by Emma J Devereux
Citation: Devereux, E.J., (2021) Why are we in a food crisis? EcoFoodDev, https://www.ecofooddev.com/why-are-we-in-a-food-crisis/
By 2050, our global population will swell to between 9-10 billion people. Such rapid population increase will place impossible strain on global food production – our current population levels already do, as global famines attest to.
With rapidly decreasing food resources, expanding urbanization, and increased climate instability leading to rapidly diminishing land availability, difficult decisions will have to be made about the food we consume- and soon. Agriculture and food production will need to adapt and innovate, economies will be forced to change, and alternative food sources must be sought.
Climate change
A change in climate c.12,000 years ago precipitated the move to agriculture. However, current climate change is putting agriculture under threat. Increased aridification and reduction of water sources has led to a decrease of available agricultural land. Intensive farming of the remaining land will lead to soil degradation and land exhaustion.
Increasingly unpredictable weather has led to widespread farming difficulties. Waterlogging and soil compaction are major threats to agricultural production, leading to increased input costs and reduced outputs. For example, agronomist Simon Draper of the Maize Growers Association has warned that waterlogging will severely reduce the window to set seed for maize growers in the UK in 2020, with a potential 40% yield loss.
Rising global temperatures will cause an increase in insect populations placing further pressures on crop yields. Researchers project further losses of over 50% in wheat crops with a 2⁰C rise, and 30% further losses in maize. With 800 million people chronically hungry today, increasing pestilence resistance is an emerging food security crisis.
Biodiversity loss
Plant domestication is an evolutionary process. Limited numbers of progenitor species were used by early farmers and they selected for traits related to yield, harvesting ability, and edibility. This produced genetic bottlenecks that have resulted in a reduction in genetic variation among annual herbaceous crops . This lack of genetic diversity in our economic crops is a food security threat, as we depend on only a few dozen species for the bulk of our nutrition and the few species we manipulate have limited ability to cope with environmental instability. However, their wild relatives display greater biodiversity and an adaptability to marginalised environments and extreme soil conditions.
For example, analysis of genetic variation in modern maize, early domesticated maize and wild populations of teosinte identified ~1,200 genes affected by domestication. Modern maize lines display only ~57% of the diversity of progenitor populations
We will not be able to make the best decisions both for our species and for the planet if we are not properly educated about what our food actually contains, and how it is actually produced.
Our problems are not all in the future. Access to food and food poverty are already critical issues in many parts of the world. Today, famine is an urgent global threat due to desertification and war, such as in Yemen and South Sudan. Recent geopolitical upheavals (the Arab Spring, the Taliban, Isis) have been attributed to crop failures in the years preceding their occurrence. It is predicted that increased food shortages in the future will lead to increased migration, further conflicts, and widespread famines (https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/hunger/).
The current Covid-19 crisis has starkly highlighted gaps in the food supply chain. According to a report produced by the UN, at least 265 million people are being pushed to starvation by the Covid-19 crisis. Urgent interventions to improve food production, and secure food supply chains in times of lock-down, are a key element to tackling crises such as this.
Cover image: Global Report on Food Crises 2019 https://www.ifpri.org/blog/global-report-food-crises-2019
References:
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- Deutsch, C.A., Tewksbury, J.J., Tigchelaar, M., Battisti, D.S., Merrill, S.C., Huey, R.B. and Naylor, R.L., 2018. Increase in crop losses to insect pests in a warming climate. Science, 361(6405), pp.916-919.
- UN, 2011. World Population Prospects, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, New York. (accessed 10.04.2020)
- UN, “Goal 2: Zero Hunger”: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/hunger/
- Editorial: “Genomics and our future food security”. Nat Genet 51, 197 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-019-0352-8
- Hua, L., Wang, D.R., Tan, L., Fu, Y., Liu, F., Xiao, L., Zhu, Z., Fu, Q., Sun, X., Gu, P. and Cai, H., 2015. LABA1, a domestication gene associated with long, barbed awns in wild rice. The Plant Cell, 27(7), pp.1875-1888.
- Zhang, H., Mittal, N., Leamy, L.J., Barazani, O. and Song, B.H., 2017. Back into the wild—Apply untapped genetic diversity of wild relatives for crop improvement. Evolutionary Applications, 10(1), pp.5-24.
