EA - Juan B. García Martínez on tackling many causes at once and his journey into EA by Amber Dawn

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Juan B. García Martínez on tackling many causes at once and his journey into EA, published by Amber Dawn on June 30, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.This post is part of a series of 6 interviews. As EAs, we want to use our careers or donations to do the most good - but it’s difficult to work out what exactly that looks like for us. I wanted to interview effective altruists working in different fields and on different causes and ask them how they chose their cause area, and how they relate to effective altruism and doing good more generally. During the Prague Fall Season residency, I interviewed six EAs in Prague about what they are doing and why they are doing it. I’m grateful to my interviewees for giving their time, and to the organisers of PFS for supporting my visit. Juan B. García Martínez was born in La Mancha, Spain, and studied Chemical Engineering in Madrid (BA) and the Netherlands (MA). Looking for neglected opportunities in climate change, he wrote his Bachelor’s thesis on solar silicon and his Master’s thesis on CO2 capture.During this time, he also became deeply concerned with farmed animal suffering and global catastrophic risks.He is now Research Manager at ALLFED. In his current work, he assesses whether and how we might use various technologies to produce food that is resilient to global catastrophes, for example fermentation technology, single cell proteins from CO₂ or natural gas, sugars from plant fiber or CO₂, fats from microorganisms or hydrocarbons, microbial electrosynthesis, and non-biological synthesis of food from CO₂ or hydrocarbons. He hopes that this work will help to mitigate the effects of global catastrophic risks, but also reduce our dependence on factory farming, thus reducing animal suffering and carbon emissions.On producing food without sunlightAmber: What are you currently working on at ALLFED?Juan: My research has been focused on non-agricultural, independent, industrial food production. We’re looking at how we could produce food without requiring any sunlight at all, to complement methods that use sunlight more efficiently. Specifically, I’ve been studying industrial factories, chemical processing, food production, and a lot of biotech ingredients and alternative protein stuff.I’m also doing some more general projects, like looking into technology readiness more broadly. Which of these things are more or less ready to go than the others?Amber: Which things are the most ready-to-go?Juan: Obviously agriculture, that’s pretty straightforward, though crop relocation would be needed to maintain yields. For more technology-based stuff, I research methane single cell proteins, which they’re already making at the industrial scale. Also lignocellulosic sugar, which is converting trees and leaves into sugars — that’s been done before at some scale.Amber: How long have you been working at ALLFED?Juan: I started there as a research volunteer at the end of 2019. I really liked the type of research that they were doing: it was similar to what I’d been doing at university, with my Master’s. So I started volunteering there while I was finishing my Master's thesis on atmospheric CO2 capture, because I was getting a little tired of that.I did that for four months. I spent a lot of time working on ALLFED projects. As soon as I presented my thesis, they hired me and I worked as a research associate for 2 years. Then they hired me as a coordinator, where I'm still doing the same research stuff, but with other responsibilities: dealing with volunteers and interns, deciding where to put them, ensuring good communication between the research team and the rest of the people or the organisation—doing a little bit of everything. Now I’m working as research manager, acting as deputy to Dr Denkenberger.On planning his career using EA pri...