@OurWorld20: "The Global Food Challenge Explained in 18 Graphics"I highly recommend taking a look at the article as it does provide some useful perspective on where we are, notably:
- We not only will add over 2 billion people to the planet in the next forty years, but we will add more food consumers as we move people from hunger to nourishment. This will greatly increase the demand for food.
- As people in developing areas move into diets more consistent with the developed world, the additional demand for meat will place continued pressure on water, energy, and other ecological systems. This is especially true if we move to more CAFO style meat production.
- Our current production and distribution system capacities can handle the increased demand, mostly because we waste as much as 40% of the current food production. Increasing efficiency will yield tremendous cost savings that can reduce the economic impact of feeding 4 billion more people (combining new and currently under-fed populations).
- We need to skip over energy policy into a broader food-energy-water policy that recognizes the overlapping demands and impacts of all three.
We all need to get educated on the life cycle of our food, from growing to harvesting to transporting to processing to consuming to disposal. Especially for those of us in the developed world who have little experience with the stress that accompanies a lack of food availability, understanding the dynamics of the food system will give us the proper viewpoint from which to make decisions going forward. It will take a careful balance between economic development in developing regions and smart choices in developed regions to meet these food challenges. These smarter choices need to allow us to maintain our own quality of life without jeopardizing the potential for another - even one halfway across the world or living twenty years in the future - to improve and maintain their own high quality of life.
That is the simple challenge.
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