The food we eatU.K. report warns of coming global food shortages

Aid workers distribute bread Pakistan in 2008 // Source: nytimes.com

The British government recently warned that global food supplies will not be sufficient to feed an expanding population by 2050.

The report, a two year long investigation involving 400 experts from thirty-five countries, was released by the U.K. Government Office for Science. The report says that resource consumption and population growth are far outpacing the world’s ability to produce food.

In a statement, U.K. chief scientific adviser Professor SirJohn Beddington said that, “Urgent change is required throughout the food system to bring sustainability center stage and end hunger.”

Food security will face several challenges on both the supply and demand side.

World population is projected to grow to more than nine billion by 2050, while increasing wealth distribution will create rising demand for more protein and other foods that will cause additional strain on current food supplies.

As demand rises, production will face increasing difficulties owing to intensifying competition for land, water, and energy, while climate change will exacerbate existing resource conflicts.

The report warns that, “Nothing less is required than a redesign of the whole food system to bring sustainability to the fore.”

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that food production must rise by 70 percent by 2050 to ensure adequate food supplies.

Beddington says that reducing food waste by half could help to boost annual production by25 percent, while lowering trade barriers for poor countries could minimize price shocks.

Additionally, sustainability in the production process must be improved to more efficiently use water and energy, while steps must be taken to protect land, water, and energy from climate change to ensure sufficient food supplies.

Implementing these changes will not be easy as food production is inexorably tied to land, water, economics, and other major policy areas.

“We’ve got to actually face up to the fact that this is a complicated problem which involves vastly different levels of society and we need to be persuading policy makers not to think about food in isolation, not to think about climate change in isolation, not to think about water in isolation, not to think about energy in isolation. All of them are intimately related,” Beddington said.

Caroline Spelman, the U.K. environment secretary, echoed this call in a statement saying, “We need a global, integrated approach to food security, one that looks beyond the food system to the inseparable goals of reducing poverty, tackling climate change and reducing biodiversity loss.”

According to the report, “hunger remains widespread,” with 925 million people experiencing hunger and another billion lacking critical nutrients in their diet.

Additionally food shortages have sparked riots across the world, destabilizing governments and leading to violence.

As global food prices hit record highs from 2007 to 2009, according to the U.S. State Department, more than sixty food riots occurredin more than thirty countries, including Egypt and Haiti.

The recent riots in Tunisia that crippled its government were in part caused by surging food prices.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, more than a billion people are overeating and their obesity is spawning a bevy of health conditions ranging from diabetes to heart disease.

Professor Beddington believes that both malnutrition and overeating are representative of the failure of the current food system.

Beddingtonurged governments to begin acting immediately. “We have 20 years to arguably deliver something of the order of 40 percent more food; 30 percent more available fresh water, and of the order of 50 percent more energy,” he said. “We can’t wait twenty years or ten years indeed - this is really urgent.”

The International Grains Council forecasts that there will be a shortfall of 61.6 million metric tons of grain through June of this year.