Food security, food systems, and environmental change (original) (raw)
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The future of the global food system
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2010
Although food prices in major world markets are at or near a historical low, there is increasing concern about food security—the ability of the world to provide healthy and environmentally sustainable diets for all its peoples. This article is an introduction to a collection of reviews whose authors were asked to explore the major drivers affecting the food system between now and 2050. A first set of papers explores the main factors affecting the demand for food (population growth, changes in consumption patterns, the effects on the food system of urbanization and the importance of understanding income distributions) with a second examining trends in future food supply (crops, livestock, fisheries and aquaculture, and ‘wild food’). A third set explores exogenous factors affecting the food system (climate change, competition for water, energy and land, and how agriculture depends on and provides ecosystem services), while the final set explores cross-cutting themes (food system econo...
Sustainable Food Security in the Era of Local and Global Environmental Change
2013
This volume discusses a broad range of vital issues encompassing the production and consumption of food in the current period of climate change. All of these add up to looming, momentous challenges to food security, especially for people in regions where malnutrition and famine have been the norm during numerous decades. Furthermore, threats to food security do not stop at the borders of more affluent countries – governance of food systems and changes in eating patterns will have worldwide consequences. The book is arranged in four broad sections. Part I, Combating Food Insecurity: A Global Responsibility opens with a chapter describing the urgent necessity for new paradigm and policy set to meet the food security challenges of climate change. Also in this section are chapters on meat and the dimensions of animal welfare, climate change and sustainability; on dietary options for mitigating climate change; and the linkage of forest and food production in the context of the REDD+ approach to valuation of forests. Part II, Managing Linkages Between Climate Change and Food Security offers a South Asian perspective on Gender, Climate Change and Household Food Security; a chapter on food crisis in sub-Saharan Africa; and separate chapters on critical issues of food supply and production in Nigeria, far-Western Nepal and the Sudano-Sahelian zone of Cameroon. Part III examines Food Security and patterns of production and consumption, with chapters focused on Morocco, Thailand, Bahrain, Kenya and elsewhere. The final section discusses successful, innovative practices, with chapters on Food Security in Knowledge-Based Economy; Biosaline Agriculture in the Gulf States; Rice production in a cotton zone of Benin; palm oil in the production of biofuel; and experiments in raised-bed wheat production. The editors argue that technical prescriptions are insufficient to manage the food security challenge. They propose and explain a holistic approach for adapting food systems to global environmental change, which demands the engagement of many disciplines – a new, sustainable food security paradigm.
Sustainable Food Security in the Era of Local and Global Environmental Chang, 2013
Addressing the challenge of global food security in our era is strongly linked with other global issues, most notably climate change, population growth and the need to sustainably manage the world’s rapidly growing demand for energy, land, and water. Our progress in ensuring a sustainable and equitable food supply chain will be determined by how coherently these long-term challenges are tackled. This will also determine our progress in reducing global poverty and achieving the Millennium Development Goals. The challenge is to deliver nutritious, safe and affordable food to a global population of over nine billion in the coming decades, using less land, fewer inputs, with less waste and a lower environmental impact. All this has to be done in ways that are socially and economically sustainable. In this paper, we try to analyze the different challenges affecting the global capacity to build a food system with the potential to enhance a sustainable food security. Actions needed to make such a paradigm and policy shift, in both developed and developing countries, have been demonstrated.
Understanding the Global Food System
Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals Through Sustainable Food Systems, 2019
Current food systems are in need of profound changes. The number of hungry people recently rose to over 820 million due to climate-related conflicts and displacement. Two billion people in the world are overweight or obese and are at risk of the diseases related to over-consumption of food, an issue that affects both the developed and developing world. The food sector operates—and depends on—a natural environment profoundly under stress and faces increasing competition for its resources between different sectors. Food is the largest freshwater user, accounts for one third of GhG emissions and is responsible for land degradation, biodiversity loss and pollution. Sustainable food systems are at the core of the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations, signed by 193 countries in 2015, as food is directly or indirectly connected to all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Against this context, the present chapter outlines the main challenges that the global food system currently faces in ...
Global Food and Nutrition Scenarios
2014
9 billion by 2050 (UN, 2010). Such population growth imposes profound challenges in meeting future food requirements. According to FAO projections, a 70 % increase in food consumption is expected, driven by the above‐mentioned large increase in world population, but also by a relevant increase in PC kcal consumption. Globally, diets are also changing rapidly, with a clear tendency towards an increasing consumption of meat. For 2050, FAO has estimated meat consumption to be around 4.65 billion ton. More specifically, it is projected that by 2050, 2.3 times more poultry meat and between 1.4 and 1.8 times more of the meat of other livestock products will be consumed as in 2010 (FAO, 2009). This increase in meat consumption can be attributed to assumed increases in income and relates to the increase in average calorie intake. The world’s average daily calorie availability is projected to rise from 2 789 kcal per person per day in 2000 to 3 130 kcal per person in 2050, a 12 percent incre...
With the change of time, income growth, globalization, urbanization, high energy prices, shifting diets and climate change are transforming food consumption, production and markets. The global food crisis is affecting the structures of the human society severely and pushing millions of people into poverty and malnutrition. Recent increases in the prices of the main agricultural commodities have increased the number of hunger affected people from 850 million to 963 million all over the world. Additionally, climate change is making the platform of food insecurity more strong. Increased rainfall amounts and intensities are leading to greater rates of soil erosion, whereas increasing problem of drought in some areas affects agricultural productivity tremendously. Rising sea levels are threatening coastal aquifers and adjoining groundwater systems, which in turn, is affecting the irrigation systems and food security. In Africa and Latin America many rain fed crops are near their maximum temperature tolerance, so that yields are likely to fall sharply for even small climate changes; falls in agricultural productivity of up to 30% over the 21st century are projected. Sea level rise in the Nile delta can change the water quality, can affect many freshwater fishes, can increase the salinity of the groundwater and also can inundate the fertile agricultural lands. The water from the melting Himalayas annually supports the production of over 514 million tonnes of cereals, equivalent to nearly 55.5% of Asia's cereal production and 25% of the world production today. Melting of glaciers in Himalayas can highly reduce the agricultural productivity of India. Additionally, new biotechnological methods have been recently used to improve the quality and quantity of foods in our globalized world to meet the demands exponentially increasing world population. Genetically modified organisms are produced by specific changes introduced into their DNA by genetic engineering techniques. There is a growing concern that introducing foreign genes into edible plants may have an unexpected and negative impact on human health. By inserting genes from organisms which have never been eaten as food, new proteins with unexpected functions are introduced into the human and animal food chains. The new varieties of genetically modified seeds can increase the price of seeds, which can raise the question of affordability of the poor farmers of the developing countries. The technology can execute a devastating effect on the economy and food security of the farmers in developing world and can eventually destroy the locally adapted, inexpensive traditional crop varieties. Understanding food systems in modern socio-cultural context is essential for designing sustainable food production and marketing for adequate human consumption.
The stark observation of the coexistence of undernourishment, nutrient deficiencies and overweight and obesity, the triple burden of malnutrition, is inviting us to reconsider health and nutrition as the primary goal and final endpoint of food systems. Agriculture and the food industry have made remarkable advances in the past decades. However, their development has not entirely fulfilled health and nutritional needs, and moreover, they have generated substantial collateral losses in agricultural biodiversity. Simultaneously, several regions are experiencing unprecedented weather events caused by climate change and habitat depletion, in turn putting at risk global food and nutrition security. This coincidence of food crises with increasing environmental degradation suggests an urgent need for novel analyses and new paradigms. The sustainable diets concept proposes a research and policy agenda that strives towards a sustainable use of human and natural resources for food and nutrition security, highlighting the preeminent role of consumers in defining sustainable options and the importance of biodiversity in nutrition. Food systems act as complex social–ecological systems, involving multiple interactions between human and natural components. Nutritional patterns and environment structure are interconnected in a mutual dynamic of changes. The systemic nature of these interactions calls for multidimensional approaches and integrated assessment and simulation tools to guide change. This paper proposes a review and conceptual modelling framework that articulate the synergies and tradeoffs between dietary diversity, widely recognised as key for healthy diets, and agricultural biodiversity and associated ecosystem functions, crucial resilience factors to climate and global changes.
Chapter 1.1 Ten Forces Shaping the Global Food System
2016
The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by all nations will provide a powerful framework that will guide decision-making on policies and budgets by governments, private sector, and civil society to 2030. These goals hold the potential to set the global food system on a more sustainable path. Key messages "The wealth of the nation is its air, water, soil, forests, minerals, lakes, oceans, scenic beauty, wildlife habitats and biodiversity… that's all there is."