in methane intensity remains wide. For dairy cows in South Asia, enteric emissions per pound of milk in 2015 were nearly four times as high as in North America and western Europe. In sub-Saharan Africa they are 8.7 times as high. In beef production, cattle systems in Latin America and the Caribbean produce roughly 30 percent higher methane emissions per unit of output compared to North America; in sub-Saharan Africa emissions are 60 percent higher; and in South Asia, they are 130 percent higher. . . .
A 2023 study by Blaustein-Rejto, et al., concluded that the total carbon footprint of pasture-finished beef production—dominant in the Global South—averages 42 percent higher than for grain-finished systems dominant in Global North countries.
‘This study concluded, “pasture-finished systems have a substantially larger carbon footprint than grain-finished systems, and there is a strong positive relationship between land use intensity and carbon footprint.” A 2017 study in Food Climate Research found that soil carbon sequestration from grazing can only offset 20–60 percent of annual ruminant emissions from grazing. . . .
‘Given the forest protection and methane-reducing benefits that would come from modernizing livestock systems in the Global South, it is discouraging to see so many civil society organizations campaigning against such a move. . . . Climate-concerned critics also call for reductions in beef and dairy consumption on human health grounds, mostly in the Global North. . . . [But unlike] cigarette smoking, moderate beef and dairy consumption can actually be good for human health. . . .
Beef and dairy consumption in the Global North is no longer increasing because a saturation level for consumer demand has already been met. By contrast, consumer demand in the Global South is far from being met.
‘Some who are reluctant to modernize livestock systems in the Global South might suggest protecting the climate by giving the animals methane-reducing feed additives, such as red seaweed, or a new product named Bovaer, recently patented by the Swiss firm DSM-Firmenich. This company has claimed that only one-fourth teaspoon of Bovaer added to a cow’s daily feed ration can reduce methane emissions from dairy cattle by 30 percent on average, and for beef cattle by as much as 45 percent. The catch is that feed additive strategies can only be adopted in controlled feeding systems. This becomes just one more reason to move away from pastured cattle systems in the Global South.’
csis.org | @csis
Arresting headlines
Ancient humans used bone tools one million years earlier than thought: Objects discovered in Tanzania and dated to 1.5 million years ago help to rewrite human ancestors’ use of carved bone implements—Nature
How Afghan women live under Taliban rule—BBC
School without adequate sanitation infrastructure pose safety risks for girls—VoxDev