A surging population will mean more hungry people in some parts of the world. But it is not yet time to panic.
By E.L.
NOT in the short term. Stocks of grain and other foods are high, with another bumper harvest due in the northern hemisphere this year. Food prices have been dropping in real terms since a spike in 2011. The number of hungry people has been falling too, by 167 million in the past decade (according to the rough estimates used by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), chiefly thanks to progress in China and India. Yet that leaves nearly 800m, a third of which are in Africa. The UN reckons that one measure, “prevalence of undernourishment” has dropped from 18.6% of the world population in 1990–92 to 10.9% now. That broadly meets a target the world set itself in 2000, in the Millennium Development Goals.
But international bodies such as the G7 are worried about the coming decades. The world’s population will exceed nine billion in 2050, with most of the growth in developing countries. The United States Department of Agriculture reckons that the number of hungry (“food insecure”) people in sub-Saharan Africa will rise by a third. The FAO reckons that food production will need to increase by 70%. Worries abound. Crop yields are flat. And many trends are negative: new crop diseases, urbanisation, desertification, salinisation and soil erosion, which outstrips renewal even in developed countries.
That does not mean disaster is looming. Agricultural productivity is often shockingly low in “traditional” farming practices. That leaves plenty of room for improvement. But in most kinds of agriculture, scarce water can be used more sensibly. A study by Britain’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers estimated that 550 billion litres are wasted annually in crop production. Eliminating waste, for example by drip-feed irrigation, could raise food production by 60% or more. Phosphorus (a finite resource, unlike water) is wasted too: only a fifth of the phosphorus mined actually ends up in food. Climate change will indeed hurt some farmers but helps others (so, perhaps, does more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere). GM crops (such as drought-resistant rice, heat-resistant maize or blight-resistant wheat) have huge potential.
Technology is only part of the solution. The food chain lacks resilience to other forms of disruption too, from political strife to consumer panics. Panics about contamination (real or imagined), for example, can send food flying off the shelves (Nestlé is having to destroy 27,000 tonnes of instant noodles in India, amid a row about lead contamination). A new report by Lloyds, the London insurance market, highlights the need for more innovation to help farmers and food manufacturers deal with adverse weather and other potential risks. The G7 summit in Germany in early June agreed that it would aim to lift 500m people from hunger by 2030. Attention now shifts to a UN development summit in New York in September, where countries will discuss not merely halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger, but eradicating hunger. The first big target has been met. The next one will be even harder.
