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Where will our food come from?

by Matthew

As politicians talk big on the climate, one issue that all nations seem unable to grapple with, is that of food supply. Where will our food come from?

This question is of huge concern because the quantity of food actually demanded at present, and is only a fraction of what will be demanded (needed) in the future. The UN estimates that the world’s population is expected to increase by 2 billion persons in the next 30 years, from 7.7 billion currently to 9.7 billion in 2050.

At present population growth and climate change are the current and most likely issues to place continual stress on the food system in the long run. As these stresses continue to increase, the cost to the consumer increases.

Other sharp shocks can do significant damage to food systems, such as pandemics (COVID-19) and conflict (the Russian invasion of Ukraine). Both, have the potential to be more common occurrences in the decades to come with the environmental pressures brought on by climate change.

The short-run effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have largely been felt on warehouses and supermarket shelves. On the other end, the problems are not quite so obvious and are brewing.

Environmental issues: Soil and food production
That other end is the production of food, with approximately a third of the world’s soil degraded, and this could rise to 90% by 2050 without action.

To feed 10 billion people we will need 56% more food to be produced globally

The causes of soil degradation vary, the main issues globally are desertification, climate change, the loss of biodiversity and population growth. However, pollution, run-off, erosion, and incorrect agriculture usage also contribute.

Population Growth
Along with other interconnected issues that affect food production. Human society is faced with a historically unique period of population growth, due to a dramatic decline in death rates coupled with constant fertility rates in much of the world. Population growth today consists of lower morality but high birth rates.

This has undoubtedly led to a huge increase in food being demanded in a short period of time, as fertile land decreases.

At present, the demand for food has seen agricultural land expand with the logging of forests and clearance of swamps.

This competition for usable land directly causes environmental issues such as insufficient biodiversity and increasing climate change.

On the one hand, Controls on population growth are desperatly needed in order to sustain the planet but the controls will result in a downturn of the current economic system. The current economic system relies on younger people and exponential growth to contribute to pay retirees pensions.

The impact of Conflict: the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Conflict places its own unique stress on food systems. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has placed increased strain on a food system still creaking due to the effects of the COVID pandemic.

Ukraine is known as being the breadbasket of the world (The Economist, 2022). Whilst this conflict has no climate/environmental origins more conflict will arise due to environmental degradation.

Foreign policy argues that conflict will be less the direct kind but that climate change and environmental degradation will play a significant role in fueling tensions—particularly in conditions of resource scarcity—by compounding existing political, socioeconomic, and security risks (Foreign Policy, 2022).

What we know is there are some troubling times ahead in terms of politics, policy, and migration.

Manufactured food and technology
Manufactured food provides some theoretical solutions to many of these problems. Lab grown meat and plant food can be manufactured but we do not know if these solutions would be better for the environment until mass production is well under way.

Mass production is by extremely energy and resource intensive. As a solution to this crisis it is limited in scope.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) specifies four dimensions of food security. These are food availability, food access, food stability and food use/utilisation.

New, existing, and emerging technologies can address the four dimensions of food security. For example, genetic modification, methods for improving soil fertility, and irrigation technologies can increase food availability (UNCTAD, 2017).

The solutions
Population control – This requires unpopular measures such as the very direct taxation on family sizes or indirect methods of discouraging citizens from having families. Through behavioural instruments for example.

Population control means ending growth, capitalist systems require population growth. Pension systems need a continual supply of younger workers to pay for the pensioners of today. Therefore, population growth requires an upending of capitalism to replace it with another system. A big task!

Technology – Investment in food technology provides some solutions. A lot less land is needed now than in the past to grow the same amount of food, efficiency gains are also far greater. Look at the use of the mechanical plough and in the 21st century drone technology to conduct yield analysis.

Technology offers a lot of potential in terms of increasing yields, shrinking resource usage, and reducing post-harvest losses. It also presents risks, as often the most fertile land identified by scanning technologies is land used as forest or wildlife ecosystems.

Diet changes also have the potential to offer part of a solution to the issue. This has not been discussed above but I bring it into solutions as diet changes are very important to solving this crisis.

Consuming insects instead of meat is one option pre-covid that was pretty much very intensely discussed in food circles and researched on this blog. It provides one option of increasing food supply. However, over consumption is a real risk and most countries already suffer issues with lack of diversity and fewer insects. Consumption of insects will be unsustainable in the long run and place strain on other parts of the food system.

Avoiding meat and dairy reduces global emissions, which has the possibility to in turn increase food supply indirectly. Vegetarian and vegan diets are growing in popularity often due to health benefits. The catch here are that vegetarian/vegan diets need to be balanced to make sure the correct nutrients are being consumed so as to avoid malnutrition.

It is important to state that nearly all of the above options to policymakers to increase food supply are only able to be enacted by richer countries.

One thing we do know is that our supermarket shelves will continue to look sparse. Richer countries need to work through and together with NGOs and international organisations in order to guarantee future food security, without this, the question of where will our food come from, will evolve to become where can we find food.

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Biblography and sources of interest

Askew, K. (2017) Population growth ‘a threat to food quality’ [Online]. Available at https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2017/11/10/Population-growth-a-threat-to-food-quality (Accessed 5 September 2022).

Davies, L. (2022) ‘Millions at risk in South Sudan as Ukraine war forces slashing of aid’, The Guardian, 14th June [Online]. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jun/14/millions-at-risk-in-south-sudan-as-ukraine-war-forces-slashing-of-aid-world-food-programme (Accessed 24 June 2022).

Harter, F. (2022) ‘“Marching towards starvation”: UN warns of hell on earth if Ukraine war goes on’, The Guardian, 17th June [Online]. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jun/17/united-nations-wfp-hell-on-earth-ukraine-war-russia (Accessed 24 June 2022).

Holmes, O. (2022) ‘US announces plan to build silos on Ukraine border to export grain’, The Guardian, 15th June [Online]. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/15/us-build-silos-ukraine-border-export-grain-food-prices (Accessed 24 June 2022).

http://encyclopedia.uia.org/en/problem/unsustainable-population-levels (n.d.) Unsustainable population levels | The Encyclopedia of World Problems [Online]. (Accessed 18 November 2021).

Live, A. P. N. (2018) ‘Desertification, Land Degradation, Drought cost India 2.54% of its GDP in 2014-15: Teri study – APN Live’, APN News [Online]. Available at https://www.apnlive.com/desertification-land-degradation-drought-cost-india-2-54-of-its-gdp-in-2014-15-teri-study/ (Accessed 18 November 2021).

Michael Fakhri and Sofia Monsalve (2017) ‘Ukraine helps feed the world – but its farmers, seeds and future are in danger’, The Guardian [Online]. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/13/ukraine-farmers-seed-food-crisis (Accessed 24 June 2022).

Monbiot, G. (n.d.) The banks collapsed in 2008 – and our food system is about to do the same | George Monbiot | The Guardian [Online]. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/19/banks-collapsed-in-2008-food-system-same-producers-regulators (Accessed 19 May 2022).

Morris, M. (2022) ‘Where will our food come from? | MatthewAshley.co.uk’, [Online]. Available at https://matthewashley.co.uk/?p=5429&preview=true (Accessed 28 August 2022).

Ranganathan, J., Waite, R., Searchinger, T. and Hanson, C. (2018) ‘How to Sustainably Feed 10 Billion People by 2050, in 21 Charts’, [Online]. Available at https://www.wri.org/insights/how-sustainably-feed-10-billion-people-2050-21-charts (Accessed 5 September 2022).

The Economist (n.d.) ‘The coming food catastrophe’, The Economist [Online]. Available at https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/05/19/the-coming-food-catastrophe (Accessed 22 May 2022).

The Encyclopedia, of World Problems, and & Human Potential (n.d.) ‘The role of science, technology and innovation in ensuring food security by 2030’, p. 55.

Tisdall, S. (2022) ‘Apocalypse now? The alarming effects of the global food crisis’, The Observer, 21st May [Online]. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/21/apocalypse-now-the-alarming-effects-of-the-global-food-crisis (Accessed 22 May 2022).

Coronavirus: The Importance of food security

by Matthew

The Coronavirus pandemic has shaken the globe. This once in a lifetime disaster has claimed over 100,000 lives globally and continues to do so. Most international crises do not directly lead to job losses, death, economic insecurity or food insecurity. However, this pandemic has trigged all three.

Food security, or insecurity is largely a problem of the developing world. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) defines food security as “existing when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO, 2020).

To put this into context in the developed world, people do not have to grow their own food for survival, or additional sustenance, however, in the developing world this is more common. Smallholders are dependent on their land, and in many cases are not fortunate to have access to supermarkets as those in the developed world do. This month bare shelves brought the long neglected issue of food insecurity to the unaware rich world.

Panic Buying

As grocery items on shelves disappeared, panic further increased. Shelves in supermarkets that were stripped bare of hand sanitiser and handwash the previous week were soon stripped, of toilet rolls, fresh fruit and veg, tinned food, cereals, crisps, meat, fresh and frozen. Supermarkets imposed limits (arguably way too late). Shelves that were restocked by night workers in supermarkets, were quickly stripped bare by shoppers who rushed in when the stores opened.

What all this demonstrated, is that the supply of food, particularly in the end stage, delivery to customer is especially fragile. Whether through online delivery, or in store. The supermarkets have assured the general public that enough food is available which may be true but the delivery of it to consumers is the weak link. It is possible to see supply disrupted by a number of sick delivery drivers causing issues for supermarkets in a region of the country.

Supply of food in the developed world in normal times is rarely a pressing issue. As Tim Laing professor of food policy at London’s City University puts it “panic buying aside, our supermarket shelves are usually full. We have access to a greater range of ingredients at better prices than at any time in human history” (Laing, 2020).

As a researcher on this topic its interesting to see an actual focus on short and long term issues of food security globally.

Laing in his book warns that the UK is food system is overstretched, open to disruption and far from resilient (Laing, 2020).

Laing goes further to state the bitter reality that faces us ‘we have a massively fragile just-in-time supply chain which could easily collapse; a depleted agriculture sector which produces only around 50% of the food we actually eat, leaving us at the mercies of the international markets; and production methods which are damaging to the environment and human health’ (Laing, 2020).

With UK overeliance on international markets and an inability to grow enough food (due to lack of usable land) for its citizens, which is not solely a UK issue. We have to turn to researching into other means of production and look into altering the means of consumption incrementally.

The food system is fragile, complex and not able to react to the demands of panic buying without interventionist policies, food is very much a finite resource and the production of it even more so. A good thing was at the time of this crisis there were no high rates of food loss present in the UK. This would have put untold strain on the food supply system. The panic buying has now ceased, largely because people have stocks of food to last over two weeks and also because of the restrictions in place at the major supermarkets.

One thing the pandemic is demonstrating is that policymakers must be proactive with regards to the food system, it is not enough for policymakers to take a laissez-faire approach.

More updates on the topic of food security, particularly in this context will be posted here.

References:

Rayner, J. (2020) Diet, health, inequality: why Britain’s food supply system doesn’t work, The Observer, 22nd March [Online]. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/22/tim-lang-interview-professor-of-food-policy-city-university-supply-chain-crisis (Accessed 13 April 2020).

Wood, Z. (2020) Supermarkets ready for a new week of rising to the virus challenge, The Guardian, 29th March [Online]. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/29/supermarkets-ready-new-week-virus-challenge (Accessed 13 April 2020).

It’s been a great 2016, now to 2017

by Matthew

Happy New Year!

2016, WOW. What a year.
No, I’m not just talking about Brexit or Trump here (equally big, but on a negative level). But personally!

This was the year of the graduation. The completion of my degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE). The beginning of a MSc in International Public Policy at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and a couple of interesting study trips.

The end of the year also marks the reshaping of this blog. It’s no longer going to be known as it once was. Some readers may already have noticed this but it going to taking on a more professional, politically inspired form.

I hope everyone has a great remainder of 2016, and a very happy new year 🙂

Take care!

IAPSS: Study trip to Brussels – Conclusion

by Matthew
European Parliament with IAPSS

European Parliament with IAPSS

My conclusion from my week at the political heart Europe, in Brussels.

Everything here is formed of my own opinion, and the speakers involved in the IAPSS study trip were not speaking on behalf of the EU in any official context. To protect each individual speaker’s identity, I won’t name or quote anyone officially.

Institutions visited: EU Parliament, EU Commission, Council of Europe, Institute for Europe Studies at the Free University of Brussels, A lobbyist (Burson-Marsteller), Representation of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the European Policy Centre (EPC).

The question is “the EU under threat” naturally leads one to think yes. There is certainly recognition from many speakers that we engaged with during the three days.

Crisis and governance

Being a government means crises are very much the norm. The EU is a continental governance of 28 member states, with a political-economic union, various active liberalisation policies, and over 500 million citizens. It’s easy to see how easy crisis builds up and stack up upon each other. I will not go in depth about factors outside of the union (the Arab spring and its aftermath, which led to an ongoing refugee crisis). It seems as though expansion, has happened too quick. Early success from many early EU projects, led to over-optimism. It seemed to me that most of the speakers I engaged with realising the brakes now need to be applied and recognise the need to consult EU citizens more. It seemed to me many were aware that no government/union can survive without the desire/will of its citizens.

Consulting citizens is all good and well, but I think the EU has one hand tied behind its back. Member states refuse to have the promotion of any factual information by the union. It’s clear that elements in member states would brand it as propaganda anyway. The problem when consulting citizens at the ballot box is they don’t tend to get the facts. There is a massive void between independent sources that can promote and provide facts and EU citizens. So, it’s no surprise that populists, charismatic politicians fill this void. What Europe needs is more independent (non-biased) fact-finding charities reaching out to the populace.

Political integration and democracy

I am going to stray a little and talk about the early founding of the EU. To add to this I will put forward my own opinion, which is that the EU should go back to its founding values. Political integration is something, not every member state is ready for and not every EU citizen is ready for. Political integration has come too soon, and without the consent of many Europeans. I think integration could be rolled out slowly over the next 30-50 years in but only in small chunks, and by consulting EU citizens through the ballot box. Although democracy does already exist within the EU (contrary to populist claims). Unfortunately, much of the control over political integration isn’t in the hands of ordinary EU citizens.

This is one reason why the EU feels so distant to many of its citizens. It’s good to see though that this has been recognised by the Juncker commission. It’s in the top ten priorities for Europe and it’s something I will follow to see just how the democratic deficit is being tackled. It’s important to remember that within any democratic governance/parliament, there is a democratic deficit so this isn’t EU specific. The question is to what extent and also what do those who hold power intend to do about it. The media/politicians/some citizens in the UK tend to raise the case of democracy a fair bit, overlooking the fact we have a large deficit in the UK parliament with an unelected House of Lords and some would argue an unfair balloting system at elections (no proportional democracy).

Many EU citizens are unable to understand the rather complex form of democratic representation within the EU, the processes are not the same as to how most state democracy works, which is far easier to understand. This is then exploited by politicians and the media, leading to a void between the governance and its citizens. There is a lack of independent sources out there, although this has improved in the run up to the UK referendum with sites such as fullfacts.org. There are still questions about how much real independent material citizens from other member states are able to access. The EU does provide facts about its operations but they aren’t allowed to advertise, and independent groups often have more credibility than government sources.

To conclude

The EU should look at its successes, which in turn have in many cases created its various crises. Some were undoubtedly unavoidable and were not caused by poor governance, such as the migrant crisis. However, this now faces a huge risk of being mismanaged!. However, with these sort of crises along with climate change the EU will be measured upon how it reacts and acts. The EU should stick to its liberal and inclusive democratic foundation. Liberalism won’t please everyone but the very fact it tries to accommodate everyone should see the EU through its toughest days yet.

One representation, In my opinion got weighed down too much by statistics and econometrics, not including any real social or “field” analysis. This is the problem with statistics and regressions.

Governing 500 million people with many different languages, cultures, religions, and differing viewpoints means the EU will always be in one crisis or another. What’s unique about today is the amount of crises the EU face all at once. In the past, they may have been one (or at most two side-by-side) now they are faced with multiple crises and growing populism. Populism is best defeated by sticking to the core values of inclusivity and by making rational decisions (no knee-jerk reactions), not by shifting to ideas which have brought bloodshed and grief not just on this continent but many others.

I went off on a bit of a tangent there, but it’s hard to talk about each institution individually. Maybe that’s an idea for a future post!

{Originally, I had planned to post this Tuesday 22nd March. However, I decided to hold this after the dreadful attacks in Brussels. I offer sympathies to all those involved in the terror attacks in Brussels, and across the world (most recently Iraq and Pakistan).}

Photos from the trip

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As a side note. I’ve purchased this book. I have gaps in my understanding about how certain things work in the EU. I don’t think you ever can know everything about governance really, pics and reviews will be in the books section.

It was an informative trip and was thoroughly enjoyed. I met a great set of people and may attend more events with IAPSS in the future (watch this space 😉 ).

I’ve been stressed out because of a university assignment. All back on track now 🙂

Happy New Year all

by Matthew
Happy New Year

Happy New Year

I’ve not been around the past few months, things got real difficult towards the end of last year. This was for personal reasons.

I just hope all my friends, family and colleagues had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I hope this year will be peaceful for all. I’ve got several personal goals to meet this year. Which will be quite challenging. Needless to say, I’m going to be happy to graduate in May. Simply because it’s been a long tough road and I really need something for my efforts and my career now. I will try to update this actively throughout the year as I have so much planned (I’d rather not release everything here). If you want to find out things that I have planned just stay tuned. More to come in later blog posts.

Right now, I’m focused on getting the target grades that I want for my target degree classification! Easier said then done. Wish me luck!

I have some assessments (other students) to give feedback on as part of my third assignment. The whole focus on Humanitarian intervention and the UN’s doctrine on the responsibility to protect has been interesting. Something I will expand upon in a post here when I have time.

Four pictures of what I’ve been up to the past two months (yes, that’s all I have but I’ve done more than that!)

Whilst writing this, I was listening to Architechs – Body Groove

I will be going back to Oxford quite a bit this year. Got one trip already planned. I really should have gone back there more often! But I’ve been so busy.

I know I say it all the time, but I’ll try to post more often. Happy new year everyone and take care! 🙂

The British Public and the EU – Democracy

by Matthew
British and EU flag

Britain and the EU need each other.

It seems a significant proportion of the British public believe we should have a referendum to stay in the European Union.

I will try to answer these the best I can to the extent of my knowledge currently it’s a work in progress as always.

What distresses me is the lack of any intelligent discourse when the subject (The European Union) is debated. This ranges from when the media interviews a member of public on TV or writes an article in a newspaper and let’s just not even mention question time, responses range from; the EU is undemocratic, the EU is a gravy train and what we spend towards the EU budget is too large, and it robs nations of their sovereignty. To add to this, It seems the public still believe lots of the Euromyths that have been proven to be nothing more then myth!

Furthermore, many citizens in other nations (from what I’ve been seeing on social media) now view UK citizens as being uninformed, or trying to hang on to a lost notion of empire, and due to this have many come to the conclusion that the UK is a burden on the rest of the EU.

I also worry just how misinformed the populace are and their opinion on vital constitutional issues, it often decided by the media or fringe/protest political parties. Important policy decisions and constitutional changes seem to be more knee-jerkingly drawn up. Independent research and rational reason seems to have disappeared.

Put the choice to the people they say.

The people have a choice at the ballot box. To vote for a anti-EU party such as UKIP (we can hardly call them Eurosceptic, more anti-Euro?) or vote for liberal democrats for example. Its how our representative system works and its how representative democracy has worked for hundreds of years. We seem to have a proportion of people who believe that unless a referendum is called on such issues there is no democratic choice. Do people now think we should implement direct democracy in this country then? Where a majority of decisions that affect the population is taken to the ballot box at regular referendums? Like the Swiss semi-representative model? Does the general public know the advantages/disadvantages of a direct system or more direct model of democracy?

I’m generally against this form of direct democracy which is often slow. Another drawback are the effects if the population not understanding what they are balloting for clearly enough (voter ignorance), financial imbalance can mess up outcomes, some issues are complex and thus cannot be reduced to a response as simple as yes or no, and question wording might mean the voter not being given the opportunity for their preferred option.

Representative democracy is not perfect but better then the alternatives. The politicians often don’t seem it but they often are the people most qualified to take such decisions. We elect a party (the party leader is chosen by the party) that represents us and who have (hope 🙂 ) qualified people to make decisions on our behalf

The EU is undemocratic.

As the only international government that has some element of democracy in the form of the EU parliament I find this statement odd in the least. To add, When did anyone have a vote on the founding of the UN?

I’m not saying that there is no democratic deficit. There is in the best of democratic parliaments and governmental systems.

Elections occur in every member state every 5 years. Some people on social media say this Jean-Claude Juncker, this Martin Schulz, we never voted for them. But they come through a similar party system as they do in the UK. The largest political group are the European People’s Party (EPP) in the European parliament Jean-Claude Juncker was selected. How both democratic systems work is quite complex and I believe this is one stumbling point between the public as nobody really understands it. I confess, I don’t understand the democratic system fully with regards to the EU, but it’s something over the next few years I’ll definitely understand more.

So, there is a democratic deficit. Just like at Westminster. Where we have a unelected House of Lords, both systems have flaws. No government is perfect but if we want to reduce a democratic deficit shouldn’t we look closer to home first? Westminster is archaic and out of date.

The problem I have with referendums is that they quite often slow down any good governance. The vocal few never are often not satisfied and continue to push for another/other referendums. The method of direct governance has it’s pitfalls, and I don’t think some have been entirely thought through in the past few years.

The UK still faces the possibility of a breakup of the Union in the near future (popularity of the SNP) and calls of another referendum will be on the cards as to whether Scotland should stay in years to come. The very dynamics of the country have changed with elements of direct democracy. Britain a place once known for stable politics within Europe is looking rather different (more like Belgium!), it needn’t be a bad thing though.

There is much more I have to say on this subject (as I do so many!). I’m always open to debate or expansion of points. Please leave a comment below. You can sign in using Facebook/Twitter or register for an account on my blog.

(Published from my iPhone)

Hope you all had a good summer 🙂