Mission impossible: The challenge is to double world food output by 2050 using less land, far less water and fewer nutrients – all in the teeth of increasing rates of drought.
Credit: iStockphoto
BARRING NUCLEAR WARS, pandemics and cosmic accidents, there will be about 9.1 billion people living in the world in 2050. Yet they will eat as much food as 13 billion people at today's nutritional levels. So how will we feed them all? The answer to this question could be the greatest scientific challenge of the 21st century – greater even than finding a solution to climate change.
The problem is that humanity is consuming more food, year-on-year, than it produces, especially as demand for high-protein food increases in high population developing countries like China and India.
The world is also moving towards a water crisis: cities are now taking up to half of the water that was once used to grow food, while groundwater levels are declining in every country where it is used for food production. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in the U.S. suggests that by 2025 water scarcity may inflict an annual loss of 350 million tonnes of food – roughly equivalent to losing today's global rice harvest or the entire U.S. grain crop.
We're also losing land; we are building on it, eroding and degrading it, or locking it in conservation reserves. Whatever the cause, the total available area of arable land is now falling. Compounding this, we are losing nutrients in the land we do have.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation notes that we apply about 150 million tonnes of elemental fertiliser to our farms every year; however the U.S. Department of Agriculture points out that we lose six times that amount – an estimated 1.1 billion tonnes of nutrients – through soil erosion and leaching.
The rise of biofuels presents another serious issue since it takes over arable land and diverts resources from food production (see, Non-crop biofuels to boost food security, Cosmos Online). It is estimated that by 2020 we will be burning 400 million tonnes of grain a year – equivalent to the entire world rice crop – just to keep our cars on the road.
And if you thought those figures weren't alarming enough, then there's the issue thrown up by climate change. For example, the Peterson Institute for International Economics in the U.S. says "agricultural production in developing countries may fall between 10 and 25 per cent, and if global warming progresses unabated, India's agricultural capacity could fall as much as 40 per cent."
In light of all these hurdles, as I see it, the challenge is to double world food output by 2050 using less land, far less water and fewer nutrients – all in the teeth of increasing rates of drought. And we need to do it sustainably.
The coming famine
With more and more grain stocks being fed to animals rather than humans, peak oil supply being reached, plus a burgeoning world population, it must be obvious that we are reaching new limits of the Earth's carrying capacity. There is a limit to how much food and biofuels that can be produced for the world's population while not destroying the ecology that keeps it functioning.
More wealthy people in Asia's middle classes are demanding meat and dairy products, exacerbating the problem. We will be polarised between those who can afford extravagant "western" diets and those who will starve! Consequently, we need to set an example of a sustainable diet for the rest of the world by
dismantling our damaging and resource-expensive livestock industries. We need to start investing in plant-based protein sources to supply our domestic and export markets. A plant-based diet is more than adequate for nourishment and avoids unhealthy animal fats and zoonoses.
The two avoided subjects of zero population growth and livestock industries need to be addressed if we are going to survive global warming, protect the planet's biodiversity and make food distribution more equitable.
Congratulations Cosmos & Cribb
Congratulations to Cosmos and Professor Cribb. Modern contributions to environmental matters including the availablity of resources such as food and water, now rarely seem to consider the impact of the sheer number of humans now on earth.
At least this vegetarian advocate seems to acknowledge that we need fewer humans on this planet. However, while the vegetarians around me seem to need to ingest even more manufactured vitamins and minerals than meat eating me, I shall still refer to my canine teeth when supporting my omnivorous diet. I continue to fear that the increasing number of sententious references to foodstuffs wasted on livestock intended for human consumption are just another opportunity for animal liberationists in their attempts to sever contact between homo sapiens and other species.
Canine teeth
The impact of the "sheer number of humans" on planet earth is blatantly obvious. The disparity between our "western diet" and the nutrient poor diet of millions of the world's poor is unjustifiable and immoral. We have too much; they have too little.
"Canine" teeth are for ripping and tearing food. The gorilla is a herbivore and has large canine teeth. Stop focusing on your canine teeth to justify your omnivore diet; look instead at your brain size. Do a little research, educate yourself and you will find that less meat and more vegetables would improve your health and be better for our planet.
Vegetarian diet
Just to clarify. I am not an advocate for vegetarianism.
I advocate the eating of a larger proportion of vegetables in the diet.
As there are over 1000 vegetables capable of being farmed which most of the world has never even tried, this could actually be a pleasurable experience, while saving an awful lot of land, water and energy.
Julian Cribb
A tough solution
Without all that support for the "third world" in the past decades there would be several billions (yes, billions) less to feed. Stop feeding those who make no effort or are not able to feed themselves, or at least tie support to stringent population control. Muhammad Yunus had the right idea when he made the five children maximum a condition of his micro loan program. Yes, babies will die, but every baby dead now will save many more from death in the future. This world was never meant to support 9 billion people under any conditions. -- Half the population a quarter of the problems!
Phah!
People keep pushing against genetically modified foods. They keep pushing for eating organic foods, and if you *must* eat meat, then keep it organic and free range, man! Make love, not food, man!
People argue and whine about the "unethical treatment of animals in large processing farms". But, they neglect to notice that over 2/3 of the world's population is BELOW the poverty lines; let alone the amount of under privileged people there are living in their own backyards. These people can't afford to shell out the $2 for one apple! Yes, I paid $2 for an organic apple...AN apple. Not a dozen. AN apple. One apple, when I'm expected to eat 4-8 servings of fruit a day. That's $16/day in just organic fruit...just apples. How much more would it cost me for organic wheat? Organic eggs? Organic meat? I'd need to make over $100,000/year to feed a family of 4 on organic only food.
Plus...the amount of crop loss, etc is far higher than chemically treated foods. You can't use effective chemicals to treat the plants and animals with, so there's a higher loss and a much lower yield. So, more land is needed to grow organic food.
How much land is needed to feed the 9.1 billion people of 2050? Forget the land, for a moment...what about the cost? How can these 9.5 billion people afford to eat organic food, even if it could be grown?
And all the while, the people of the Western World are sitting in their gated communities, sipping their lattes, and throwing out their half-eaten cheese burgers thinking, "Gee, I should do something."
The "Answer" to the famine.
In case you did not notice,those super-wealthy, super-powerful, and extremely well organized group of people that have ALREADY started to exterminate a certain number of people on the planet Earth, have the only answer for this very real and up-coming apocalyptic reality. Why do you think 9-11 happened? Why are we at war? Why is many of Americas enemies still alive and thriving? One-third of the worlds population WILL be exterminated by the year 2025. I PROMISE you this. The world is running out of everything. This is a fact that cannot be ignored. The above persons will rule the world with an iron fist and a handful of "servants" will be permitted to survive only to cater to those that rule. I have inside information to this and this is not an empty threat or some paranoid delusion. TRUST me! This will happen and there is nothing that you or I can do about this.
Sounds to me like a genuine
Sounds to me like a genuine HOMEGROWN environmentally sustainable wholly organic CONSPIRACY masterminded by a cabal of unknown but POWERFUL people who only have their OWN self-interest in mind.
We worry too much
People worry too much about what they hardly know anything about. For those fruits and vegies that are spayed with a pesticide, just wash them. And if something is GM the genes in a plant do not affect you.
What I'm saying is that many of the things we do now are sustainable and if we invest in organic produce I bet you a fair bit of the world will starve.
The Great Famine is coming.
And it doesn't need to be any worse than any other famine climate. No worse than 1910 when Niagra Falls froze over in fact. Because it's not the cold that will do it this time, is the sheer volume of humans on the Earth that need to be fed. We simply will not be able to feed everyone.
The Coming Cold Years
by David Driver, Ó2009
What you are about to read does not invalidate a theory of “global warming”. It exists independent of any AGW theory. What will happen, will happen in spite of global warming. It is in fact, already happening and has been happening repeatedly for centuries.
Like the concentric rings that successively appear after a pebble is dropped into a pool of water, so sunspot cycles run in multiple patterns. Those patterns are probably infinite in variation and duration, most likely lasting from one ice-age to the next. But what concerns us most of course, are simply those identifiable patterns we can easily and accurately measure, through the variation in isotopes present in successive layers of glacial ice cores.
Scientists are currently able to measure two specific patterns very accurately. There is a minor 11 year cycle, that you hear about most frequently on the news. And there is a larger and somewhat more indefinite 110-130 year cycle (Maunder, Sporer, Dalton, Oort, Wolf, etc.) that you often hear about with reference to great catastrophic events of past centuries, like the “Mini Ice Age”.
For both major and minor cycles, the end and beginning of those cycles are marked at a point (called a “minimum”) where there are the fewest visible sunspots. This also corresponds to a point where we commonly find the coldest temperatures. The presence of sunspots generally makes the weather warmer, and the absence of them usually means colder weather.
During a minor cycle, the average temperatures (usually – but not always) rise in successive years during the first 5 years, and then begin to fall during the last 5-years of the cycle. The larger and longer major cycle lasts 110-130 years. The major cycle raises the Earths temperature (more subtly, but more predictably) for 5-6 cycles (55-70 years), then it declines for another 5-6 cycles.
As of January 2008, scientists are noting the change from minor cycle-23 to minor cycle-24, and as a result, we are experiencing the normal pattern of cold temperatures, commonly found during the minimum of a minor cycle change. The reason that it’s happening a year after the event, is because the effects of an event must happen after that event has occurred. 2008, had the 4th lowest number of sunspots since recording began some 24 cycles (approx. 250 years) ago. So this time it is abnormally cold.
Additionally, the end of this current minimum cycle also marks the end of, the last of two minor sunspot-cycles left, in a major cycle that will hit a major minimum in about 20 years. And that is an additional reason why it is so unusually cold right now. The minimums are setting records that haven’t been reached since the last major minimum. Like I said, this happens every 110-130 years. The next cycle (cycle-25) will be the last cycle before we hit the bottom and have the coldest temperatures.
The primary effect of a major minimum is progressively colder weather and a shortened growing season for crops. This progression will continue until we pass though the coming major minimum in about 30-40 years.
Hopefully, that is. -- Sometimes minimums can last 100 years, or more, like the long bitter Maunder Minimum. But even if it doesn’t last long, that does not mean we don’t have reason for great concern today.
As explained earlier, each 11-year cycle has a minimum and a maximum. Right now we are at a minimum of a minor 11-year cycle. So for the next 5-years, while we are on the upswing of cycle-24, the temperatures will likely see some increase. But the following 5 years after cycle-24 peaks, the temperatures will most likely begin to plummet again, like they have for the past 5-years.
However, because this current minor cycle is part of a larger major cycle, (one which is currently nearing a “major” minimum) the bottom of cycle-24, will likely be lower than the minimum we are experiencing today. In other words, in 10-years, it will be colder than it is today. The following cycle will see even colder temperatures during the change from cycle-25 to cycle-26, and cycle-26 will see the bottom of the larger 120-130 major cycle. That is; the “major minimum”.
There is no reason to believe that the temperatures during the minimum will be unlike the years of extreme cold that have been recorded in history during prior minimums. It will in all likelihood be the same. That being the case; the trend will not be towards temperatures any warmer than those we have today, from each successive 11-year cycle to the next, for about another 60 years. So get ready for cold weather like this generation has never experienced before.
The last major minimum (Dalton), was in 1910, when the population of our planet was a mere 1.5 billion people and it passed with relatively little historical impact. In fact, most people don’t even know about it. But by the time the worst of this new major minimum hits in 20-years, there will be between 8.5-9 billion people on the planet. That’s five to six times as many people.
Please take a moment to consider the impact that will likely have on society. Because mankind has never before experienced this kind of challenge, affecting this many people, all at once.
A shortened growing season will have extremely dire consequences for that exponentially growing percentage of the world’s population (800-million today) that suffers from malnutrition and who are at the greatest risk of spreading disease to other areas during a famine. This possible threat concerns all of us, not just those who live in impoverished areas of the world. It is not only a health issue, but it will also likely become a severe economic and therefore geo-political issue if not properly prepared for. Major solar minimums have frequently had catastrophic humanitarian and social impacts in the past.
There is no reason to logically think we are immune from the same consequences as previous generations.
A famine from this approaching climate change, could easily make “The Great Famine” of 1315-1317 (right in the middle of the “Wolf minimum”), look like a neighborhood picnic that simply ran out of hot-dog buns.
National Geographic has a special series on, “The World Food Crisis” that is well worth the time it takes to view it online.
You can see it here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/food_crisis_02.html (start on pg 2, and read from back-to-front, or from the first article to most recent to gain a proper context for the series)
It’s important that you understand what has been happening to hamper our ability to produce enough food for the world, in spite of the many wonderful increases in technology mankind has discovered. There are many trends that have been accelerating the decline in mankind’s ability to feed our rapidly growing population during the last half of the 20th Century. If they remain ignored, dismissed or over-shadowed by other more general (albeit popular) scientific theories like global warming, then those trends towards diminishing resources, will continue to pose a clearly significant threat to our future, as confusion over what paradigm is most important for mankind to focus on and prepare for, paralyzes those struggling to maintain their political power into inaction, like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle.
The US alone, has lost 25%-30% of it’s farmland to other uses since 1950 and each year we lose more. So what I’m saying is not hyperbole and there exists a very high degree of probability that what I say, may happen, will happen.
The question of course is, “How severe will it be?”
Past major minimums are suspected of wiping out entire civilizations, like the Mayans (prior to the “Oort minimum”), the Norse settlements in Greenland (during the “Sporer minimum”), and much of Europe during the long and severe “Maunder minimum” of the 15th-18th Centuries, commonly called the “Mini Ice Age”. These are certainly survivable events. Mankind has lived through them before. But never under the compromised conditions we face today because of extreme over-population.
Because of the enormous size of he worlds population today compared with previous centuries, it is very possible that the shortened growing season of this next major minimum, will trigger a famine much larger than ever experienced before. We could lose as many as a quarter of the worlds population to famine, if we fail to prepare properly. And maybe even more, if the disease incumbent with such a famine and plague is not adequately contained.
Contrary to what Al Gore says; “THIS”, is the most serious calamity facing the world today.
And it’s not a “maybe”.
It’s already started!
Like I said, the next five years will probably get progressively warmer. If history is any indication of mankind’s willingness to take precautionary measures on his own behalf -- Then in all likelihood, this short warming trend will simply lull those who have the power to prepare, into a state of complacency.
That misstep could make the following ten years catastrophic.