2050: A third more mouths to feed

Food production will have to increase by 70 percent - FAO convenes high-level expert forum
FAO 23 Sep 09;

23 September 2009, Rome - Producing 70 percent more food for an additional 2.3 billion people by 2050 while at the same time combating poverty and hunger, using scarce natural resources more efficiently and adapting to climate change are the main challenges world agriculture will face in the coming decades, according to an FAO discussion paper published today.

The UN agency will organize a High-Level Expert Forum in Rome on 12-13 October 2009 to discuss strategies on "How to Feed the World in 2050". The Forum will bring together around 300 leading experts from academic, nongovernmental and private sector institutions from developing and developed countries.

The Forum will prepare the ground for the World Summit on Food Security, to take place in Rome 16-18 November 2009.

Cautious Optimism

"FAO is cautiously optimistic about the world's potential to feed itself by 2050," said FAO Assistant Director-General Hafez Ghanem. However, he pointed out that feeding everyone in the world by then will not be automatic and several significant challenges have to be met.

Ghanem said there was a need for a proper socioeconomic framework to address imbalances and inequalities and ensure that everyone in the world has access to the food they need and that food production is carried out in a way that reduces poverty and take account of natural resource constraints.

Global projections show that in addition to projected investments in agriculture, further significant investment will be needed to enhance access to food, otherwise some 370 million people could still be hungry in 2050, almost 5 percent of the global population.

According to the latest UN projections, world population will rise from 6.8 billion today to 9.1 billion in 2050 - a third more mouths to feed than there are today. Nearly all of the population growth will occur in developing countries. Sub-Saharan Africa's population is expected to grow the fastest (up 108 percent, 910 million people), and East and South East Asia's the slowest (up 11 percent, 228 million).

Around 70 percent of the world population will live in cities or urban areas by 2050, up from 49 percent today.

Food demand

The demand for food is expected to continue to grow as a result both of population growth and rising incomes. Demand for cereals (for food and animal feed) is projected to reach some 3 billion tonnes by 2050. Annual cereal production will have to grow by almost a billion tonnes (2.1 billion tonnes today), and meat production by over 200 million tonnes to reach a total of 470 million tonnes in 2050, 72 percent of which will be consumed in developing countries, up from the 58 percent today.

The production of biofuels could also increase the demand for agricultural commodities, depending on energy prices and government policies.

Land

Despite the fact that 90 percent of the growth in crop production is projected to come from higher yields and increased cropping intensity, arable land will have to expand by around 120 million hectares in developing countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Arable land in use in developed countries is expected to decline by some 50 million hectares, although this could be changed by the demand for biofuels.

Globally, there are still sufficient land resources available to feed the future world population. FAO cautioned, however, that much of the potential land is suitable for growing only a few crops, not necessarily the crops with highest demand and it is concentrated in a few countries.

Much of the land not yet in use also suffers from chemical and physical constraints, endemic diseases and lack of infrastructure which cannot be easily overcome. Therefore significant investments would need to be undertaken in order to bring it into production. Part of the land is also covered by forests, or subject to expanding urban settlements. A number of countries, particularly in the Near East/North Africa and South Asia have already reached or are about to reach the limits of land available.

Water

Water withdrawals for irrigated agriculture are projected to grow at a slower pace due to reduced demand and improved water use efficiency, but will still increase by almost 11 percent by 2050.

Globally, fresh water resources are sufficient, but they are very unevenly distributed and water scarcity will reach alarming levels in an increasing number of countries or regions within countries, particularly in the Near East/North Africa and South Asia. Using less water and at the same time producing more food will be the key to addressing water scarcity problems. Water scarcity could be made more acute by changing rainfall patters resulting from climate change.

Yield potential

All in all, the potential to raise crop yields to feed a growing world population seems to be considerable, FAO said. "If the appropriate socio-economic incentives are in place, there are still ample ‘bridgeable' gaps in yield (i.e. differences between agro-ecologically attainable and actual yields) that could be exploited. Fears that yields are reaching a plateau do not seem warranted, except in a very few special instances."

Stronger interventions

FAO called for stronger interventions to make faster progress towards reducing and finally eliminating the number of hungry and poor people. Investment in primary agriculture should become a top priority and needs to increase by some 60 percent since agriculture not only produces food but also generates income and supports rural livelihoods.

Poverty reduction also requires investments in rural infrastructure (roads, ports, power, storage and irrigation systems); investments in institutions, research and extension services, land titles and rights, risk management, veterinary and food safety control systems; and non-agricultural investment including food safety nets and cash transfers to the most needy.

Without developing and investing in rural areas in poor countries, deprivation and inequalities will remain widespread, though significantly less than today, FAO said.

By 2050, 25m more children will go hungry as climate change leads to food crisis
• Report says food shortages will hit developing world
• Global warming set to bring back malnutrition
Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian 30 Sep 09;

Twenty-five million more children will go hungry by the middle of this century as climate change leads to food shortages and soaring prices for staples such as rice, wheat, maize and soya beans, a report says today.

If global warming goes unchecked, all regions of the world will be affected, but the most vulnerable – south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa – will be hit hardest by failing crop yields, according to the report, prepared by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) for the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.

The children of 2050 will have fewer calories to eat than those in 2000, the report says, and the effect would be to wipe out decades of progress in reducing child malnutrition.

The grim scenario is the first to gauge the effects of climate change on the world's food supply by combining climate and agricultural models.

Spikes in grain prices last year led to rioting and unrest across the developing world, from Haiti to Thailand. Leaders at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh last week committed $2bn (£1.25bn) to food security, and the United Nations is set to hold a summit on food security in November, its second since last year's riots.

But the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, is pressing the World Bank and other institutions to do more. He said the industrialised world needs to step up investment in seed research and to offer more affordable crop insurance to the small farmers in developing countries. Though prices have stabilised, the world's food system is still in crisis, he said at the weekend.

"Ever more people are denied food because prices are stubbornly high, because purchasing power has fallen due to the economic crisis, or because rains have failed and reserve stocks of grain have been eaten," he said.

Even without global warming, rising populations meant the world was headed for food shortages and food price rises.

"The food price crisis of last year really was a wake-up call to a lot of people that we are going to have 50% more people on the surface of the Earth by 2050," said Gerald Nelson, the lead author of the report. "Meeting those demands for food coming out of population growth is going to be a huge challenge – even without climate change."

After several years in which development aid has been diverted away from rural areas, the report called for $7bn a year for crop research, and investment in irrigation and rural infrastructure to help farmers adjust to a warming climate. "Continuing the business-as-usual approach will almost certainly guarantee disastrous consequences," said Nelson.

The G20 industrialised nations last week began discussing how to invest some $20bn pledged for food security earlier this year.

Some regions of the world outlined in the report are already showing signs of vulnerability because of changing rainfall patterns and drought linked to climate change. Oxfam yesterday launched a $152m appeal on behalf of 23 million people hit by a severe drought and spiralling food prices in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Uganda. The charity called it the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa for a decade, and said many people in the region were suffering from malnutrition.

But southern Asia, which made great advances in agricultural production during the 20th century, was also singled out in the IFPRI report for being particularly at risk of food shortages. Some countries, such as Canada and Russia, will experience longer growing seasons because of climate change, but other factors – such as poor soil – mean that will not necessarily be translated into higher food production.

The report was prepared for negotiators currently trying to reach a global deal to fight climate change at the latest round of UN talks in Bangkok. It used climate models prepared by the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia to arrive at estimates of how changes in growing seasons and rainfall patterns would affect farming in the developing world and elsewhere.

Without an ambitious injection of funds and new technology, wheat yields could fall by more than 30% in developing countries, setting off a catastrophic rise in prices. Wheat prices, with unmitigated climate change, could rise by 170%-194% by the middle of this century, the report said. Rice prices are projected to rise by 121% – and almost all of the increase will have to be passed on to the consumer, Nelson said.

The report did not take into account all the expected impacts of climate change – such as the loss of farmland due to rising sea levels, a rise in the number of insects and in plant disease, or changes in glacial melt. All these factors could increase the damage of climate change to agriculture.

Others who have examined the effects of climate change on agriculture have warned of the potential for conflict. In a new book, Plan B 4.0: Mobilising to Save Civilisation, published today, Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, warns that sharp declines in world harvests due to climate change could threaten the world order.

"I am convinced that food is indeed the weak link," he said.

Brown saw Asia as the epicentre of the crisis, with the latest science warning of a sea level rise of up to six feet by 2100. With even a 3ft rise, Bangladesh could lose half of its rice land to rising seas; Vietnam, the world's second largest producer of rice, could also see much of the Mekong Delta under water.

Wheat and rice production would also fall because of acute water shortages, caused by past over-pumping and the melting of the Himalayan glaciers, which currently store water that supplies the region's main rivers: the Indus, Ganges, and Yangtse.

Brown said: "The potential loss of these mountain glaciers in the Himalayas is the most massive projected threat to food security ever seen" .

Global shortfall

People in both the developing and developed worlds will have less to eat by 2050 if climate change is not seriously addressed, though the shortfall will be relatively slight in richer countries. Prices rises and shortages of food will drive down the average calories available:

• The calories available for each person in industrialised nations will fall from 3,450 in 2000 to about 3,200.

• In developing countries overall, the average will fall from 2,696 to 2,410 calories.

• In sub-Saharan Africa, people will on average have only 1,924 calories a day, compared with 2,316 in 2000.