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The Coming Famine

1 January 2012 | Categories: Back Paddock Company, Risks and solutions for the food challenge, Julian Cribb & Associates

Abstract: Feeding 10 billion people sustainably in the late 21st century will be the greatest challenge humanity and science have ever faced. While food demand will double by 2060 there are emerging scarcities of all the main resources required to produce it – water, land, energy, nutrients, science, fish, finance and stable climates. These challenge us to rethink food itself, to develop new farming systems, diets and food products for the future that are healthy, creative, delicious and tread less heavily on the planet.

Make no mistake: we are facing the greatest challenge in human history – how to feed ten billion people sustainable for more than half a century.

In the first part of this talk I will outline the limitations we face – and you may well find this a bit confronting. In the second, however, I shall describe the enormous opportunities which recreating our food systems and diet holds for us – and I trust you will find this both inspiring and motivational.

 

Demand

Tonight there will be 242,000 more human beings to dinner than there were last night.

As we’re all aware there will be around 9 billion people in the world of 2050. However our numbers will keep on climbing as more babies are born and older people live longer, probably peaking at 10 or 11 billion in the mid-2060s.

The world economy, too, will continue to grow – as China, India, Brazil and other advancing economies seek massively more high protein food.

So global demand for food is likely to double in the coming half century.

By 2065 we will need 600 quadrillion calories every single day to feed us all.

My first point is that the central issue in the human destiny in the coming half century is not climate change, terrorism or the global financial crisis.

It is whether we can achieve and sustain such a vast supply of food.

 

Constraints

My second point is that our food systems face critical limitations. Not just one or two, but a whole constellation of them, playing into one another. And serious ones!!

There are looming scarcities of just about everything we need to produce good food – water, land, nutrients, oil, technology, skills, fish, finance and stable climates.

And it is very hard to solve one, without making the others worse.

So this isn’t a simple problem that we can just throw more technology or new policies at.

It is a wicked problem.

 

Water

By 2050, nearly 8 billion people will live in the world’s cities. They will use about 2800 cubic kilometres of fresh water every year – more than the whole of irrigation farming uses today. Many cities are already meeting their own needs by stealing the farmer’s water.

Then there is the slice of farm water that climate change is stealing: rainfall over the world’s great grainbowls, evaporation from soil and dams, dwindling lakes, shrinking groundwater or the loss of icepack from mountain regions. The Himalayan glaciers are indeed disappearing. And the North China Plain is running out of water. Those two regions today feed 1.7 billion people now and must support twice as many in future.

By 2050 6 billion people will live in conditions of moderate to acute water scarcity, mainly in the regions shown in the map.

IWMI director general Colin Chartres warns “Current estimates indicate that we will not have enough water to feed ourselves in 25 years time.”

 

Lakes

Worldwide, groundwater levels and rivers are dropping as they are pumped dry. Immense waterbodies like Lake Chad are simply vanishing. America’s Colorado and Australia’s Murray River now rarely reach the sea, and there are many like them.

 A recent study in the journal Nature reported that 80 per cent of the world’s major rivers are degraded.

 

Thirsty Race

Today, humanity uses about 7,450 cubic kilometres of water a year.

Each of us uses an Olympic swimming pool of water, every two and a half years. Three quarters of that water is used to produce our food.

The cup of coffee you enjoyed this morning took fourteen buckets of water just to grow the beans. The steak you might enjoy tonight takes 15 tonnes of water to grow two pounds of beef if grassfed, and 60 tonnes if grainfed.

To put our fresh water consumption in perspective, over a lifetime we each use enough water to float the USS Enterprise.

 

Land

Today, a quarter of the world’s farm land is degraded. (FAO 2008)

A recent satellite study has found that the world has been losing one per cent of its farmland every year – due to a combination of erosion, urban sprawl, mining, recreation, toxic pollution and rising sea levels. We are currently losing 750 tonnes of topsoil every second.

If we’ve already lost 24% of our food producing land and we lose around 1% a year from here on in, you can calculate for yourself how much land our grandkids will have left to double their food production on. 

The world appears to have passed ‘peak land’ in 2001 – see the FAO graph.

 

Megacities

By 2050 the area of farm land buried under cities will exceed the total landmass of China, and the total area of land diverted to recreation and other non-food activities could rival that of the United States. This is nearly all prime farm land in river valleys and on coastal plains.

The word “development” must now be understood to mean the elimination of food potential. We need more laws to stop it.

Every hectare of good land lost near a city has to be replaced with four or five hectares of marginal country, at risk of drought or erosion, thousands of miles away – adding to global food insecurity, carbon emissions and land degradation.

Some of these mighty cities will have 20, 30 and even 40 million inhabitants. Yet they will grow little or none of their own food.

They are sustained by a mighty river of trucks that flows in every night to restock our shops and markets.

What would happen if - due to an oil crisis, a local war or natural disaster - that river of trucks failed to arrive, even for a few days?

Civilisation has designed its greatest cities as death-traps.

It is time for us to rethink them.

 

Nutrients

The world currently loses close to 90 per cent of its nutrients all along the chain from farm to fork.

On farm anything up to half of the fertiliser can be lost. Another half of our nourishment is lost in the food chain and waste disposal system.

This wastage is destroying lakes, rivers and coastal areas – as illustrated by China’s Olympic yachting course, overgrown with algae.

Modern civilization is largely dependent on finite mineral nutrients mined from rock or soil.  There are no substitutes for these.

No phosphorus, no food.

Because these minerals are finite they will sooner or later become scarce.  Just when is currently a fierce debate among scholars. But like peak oil, peak phosphorus is lying in wait for humanity, sometime this century.

When it happens, millions of farmers will be unable to afford fertiliser – and unless we have found new sources of nutrients, food prices will skyrocket.

 

Waste

In the developed world, we are the first generation in the whole of human history to throw away half our food. That picture shows the USDA’s estimate of the food trashed by the average American family every month.

Put another way, half of the hard work of the world’s farmers is going to landfill.

While a billion people go hungry and a child dies from malnutrition every five seconds, we waste food sufficient to feed 3 billion.

Our generation, it appears, has lost its respect for food – the very thing that keeps us all alive.

Our grandparents would say we were idiots. And they’d be right.

 

Peak Oil

Global peak oil happened in 2006, according to the International Energy Agency.  It has certainly occurred 50 out of 65 of the world’s oil producing regions – including, possibly, Saudi Arabia.

Yet 60 million new cars will hit the world’s roads this year.

Whether the coming oil crisis happens next week or next decade, it is now a safe bet – and it will have a huge impact on the cost f farming and on both the price and availability of food worldwide

The modern food system is totally dependent on oil. Each of us consumes the distillate from 66 barrels, embodied in the food we eat.

Farm fuels are generally not a solution, as they drive up food prices. In theory you could grow enough fuel on farm to run all the tractors, but that would cut global food supplies by 10 per cent. And if you grew enough to run the trucks that supply out cities, it would cut global food by 30 per cent.

We need a crash worldwide program convert the whole of the world’s advanced farming systems to another energy source: algal biodiesel maybe. 2^nd generation biofuels. Or hydrogen. Or solar electrics.

But our governments are mostly asleep at the wheel on this looming crisis.

 

Fisheries

Fisheries scientists say a third of world fisheries have already collapsed and another third are in trouble. (Worm et al 2007). Whatever happens, we are not going to double the supply of wild-caught fish as world food demand doubles.

As FAO (2008) put it: “the maximum wild capture fishery potential from the world’s oceans has probably been reached”.

If we cannot double the fish catch, then we will have to get the extra 100 million tonnes of protein from land animals or fish farms. This will require us to grow a billion tonnes more grain.

In addition to this, FAO expects global meat demand to rise by 185mt by 2050.

Just to put the scale of the food production challenge in perspective for you, we’d need to discover three more North Americas to grow enough grain to feed all these livestock.

 

Climate

This is all happening in a time of climate change. “Our crops are adapted to climates which are about to become extinct,” is how Cary Fowler, who runs the Svalbard Seed Vault, sums it up.

The UK’s Hadley Centre thinks drought could regularly affect 40 per cent of the planet’s land area by the end of this century.

Their soil moisture projection suggests that regions once thought to have big farming potential, like Brazil, southern Africa and the Indian grain bowl, may prove unreliable.

The International Food Policy Research Institute warns of a 30% drop in irrigated wheat in Asia and 15% in rice due to climate factors. The World Bank thinks African productivity could halve and India’s drop by 30 per cent.

There general consensus is that global food production could drop 25%, right when we are trying to double it.

In the last few months drought and floods have smashed key food growing regions of China and the US. As we well know, nowhere is immune.

 

Challenge

This gives an idea of the challenge facing the world’s food industry in the next two generations.

We need to double the global food supply using half the water, less land, without fossil fuels, with scarce and costly fertiliser and chemicals, under the hammer of climate change.

This may seem like a massive task.

But it is also a magnificent opportunity for all those involved in food – and especially for good farmers and imaginative cooks.

It is the challenge of our Age.

It is a chance for Australia to pioneer novel farming and food systems and a truly sustainable, healthy and delicious new cuisine.

 

R&D

But we have put our farmers behind the eight ball.

On top of the scarcities of land, water, energy and nutrients agriculture is driving into a huge technology pothole.

This is because of decisions by national and regional governments worldwide, by aid donors and academic institutions, to slash funding for agricultural research over four decades.

In the year 2000 the rich countries spent just 1.8 cents in every research dollar on ag research, so unimportant has food become to them.

To give you a comparison: the world spends about $50 billion a year on food science.

And it spends $1500 billion a year on weapons.

To develop the sustainable eco-agriculture of the future, and the sustainable healthy diet that does not kill half its consumers, like our current one, we need massively more investment in food science and technology.

Creating the sustainable food revolution is, today, humanity’s most urgent task and greatest scientific challenge.

 

Conflict

The reason is that, if we fail, the consequences will affect every person on the planet.

Modern wars are often driven by scarcities of food, land and water.

Dafour, Rwanda, Eritrea, the Balkans were all destabilized, at root, by squabbles over these resources. Going further back, the French and Russian civil wars both grew out of bread crises. We know that hunger breeds war.

The UK Ministry of Defence – which developed this threat map – America’s CIA, the US Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Oslo Peace Research Institute all identify food scarcity as a trigger for revolution, government collapse and wars, possibly even nuclear.

 

Food Prices

The riots that overthrew governments in Egypt and Tunisia this year both began with a public outcry over food prices.

Globally, as FAO points out, food prices are now at their highest level on record, peaking twice in three years.

But the good news, ladies and gentlemen, is that many wars can also be avoided – by successfully meeting the world’s need for sustenance.

Investing in food and farming science is, in other words, defence spending. It merits equal priority.

 

Refugees

Recent years have also witnessed a surge in the number of refugees and legal immigrants.

Future famines in any significant region – Africa, India, Central Asia, China, Indonesia, Middle East or any of the megacities – will confront the world with tidal waves of tens, even hundreds of millions of refugees, swamping their neighbouring countries.

In future, even places that think they are safe may face tidal movements of people in the millions or tens of millions, bringing profound change to society and impacting the whole world.

Let there be no doubt that solving global food insecurity is the great challenge of our time.

So what are the solutions?

Here are some of the most important – and exciting.

 

SOLUTIONS

We need to redouble the global investment in agricultural and food science.  In my estimate we should lift the total agrifood R&D spend to at least $80 billion, twice what it is today.

Then, for every research dollar we need to spend another dollar getting the knowledge into the hands of the world’s 1.8 billion farmers.

We must generate the greatest knowledge sharing effort in history – to reach not only farmers, but also all cooks, food processors, restaurants and consumers

Using the internet and modern mass communication systems, I believe this to be completely achievable.

And where is the $160 billion to come from?

Food science IS defence spending.

Just ten per cent of the world’s current weapons budget would secure both a sustainable food supply – and enhance the prospects of peace everywhere.

An easy way to improve global food security is to reduce the colossal waste of half the food we currently produce.

However it means extensively redesigning our diets, our cities and the food production and distribution systems that satisfy them.

It means educating ten billion people with a new respect for food.

 

Vegies in Sky

It means greening our cities, mining and recycling the vast volumes of water and nutrients they presently collect, purifying them and designing entirely new urban-based food production systems.

These will turn what we now treat as waste back into food, fuel and a great many other essential things.

It will involve growing large quantities of fresh vegetables within urban areas by hydroponic, aquaponic and other intensive methods.

We will design this new urban permaculture and incorporate it into the buildings, landscapes and social milieu of our mighty cities.

 

Biocultures

It will involve creating new industries that use organic waste to produce vegetable, microbial, fungal and animal cells in biocultures and turn them into healthy and novel foods.

This may not sound very ‘gourmet’ – but remember that fine wines, cheeses, beers and salami are all the products of bio-processing. And these novel foods can be profiled to directly tackle conditions like diabetes, heart disease, cancer and obesity.

To do this, I here call for a World War on Waste.

Let us together design food systems that do not waste or, if they do, that then reuse.

We must refashion the world diet - to one that doesn’t actually kill half the people who eat it, as does our present one.

To one that treads more gently on our crowded planet.

 

Vegies

This diet will be lighter, fresher, healthier. It will be vastly more diverse, will contain far more plant foods, and less high-energy foods.

We are at the brink of a revolution in food diversity, the like of which we have never seen before.

A culinary and farming adventure like no other we have ever seen or imagined.

Australian scientist Dr Bruce French has compiled a database of 23,000 edible plants from all around the world – of which we currently eat only 1 or 2 per cent.

The richness of nature has scarcely been tapped.

Our menus, supermarkets, cookbooks and restaurants are poor in diversity compared with what they will become.

In Australia he lists 6132 edible plants, of which we actually farm about half a dozen.

This has the makings not only of a revolution in farming diversity but a grand culinary adventure and a breakthrough for health and sustainability.

 

Rangelands

Humans will still want to eat meat. But with the rise in grain and energy prices and the drying of the world’s grain bowls, I anticipate that livestock production will refocus in the world’s grasslands and rangelands - at lower stocking rates – while graingrowing will concentrate on producing food crops in the regions favoured by good soil and more consistent climate.

Future meat will be clean, healthy, natural and largely organic – by popular demand. But it will be very expensive, reflecting the true cost to the environment of producing it and giving a better return to the producer.

It will use advanced technologies like ‘precision pastoralism’ to ensure it is sustainable.

It will help to regenerate the world’s grasslands, rangelands and deserts along with their wildlife.

Because of the huge areas involved, it will lock up billions of tonnes of carbon.

We can also farm parts of the deserts, using novel systems that grow food, feed and fuel from sunlight and seawater.

But to achieve all this we need to reshape the attitudes and expectations of 8 billion urban consumers towards food and farming.

 

Food year

This calls for the world’s most ambitious educational campaign – to install one full year, a food year, in every junior school on the planet.

A year in which every subject – maths, language, geography, science, society and sport – is taught through the lens of food, how precious it is and how it is produced, where it comes from, how to eat safely, thriftily and healthily. How to help ensure it never fails.

Teaching food is acceptable in all cultures, races and creeds. Teaching respect for food and how it is produced is equally so. The means already exist to share these principles and educational courses universally.

I call on the farmers, chefs, food scientists and teachers of Australia to be leaders in this campaign, to engage the food processing industry, the supermarkets, the cookbook writers and nutritionists, the TV chefs and the health departments to promote the same universal messages.

Eat well but eat less. Eat more vegetables and less energy-intensive foods. Choose foods that spare our soil and water. Be happy to pay more for such good food, so our farmers can look after the precious environment that produces it.

 

Pay More

Current low prices paid by globalised supermarket chains risk destroying agriculture and its people.

If we underpay our farmers, they will go out of business, local industries will fail and landscapes will be damaged or ruined. And that will cause food prices to skyrocket.

Cheap food also kills a half of all consumers and adds massively to healthcare costs and taxation.

If food is too cheap, people do not respect it or the people who produce it. They waste it.

Conversely, paying just a little more and eating just a little less can secure the world’s food supply and enable farmers to safeguard its productive systems

 

Australia’s Role

Australia has a leading role to play in humanity’s next great food adventure.

To design new, healthier and more sustainable diets

To develop farming systems that use less water, energy and other inputs – but produce more.

And to pay a fair price to farmers, fishers and food producers so they can protect the environment that feeds us.

It is more than an inspiring challenge.

It is one on which depends the future prosperity, security, stability, peace and happiness of civilization.

It represents our great opportunity as a people to contribute meaningfully to the human destiny.

Let us be world leaders in avoiding and defeating the coming famine.