As the global population grows from 7 billion in 2010 to a projected 9.8 billion in 2050, and incomes grow across the developing world, overall food demand is on the course to increase by more than 50 percent, and demand for animal-based foods by nearly 70 percent.
Yet today hundreds of millions of people remain hungry, agriculture already uses almost half of the world's vegetated land, and agriculture and related land-use change generate one quarter of annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
This has been claimed in a report recently released by the World Resources Institute (WRI) titled 'creating sustainable food future'. This synthesis report proposes a menu of options that could allow the world to achieve a sustainable food future by meeting growing demands for food, avoiding deforestation, and reforesting or restoring abandoned and unproductive land and in ways that help stabilize the climate, promote economic development, and reduce poverty.
The report estimates that the world has to grow 56 percent more crop calories in year 2050 than what was being produced in year 2010. Similarly, the difference between global agricultural land area in 2010 and the area required in 2050 even if crop and pasture yields continue to grow at past rates, it is estimated this gap at 593 million hectares (Mha), an area nearly twice the size of India.
The difference between the annual GHG emissions likely from agriculture and land-use change in 2050 has been estimated at 15 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent (Gt CO2e), and a target of 4 Gt that represents agriculture's proportional contribution to holding global warming below 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures. The report therefore estimate this gap to be 11 Gt. Holding warming below a 1.5°C increase would require meeting the 4 Gt target plus reforesting hundreds of millions of hectares of liberated agricultural land.
This report to meet these targets suggests a five course remedy which includes reducing growth in demand for food and agricultural products, increase in food production without expanding agricultural land, exploit reduced demand on agricultural land to protect and restore forests, savannas, and peat lands, increase fish supply through improved wild fisheries management and aquaculture; and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production.
Increased efficiency of natural resource use is the single most important step toward meeting both food production and environmental goals. This means increasing crop yields at higher than historical (linear) rates, and dramatically increasing output of milk and meat per hectare of pasture, per animal, particularly cattle and per kilogram of fertilizer. If today's levels of production efficiency were to remain constant through 2050, then feeding the planet would entail clearing most of the world's remaining forests, wiping out thousands more species, and releasing enough GHG emissions to exceed the 1.5°C and 2°C warming targets enshrined in the Paris Agreement even if emissions from all other human activities were entirely eliminated.
Closing the food gap will be far more difficult if we cannot slow the rate of growth in demand. Slowing demand growth requires reducing food loss and waste, shifting the diets of high meat consumers toward plant based foods, avoiding any further expansion of bio-fuel production, and improving women's access to education and healthcare in Africa to accelerate voluntary reductions in fertility levels, the report adds. The report also stresses the need for ensuring that food production is increased through yield growth (intensification) and not expansion, and productivity gains do not encourage more shifting, governments must explicitly link efforts to boost crop and pasture yields with legal protection of forests, savannas, and peatlands from conversion to agriculture.
The report also suggests that fully closing the gaps requires many innovations. Fortunately, researchers have demonstrated good potential in every necessary area. Opportunities include crop traits or additives that reduce methane emissions from rice and cattle, improved fertilizer forms and crop properties that reduce nitrogen runoff, solar-based processes for making fertilizers, organic sprays that preserve fresh food for longer periods, and plant-based beef substitutes. A revolution in molecular biology opens up new opportunities for crop breeding. Progress at the necessary scale requires large increases in R&D funding, and flexible regulations that encourage private industry to develop and market new technologies, the report concludes.
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