IAP: global food systems are faltering

Take a trip to any supermarket in the western world and you might well be under the impression that there has never been so much food in such great variety ever before. Then consider the 1 billion tons of food wasted each year worldwide, and you may become certain that food security is well and truly assured.

Yet abundance is hardly the case across much of the world. In fact, more than 800 million people worldwide continue to go hungry, according to the United Nations. Meanwhile, almost as many people are obese and another 2 billion of us are overweight, largely as a result of harmful dietary habits.

And matters are bound to take a turn for the worse in coming years and decades. Accelerating climate change is causing food systems to falter around the planet, says the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP) in a new report. And unless swift and comprehensive actions are taken, food shortages will become increasingly common.

The report, whose contributors include 130 national academies of science and medicine worldwide, too three years to complete and went through rigorous peer review. Its authors call it a “wake-up call” to policymakers.

“Our food systems are failing us,” warns Professor Joachim von Braun, co-chair of the IAP’s project on Food and Nutrition Security and Agriculture who is director of the Center for Development Research (ZEF) at the University of Bonn. “[W]e need to see leaders take action on climate change and go beyond political statements. It is not only the environment that is at stake, but health, nutrition, trade, jobs and the economy.”

Yet it isn’t just changing weather patterns, including prolonged heatwaves and droughts, that are at fault. Consumer behavior is also to blame in the developed world. “Agriculture and consumer choices are major factors driving disastrous climate change,” von Braun says. “We need a robust and ambitious policy response to address the climate impacts of agriculture and consumer choices – and scientists have a major role to play. Our new report is a wake-up call to leaders.”

Agricultural production is “broken,” experts say, and it continues to emit vast amounts of greenhouse gases. In fact, agriculture generates more emissions than those from transportation, heating, lighting and air conditioning combined. And so in a sort of feedback loop, agriculture is contributing greatly to climate change even as it is suffering more and more from the effects of climate change.

“Whether you look at it from a human health, environmental or climate perspective, our food system is currently unsustainable and given the challenges that will come from a rising global population that is a really [serious] thing to say,” says Tim Benton, professor of population ecology at the University of Leeds, who contributed to the report.