Amongst all the current – and long overdue – discussion of global food security, a new mantra is increasingly heard: food production must double by 2050 if a projected world population of 9 billion is to be fed. Norman Borlaug, pioneer of the Green Revolution, asserted this target at the IARI in March 2005; Jacques Diouf, head of the UN FAO repeated the requirement at a food security conference earlier this year. The claim has since been widely repeated in print and on air.
Who stands to gain?
The Global Harvest Initiative has identified this target as its express goal:
By 2050, we must eliminate the global productivity gap by sustainably doubling agricultural output to meet the needs of a growing world.
Feeding the world is an undeniably commendable aim, but is a rush to increase agricultural productivity really the best way to go about it? As Paula Crossfield, of Civil Eats, has observed, the target may do more to increase the profits of multinational agri-business than to feed the world’s hungry. Who’s behind the GHI? DuPont, Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland and John Deere.
More achievable and sustainable approaches to addressing hunger include reducing food waste along the food supply chain, distributing the world’s food more equitably and managing demand for resource-hungry meat and dairy products.
Profligacy
Tristram Stuart examines these issues in his powerful new book, Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal
Stuart digs up some truly shocking statistics from FAO data: of a total global edible food harvest of 4,600 kCal per person per day, only 2,000 kCal are consumed (1,700 are fed to animals, yielding just 400 in return; 600 are lost between field and food industry, 800 lost in distribution, retail, catering and households). The world is already producing more than twice the amount of food we actually consume.
One of many striking graphs in the book’s appendix plots countries’ GDP against edible crop harvest (including crops fed to livestock) as a percentage of nutritional requirements. In every country except the Democratic Republic of Congo, the harvest is over 100% of requirements, rising (in close correlation to GDP) to over 300% in most of the developed world and over 400% in the USA and Greece. Meat production is an important part of the story, but needn’t be such a drain on resources: another telling morsel of information is that livestock in Kenya are net contributors to food supply, feeding on residues and grass rather than arable crops.
Besides the abundance of informative data, a diverse collection of photos starkly illustrates rampant profligacy in farming, processing and retail.
Positive lessons
Stuart examines, and dismisses, possible arguments that waste is inevitable, identifying positive examples of less wasteful countries and cultures, particularly the Uighurs of China. The FAO identifies a food supply level of 130% as providing a sufficient buffer against crop failure and other supply problems; achieving this would leave enough surplus food at current production levels to feed an additional 3 billion people (without any change to dietary patterns), about the number by which the world’s population is expected to rise by 2050.
All of which suggests that we don’t need another Green Revolution to feed the world, rather to eliminate profligate waste from farm to table. Such a waste revolution will not even require drastic changes to our lifestyles, but will have to be achieved piecemeal, changing the attitude and behaviour of individuals, households, businesses and farms across the world.
Practical local steps to eliminating waste
At a local level, farms and businesses can take relatively simple steps to reduce waste. Production planning, supplying food through more diverse and direct markets, professional supply chain management, raising production standards, collaborating and sharing information, auditing sustainability and monitoring waste: all can contribute to a more efficient and less wasteful food supply system. Provenance, a new food supply and sustainability consultancy, hopes it can play a part in helping businesses achieve such vital steps.
Reducing waste to feed the world was first published on the blog of Provenance: for more sustainable food systems.
