Multi-tasking is the way forward to address food shocks

Two important events marked October 2011. As usual, World Food Day was observed on October 16, a day proclaimed by the United Nations to ‘heighten public awareness of the world food problem and strengthening solidarity in the struggle against hunger, malnutrition and poverty'. And, before the month ended, global population surpassed the seven-billion-mark with the 7-billionth child said to be born in India.

Projections suggest, by 2050 this earth will have to support nine billion people; and importantly, the Asia-Pacific region will add to the present population at least one billion more by 2025. How are we going to address the challenge of ensuring a sustainable future for this world with burdensome population and rapidly depleting or shrinking natural resources in relation to the voracious appetite for consumption?

Greater reproductive choice and measures to reduce resource consumption and waste are critical to reducing humanity's environmental impact, according to the Washington DC-based think-tank Worldwatch Institute. The combined measures of empowering women to make their own decisions about childbearing and significantly reducing global consumption of energy and natural resources would move humanity toward, rather than away from, environmentally sustainable societies that meet human needs, it asserts.

Resource limitations

How does the world address looming resource limitations, for instance, land constraints and water shortage? Agriculture already occupies 40 per cent of the world's land. Where's additional land going to come from? By 2050, about four billion people will live in countries with water scarcity. What about the varied but adverse effects of global warming and climate change that threaten food security in many parts of the world? How can we feed our burgeoning population while preserving the only planet we have? These are issues constantly on top of the agenda of many policymakers, scientists and researchers.

One of the simplest and most doable is to consume fewer resources and waste less food. Humans appropriate nearly 40 per cent of the photosynthetic output of the planet for food and other purposes, and more than half of the accessible renewable freshwater runoff. In addition to overuse of finite resources, humans waste large quantities of food every year.

Industrialised countries waste 222 million tonnes of food annually, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. While resource utilisation is unavoidable, if fewer resources and less food were wasted, the world would be able to feed more people and use fewer resources. With nearly one billion hungry people worldwide, wasting less food would also mean utilising existing resources – not new ones – to feed them. So, the way forward is to reduce food wastage in developed countries through education and sensitisation.

If industrial economies waste food, developing countries incur huge food losses that are largely avoidable. Boosting investment in the entire value chain, especially post-harvest is the way forward. Policymakers must step up critical efforts to combat poverty and hunger in emerging markets.

Food price volatility

A critical and most immediate issue that must engage global attention is high food inflation and food market price volatility that dilutes the already weak nutritional content of the poor and malnourished. The major impacts of food price volatility are felt by the world's poorest – among them many farmers – who have very little room to adjust their budgets.

The FAO has asserted that to tame food price volatility and protect the poor against future shocks, the world must seek to address the drivers of such volatility and tackle market characteristics (build global reserves, share information and so on). Building resilience through social protection systems and improving livelihood are critical.

To move towards stability – supply and prices - experts see the need for multi-tasking. It is necessary to simultaneously address many elements including infrastructure improvements, policies that encourage investment, rural development and climate change mitigation. One of the key solutions to avoid further food shocks is the ability for agricultural production to sustainably increase to hold pace with growing calorie demand.

To this end, yields on existing land must be increased, resource management improved, innovations fostered, knowledge and technologies made more widely available and finance instruments developed, experts have asserted.

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