Unless major changes are made - including the way food is produced, handled and disposed of around the world - the current global food crisis may foreshadow an even bigger problem in years to come.
Recent reports by the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep), including one released last month, predict food prices may increase 30%-50% within decades, forcing those living in extreme poverty to spend 90% of their income on food.
The reports, compiled by a wide group of experts from both within and outside Unep, emphasise that changing the ways in which food is produced, handled and disposed of across the globe - from farm to store and from fridge to landfill - can both feed the world's rising population and help the environmental services that are the foundation of agricultural productivity in the first place.
Key points of the Unep reports:
• More than half of the food produced today is lost, wasted or discarded as a result of inefficiency in the human-managed food chain. Losses and food waste in the United States could be as high as 40-50%, according to some recent estimates; in Australia, it is estimated that food waste makes up half of that country's landfill; almost one-third of all food purchased in the United Kingdom every year is not eaten.
• Food losses in the developing world are also considerable, mainly due to spoilage and pests. For instance, in Africa, the total amount of fish lost through discards, post-harvest loss and spoilage may be about 30% of landings.
• More than a third of the world's cereal harvest is used as animal feed; by 2050 it will rise to half.
• Recycling food wastes and deploying new technologies aimed at producing biofuels to produce sugars from discards such as straw and nutshells could be a key environmentally friendly alternative to increased use of cereals for livestock.
• The amount of unwanted fish currently discarded at sea - estimated at 30 million tonnes a year - could alone sustain an increase of more than 50% in fish farming, which is required to maintain per-capita fish consumption at current levels by 2050 without increasing pressure on an already stressed marine environment.
• Reorganising the food market infrastructure to regulate prices and generate food safety nets for those at risk, backed by a global, micro-financing fund to boost small-scale farmer productivity in developing countries.
• Removal of agricultural subsidies and the promotion of second-generation biofuels based on wastes rather than on primary crops - this could reduce pressure on fertile lands and critical ecosystems such as forests.
Environmental degradation poses a major risk to food production. For instance:
• The melting and disappearing glaciers of the Himalayas, which supply water for irrigation for nearly half of Asia's cereal production - a quarter of the world's cereal production.
• Globally, water scarcity may reduce crop yields by up to 12%. Climate change may also increase invasive pest numbers, diseases and weeds, reducing yields by an additional 2-6%.
• Continuing land degradation, particularly in Africa, may reduce yields by another 1-8%. Croplands may be swallowed by urban sprawl, biofuels and cotton.
• Increased use of artificial fertilisers, pesticides, increased water use and cutting down of forests will result in massive decline in biodiversity.
