The future of the global food system

Abstract

Although food prices in major world markets are at or near a historical low, there is increasing concern about food security—the ability of the world to provide healthy and environmentally sustainable diets for all its peoples. This article is an introduction to a collection of reviews whose authors were asked to explore the major drivers affecting the food system between now and 2050. A first set of papers explores the main factors affecting the demand for food (population growth, changes in consumption patterns, the effects on the food system of urbanization and the importance of understanding income distributions) with a second examining trends in future food supply (crops, livestock, fisheries and aquaculture, and ‘wild food’). A third set explores exogenous factors affecting the food system (climate change, competition for water, energy and land, and how agriculture depends on and provides ecosystem services), while the final set explores cross-cutting themes (food system economics, food wastage and links with health). Two of the clearest conclusions that emerge from the collected papers are that major advances in sustainable food production and availability can be achieved with the concerted application of current technologies (given sufficient political will), and the importance of investing in research sooner rather than later to enable the food system to cope with both known and unknown challenges in the coming decades.

Food security framings within the UK and the integration of local food systems

“…In its report, Reaping the Benefits (Royal Society, 2009), the Royal Society suggests that crop production methods will need to increase yields while at the same time "sustain the environment, preserve natural resources and support the livelihoods of farmers and rural populations around the world" (ibid., p. ix). Key to achieving this is the notion of 'sustainable intensification', which Godfray et al (2010Godfray et al ( , p. 2776 define as "achieving higher yields from the same acreage without severely impacting the environment", arguing that it involves a whole new way of producing food.…”

A Synthesis of Global Urbanization Projections

“…The question of constructing reliable population projections is still very much at the forefront of demography. Godfray et al ( 2010 ) discussing Lutz and Samir ( 2010 ) The handling of uncertainty depends on a wide variety of end goals of a projection/forecasting effort. Lutz and Samir ( 2010 ) list four strategies: to ignore it, to construct scenarios, to explore a plausible range of variation, and to make fully probabilistic projections; they eventually advocate for the generation of probabilistic projections:…”

“…Global income projections have become a bread-and-butter operation for a large number of international organizations, governance bodies, think tanks, investment fi rms and nonprofi ts fertility rates in China; slight variations in China can have a big impact in projections overall. According to Godfray et al ( 2010 ), " [w] These projections may mean little if they are disconnected with the overall regional and national economic growth patterns.…”

Towards Sustainable Food Systems: A Holistic, Interdisciplinary and Systemic Approach

“…Mathijs, 2012;Gladek et al, 2016). Over recent years, and particularly since the global food price spikes of 2007(IFPRI, 2008, the scientific and policy communities have trained their attention on multiple problems within global food systems (e.g.…”