[LUM#7] A World to Feed
How can we ensure an adequate food supply for a constantly growing population while protecting the planet? This is a challenge we must address today to guarantee food security tomorrow.
The women uprooted the vetiver along the riverbank and then replanted it along a stone embankment to reinforce it. © IRD – Tiphaine Chevallier
9.8 billion. That’s how many people will be living on our beautiful planet by 2050. This rapidly growing population poses a real challenge: how can we feed an ever-increasing number of people?“The real challenge isn’t simply feeding them,” notes Patrick Caron, a researcher at CIRAD, “but ensuring long-term food security.” In other words, the ability to eat properly.“Food security encompasses the availability of food, access to it—in other words, the ability to produce or purchase one’s own food—and the quality of food in terms of nutrition, health, sensory experience, and socio-cultural aspects. All of this must be ensured on a regular basis,” explains the chair of the High-Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) of the United Nations Committee on World Food Security.
Triple burden
An ideal far from being achieved: food-related challenges of various kinds affect the entire world.“We are facing a triple burden,” explains Patrick Caron. First, there is hunger: 800 million people do not have enough to eat.“A situation exacerbated by climate change and conflicts ,” he emphasizes (Agriculture and Climate Change: An Inevitable Marriage of Convenience, in Agriculture in the Face of Climate Change, Vol. 27, 2018). The second burden: 2 billion people worldwide suffer from what is known as hidden hunger.“A deficiency in micronutrients—zinc, iron, iodine, vitamins A and B—that prevents good health.” And finally, 2 billion people worldwide are overweight or obese, a condition associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, and cancer.
How can we combat these scourges? In the20th century, the problem seemed simple: “When asked ‘how can we feed everyone?’, the answer was ‘we need to produce more’.”The watchword back then was intensification. Welcome to the“Green Revolution.”“While this production method did indeed keep pace with population growth, we now know that the intensive approach relying on fertilizers and fossil fuels is not sustainable,” the researcher emphasizes. It is no longer simply a matter of producing more, but above all of producing better.“Producing high-quality food while preserving the environment and ensuring a decent income for farmers—that is the real challenge,” explains Patrick Caron.
At the heart of sustainable development issues
A challenge that places food security at the heart of sustainable development.“It’s not just about producing enough, but about producing and consuming in a way that contributes to sustainable development.” And this means prioritizing environmental concerns.“In the 1990s, agriculture and the environment were bitter enemies; we then tried to reconcile them,” explains Patrick Caron. Preventing land degradation, maintaining biodiversity, and avoiding contributing to climate change are all challenges for an agriculture sector that still needs to be reinvented (Reconciling biodiversity conservation and food security: scientific challenges for a new agriculture, in Current Opinion Environmental Sustainability, 2010). “Reconciliation is good, but it’s not enough. We need to do better than that, by using agriculture as a lever to safeguard the environment,” explains Patrick Caron. For example? “In the field of livestock farming, the use of pasture has the advantage of sequestering carbon and thus limiting greenhouse gas emissions,” the researcher illustrates.
Local solutions for global food security
“With agroecology, we’re rediscovering that we can limit the use of chemical fertilizers and choose to mimic nature by stimulating its biological cycles,” emphasizes Patrick Caron. And produce enough food to feed nearly 10 billion people?“Yes, but only if we implement local solutions that require significant design and engineering work,” explains Patrick Caron . “We’ll need to ensure consistency between these local transformations and the global challenge.”
Consume more responsibly
And for the planet to benefit, it’s not enough to simply produce better.“It’s also essential to consume better in order to contribute to sustainable development,” insists Patrick Caron. This includes reducing food loss and waste, which account for an average of 30% of food in most countries. It also means consuming high-quality products that promote good health and help keep public health costs down.“When it comes to overweight and obesity, the entire food environment is at play; all the factors that influence consumer choices must be taken into account,” explains the expert.
“The issue of food security is like a Rubik’s Cube with so many facets to consider,” explains Patrick Caron. The ultimate goal:“to meet everyone’s needs based on their preferences, while taking into account the social, environmental, and health impacts of what we consume.” A goal that requires us to reshape the planet, with 10 billion people committed to the cause.
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