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Conclusion
There are many challenges to world food security. Key among them are high population growth,
the large amount of food lost or wasted, unsustainable use of scarce natural resources and the
degradation of ecosystems.
In order to meet the needs of the world’s growing population,
estimated to reach 9.6 billion by 2050, food production should
increase by as much as 60 per cent. Conventional means to
increase food production, including technological solutions
such as high-yielding hybrid seed varieties and livestock
progeny, will result in very marginal annual increases in food
production (around 1 per cent per year over the next two
decades). Accelerated cropland expansion will result in further
negative impacts on forests and other ecosystems.
Global food security is further threatened by the large amount
of food that is either lost or wasted. This food does not feed
people, and also wastes the natural resources used to produce
it, leaving fewer resources to produce the next food crop, meat
or fish catch. Against such a background, it is evident that
the solutions to the world’s food security challenges depend
on both significant reductions in the amount of food that is
lost or wasted and the restoration of ecosystems so that food
production is not only sustained but also increased.
Food losses due to degraded agro-ecosystems are particularly
alarming, with soil erosion, the most common form of land
degradation, responsible for the annual loss of topsoil at rates
that are 10 to 40 times greater than soil renewal. In drylands
yield losses of as much as 4 – 10 per cent in crop production are
incurred due to land degradation, desertification and drought.
Reductions in food production are also caused by the loss of
ecosystem services such as insect pollination. About 35 per cent
of crops produced depend on insect and animal pollination,
and the depletion and death of insects including bees are
likely to have dramatic consequences for food production. A
conservative estimate suggests that restoration of a quarter of
the global degraded agricultural land could be enough to feed
740 million people.
Similarly, much potential food is lost in the world’s fisheries
due to overharvesting and overexploitation of the global fish
stocks. If fish stocks were sustainably managed, an additional
9.9 million tonnes of fish and other seafood would be available
on the global market, enough to meet the daily protein needs
of 90 million people. Discards from commercial fisheries is one
of the most wasteful practices found in food production, with
as much as 40 million of the total global catch being discarded
every year. Discards from fishing vessels alone could fulfill the
daily protein needs of 370 million people for a whole year.
A significant amount of the food that is wasted, while deemed
unfit for human consumption, is still fit for use as animal stock
feed, as well as feed in aquaculture. By finding safe and healthy
ways to capture and reinvest food waste to feed animals and fish
in aquaculture, significant amounts of the cereals and fish now
used in animal feeds could be freed for human consumption.
Cereals currently used as animal feed could, in principle, feed
an additional 4 billion people.
Forests provide a variety of foods including fruits, mushrooms,
nuts, seeds, roots, honey, birds, insects and bush-meat.
For example, forest insects form part of the traditional diet
for about 2 billion people in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
Food from forests is under threat from rapid deforestation,
with a net of 5.2 million hectares of forest being lost each
year. Deforestation also threatens food security as forests
deliver crucial ecosystem services that other food-providing
ecosystems depend on, causing a reduction in potential yields.
The bulk of world food losses are in the developing countries
where the tremendous efforts to improve agricultural yields
have not been matched with the development of infrastructure
to transport, process and store food. At least 40 per cent of all
food losses in developing countries occur during post-harvest
and at the processing stages. If the US$4 billion worth of food
that is currently lost in sub-Saharan Africa could be avoided,
it would provide food to meet the needs of 48 million people.
In developed countries more than 40 per cent of food losses
occur at retail and consumer levels – losses that can be reduced
significantly with consumer and industry education.
In order to meet current and future food demands while
preserving the world’s ecosystems and sustainably exploiting
their full potential for producing food, new and more
appropriate management practices must be implemented in
agriculture, fisheries and forestry. Ecosystem approaches
represent an alternative to conventional food production that
will not only reduce the human footprint on the environment,
but also improve the Earth’s biological capacity and thus its
food production potential. Ecosystems approaches to food
production, including inter-cropping, integrated farming,
conservation tillage, biological control of pests, agroforestry
and integrated coastal zone management are some of the
important strategies to be adopted in order to achieve this goal
and feed the world in 2050.