Sometime around 2050, there are going to be nine billion people roaming this planet—two billion more than there are today. It's a safe bet that all those folks will want to eat. And that's... an incredibly daunting prospect. Right now, an estimated one billion people go hungry each day. So add two billion more people, a limited supply of arable land, plus the fact that rising incomes will boost demand for meat and dairy products, plus the fact that many key natural resources (fisheries, say) are already being overexploited… and it's hard to see the situation getting better. And that's before we get into the fact that the planet's heating up, which is expected to wreak havoc on agricultural yields.
Still, not everyone's convinced that feeding nine billion people—and doing it in a sustainable fashion—is a totally impossible task. A new paper published this week in Science, written by Britain's chief scientific adviser John Beddington along with nine other experts, outlines a way this could actually be done. The catch? Doing so would require "radical" changes to the current global food system. The paper's a great synthesis of a wide range of different food issues, and I'll just pull out the main ideas:
Boosting crop yields: If the supply of farmland is ultimately finite, then boosting yields is the only way we'll get more food. Now, this subject usually gets tangled up in heated debates about the virtues or evils of genetically modified foods—and the study authors do recommend GM crops as a "potentially valuable technology" that "should neither be privileged nor automatically dismissed." (Imagining that fancy technology will just solve all these food problems, though, is likely misguided.) But there are plenty of smaller, more mundane yield-boosting approaches, too—right now, there are plenty of small farmers in the developing world that could get more out of their land right now with better training or access to financing. (This is known as the "yield gap.")
Stop tossing out so much food: The study estimates that 30 percent to 40 percent of the world's food is thrown out each year. In poorer countries, this typically happens because the food-chain infrastructure is shoddy, or storage facilities are inadequate—something that's pretty straightforward to fix. In wealthier countries, the causes of waste are a lot more varied: Cheap food, the craze for supersized portions, the fact that stores throw away perfectly edible food because it's not as visually appealing, an overreliance on use-by dates "whose safety margins often mean that food fit for consumption is thrown away." Fixing all this would require major advocacy campaigns—though, no, it doesn't mean we'd all have to become freegans.
Fewer hamburgers: Can't imagine this one will go over well, but the authors do suggest that people will probably have to reduce their meat consumption slightly to feed nine billion people. This doesn't mean going vegetarian. A recent study from Germany's Potsdam Institute found that if everyone had a diet equivalent to eating meat three times a week, it'd be perfectly doable to feed nine billion people and rein in some of the gruesome excesses of factory farming. But if the whole world adopted a Western meat diet, we'd need to start razing forests for additional land—three million square kilometers all told, an area about two-thirds the size of the current Amazon rain forest. (Or, who knows? Maybe by 2050 we'll all resort to in vitro meat instead.)
A slew of green technical stuff: Of course, all those other measures will only go so far. There are also some serious threats to the long-term sustainability of agriculture lurking out there. Global warming's a big one. But then also water shortages due to over-extraction. Soil degradation due to poor farming techniques. Loss of biodiversity due poor management. The fact that fisheries are being ravaged (so something like a cap-and-trade system for fish could help here). A lot of the fixes here are dry and technical, and they tend to get discussed as wonky enviro ideas that might be nice to do but aren't essential. Except that, as the Science study makes clear, they really are crucial—at least if all those nine billion people want enough to eat.
P.S. Oh yes, forgot one: biofuels! It's probably going to be hard to find enough food for nine billion people if we're still diverting vast swaths of farmland for crop-based ethanol. (Though maybe by then we'll have moved on to algae fuels or electric cars or some other fancy technology.)
(Flickr photo credit: Orhan Tsolak)
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COMMENTS (6)
Must we have 9 billion people? Can we not manage to restrain this growth? If we feed 9 billion and we cannot restrain population growth, then we will be asking this question about 11 billion, or 15 billion. Sooner or later, Malthus will be right. Resource consumption has been made much more efficient through technology, beyond anything Malthus could have imagined. But resources are not infinite. At some point population growth will therefore end. Would it not be better for it to end before the whole world is impoverished?
Must we have 9 billion people? Can we not manage to restrain this growth? If we feed 9 billion and we cannot restrain population growth, then we will be asking this question about 11 billion, or 15 billion. Sooner or later, Malthus will be right. Resource consumption has been made much more efficient through technology, beyond anything Malthus could have imagined. But resources are not infinite. At some point population growth will therefore end. Would it not be better for it to end before the whole world is impoverished?
That's a good point, although as I understand it, the UN projects the global population will *stabilize* at about 9 billion by mid-century--so presumably we won't have to plan for 11 billion or 15 billion. And I think the UN is assuming that access to family planning, female education, and birth control continues to spread.
So I think 9 billion is going to be hard to avoid. And even if there was a *lot* more focus on (and funding for) family planning and so forth in the next few decades, even a world with, say, 8.5 billion people by 2050 instead of 9 billion would see similar resource constraints.
That's a good point, although as I understand it, the UN projects the global population will *stabilize* at about 9 billion by mid-century--so presumably we won't have to plan for 11 billion or 15 billion. And I think the UN is assuming that access to family planning, female education, and birth control continues to spread.
So I think 9 billion is going to be hard to avoid. And even if there was a *lot* more focus on (and funding for) family planning and so forth in the next few decades, even a world with, say, 8.5 billion people by 2050 instead of 9 billion would see similar resource constraints.
quoting from http://food.theatlantic.com/sustainability/why-big-ag-wont-feed-the-worl...
"Indeed, there will be over 9 billion people by 2050, and indeed, with less than 7 billion today, people still go hungry. But we don't need to increase crop yields to feed these people. In 2008, globally, we grew enough food to feed over 11 billion people. We grew 4,000 calories per day per person—roughly twice what people need to eat."
quoting from http://food.theatlantic.com/sustainability/why-big-ag-wont-feed-the-worl...
"Indeed, there will be over 9 billion people by 2050, and indeed, with less than 7 billion today, people still go hungry. But we don't need to increase crop yields to feed these people. In 2008, globally, we grew enough food to feed over 11 billion people. We grew 4,000 calories per day per person—roughly twice what people need to eat."
Interesting, though I'd be curious where those Atlantic numbers come from. The Science study suggests it's both a question of distribution (i.e., the waste question) and higher yields. Then again, those researchers also seem to be factoring in the fact that hotter temperatures are going to put a big dent in overall agriculture production going forward, which means we'll need other ways to boost yields.
Interesting, though I'd be curious where those Atlantic numbers come from. The Science study suggests it's both a question of distribution (i.e., the waste question) and higher yields. Then again, those researchers also seem to be factoring in the fact that hotter temperatures are going to put a big dent in overall agriculture production going forward, which means we'll need other ways to boost yields.
Agree with scharch that we can easily handle a 25% increase in food needs over the next 40 years. That's paltry growth--under 1% per year. We've been posting much larger gains that that for some time.
Plus, with EU and US population rates at or almost declining (not including immigration) it means the countries that are most equipped to produce lots and lots of food will have surpluses.
Agree with scharch that we can easily handle a 25% increase in food needs over the next 40 years. That's paltry growth--under 1% per year. We've been posting much larger gains that that for some time.
Plus, with EU and US population rates at or almost declining (not including immigration) it means the countries that are most equipped to produce lots and lots of food will have surpluses.
I'd be more sanguine about the surplus potential of the United States had we not become a net food-importing nation during the Bush administration. We don't grow enough food to feed ourselves anymore; how are we supposed to provide bountiful surpluses to the rest of the world?
I'd be more sanguine about the surplus potential of the United States had we not become a net food-importing nation during the Bush administration. We don't grow enough food to feed ourselves anymore; how are we supposed to provide bountiful surpluses to the rest of the world?