AGRIBUSINESS: Transforming our food system to ensure a sustainable future.

AGRIBUSINESS: Transforming our food system to ensure a sustainable future. By 2050, the world will have almost 10 billion people. It will be impossible to feed everyone without exacerbating poverty, accelerting deforestation and increasing GHG(Green House Gas) emissions unless we start making substantial changes to our food system now. 

 This issue is covered in a new report, Creating a Sustainable Food Future , published on December 5 in the World Resources Report series. The report was produced by World Resources Institute(WRI)in partnership with the World Bank, UN Environment, UN Development Programme, CIRAD and INRA. In the report, WRI suggests ways of feeding almost 10 billion people by 2050.

 Food demand is set to rise by over 50%, with demand for animal-based food products (meat, dairy and eggs) likely to grow by almost 70%. Hundreds of millions of people already go hungry, Farming uses around half the world's green areas and generates a quarter of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Unsurprisingly, the report says that there is no silver bullet. However, it does offer a menu of 22 options that suggests it is possible to feed everyone sustainably.

 "This resembles the "Healthy" scenario established by the CIRAD-INRA Agrimonde-Terra foresight exercise in many important ways. However, the two differ in terms of their initial objectives. WRI set out to increase food production while reducing GHG emissions and limiting the spread of agriculture. WRI estimates that feeding the world sustainably while reducing agricultural land use and GHG emissions by 2050 will mean the whole world: 

 (1) reducing demand by cutting food loss and waste, eating less beef and lamb, using crops for food and feed rather than biofuels, and reducing population growth by achieving replacement fertility levels; (2) increasing crop and livestock productivity to higher than historical levels but on the same land area; (3) stopping deforestation, restoring peat lands and degraded land, and linking yield gains to protection of natural landscapes; (4) improving aquaculture and managing wild fisheries more effectively; (5) using innovative technologies and farming methods that lower agricultural GHG emissions.

 Limiting global warming will mean acting on the food sector. Food lies behind most environmental and development issues: deforestation, malnutrition, biodiversity loss, water scarcity, climate change, water pollution and more. By improving how the world's food is produced and consumed, we can treat the cause and not just the symptoms.