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Benno Hansen

Food Security: The Challenge of Feeding 9 Billion People -- Godfray et al. 327 (5967): ... - 2 views

www.sciencemag.org/...812

food agriculture poverty

shared by Benno Hansen on 23 Feb 10 - Cached
  • more than one in seven people today still do not have access to sufficient protein and energy from their diet, and even more suffer from some form of micronutrient malnourishment
  • Increases in production will have an important part to play, but they will be constrained as never before by the finite resources provided by Earth’s lands, oceans, and atmosphere
  • a period of rising and more volatile food prices driven primarily by increased demand from rapidly developing countries, as well as by competition for resources from first-generation biofuels production
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • agricultural land that was formerly productive has been lost to urbanization and other human uses, as well as to desertification, salinization, soil erosion, and other consequences of unsustainable land management
  • the world will need 70 to 100% more food by 2050
  • Low yields occur because of technical constraints that prevent local food producers from increasing productivity or for economic reasons arising from market conditions.
  • In the most extreme cases of failed states and nonfunctioning markets, the solution lies completely outside the food system.
  • Food production in developing countries can be severely affected by market interventions in the developed world, such as subsidies or price supports.
  • the environmental costs of food production might increase with globalization, for example, because of increased greenhouse gas emissions associated with increased production and food transport
  • Food production has important negative "externalities," namely effects on the environment or economy that are not reflected in the cost of food.
  • superior technologies may become available and that future generations may be wealthier
  • The introduction of measures to promote sustainability does not necessarily reduce yields or profits. One study of 286 agricultural sustainability projects in developing countries, involving 12.6 million chiefly small-holder farmers on 37 million hectares, found an average yield increase of 79% across a very wide variety of systems and crop types
  • Unexploited genetic material from land races, rare breeds, and wild relatives will be important in allowing breeders to respond to new challenges
  • Fair returns on investment are essential for the proper functioning of the private sector, but the extension of the protection of intellectual property rights to biotechnology has led to a growing public perception in some countries that biotech research purely benefits commercial interests and offers no long-term public good. Just as seriously, it also led to a virtual monopoly of GM traits in some parts of the world, by a restricted number of companies, which limits innovation and investment in the technology.
  • Roughly 30 to 40% of food in both the developed and developing worlds is lost to waste
  • unwanted food goes to a landfill instead of being used as animal feed or compost because of legislation to control prion diseases
  • retailers discard many edible, yet only slightly blemished products
  • In the developing world, losses are mainly attributable to the absence of food-chain infrastructure
  • About one-third of global cereal production is fed to animals
  • the argument that all meat consumption is bad is overly simplistic
  • There is no simple solution to sustainably feeding 9 billion people
Brian G. Dowling

UN Chronicle | A magazine for the United Nations. - 0 views

www.un.org/...2_308p14.html

mdg1 blogging hunger

shared by Brian G. Dowling on 30 Apr 09 - Cached
  • During the past two decades, population growth, improvement in incomes and diversification of diets have steadily increased the demand for food. Prior to 2000, food prices were in decline, largely through record harvests. At the same time, however, public and private investment in agriculture, especially in the production of staple food, decreased, which led to stagnant or declining crop yields in most developing countries.1 Rapid urbanization has led to the conversion of farmland to non-agricultural uses, and low food prices have encouraged farmers to shift to alternative food and non-food crops. Long-term unstable land use has also caused land degradation, soil erosion, nutrient depletion, water scarcity and disruption of biological cycles.
  • Brian G. Dowling on 30 Apr 09
     
    Losing 25,000 to Hunger Every Day. From the UN Chronicles
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