Saving the Food System from the “Quadruple Squeeze” – Hunger, Risk, Nutrition & Climate

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Climate activists like us are informed about the world’s necessary transition to clean energy sources. We are confident that renewable energy will provide us with clean strength as systemic change occurs. However, it is much more difficult to wrap our heads around the concept of a sustainable global food system. That metamorphosis would require a combination of elements — equitable access to nutrition, cross-cultural nutrition options, affordable food sources — and an agricultural food system that did not destroy ecosystems, pollute environments or pollute the atmosphere.

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The contemporary dining system has been carefully cultivated for taste and convenience. The exotic food luxuries of many of our childhoods are now staples of popular produce. If I want to find mirin for a low-sodium, gluten-free, vegan and kosher San-J recipe, I fully expect to find it at a local grocery store. Also, I’d assume I could pick up some organic or heirloom produce at the same time. If none of those items were available, I’m pretty sure I’d be on the lookout. 🙂

The translation from valuable and differential layers of food choices to what Cornell agricultural economist Chris Barrett tells us New York Times it is a “multiple food crisis” almost too abstract to digest. But the past decade has stopped providing reliable global patterns of year-on-year improvements in hunger, Barrett says. US investment in agricultural research and development has fallen by nearly one-third in this young age, and “basically the failure to invest in improving agricultural productivity, especially healthier foods, seems complacent,” Barrett argues.

Spending on agricultural research and development would need to be at least tripled to keep up with growing demand. That innovation is not on track to keep pace with climate change; over a 30-year period, insurer Lloyd’s recently estimated a 50% chance of a major global food shock.

A few years ago, it was possible to imagine a long list of solutions that addressed the problem of emissions from food production and led to their attraction to industrial agriculture. What happened?

• Sequestering carbon in soil is more difficult than expected.
• So far, climate-smart regenerative farming practices seem to be no more than a miracle cure.
• Vertical farming has only grown, in part because of its huge energy demands.
• Genetically modified strains could fill gaps, but are unpopular or sometimes illegal in many parts of the world.

Global Challenges in Food Security

We can start at the domestic level to make sense of what a crisis in the food system is likely to be.

Obesity has continued to rise, and the average micronutrient content of many common vegetables has fallen. Most US farms lose money, but more than half of US land is used for agricultural production. In fact, more than one third of the planet’s land is used to produce food, and 70% of all fresh water is used to irrigate farmland.

One in eight US residents is food insecure, according to the US Department of Agriculture. “But it doesn’t have to be this way. No one should have to know hunger,” says US Representative Ayanna Pressley. “It’s a humanitarian crisis, it’s a moral failure, and it’s a policy choice.”

Scientists estimate that the impact of switching to a plant-based diet could significantly reduce emissions and provide half of the emissions reductions needed to keep the planet from warming more than two degrees. Even with that knowledge, trends towards vegetarianism and veganism have not increased, but per capita meat consumption in the US and UK has increased dramatically over the past 50 years.

The Covid-19 pandemic, regional conflicts and climate change have affected the food system in recent years. Global hunger levels have failed to reduce for three consecutive years, with around 1 in 11 people hungry in 2023. According to the World Food Programme, 282 million people in 59 countries went hungry last year, 24 million more than in 2022. And global food shortages are driving record levels of human displacement and migration.

About three-quarters of the world’s agricultural land is at risk of severe climate change, says NASA’s Jonas Jägermeyr, “so usually everywhere you look, things will change in one way or another. ” And that probably means the food you’re eating is also at risk, as climate threats loom large in the coming years. Even when politics is relatively stable, market incentives are often conflicting, infrastructure is often inadequate, and there is a lack of support systems for smallholder farmers trying to make their way towards stability and better crop abundance.

NASA’s Jägermeyr calls the challenge of providing sustainable food “the challenge of our generation.” We need to save the food system from what he calls a “quadruple sweep.”

1. The problem of productivity and hunger — agricultural production is still growing, but not as fast as it used to be and not as fast as demand is growing.
2. The risk to ecosystems, threatened by deforestation, fertilizer runoff and other pollution
3. The challenge of undernutrition, as those foods we are growing more of are generally getting worse over time – undernourishment rates have increased by 21% since 2017
4. Climate — the effects of climate change have reduced overall global agricultural productivity growth by 30% to 35%.

These factors, he says, are driving “fundamental change across most of the world’s breadbaskets. It is quite complicated. And the scary part is that we have to sort them all out.”

The climate crisis affects in particular the quantity, quality and accessibility of food and is usually characterized by changes in the frequency, intensity or duration of extreme weather events. “For policymakers, it’s important to understand where the vulnerabilities are in different systems and how they are interconnected,” Ramya Ambikapathi, senior research associate in global development at Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, told the advocacy group Food Tank .

The Future of Food Systems May Look Different Than We Expect

The pressure on the current food system is not a sign that it will fail, but that it must change. Even if that progress is made, intervention will be needed to ensure a stable and abundant future for food on a much warmer planet. But disruption is only part of the whole problem. Adaptation and innovation will also change the global food supply. Diets will change, as will the farmland that currently produces staple crops – corn, wheat, soy, rice. More hazards will surely follow, reshaping the entire food system as we know it.

The world may need to add the equivalent of two Indias to the world’s existing farmland to meet food needs in the second half of this century, according to the World Resources Institute. But adding that farmland means cutting down forests, which treasure carbon, in order to graze more animals, a production carbon

But all is not lost. Economist Barrett now sees many promises: biofortified crops; new techniques for fixing nitrogen from the air, limiting the use of fossil fuel-based fertilizers; resilient varieties, such as flood-resistant rice, are already transforming the paddies of South Asia.

Instead of a single quick fix, however, we must accept that many tools in our food system toolkit are necessary to keep the world eating adequately and in pursuit of good health.