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Population Growth: Where’s the food coming from?

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 desperately 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).

Meat: A threat to our planet?

Having watched the BBC documentary recently on the topic of Meat production and the threat it poses to our planet. I thought a short assessment on the documentary would be appropriate.

Largely, this documentary focused on the US and South America. However, the overall message was applicable no matter where the location. The current form and sheer scale of meat production is unsustainable. This only increases when we factor in global population growth in all continents.

This is the documentary description

Following on from 2018’s award-winning Drowning In Plastic, science and wildlife presenter Liz Bonnin is travelling around the world to investigate the impact that our hunger for meat is having on our planet’s environment.

Reports from the IPCC and the FAO revealed that the global livestock industry is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the running of all the world’s transport combined – and it’s polluting our air, land, and water. So just how bad is the problem, and what can we do about it?

Liz travels from Texan megafarms, where 50,000 cows belch out vast amounts of planet-warming methane, to giant pig farms producing colossal quantities of polluting manure. In the Amazon rainforest she discovers how beef farming is a leading cause of deforestation, and comes face to face with a baby harpy eagle – a species rapidly losing its habitat as cattle farmers cut down the forest. Feeding our planet’s livestock is also leading to huge biodiversity loss and, in South Africa, Liz discovers how this is affecting life in our oceans, helping to drive the African penguin towards extinction.

Liz also meets the scientists and entrepreneurs urgently looking for solutions. At a university in California, Liz puts her hand directly into the stomach of a cow – all in the name of reducing methane emissions. In North Carolina she meets an entrepreneur who’s using his manure to power local homes. And in San Francisco, she becomes one of the first people in the world to try a lab-made chicken nugget – a product that might reduce the environmental damage caused by meat production.

Liz finishes her journey on a small farm in Wales, where she meets a family who have shifted their relationship with meat by taking the bold step of slaughtering their own animals.

At the end of her journey, Liz starts to assess her own attitude to meat, and questions what we can all do to save our fragile planet.

Twitter lit up throughout the documentary with arguments for veganism, which in itself is not the solution. Changing the behaviour of millions or potentially billions of people is difficult at best. Many advocates of veganism, advocate total veganism which in itself is unsustainable.

As I have argued previously, what we need to promote globally is a balanced diet. The dangers of unintended consequences loom large promoting such a diet, for example the land mass to for a plant based diet may be significantly less but the consequences of a loss of biodiversity have not been adequately considered. Far better to promote incremental change and balance with regards to how people eat, rather then total change as it is simply impossible to foresee every consequence of any action.

In conclusion
It is great to see that the media is finally broadcasting programmes that make the public aware of the environmental problems some of the food we consume can cause. However, this is just the beginning.

Moving forward
What is needed by everyone though is more focus on the security of food and population sustainability. Whether it be crops or meat, overall the climate will force us to change our diet. This will create ‘food deserts’ in some areas of the world, where little or nothing can grow or be produced. Overall the BBC made a good start, but more focus on the benefits of genetic modification and the circular effects of food waste/losses in different regions of the world would be something to explore.

Climate change and chickens in Nigeria

Climate change is causing serious problems across the world, from wildfires to freak storms. A topic that is often neglected is the current and future effect of the changing climate on the supply of food.

Developing countries will be affected disproportionality more then developed countries by the effects of climate change. In terms of food security, food loss is the largest food issue affecting developing countries.

In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) rural smallholders routinely function as both producers and consumers (Morris, 2018, p.10). For this reason, both food loss (losses which occur at production level) and food waste (losses at point of retail/consumption) affect the approximately 80% of smallholder farmers in Nigeria. In comparison, although around 70% of UK farms are owner occupied, however, no smallholder farmers rely primarily on their own farms to feed (DEFRA, 2009, p.99).

This makes the article titled How to roast a chicken: Climate change and farming in Nigeria by Aljazeera concerning. The subtitle sets out the real issue that African farmers will have to grapple with for the future; Extreme heat is worsening economic inequality among African farmers – and raising the spectre of future food shortages.

The article points out the losses Nigerian farmers are making on smallholder farms particularly in northern Nigeria, where most recent temperatures have spiked to 36c with farmer Olusola John who states that the severe heat has been affecting his 600 chickens (Mbamalu, 2019).

Farmer Olusola dreams of building a modern-style chicken house that could minimise his heat-related losses (Mbamalu, 2019). However, such a structure could cost as much as 19 million naira ($55,000) – more than the profits that he could recoup by selling his chickens (Mbamalu, 2019). Not only do farmers on the continent face difficulties with agricultural knowledge-transfer (which has always existed in some form and that I have reported at length), but they face the threat of climate change reducing production and deepening inequality.

Adedoyin Idowu, a senior lecturer at the University of Agriculture, Abeokuta states that in Nigeria, mortality rates for poultry are increasing “to the level of at least 15 percent per annum” (Mbamalu, 2019). Naturally, this loss is not as severe on farms with modern technology, where yields and profits are higher (Mbamalu, 2019). With high economic growth rates in Nigeria the gap between those who can afford modern technology and those who cannot will surely increase.

This means agricultural producers who are wealthy enough to mitigate the effects of global warming can plant more productive crops and raise more poultry and livestock (Mbamalu, 2019). This is why it is the more affluent Nigerian farmers who are now controlling the market, says Merlin Uwalaka, an environmental economist at the University of Alberta (Mbamalu, 2019). For Uwalaka, even a slight change in the balance of the ecosystem can be enough to plummet low-income Nigerians into dire poverty. This is particularly and issue when roughly 47 percent of the population is living in poverty, according to the World Data Lab (Mbamalu, 2019).

More government intervention and points to note

How can Nigeria address its agricultural needs? The article finds:

“The government must intensify its efforts to reduce the impacts of climate change on farmers,” says Adenike Adediran, a project manager for the International Climate Change Development Initiative. “Research producing relevant data should be carried out. This would bring to the forefront the impact of climate change, and [would] create awareness amongst all stakeholders” (Mbamalu, 2019).

Nigerian farmers say that unless the government provides that basic support, the only way they can afford to take measures to address extreme heat is to take out loans from banks that can charge interest rates as high as 28 percent (Mbamalu, 2019).

The article does not include any suggestions on how to improve agricultural knowledge-transfer (the circulation of agricultural knowledge) or pool resources in local communities which can be a cost effective means of reducing losses. Whilst it is true national governments can, and should do much more to reduce the impacts of climate change on farmers.

Bottom-up interventions such as pooling of money or materials through NGOs and local communities can go a long way to solving this crisis. Behavioural instruments could also be trialled to get those farmers that are more economically better off, to share their resources and knowledge with the benefit of decreased losses and increased production for both parties.

This demonstrates the complexities and wide issues facing smallholders not only in Nigeria but across the African continent. Only through joined up policymaking, increased resource pooling, and sharing can such pressing food security issues related to climate change be mitigated. States should work harder to make sure circulation of knowledge is efficient, loans more readily available with terms that are reasonable, and they should be more willing to work at a wider level through the African Union and other international organisations.

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References:

Mbamalu, S. (2019) How to roast a chicken: Climate change and farming in Nigeria [Online]. Available at https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/roast-chicken-climate-change-farming-nigeria-190712154410790.html (Accessed 21 July 2019)

Morris, M. (2018) South-South Cooperation: An analysis of agricultural knowledge-transfer implementation influencing smallholder food losses – An analysis utilising the case of Kenya and Ghana (August 2018)

Phillips, C. (2019) Climate change is creating catastrophic wildfires | World Economic Forum [Online]. Available at https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/the-vicious-climate-wildfire-cycle/ (Accessed 21 July 2019)

June 2019 Food Thinkers seminar

A food thinkers event will be taking place next month at City, University of London. I will be attending. Hope to meet some fellow food thinkers, policymakers and colleagues there. Details are below.

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What does viewing food as a system and resilience mean for the practice of coherent policy making?

With Bob Doherty (University of York and DEFRA)

Chaired by Professor Corinna Hawkes, Centre for Food Policy, City, University of London

Monday 24 June, 5.30pm – 7.00pm

The UK is facing the biggest overhaul of UK agrifood policy since the end of the Second World War. EU Exit, 25-year Environment plan, National Food Strategy and Agricultural bill signal the need for coherent policy development. It has become something of a truism in the burgeoning field of food studies to describe food as constituting a ‘system’. Yet this concept is invoked far more often than applied and there are still relatively few contributions that succeed in delineating an explicit conceptualisation of the food system. The contributions that have been made share an understanding that food needs to be studied holistically in order to capture the multiple activities, interactions and outcomes associated with its production, exchange, consumption and governance. The implications are also that the practice of policy making also needs to be conducted in a more holistic way.

In this context, the Chief Scientists office at the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) have set-up a systems programme team to develop a framework to put systems thinking and sound evidence at the centre of the future policy formulation process. This task is easier said than done given the complexity of the food system and the various ways it intersects with other social, health and environmental systems.

At the same time, resilient thinking is now extensively used in policymaking and raises questions such as: what has led to the current state of the food system, what is the ‘desired state’? Who gets to define this? What and who create(s) the stresses and shocks on the food system?

In this Food Thinkers, Bob Doherty will discuss the implications of understanding food as a system and the concept of resilience for future coherent policy formulation. This will be followed by a panel discussing the implications for seeing food as part of the system for the practice of food policy.

Bob Doherty is Professor of Marketing and N8 Agrifood Chair at the University of York and leads a 4-year interdisciplinary research programme on food resilience titled ‘IKnowFood’ (Global Food Security fund). Bob is also the research theme leader for food in the York Environmental Sustainability Research Institute (YESI). In addition, he has recently been seconded into UK Government Department, DEFRA as a policy fellow to work on Food Systems policy development. Bob specializes in research on the management aspects of social enterprise hybrid organizations competing in the food industry. He is currently a trustee on the board of the Fairtrade Foundation. Prior to moving into academia Bob spent 5-years as the Head of Sales and Marketing at the Fairtrade pioneer Divine Chocolate Ltd.

This seminar is free to attend but tickets are allocated on a first come first served basis so please do register to secure your space. Please also feel free to forward this invitation on to colleagues.

If you have any questions about this event please email: foodpolicy@city.ac.uk

Monday 24 June 2019

5.30pm – 7.00pm

Lecture Theatre B200, University Building

City, University of London

Register with eventbrite here

Climate impacts on food security

Among the most significant impacts of climate change is the potential increase of food insecurity and malnutrition (WFP, 2019). Post-Harvest food losses (PHL) on the African continent are of increasing concern with a rapidly growing population, in Kenya and Ghana for example they comprise of an estimated 30-50% of production at various points in the value chain (Morris, 2018, p.5).

Thus, as the climate changes with increasing desertification, the pressures of feeding populations where food is already scarce will increase exponentially. Only international awareness of the effect climate change has on food security can possibly provide the correct funding, network solutions and distribution of knowledge to assist those at the local (street-level) in reducing PHL’s.

Note: The image above depicts how climate change shapes food insecurity across the world (Carbon Brief, 2015). The map shows that climate change will increase pressure on food supplies primarily in the global south. The map that is linked to is supposed to be interactive at the carbon brief website, however, a technical problem is preventing this at the moment.

The push to consume insects instead of traditional farmed meat

Is eating insects the real answer to solving food security as the economist suggests? Moving from meat to insect protein may make sense. However, I have long argued against this. A more recent guardian article puts plummeting insect numbers ‘as threatening collapse of nature‘.

For all the hype and push towards consuming insect bars and the like we need to look into this seriously.

What the planet needs most right now is balance and we should be exercising caution before advocating the altering human of diets significantly, this also rings true for the recent vegan trend.

A move from one extreme to another may cause unintended consequences.

Update 07/05/2019: Another argument against such a proposition is that of the human effect on biodiversity. A draft UN report reveals that up to one million species face extinction due to human influence. Surely rendering the argument that humans can switch to eating insect protein dead in the water.

According to the report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the loss of pollinating insects and other ecological disasters – from the destruction of flood-saving mangroves to air pollution – poses no less of a threat than climate change (The Guardian, 2019).

The report will lend more weight to the argument that reducing the consumption of meat and dairy produce is the most viable solution, both in terms of reducing climate impacts and ecological damage. More news will be posted on these interesting developments soon.

Further Update 02/11/2020: I tried one of the free insect bars a few years ago. They were being given away at a stand put up by the Economist at London Liverpool Street Station. It was Cacao and Crickets, tasty it was too. Still caution needs to be taken if this is used as an option for solving hunger, but in with proper regulation (no over farming, or breeding) it would work.