food sustainability essay

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Towards Sustainable Food Systems: How to feed, not deplete the world

'Game-Changers’ is a new editorial series from the UN Development Coordination Office (DCO) on key transitions that the UN Secretary-General has called for, to advance progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals ( SDGs), catalyzing a more sustainable and equitable future. This series explores the progress achieved since the adoption of the SDGs in 2015 in key areas and how the UN is supporting this progress. The world needs renewed ambition and action to deliver these Goals at scale.   

Today, with one-third of all food produced globally ending up lost or wasted and more than three billion people unable to afford healthy diets, the question of how we produce, trade and consume food in a sustainable manner has come to the fore. As the global population continues to rise, this cycle, which is known as a ‘food system’, is failing in its primary purpose to end hunger and deliver food security and nutrition for all. 

As the UN  Secretary-General has said, “In a world of plenty, it is outrageous that people continue to suffer and die from hunger.”

We must transition towards a system that balances the need for food production with the urgent demand for climate action, sustainable agriculture and healthy, affordable, diets for all. 

Where was the world in 2015?

When the SDGs were adopted in 2015: 

• More than 795 million people (or  11 per cent of the global population) were facing hunger.  Hunger rates in countries enduring protracted crises were more than three times higher than elsewhere. 
• The growth and development of 159 million children , (24.6 per cent) under 5 years old  was impaired or ‘stunted’ due to poor nutrition. 

Where are we in 2023 at half-time?

• The prevalence of hunger has dropped only marginally since 2015, to 9.2 per cent of the global population. Progress has been frustrated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise in climate shocks and conflict, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine which has driven up the costs of food, fuel and fertilizers.
• Last year, approximately 735 million people faced hunger, which is still well above the pre-pandemic level, and 148 million children still faced stunting from poor nutrition; just over 2 per cent decrease since 2015. 
• At the same time, not enough is being done to support developing economies adapt their food production to the impacts of climate change. Small-scale farmers from developing countries produce one third of the world’s food, yet they receive only 1.7 per cent of climate finance.  

How can a food systems transition make a difference? 

With most of the world’s extremely poor living in rural areas and relying on agriculture to survive, efforts to transform global food production go hand in hand with increasing the productivity and incomes of farmers.  Doing so would lead to the restoration of degraded land and will prevent further deforestation for food production, helping mitigate the effects of climate change.  

What is the UN doing about this? 

Under the convening of the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, the UN system, world leaders, civil society and private sectors partners gathered at the UN Food Systems Summit in Rome in 2021 and a subsequent ‘stocktaking moment’ in 2023 to transform these failing food systems. The Summit has provided a platform for countries to share their food systems journeys and led to the launch of the Secretary-General's Call to Action for accelerated Food Systems Transformation.

At the national level, this shift is being supported by UN country teams on the ground, and backed by the knowledge, expertise and convening power of the Resident Coordinator system. 

Spotlight: Kick-starting transformation in the Gran Chaco Americano 

The Gran Chaco region of Latin America, which extends through areas of Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay, has the largest dry forest in the world, and is home to more than 9 million people. Yet high temperatures and prolonged droughts, make this region and its inhabitants particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change and in desperate need of more resilient food systems. 

Recognizing these pressures, the UN Resident Coordinators in Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay have joined forces, along with their UN country teams to help create joint pathways for sustainable food systems to be adopted at scale. 

Earlier this year, the three Resident Coordinators set off on a joint mission through the region to engage with key members of the indigenous community, smallholder farmers, civil society and local government to design shared proposals that not only accelerate systemic climate action and boost the resilience of food production methods, but also tackle the region’s growing economic and social divides. 

Understanding that too many of today’s challenges, including those which are climate-related, know no country borders, the Resident Coordinators are helping their host governments articulate a common vision for food systems transformation and advancing shared data systems and policy pathways, to make this systemic shift a long-term reality. 

Learn more about other examples on what the UN is doing to support this transition:

Jordan’s farmers respond to water scarcity woes with innovation | United Nations DCO (un-dco.org)

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• Published: 09 October 2018

Review of the sustainability of food systems and transition using the Internet of Food

• Nicholas M. Holden 1 ,
• Eoin P. White 2 ,
• Matthew. C. Lange   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6148-7962 3 &
• Thomas L. Oldfield 1  

npj Science of Food volume  2 , Article number:  18 ( 2018 ) Cite this article

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Environmental impact

Many current food systems are unsustainable because they cause significant resource depletion and unacceptable environmental impacts. This problem is so severe, it can be argued that the food eaten today is equivalent to a fossil resource. The transition to sustainable food systems will require many changes but of particular importance will be the harnessing of internet technology, in the form of an ‘Internet of Food’, which offers the chance to use global resources more efficiently, to stimulate rural livelihoods, to develop systems for resilience and to facilitate responsible governance by means of computation, communication, education and trade without limits of knowledge and access. A brief analysis of the evidence of resource depletion and environmental impact associated with food production and an outline of the limitations of tools like life cycle assessment, which are used to quantify the impact of food products, indicates that the ability to combine data across the whole system from farm to human will be required in order to design sustainable food systems. Developing an Internet of Food, as a precompetitive platform on which business models can be built, much like the internet as we currently know it, will require agreed vocabularies and ontologies to be able to reason and compute across the vast amounts of data that are becoming available. The ability to compute over large amounts of data will change the way the food system is analysed and understood and will permit a transition to sustainable food systems.

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Introduction.

The food we eat today is unsustainable for two reasons: the food system causes unacceptable environmental impacts and it is depleting non-renewable resources. Our food can be regarded as ‘fossil food’ because its production relies on fossil fuel, non-renewable mineral resources, depletion of groundwater reserves and excessive soil loss. The idea of sustainable food systems is at the heart of global efforts to manage and regulate human food supply. 1 The sustainable development goals focus on a number of critical global issues, but Goal 2 (‘end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture’), Goal 12 (‘ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns’) and Goal 13 (‘take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts’) are intimately related to the need to transition global food systems from fossil to sustainable. To understand how to meet the challenge presented by these goals, it is necessary to consider what is meant by ‘sustainable’ in the context of a food system. In 1989, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) council defined sustainable development as ‘the management and conservation of the natural resource base, and the orientation of technological and institutional change in such a manner as to ensure the attainment and continued satisfaction of human needs for present and future generations. Such sustainable development (in the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors) conserves land, water, plant and animal genetic resources, is environmentally non-degrading, technically appropriate, economically viable and socially acceptable’. 2 The important ideas in this definition are working within the planetary boundary (‘the natural resource base’), having a future-proof system (‘continued satisfaction’, ‘present and future generations’), limiting impacts to those manageable by the buffering capacity of the planet (‘environmentally non-degrading’), considering the financial needs of business stakeholders (‘economically viable’) and compatible with local needs and customs (‘socially acceptable’).

Five principles have been identified to support a common vision for sustainable agriculture and food. 3 These are: (1) resource efficiency; (2) action to conserve, protect and enhance natural resources; (3) rural livelihood protection and social well-being; (4) enhanced resilience of people, communities and ecosystems; and (5) responsible governance. The aim of this paper is to outline the case for why food systems are not sustainable and to define the case for using technology, specifically internet technologies (hardware and software combined to make the ‘Internet of Food’) to enable the transition of the food system from fossil to sustainable. Increasing population, increasing consumption, a billion malnourished people and agriculture that is concurrently degrading land, water, biodiversity and climate on a global scale 4 combine to indicate that the fossil food systems we currently rely on are not fit-for-purpose. It is suggested that halting agricultural expansion, closing yield gaps, increasing efficiency, changing diets and reducing waste could lead to a doubling of food production with reduced environmental impacts of agriculture. 4 To achieve these changes, it is going to be necessary to harness internet technology, in the form of an ‘Internet of Food’, which offers the chance to use global resources more efficiently, to stimulate rural livelihoods, to develop systems for resilience and to facilitate responsible governance by means of computation, communication, education and trade without limits of knowledge and access.

The concept of ‘Internet of Food’ first appeared in peer-reviewed literature in 2011 (based on a search of scopus.com using ‘Internet of Food’ as the search term). It was described by the idea of food items having an ‘IP identify’, which raised the question of how this might influence our eating habits. 5 Their focus was very much on how the technology could influence food choices and predicted that by 2020 it would be possible to monitor and control food objects remotely through the Internet. It is this technological control of the food system that has real potential to help societal stakeholders (consumers, retailers, processors, producers, shareholders, landowners, indigenous peoples and so on) to engage in the transition of our food system from being fossil to sustainable. The ubiquitous physical tagging and sensing of mass and energy flow in the food system linked to a formal semantic web will allow computation over the whole system to answer questions such as: What was the resource depletion of this product? What is the social impact of eating this product? What food safety procedures have been employed for this product? What and where has wealth been created by the value chain of this product? When these questions can be answered for specific instances of food product types and predicted for new products, then it will be possible to determine whether a specific food system is sustainable or not. The stakeholders demanding answers to these questions are likely to be governance and policy makers and consumers. When these questions can be answered, it will be possible to plan how to manage the evolution of the fundamental life support system (food) from fossil to sustainable in order to support a growing global population.

Current food systems

To understand the need for a systematic transformation of the food system, it is necessary to detail exactly why it is unsustainable. An overwhelming case can be made for the environmental dimension of the system, but there are also social and economic issues as well. This paper will focus the environmental case (resource depletion and adverse environmental impact that relate to the ‘continued satisfaction’ and ‘environmentally non-degrading’ criteria for sustainable food systems), but similar cases can be made for important social and economic issues as well.

Resource depletion

The resource depletion case can be made with respect to energy, nutrients, water, soil and land. Each will be summarised in turn. To date, the agri-food system has converted non-renewable fossil fuel energy into food by enabling mechanisation, amplified fertiliser production, improved food processing and safe global transportation. 6 According to FAO, 7 the agri-food sector accounts for around 30% of the world’s total energy consumption, with Europe alone accounting for 17% of gross energy consumption in 2013. 8 Agriculture, including crop cultivation and animal rearing, is the most energy-intense phase of the food system, accounting for nearly one third of the total energy consumed in the food production chain. 9 To date, renewable energy has had limited penetration of the agri-food sector with fossil fuels accounting for almost 79% of the energy consumed by the food sector. 8 From an energy perspective, the food system can be regarded as unsustainable (cannot meet the ‘continued satisfaction’ requirement) due to its reliance on fossil energy sources.

By the end of the 20th Century, it was estimated that US-produced ammonia represented 32% of fertiliser nitrogen (N) demand, which was produced by extracting N from the atmosphere as ammonia by a process using hydrogen from natural gas (fossil fuel). 9 The vast majority of N fertilisers consumed today are still created using fossil fuels and cannot be regarded as sustainable until such times as new technological approaches emerge, which are currently in their infancy. 10 , 11 A review of mineral fertiliser reserves concluded that potash reserves (the source of most potassium (K) fertilisers) are of great concern and that it is time to start evaluating other sources of K for agriculture 12 but others concluded that ‘modern agriculture is currently relying on a non-renewable resource and future phosphate rock is likely to yield lower quality P at a higher price’. 13 If significant physical and institutional changes are not made to the way we currently use and source P, agricultural yields will be severely compromised in the future. Estimates for when world peak P will be reached range from 2027 14 to 2033. 13 Variations in estimations of when peak P will occur are due the constant changing of reserve levels. 12 The ‘power imbalance’ where just three countries controlling >85% of the known global phosphorus reserves, 15 a concentration of power far greater than that of crude oil, is also of concern, and it has been concluded that the combined impact increasing demand, dwindling reserves and geopolitical constraints could result in reduced production and supply of chemical P fertilisers and increased global P price. 16 It is clear that over time horizons of around 50 years the agri-food system is going to face a major nutrient crisis unless reliance of fossil mineral resources is significantly reduced and ultimately eliminated. From a nutrient management point-of-view, the food system can be regarded as unsustainable (cannot meet the ‘continued satisfaction’ requirement) due to its reliance on fossil mineral resources.

Modern food production is reliant on irrigation to a great extent, which according to the UN water programme, accounts for 70% of freshwater withdrawals worldwide. 17 Excessive removal of groundwater for irrigation is leading to rapid depletion of aquifers in key food-producing regions, such as North-Western India, the North China Plain, Central USA and California. 18 Aquifers replenish so slowly that they are effectively a non-renewable resource. The depletion of these large freshwater stocks threatens food production and security locally and globally via international food trade. Non-sustainable groundwater abstraction contributed to 20% of global gross irrigation water demand in the year 2000 with this demand having tripled over the period 1960–2000. 19 For many countries, irrigation is sustained by non-renewable groundwater, and it has been highlighted that ‘a vast majority of the world’s population lives in countries sourcing nearly all their staple crop imports from partners who deplete groundwater to produce these crops’. 18 Countries who both produce and import food irrigated from rapidly depleting aquifers are particularly at risk, such as USA, Mexico, Iran and China. It has been estimated that India, soon to be the most populous country in the world, will be unable to meet water requirements within 300 years and emerging pressures may reduce this time horizon considerably. 20 Given the interaction of water supply with energy, this situation may become even worse. For example, in California, 20% of electricity production is used for moving and pumping water for agriculture, 21 and as water becomes more difficult to access, the energy demand will increase. From a water management point-of-view, the food system can be regarded as unsustainable (cannot meet the ‘continued satisfaction’ requirement) due to its reliance on non-renewable water resources.

Over 20 years ago, it was estimated that around one third of the world’s agricultural land had been lost to erosion and the rate of loss was about 10 Mha/year 22 Calculations suggest that soil erosion rates under ploughed cultivation are one to two orders of magnitude greater than soil production rates. 23 This rate of soil loss is not compatible with the ‘continued satisfaction’ requirement for a sustainable food system. It is also linked with other environmental impacts, such as loss of carbon, gaseous emissions, non-point source pollution and sedimentation of waterways, 24 therefore it is not compatible with the ‘environmentally non-degrading’ criteria as well. Given projections for expansion of dryland areas to around 50% of total land surface, with 78% of dryland expansion in areas supporting 50% of population growth in the coming decades, 25 the control of soil erosion and its related impacts is going to be a major requirement for sustainable food systems. From a soil management perspective, the food system can be regarded as unsustainable (cannot meet the ‘continued satisfaction’ requirement).

Having considered the energy, nutrient, water, soil and land requirements for food production, it must be concluded that the food system is unsustainable and needs to change because the natural resource base, future satisfaction and environmentally non-degrading requirements cannot be met. It is reasonable to describe food as ‘fossil food’ because of the reliance of non-renewable (and rapidly depleting) resources to supply much of the world’s population. A complete transformation of the food system is required, one that can perhaps be best driven by harnessing appropriate technology to monitor, control and regulate the different types of food system by unleashing the potential benefits of being able to compute over the vast amounts of data that can be obtained from the activities along the food value chain.

Modern industrial agriculture was made possible through land clearing and habitat disruption. Some recognised consequences of this were fragmentation and loss of biodiversity, significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from land clearing and adverse impact on marine and freshwater ecosystems. 26 An estimate suggests that the global food system, from fertiliser manufacture to food storage and packaging, is responsible for up to one third of all human-caused GHG emissions. 27 Using data from 2005, 2007 and 2008, agricultural production is also estimated to be responsible for a significant share of GHG emissions from the food system, releasing ~12,000 Mt CO 2 e/year representing about 86% of all food-related anthropogenic GHG emissions, followed by fertiliser manufacture at ~575 Mt CO 2 e/year and refrigeration at ~490 Mt CO 2 e/year. 28 The impacts of such emissions are already being felt 29 including negative feedbacks on crop yield and health. Reducing this impact will be critical to transitioning from unsustainable fossil food to a sustainable future-proof food system. 28 , 30

The eutrophication of surface waters has become an endemic global problem. 31 From the 1950s to the 1990s, agriculture was associated with a 6.87-fold increase in nitrogen fertilisation, a 3.48-fold increase in phosphorus fertilisation, a 1.68-fold increase in the amount of irrigated cropland and a 1.1-fold increase in land in cultivation. 26 Agricultural production has been identified as a major underlying and persistent cause of eutrophication in many catchments around the world 32 , 33 Nutrient loadings from agriculture are a major driver of water quality deterioration, but it is unclear what level of on-farm control is necessary to achieve water quality improvements. 31 Smart agriculture and precision farming will drive improvement by increasing resource use efficiency and by harnessing technology to determine current conditions, future weather conditions and the correct intervention. 34 , 35

Similar cases can be made for acidification, 36 biodiversity, 37 ecosystem toxicity 38 and other environmental impacts. 39 Taking just the limited number of examples presented above, it is clear that the ‘environmentally non-degrading’ requirement for a sustainable food system is not being met by current food supply systems and a radical change is needed. From an environmental perspective (resource depletion and adverse impact), it can be concluded that food systems are not sustainable (in general), and if we work from a strong sustainability perspective of working within planetary boundaries, 40 they cannot become sustainable until this adverse situation is rectified.

Life cycle thinking methods and the need for an Internet of Food

Life cycle thinking is increasingly being used to assess food system sustainability. 41 It is an approach used to assess products, processes or services in terms of their place in the world, the full life cycle that is required for them to serve human society and environmental, social and economic consequences of that service. The method has been recognised as the leading approach for including sustainability in decision-making in the United States of America, 42 Europe 43 and elsewhere in the world. The quantitative tool used to implement life cycle thinking is life cycle assessment (LCA), which is formalised by international standard (ISO 14040/14044) 44 and has been widely used to assess food production systems. 45 LCA is one of the most important methodologies used to assess the impact (pollution and resource depletion) of the food system by using mass and energy flow accounting to model the system and agreed scientific models to calculate resource depletion and specific types of environmental impacts.

It has been suggested that LCA can lead to practitioners focus on the ‘eco-efficiency’ of inherently unsustainable products, and this can lead to increased consumption, because of the LCA paradigm of reducing negatives rather than increasing positives 46 The cradle-to-cradle (C2C) concept tends to focus more on linking resource consumption and waste creation with sustainability status rather than minimisation of specific impacts. One conclusion is that the best attributes of both approaches should be harnessed. 46 All such methods (e.g. LCA, C2C) depend on being able to collect sufficient data to characterise a system of interest or the use of publicly funded or commercial databases when site-specific data are not available. It was noted that ‘the practicality of adopting LCA to support decision-making can be limited by the generic nature of the assessment and the resource-intensive nature of data collection and life cycle inventory modelling’, 47 which is the key limitation for developing tools to facilitate the transition from fossil to sustainable food. The need to share data between stakeholders in increasingly important for the creation of useful information about the food system.

A number of issues associated with using LCA to better understand and manage food systems have been noted, 41 including (i) the variability of food production, supply chain and consumption globally; (ii) uncertainty related to the specification of data 48 and the system; 49 (iii) identifying the boundary between technosphere and ecosphere because agriculture relies on exploiting the ecosphere; 50 (iv) correctly identifying the real function 51 of the food system in order to select the most useful functional unit; (v) the multi-functionality of the system; (vi) capturing or modelling inventory data (which requires cooperation between stakeholders for food system applications); (vii) the geo-temporal specificity of background data from LCA databases; (viii) capturing the role of different stakeholders (e.g. consumers, government, industry); (ix) the role of diet choices and (x) handling ‘waste’. These issues are seen in the lack of comparability of LCA studies of the same type of product. 52 Furthermore, the scope of LCA as a global tool to quantify environmental impacts over the whole life cycle creates limitations. 53 LCA by its nature, focusses on the global scale and on steady-state, linear homogenous modelling, making it ‘very difficult to include varying spatial and temporal characteristics and nonlinear characteristics of large numbers of processes that occur all over the world’. 53 There are inherent limitations of inventory because of loss of spatial, temporal, dose–response and threshold information, which reduced the accuracy of impact assessments. 54 The ‘Internet of Food’ would transform our understanding of the food system and how they are modelled using LCA, provided data sharing is possible. Of the issues affecting food LCA, 41 most could be directly addressed by the ability to collect data and compute across the whole food chain: variability, uncertainty, multi-functionality, inventory data, databases, stakeholder influence, diet and waste, and the other two, boundary and function, could probably be better understood based on discernible activity. The examples of data mining of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data sets, 47 potential for avoiding excessive simplification 55 and use of big data in industrial ecology 56 indicate that this is the way forward.

Internet of Food: an enabling technology for the transition from fossil to sustainable

The deployment of sensor networks in the food system have historically been stage-specific and typically designed for monitoring and decision-making at a specific site and time, despite the potential for system integration having been recognised more than a decade ago. 57 Many sensors have been developed that could be used for the food chain, for example, for soil monitoring, for precision agriculture purposes, 58 for post-harvest storage monitoring, 59 for process control, 60 for retail logistics monitoring 61 and in some cases for domestic use. 62 A key requirement to create an ‘Internet of Food’ will be to make the data from these sensors interoperable and to be able to compute across the data set they create. A notable limitation is lack of integration caused by the current mix of open and closed data, communications, hardware standards and a lack of willingness to share data between stakeholders. It has been noted that an ‘…ontology-driven architecture for developing hybrid systems [that] consists of various entities including software components, hardware components (sensors, actuators and controllers), datastores (knowledge base, raw data, metadata), biological elements (plants[or animals]) and environmental context…’ 63 would permit the development of precision agriculture applications, and by logical extension this is required to utilise information across the whole food system (i.e. the Internet of Food). The proposal here is that the ‘hybrid-system’ needs to be extended to cover the whole food system, thus permitting production, process, logistics, retail, purchasing, consumption, nutrition and health outcomes to be integrated through information and computation. Where it is not possible to integrate data of the whole system that delivers a product, it will be very difficult to use Internet of Food for best advantage because its strength is determined by the data available.

A critical requirement will be the development of related ontologies. An ontology is the formal naming of concepts (e.g. types, properties, inter-relationships) within a domain and it is used to describe or infer properties of that domain. In order to be able to draw upon a range of data sources (sensors) and databases (knowledge silos), it is necessary to label data with unique identifiers that permit computers to reason with or compute over those data sets. This is where the real value of Internet of Things, and more specifically Internet of Food lies. To achieve the paradigm shift from fossil food to sustainable food systems, such a shift is needed, facilitated by the ability to reason with such data. As noted, 63 an ontology-driven architecture is needed to enable the ‘Internet of Food’. Ecologists have recognised the importance of big data in ecological research 64 in order to address major scientific and societal issues, and to answer the major question facing food (how to achieve a sustainable food system?), an agreed vocabulary and language structure (ontology) is needed. To take simple examples, the word ‘buttermilk’ originally referred to liquid left after churning butter is now also used to describe a fermented or cultured milk drink, so until the language describing these two concepts is standardised it is not possible to compute from diverse data sets within the domain of dairy processing, never mind across domains, where words such as slurry, matrix and texture all mean very different things depending on context. A noted rapid growth of Internet of Things requires standardisation to lower the entry barriers for the new services, to improve interoperability of systems and to allow better services performance. 65 They noted that this is particularly important for security, communication and identification where interoperability, and particularly semantic interoperability, will be critical. It has been recognised that a proliferation of ad hoc coded data systems will be an impediment to developing data-centric systems that can transform farming, 66 so sharing of data, agreement of standards and stakeholder cooperation will be required to achieve food systems transformation.

Food ontologies can be used with the specific aim of identifying gaps and for purposes beyond the initial, relatively simple applications, such as recognising foods, 67 with a contextual focus on diet, food selection, health and wellbeing being possible, 68 which is a critical component of a sustainable food system, and just as important are the social, economic and environmental impacts and benefits. There are untold opportunities to develop specific services targeted in these areas as well as the potential for integration, with tools such as life cycle sustainability assessment to evaluate the true sustainability of specific food products, meal combinations, whole diets and food systems. These ideas have been evaluated in the context of mining U.S. EPA data for assessing chemical manufacturing, 47 which identified that automating data access was a challenge because the data are incompatible with semantic queries. Data need to be described using ontologies to relate those data that need to be linked and to introduce LCA concepts to the descriptions. A framework for integrating ‘big data’ with LCA has been suggested 69 and it was also noted that development of semantic web standards for ecological data have greatly enhanced interoperability in that domain. 70 The same is required for the food system. It has been suggested that when food (and water) domain descriptors have been developed, this will enable ‘IT support [for] improved production, distribution and sales of foodstuffs [and water]’, 71 but the development of the domain models for the food chain is perhaps not a task for commerce or industry, rather for public, international research.

The opportunities that will be created by the Internet of Food are immense. One important shift will be from a descriptive, inferential approach to analysing food systems to a ‘big data’ approach. 68 ‘Big data’ can be characterised in terms of volume (data sets too large for conventional database management), velocity (acquiring, understanding and interpreting data in real time) and variety (the vast array of sources and types of data beyond the conventional rows and columns of numbers describing transactions). 72 Examples have already emerged where ‘big data’ has been used to provide data useful for LCA including agricultural resource survey 73 and resource use and emissions associated with U.S. electric power generation. 74 It is worth pointing out that much of the data relied on for LCA studies is drawn from commonly used databases (e.g. EcoInvent, ELCD, NREL) and are reliant on ‘small data’ and limited observations, which has resulted in reported error (multiple orders of magnitude), 47 while ‘big data’ offers a means to answering questions about environmental impact or food safety that simply cannot be contemplated in the context of controlled experiments. 71

Authors have considered ‘big data’ and ‘internet of things’ in the context of specific parts of the food chain. For example, ‘big data’ in ‘smart farming’ (i.e. the production stage of the food system) is now being used to make predictive insights about farm operations, to support operational decisions, to redesign business processes and to change business models. 75 To leverage this value at the farm level required extension along the food chain beyond the farm, but two scenarios are emerging: closed proprietary systems and open collaborative systems, 74 such as Food Industry Intelligence Network, 76 Food Innovation Network 77 and European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) Food. 78 Priority should be given to development of data and applications infrastructure and at the same time to organisational issues concerning governance and business models for data sharing. 74 In the context of circular economy (i.e. the end of life, non-consumed part of the food system), it was found that, despite the concept of circular economy being discussed for decades, it has not become an adopted business model. 79 An analysis of literature from 2006 to 2015 found only 70 publications at the intersection of circular economy and ‘big data’/‘internet of things’, but nearly half (34) had been published in 2015. 75 It was suggested that technology encompassed by ‘big data’ and ‘internet of things’ is what is needed to enable such change, 75 which is the same argument being put forward here for the Internet of Food in the context of sustainable food systems. Two implications of relevance for the Internet of Food are: there is a gap between scientific research and corporate initiatives, which needs to be closed, and the search of literature was limited by the keywords available, and more specifically the lack of structured taxonomy to describe the circular economy. It is reasonable to conclude that if these ideas are relevant to one small component of the Internet of Food, then they are probably relevant to the concept as a whole.

These two recent reviews highlight the importance of developing the Internet of Food as a precompetitive platform on which business models can be built, much like the internet as we currently know it, and to achieve this we need to define agreed vocabularies and ontologies to be able to reason and compute across the vast amounts of data that are and will be available in the future. The ability to compute over large amounts of data will change the way the food system is analysed and understood. Biological scientists have noted how important data curation is, because as curated data become available the way science is conducted changes. 80 A key requirement of data curation is the connection of data from different sources in a human- and machine-comprehensible way. Another key change is the processing of multiple sources of complex data (‘big data’) using inference programs. While this might lead to new ways of conducting experimental (hypothesis driven) research, it is also unlocking the door to data-driven research, i.e. extracting new knowledge and understanding from data without experimentation or preconceived ideas, and providing new management approaches based on information and better decision-making capabilities. 71

The Internet of Food offers substantial opportunities for understanding the limits and constraints to sustainable food systems and thus supporting decisions about the transition from fossil to sustainable food. It is essential that all stakeholders engage with the development of Internet of Food to ensure harmonious development of a technology that can be used for both pre-competitive applications and commercial exploitation, if it is to be fully developed over the coming 5–10 years. In addition to the technical issues highlighted here, there are considerations of data ownership, privacy, ethical use of data, market control and other application domains (e.g. food safety, traceability, personal nutrition, security, fraud and policy) that need to be developed with stakeholder contributions alongside the technical advances considered here.

Conclusions

In order to transition to a sustainable food system, we need specific technology infrastructure to allow high-quality data to be collected about the food system that will permit the best possible decision-making. Key requirements are: standard vocabularies and ontologies to allow integration of data sets across the internet; proliferation of low cost sensing to allow orders of magnitude change in the supply of empirical observation data into LCA models; and new analytical methods to collate, curate, analyse and utilise data across the whole food production system. We need an Internet of Food to monitor conditions and analyse data to derive knowledge that can be combined with the means to implement control of the system to enable a step change in how we think about food systems. This technology will give us the chance to transition from fossil food to sustainable food systems.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the support and funding from the UCD Institute of Food and Health, UC Davis, Food for Health Institute and the IC3-Foods Conference.

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The ideas and initial draft for this paper were drawn together by N.M.H. and consolidated at the inaugural IC3-Foods Conference in UC Davis, November 2016, following extensive discussion with M.C.L. T.L.O. and E.P.W. contributed to background research and additional draft text. M.C.L. refined the technology discussion.

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Holden, N.M., White, E.P., Lange, M.C. et al. Review of the sustainability of food systems and transition using the Internet of Food. npj Sci Food 2 , 18 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41538-018-0027-3

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Food Sustainability

The Factors, Choices, and Impact

Evgeniia Siiankovskaia / Getty Images

What Is Sustainability?

Factors of food sustainability, sustainable food organizations, how to make sustainable food choices, more ways to support food sustainability.

The concept of food sustainability has been the subject of research for several decades, and it's a topic that has increasingly occupied the public consciousness in recent years. But what is sustainability, and what does food sustainability mean?

Food sustainability means producing food in a way that protects the environment, makes efficient use of natural resources, ensures that farmers can support themselves, and enhances the quality of life in communities that produce food, including the animals as well as the people. This idea is the driving force behind a movement to address the fact that significantly more resources go into our global food system than come out of it.

Why Is It Important?

Food sustainability is important for a number of reasons, all of which are interrelated. But the primary reason is that it determines humankind's ability to produce enough food for everyone on the planet now, as well as for future generations. As things stand now, we are already unable to feed the world's population (9 percent of the world's population doesn't have enough food). And since the population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050, food production would need to increase 60 to 70 percent by then to meet this additional demand.  

To accomplish this growth, hundreds of millions of hectares of forest would need to be converted to farmland, which would have a massively negative impact on the environment. Moreover, the agriculture industry currently produces more greenhouse gases than the entire transportation industry, including all road transport, aviation and shipping. Increasing the size of this industry by 60 to 70 percent would be devastating to the environment. It might not even be possible. Food production currently accounts for 70 percent of the planet's freshwater usage. Increasing that usage to keep up with the growing demand for food will put even greater pressure on already scarce resources.

Food sustainability is about feeding the world today and in the future, not by making the world's agriculture system bigger, but by transforming it into something new. This effort faces significant challenges, as it's a multifaceted issue with many factors contributing to it. 

In addition to food security (being able to feed the current population without compromising the ability to feed future generations), other factors include nutrition and health, social justice, natural resources, and animal welfare. Farms need healthy soil to be able to grow healthy produce, and the way we deal with food waste (which is a massive problem ) needs to become more sustainable as well. Additionally, sustainability includes ensuring that food systems benefit everyone equally, not just those in wealthy countries or urban areas. Creating a system where farmers can subsist above poverty is a big part of this.

There are many organizations worldwide that are working to promote food sustainability. Here a some of the best.

FoodTank , a nonprofit research group, pushes for food system change through education, advocacy, and building networks to support food sustainability while alleviating hunger, obesity, and poverty.

Sustainable Food Trust focuses on leadership and advocacy, research and policy, and communications to influence and enhance the work of other organizations.

International Food Policy Research Institute has more than 600 employees in over 50 countries working to provide policy solutions to reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries, all in a sustainable manner.

One of the most powerful forces behind food sustainability is consumers making choices. Each time a consumer chooses one food product over another, or one type of food over another, they are effectively casting a vote for what sort of future they want to see. To that end, meeting the world's increased food demand by 2050 will require making substantial changes to our diets. Consumption of fruits, vegetable, nuts, and legumes will have to double, while consumption of red meat and sugar will have to be cut by at least half. So making sustainable food choices includes choosing plant-based foods over animal-based ones.

Eating Local : If your food originates close to where you live, it requires less energy to transport it to you, and refrigerate it on its way. Traveling a shorter distance also means fewer emissions are produced.

Eat Seasonally: This goes hand in hand with eating locally, since what's in season locally will naturally match the season you're in. CSAs are a great tool to support eating locally and seasonally .

Eat More Variety: Increasing the diversity of what you eat promotes diversity in agriculture, which in turn is better for the environment. 

Reduce Waste: More than 40 percent of food in the U.S. ends up being thrown away, which means all the resources that went into producing that food are being thrown away with it.

Hunger and Undernourishment . Max Roser and Hannah Ritchie , OurWorldInData.org

Growing at a slower pace, world population is expected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050 and could peak at nearly 11 billion around 2100 . United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs

Feeding the world in 2050 and beyond . George Silva, Michigan State University Extension

Sector by sector: where do global greenhouse gas emissions come from? Hannah Ritchie, OurWorldInData.org

Water for Food, Water for Life: A Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture . London: Earthscan, and Colombo: International Water Management Institute.

Food Planet Health . The EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets From Sustainable Food Systems

• Ingredient Information
• Culinary Glossary
• Food History
• Ingredient Glossary

• Food Waste Management Words: 1989
• Food Labeling Affecting Sustainable Food Choices Words: 1931
• Are Food Manufactures Killing Us? Words: 2188
• Food Technology Importance in Modern Days Words: 1117
• Food Additives Words: 2039
• The Environmental Impacts of the Food and Hospitality Industry Words: 1579
• Food Insecurity Health Issue: How to Mitigate It Words: 1397
• Nutrition and Food Security within the Aboriginal and Remote Communities of Australia Words: 3061
• Nursing: Issue of Obesity, Impact of Food Words: 655
• Food Allergies and Obesity Words: 821
• Food Processing: Principles and Controversies Words: 584
• Food Security: Global Health Issue Comparison Words: 1524
• Food Safety in the Commercial Industry Words: 697
• The “Food Inc.” Documentary by Robert Kenner Words: 1139
• Food Donation and Food Safety: Environmental Health Words: 1332
• Food Safety Issues and Standards Words: 1399
• Sustainable Agriculture Against Food Insecurity Words: 542
• Food Safety and Information Bulletin Words: 638
• Right to Food as a Fundamental Right Words: 2863
• The Trends of Natural and Organic Foods Words: 760
• Scientific Approach to Food Safety at Home Words: 1205
• Food Waste Reduction Strategy Words: 834

Sustainable Food Systems, Nutrition

Introduction, overview of the challenges in modern agriculture, sustainable agriculture and the importance of diversity, innovative food processing methods, food waste management, works cited.

Sustainable food systems focus on food production, processing, and waste management to ensure efficiency and low environmental impact of the food industry. Until the end of the 20th century, these processes were largely seen as independent, resulting in numerous issues. While the population of the Earth keeps growing, limited resources and environmental problems become a global issue that forces governments worldwide to think differently. Food industry management has a significant impact on society and the environment, and it cannot be approached in the same way as it was during the industrial revolution. Sustainable food systems offer a new approach that can define the future of humanity for the next centuries.

To study sustainable food systems, it is crucial to understand the causes of the crisis in the food production industry. Dwivedi et al. define primary issues as “decline of biodiversity, climate change and greenhouse gas emissions (GHGEs), hunger and malnutrition, and poverty and water scarcity” (842). Numerous researchers agree that the current crisis is primarily caused by the reductionist approach to agriculture. Reductionism aims to simplify systems by assuming the key role of a single factor rather than analyzing those as complex phenomena. This approach was used mainly for the agricultural reforms of the 19th century, which largely laid the foundation for the modern food production industry.

The industrial revolution of the 19th century had a dramatic impact on the agricultural industry. The uses of fertilizers and similar strains of seeds were seen as crucial to ensure increased productivity, and the theories advocating sustainability did not stand a chance against the principles of rising capitalism (Biel 12-16). The continuously growing consumption of refined foods is one of the consequences of the reductionist approach. Dwivedi et al. note that, besides contributing to health issues, refined foods production increases carbon footprint (844). The low biodiversity of crops is yet another issue that poses a severe threat to human health.

The Green Revolution was introduced in the 1950s as a plan to deal with hunger issues worldwide. However, it is impossible to ignore the scope of the negative impact it had on public health. For example, heavy reliance on rice and wheat diet has led to significant malnutrition issues in South-East Asia (Dwivedi et al. 845). Overall, the Green Revolution in the 20th century followed the same reductionist thinking patterns that inspired the agricultural reform in the 19th century. Sustainable food systems can prove to be the best alternative to this simplified approach.

Sustainable agriculture is a concept that addresses the issues that have emerged as a result of the “industrial” approach to agriculture in the past centuries. Shelef cites land and resource management, as well as human and ecosystem interfaces, as the major principles that define it (50). Land management ensures the quality of the soil in the long term. Shelef states that “compost incorporation, cover crops, intercropping, crop rotation, and sustainable tillage management can offer beneficial solutions regarding soil organic matter management” (51). Resource management focuses on the use of energy and, most importantly, water. In a sustainable system, numerous environmentally friendly techniques (wastewater streams, biosolarization) can be used to fight pests and disinfect the soil (Shelef 52). Human and ecosystem interfaces are connected as the environmental impact of agriculture affects both human health and ecology. Some of the steps towards a sustainable system include reduced use of chemicals, diversification of the crops, and stopping deforestation and land conversion (Shelef 54-55). While sustainable agriculture addresses several global problems, some researchers argue that its implementation can result in lower productivity, which might worsen other issues, such as hunger.

Malnutrition is considered to be a crucial factor in the food industry crisis. Hence, sustainable food systems aim to increase dietary diversity by increasing the heterogeneity of the crops. Current regulations in agriculture are geared towards the “stability” of the crops, limiting the evolutionary potential and, as a result, the biodiversity of the latter. Biel suggests lifting some regulations to allow for more space for natural evolution and farmer-based research (62). Arguably, these two factors are crucial to reducing crops homogeneity.

Evolutionary breeding is a technique used in sustainable food systems to improve diversity. By growing multiple genotypes of the same crop, farmers can achieve better biodiversity due to the natural crossing of the seeds. Dwivedi et al. note that “farmers using evolutionary populations report high yields and low levels of weed infestation, disease incidence, and insect damage” (847). For instance, this technique benefited rice plantations in China, where it significantly limited the spread of fungi, allowing farmers to reduce the use of fungicides (Zocca et al. 10). Evolutionary populations show better resilience, which is an important factor considering climate change. Moreover, this method contributes to dietary diversity, which helps to reduce health risks.

Wild and orphan crops have a huge potential to increase biodiversity. Biel argues that some of the weeds generally perceived as harmful are actually edible plant species (59). Orphan crops are often under-researched, but evidence suggests that they could potentially solve nutrition-related problems. Borelli states that research has proven that several native fruit species in Brazil have more vitamins A and C than fruits that are traditionally considered the best sources of these vitamins (231). Similar research in Sri Lanka, Kenya, and Mali has shown comparable results. Researchers state that raising public awareness and implementing government programs to promote the use of orphan crops is one of the key measures that benefit the sustainability of food systems.

One of the goals of sustainable food systems is ensuring the nutritional quality of foods. Traditional thermal processing methods affect the taste of food and reduce its nutritional value (Zocca et al. 27). In the past few decades, numerous alternative ways of processing that address this issue have emerged. Those can be divided into two main categories – thermal and non-thermal processing. Most of the new methods are still restricted to laboratory research; however, some are used commercially in developed countries.

High-pressure processing is one of the non-thermal technologies that has found commercial success in the US and Europe. It can be used to preserve food without applying thermal or chemical treatments that affect the quality of products (Zocca et al. 28). Unlike many other novel technologies, high hydrostatic pressure has no serious limitations or adverse effects that could prevent it from becoming the new standard food preservation method.

Pulsed electric fields technology is another method that could replace pasteurization for non-solid foods. While this process has a limited scope of usage (liquid foods with low conductivity) and implementation costs are high, low processing costs and good quality of the processed products make it a promising technology (Zocca et al. 28). Alternatively, liquids can be processed using membrane technology that has been used commercially for a few decades. Membrane separation can be used to refine juices, oils, and dairy products. This method produces less pollution and is more energy-efficient than traditional pasteurization (Zocca et al. 29). Notably, the research on membranes has been ongoing since the 1950s, and scholars have been continuously successful at finding new applications of the technology throughout the years.

Ozone and irradiation are used to preserve food commercially, but both methods have serious disadvantages. Zocca et al. note that irradiation leads to loss of nutrients, and a modified taste of foods, the problems that alternative processing methods aim at resolving in the first place (29). Ozone use is limited to certain products and has a high capital cost (Zocca et al. 30). Moreover, both methods require nearly ideal sanitary conditions to be efficient, and those are not always achievable.

Joule or ohmic heating is one of the most prominent novel thermal processing technologies. While this method might seem similar to traditional technologies, it does not lower the nutritional value of food and is better at preserving its qualities (Kaur & Singh 2338). Zocca et al. note that fast heating to extreme temperatures has minimal effect on food chemistry (31). Similar to other technologies, Joule heating has not found much commercial success so far due to high investment costs (Kaur & Singh 2345-2346; Zocca et al. 34). Overall, there is a lot of ongoing research on ohmic heating that could make the technology more accessible in the future.

Infrared heating has been used for years in electronics and other industries, and recent research established its potential in food processing. Low energy costs and high product quality are among the advantages of the technology (Zocca et al. 31). Aboud et al. statek that “the energy is directly concentrated on the material to be heated and does not produce volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide or nitrogen oxides” (5). Zocca et al. note that infrared heating can be combined with other methods, such as microwave heating, to achieve better results. Researchers have not determined any significant negative effects of infrared processing so far; the only limitation is the depth of penetration (Aboud et al. 5). This technology has recently gained a lot of recognition; however, its commercial use remains limited.

Radio frequency heating, on the other hand, has seen some commercial use and is one of the major contenders to replace the traditional processing methods. Similar to other mentioned technologies, RF heating is an energy-efficient, environmentally friendly process that does not affect food quality. Altemimi et al. state that RF heating units are more efficient, have better penetration, and are easier to construct than conventional heating or microwave units (83-84). However, the construction costs for the RF units are higher (Altemimi et al. 84). Altemimi et al. also note that the technology could serve as a better alternative to consumer microwave units in the future (90). Overall, the simplicity of the technology and its potential in the food processing industry and electronics makes it one of the most promising alternatives to traditional thermal processing.

The growth of the population of the Earth makes waste management one of the most pressing environmental issues on the planet, and food waste is one of the factors that contribute the most. Otles and Kartal state that the food industry is responsible for 31% of the European carbon footprint (373). Climate changes force governments to adopt environmentally friendly policies, and proper food waste management may be one of the most important issues. For example, food waste can be used to produce biofuels and chemicals for healthcare and cosmetic industries (Otles & Kartal 374). The biorefinery concept suggests increased use of recycling technologies instead of traditional ones, such as landfills.

Some of the traditional techniques fit in the context of sustainable systems. One of those is the use of food waste as a livestock feed. However, Otles and Kartal note that potential toxins in the feed and diseases associated with this method make it relatively dangerous (376-377). Composting is yet another traditional technique used to enrich the soil and decrease waste volumes. Otles and Kartal argue that while composting is an environmentally friendly method, it is difficult to implement it on a large scale worldwide (377). Therefore, new techniques have to be implemented in food waste management to ensure the sustainability of the system.

The biorefinery concept is designed to respond to environmental challenges of the modern world by improving food waste management and reducing the use of fossil fuels. According to Otles and Kartal, “biorefinery is based on the conversion of bio-mass by separating it into its building units to produce biofuels, chemicals, and other products” (379). Thus, biorefinery processes are somewhat similar to those of the petroleum refineries but with less environmental impact. However, the concept is associated with ethical issues, as biorefineries use not only waste but specialized crops, which can be used in food production.

As biorefineries compete with food producers for the crops while hunger remains a huge issue in the developing countries, many question the viability of the concept. Fereira argues that biorefinery has to be considered a vital part of the economy, as with non-renewable resources reaching peak production, the development of new energy sources becomes a necessity rather than a luxury (3). Otles and Kartal add that newer research focuses on better use of food waste and alternative sources of energy, such as algae, to reduce the need for the use of specialized crops in biorefineries (380). However, many of these technologies require massive investments, and it might take decades before they are used commercially worldwide.

Wasted crops and production by-products have shown a lot of potential in biofuels production research. Otles and Kartal state that “potential of bioethanol production from crop residues and wasted crops is about 16 times higher than the current world production” (383). Otles and Kartal add that the stillage (the alcohol production residue) can be used to produce biogas (384). Citrus peel, olive kernels, and cheese whey are other examples of by-products used to obtain valuable compounds (Galanakis 405). While these technologies are still far from becoming the industry standard, researchers note that social demand for sustainable production can make a difference. Overall, biorefineries are extremely important to the future of the economy, as they could prove to be the best solution to numerous issues, including food waste management and search for renewable energy sources.

The problems that have emerged from poor management of the food industry in the 19-20 th centuries are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Sustainability is the concept that aims at dealing with most of the issues, such as malnutrition, hunger, high carbon footprint, and so forth. In the era of globalization, when every step taken by governments and corporations is tracked and questioned, the concept of sustainable food systems has a chance to replace the current industrial approach. Emerging technologies in food production, processing, and waste management might redefine the outlook of the food industry forever. A complex approach to the current and future issues is crucial to ensure the success of the global sustainable food system.

Aboud, Salam A., et al. “A Comprehensive Review on Infrared Heating Applications in Food Processing.” Molecules, vol. 24, no. 22, 2019, pp. 2-21.

Altemimi, Ammar, et al. “Critical Review of Radio-Frequency (RF) Heating Applications in Food Processing.” Food Quality and Safety, vol. 3, no. 2, 2019, pp. 81-91.

Biel, Robert. Sustainable Food Systems. UCL Press, 2016.

Borelli, Teresa, et al. “Local Solutions for Sustainable Food Systems: The Contribution of Orphan Crops and Wild Edible Species.” Agronomy, vol. 10, no. 2, 2020, p. 231.

Dwivedi, Sangam L., et al. “Diversifying Food Systems in the Pursuit of Sustainable Food Production and Healthy Diets.” Trends in Plant Science, vol. 22, no. 10, 2017, pp. 842-856.

Fereira, Ana. “Biorefinery Concept.” Biorefineries: Targeting Energy, High Value Products and Waste Valorisation, edited by Miriam Rabaçal et al., Springer, 2017, pp. 1-20.

Galanakis, Charis M. “Food Waste Recovery: Prospects and Opportunities.” Sustainable Food Systems from Agriculture to Industry: Improving Production and Processing, edited by Charis M. Galanakis, Academic Press, 2018, pp. 401-419.

Kaur, Nimratbir and A. K. Singh. “Ohmic Heating: Concept and Applications—A Review.” Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, vol. 56, no. 14, 2016, pp. 2338-2351.

Shelef, Oren et al. “Elucidating Local Food Production to Identify the Principles and Challenges of Sustainable Agriculture.” Sustainable Food Systems from Agriculture to Industry: Improving Production and Processing, edited by Charis M. Galanakis, Academic Press, 2018, pp. 47-81.

Zocca, Renan O., et al. “Introduction to Sustainable Food Production.” Sustainable Food Systems from Agriculture to Industry: Improving Production and Processing, edited by Charis M. Galanakis, Academic Press, 2018, pp. 3-46.

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Six brilliant student essays on the power of food to spark social change.

Read winning essays from our fall 2018 “Feeding Ourselves, Feeding Our Revolutions,” student writing contest.

For the Fall 2018 student writing competition, “Feeding Ourselves, Feeding Our Revolutions,” we invited students to read the YES! Magazine article, “Cooking Stirs the Pot for Social Change,”   by Korsha Wilson and respond to this writing prompt: If you were to host a potluck or dinner to discuss a challenge facing your community or country, what food would you cook? Whom would you invite? On what issue would you deliberate? 

The Winners

From the hundreds of essays written, these six—on anti-Semitism, cultural identity, death row prisoners, coming out as transgender, climate change, and addiction—were chosen as essay winners.  Be sure to read the literary gems and catchy titles that caught our eye.

Middle School Winner: India Brown High School Winner: Grace Williams University Winner: Lillia Borodkin Powerful Voice Winner: Paisley Regester Powerful Voice Winner: Emma Lingo Powerful Voice Winner: Hayden Wilson

Literary Gems Clever Titles

Middle School Winner: India Brown  

A Feast for the Future

Close your eyes and imagine the not too distant future: The Statue of Liberty is up to her knees in water, the streets of lower Manhattan resemble the canals of Venice, and hurricanes arrive in the fall and stay until summer. Now, open your eyes and see the beautiful planet that we will destroy if we do not do something. Now is the time for change. Our future is in our control if we take actions, ranging from small steps, such as not using plastic straws, to large ones, such as reducing fossil fuel consumption and electing leaders who take the problem seriously.

 Hosting a dinner party is an extraordinary way to publicize what is at stake. At my potluck, I would serve linguini with clams. The clams would be sautéed in white wine sauce. The pasta tossed with a light coat of butter and topped with freshly shredded parmesan. I choose this meal because it cannot be made if global warming’s patterns persist. Soon enough, the ocean will be too warm to cultivate clams, vineyards will be too sweltering to grow grapes, and wheat fields will dry out, leaving us without pasta.

I think that giving my guests a delicious meal and then breaking the news to them that its ingredients would be unattainable if Earth continues to get hotter is a creative strategy to initiate action. Plus, on the off chance the conversation gets drastically tense, pasta is a relatively difficult food to throw.

In YES! Magazine’s article, “Cooking Stirs the Pot for Social Change,” Korsha Wilson says “…beyond the narrow definition of what cooking is, you can see that cooking is and has always been an act of resistance.” I hope that my dish inspires people to be aware of what’s at stake with increasing greenhouse gas emissions and work toward creating a clean energy future.

 My guest list for the potluck would include two groups of people: local farmers, who are directly and personally affected by rising temperatures, increased carbon dioxide, drought, and flooding, and people who either do not believe in human-caused climate change or don’t think it affects anyone. I would invite the farmers or farm owners because their jobs and crops are dependent on the weather. I hope that after hearing a farmer’s perspective, climate-deniers would be awakened by the truth and more receptive to the effort to reverse these catastrophic trends.

Earth is a beautiful planet that provides everything we’ll ever need, but because of our pattern of living—wasteful consumption, fossil fuel burning, and greenhouse gas emissions— our habitat is rapidly deteriorating. Whether you are a farmer, a long-shower-taking teenager, a worker in a pollution-producing factory, or a climate-denier, the future of humankind is in our hands. The choices we make and the actions we take will forever affect planet Earth.

 India Brown is an eighth grader who lives in New York City with her parents and older brother. She enjoys spending time with her friends, walking her dog, Morty, playing volleyball and lacrosse, and swimming.

High School Winner: Grace Williams

Apple Pie Embrace

It’s 1:47 a.m. Thanksgiving smells fill the kitchen. The sweet aroma of sugar-covered apples and buttery dough swirls into my nostrils. Fragrant orange and rosemary permeate the room and every corner smells like a stroll past the open door of a French bakery. My eleven-year-old eyes water, red with drowsiness, and refocus on the oven timer counting down. Behind me, my mom and aunt chat to no end, fueled by the seemingly self-replenishable coffee pot stashed in the corner. Their hands work fast, mashing potatoes, crumbling cornbread, and covering finished dishes in a thin layer of plastic wrap. The most my tired body can do is sit slouched on the backless wooden footstool. I bask in the heat escaping under the oven door.

 As a child, I enjoyed Thanksgiving and the preparations that came with it, but it seemed like more of a bridge between my birthday and Christmas than an actual holiday. Now, it’s a time of year I look forward to, dedicated to family, memories, and, most importantly, food. What I realized as I grew older was that my homemade Thanksgiving apple pie was more than its flaky crust and soft-fruit center. This American food symbolized a rite of passage, my Iraqi family’s ticket to assimilation. 

 Some argue that by adopting American customs like the apple pie, we lose our culture. I would argue that while American culture influences what my family eats and celebrates, it doesn’t define our character. In my family, we eat Iraqi dishes like mesta and tahini, but we also eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch for breakfast. This doesn’t mean we favor one culture over the other; instead, we create a beautiful blend of the two, adapting traditions to make them our own.

 That said, my family has always been more than the “mashed potatoes and turkey” type.

My mom’s family immigrated to the United States in 1976. Upon their arrival, they encountered a deeply divided America. Racism thrived, even after the significant freedoms gained from the Civil Rights Movement a few years before. Here, my family was thrust into a completely unknown world: they didn’t speak the language, they didn’t dress normally, and dinners like riza maraka seemed strange in comparison to the Pop Tarts and Oreos lining grocery store shelves.

 If I were to host a dinner party, it would be like Thanksgiving with my Chaldean family. The guests, my extended family, are a diverse people, distinct ingredients in a sweet potato casserole, coming together to create a delicious dish.

In her article “Cooking Stirs the Pot for Social Change,” Korsha Wilson writes, “each ingredient that we use, every technique, every spice tells a story about our access, our privilege, our heritage, and our culture.” Voices around the room will echo off the walls into the late hours of the night while the hot apple pie steams at the table’s center.

We will play concan on the blanketed floor and I’ll try to understand my Toto, who, after forty years, still speaks broken English. I’ll listen to my elders as they tell stories about growing up in Unionville, Michigan, a predominately white town where they always felt like outsiders, stories of racism that I have the privilege not to experience. While snacking on sunflower seeds and salted pistachios, we’ll talk about the news- how thousands of people across the country are protesting for justice among immigrants. No one protested to give my family a voice.

Our Thanksgiving food is more than just sustenance, it is a physical representation of my family ’s blended and ever-changing culture, even after 40 years in the United States. No matter how the food on our plates changes, it will always symbolize our sense of family—immediate and extended—and our unbreakable bond.

Grace Williams, a student at Kirkwood High School in Kirkwood, Missouri, enjoys playing tennis, baking, and spending time with her family. Grace also enjoys her time as a writing editor for her school’s yearbook, the Pioneer. In the future, Grace hopes to continue her travels abroad, as well as live near extended family along the sunny beaches of La Jolla, California.

University Winner: Lillia Borodkin

Nourishing Change After Tragedy Strikes

In the Jewish community, food is paramount. We often spend our holidays gathered around a table, sharing a meal and reveling in our people’s story. On other sacred days, we fast, focusing instead on reflection, atonement, and forgiveness.

As a child, I delighted in the comfort of matzo ball soup, the sweetness of hamantaschen, and the beauty of braided challah. But as I grew older and more knowledgeable about my faith, I learned that the origins of these foods are not rooted in joy, but in sacrifice.

The matzo of matzo balls was a necessity as the Jewish people did not have time for their bread to rise as they fled slavery in Egypt. The hamantaschen was an homage to the hat of Haman, the villain of the Purim story who plotted the Jewish people’s destruction. The unbaked portion of braided challah was tithed by commandment to the kohen  or priests. Our food is an expression of our history, commemorating both our struggles and our triumphs.

As I write this, only days have passed since eleven Jews were killed at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. These people, intending only to pray and celebrate the Sabbath with their community, were murdered simply for being Jewish. This brutal event, in a temple and city much like my own, is a reminder that anti-Semitism still exists in this country. A reminder that hatred of Jews, of me, my family, and my community, is alive and flourishing in America today. The thought that a difference in religion would make some believe that others do not have the right to exist is frightening and sickening.  

 This is why, if given the chance, I would sit down the entire Jewish American community at one giant Shabbat table. I’d serve matzo ball soup, pass around loaves of challah, and do my best to offer comfort. We would take time to remember the beautiful souls lost to anti-Semitism this October and the countless others who have been victims of such hatred in the past. I would then ask that we channel all we are feeling—all the fear, confusion, and anger —into the fight.

As suggested in Korsha Wilson’s “Cooking Stirs the Pot for Social Change,” I would urge my guests to direct our passion for justice and the comfort and care provided by the food we are eating into resisting anti-Semitism and hatred of all kinds.

We must use the courage this sustenance provides to create change and honor our people’s suffering and strength. We must remind our neighbors, both Jewish and non-Jewish, that anti-Semitism is alive and well today. We must shout and scream and vote until our elected leaders take this threat to our community seriously. And, we must stand with, support, and listen to other communities that are subjected to vengeful hate today in the same way that many of these groups have supported us in the wake of this tragedy.

This terrible shooting is not the first of its kind, and if conflict and loathing are permitted to grow, I fear it will not be the last. While political change may help, the best way to target this hate is through smaller-scale actions in our own communities.

It is critical that we as a Jewish people take time to congregate and heal together, but it is equally necessary to include those outside the Jewish community to build a powerful crusade against hatred and bigotry. While convening with these individuals, we will work to end the dangerous “otherizing” that plagues our society and seek to understand that we share far more in common than we thought. As disagreements arise during our discussions, we will learn to respect and treat each other with the fairness we each desire. Together, we shall share the comfort, strength, and courage that traditional Jewish foods provide and use them to fuel our revolution. 

We are not alone in the fight despite what extremists and anti-semites might like us to believe.  So, like any Jew would do, I invite you to join me at the Shabbat table. First, we will eat. Then, we will get to work.  

Lillia Borodkin is a senior at Kent State University majoring in Psychology with a concentration in Child Psychology. She plans to attend graduate school and become a school psychologist while continuing to pursue her passion for reading and writing. Outside of class, Lillia is involved in research in the psychology department and volunteers at the Women’s Center on campus.   

Powerful Voice Winner: Paisley Regester

As a kid, I remember asking my friends jokingly, ”If you were stuck on a deserted island, what single item of food would you bring?” Some of my friends answered practically and said they’d bring water. Others answered comically and said they’d bring snacks like Flamin’ Hot Cheetos or a banana. However, most of my friends answered sentimentally and listed the foods that made them happy. This seems like fun and games, but what happens if the hypothetical changes? Imagine being asked, on the eve of your death, to choose the final meal you will ever eat. What food would you pick? Something practical? Comical? Sentimental?  

This situation is the reality for the 2,747 American prisoners who are currently awaiting execution on death row. The grim ritual of “last meals,” when prisoners choose their final meal before execution, can reveal a lot about these individuals and what they valued throughout their lives.

It is difficult for us to imagine someone eating steak, lobster tail, apple pie, and vanilla ice cream one moment and being killed by state-approved lethal injection the next. The prisoner can only hope that the apple pie he requested tastes as good as his mom’s. Surprisingly, many people in prison decline the option to request a special last meal. We often think of food as something that keeps us alive, so is there really any point to eating if someone knows they are going to die?

“Controlling food is a means of controlling power,” said chef Sean Sherman in the YES! Magazine article “Cooking Stirs the Pot for Social Change,” by Korsha Wilson. There are deeper stories that lie behind the final meals of individuals on death row.

I want to bring awareness to the complex and often controversial conditions of this country’s criminal justice system and change the common perception of prisoners as inhuman. To accomplish this, I would host a potluck where I would recreate the last meals of prisoners sentenced to death.

In front of each plate, there would be a place card with the prisoner’s full name, the date of execution, and the method of execution. These meals could range from a plate of fried chicken, peas with butter, apple pie, and a Dr. Pepper, reminiscent of a Sunday dinner at Grandma’s, to a single olive.

Seeing these meals up close, meals that many may eat at their own table or feed to their own kids, would force attendees to face the reality of the death penalty. It will urge my guests to look at these individuals not just as prisoners, assigned a number and a death date, but as people, capable of love and rehabilitation.  

This potluck is not only about realizing a prisoner’s humanity, but it is also about recognizing a flawed criminal justice system. Over the years, I have become skeptical of the American judicial system, especially when only seven states have judges who ethnically represent the people they serve. I was shocked when I found out that the officers who killed Michael Brown and Anthony Lamar Smith were exonerated for their actions. How could that be possible when so many teens and adults of color have spent years in prison, some even executed, for crimes they never committed?  

Lawmakers, police officers, city officials, and young constituents, along with former prisoners and their families, would be invited to my potluck to start an honest conversation about the role and application of inequality, dehumanization, and racism in the death penalty. Food served at the potluck would represent the humanity of prisoners and push people to acknowledge that many inmates are victims of a racist and corrupt judicial system.

Recognizing these injustices is only the first step towards a more equitable society. The second step would be acting on these injustices to ensure that every voice is heard, even ones separated from us by prison walls. Let’s leave that for the next potluck, where I plan to serve humble pie.

Paisley Regester is a high school senior and devotes her life to activism, the arts, and adventure. Inspired by her experiences traveling abroad to Nicaragua, Mexico, and Scotland, Paisley hopes to someday write about the diverse people and places she has encountered and share her stories with the rest of the world.

Powerful Voice Winner: Emma Lingo

The Empty Seat

“If you aren’t sober, then I don’t want to see you on Christmas.”

Harsh words for my father to hear from his daughter but words he needed to hear. Words I needed him to understand and words he seemed to consider as he fiddled with his wine glass at the head of the table. Our guests, my grandma, and her neighbors remained resolutely silent. They were not about to defend my drunken father–or Charles as I call him–from my anger or my ultimatum.

This was the first dinner we had had together in a year. The last meal we shared ended with Charles slopping his drink all over my birthday presents and my mother explaining heroin addiction to me. So, I wasn’t surprised when Charles threw down some liquid valor before dinner in anticipation of my anger. If he wanted to be welcomed on Christmas, he needed to be sober—or he needed to be gone.

Countless dinners, holidays, and birthdays taught me that my demands for sobriety would fall on deaf ears. But not this time. Charles gave me a gift—a one of a kind, limited edition, absolutely awkward treat. One that I didn’t know how to deal with at all. Charles went home that night, smacked a bright red bow on my father, and hand-delivered him to me on Christmas morning.

He arrived for breakfast freshly showered and looking flustered. He would remember this day for once only because his daughter had scolded him into sobriety. Dad teetered between happiness and shame. Grandma distracted us from Dad’s presence by bringing the piping hot bacon and biscuits from the kitchen to the table, theatrically announcing their arrival. Although these foods were the alleged focus of the meal, the real spotlight shined on the unopened liquor cabinet in my grandma’s kitchen—the cabinet I know Charles was begging Dad to open.

I’ve isolated myself from Charles. My family has too. It means we don’t see Dad, but it’s the best way to avoid confrontation and heartache. Sometimes I find myself wondering what it would be like if we talked with him more or if he still lived nearby. Would he be less inclined to use? If all families with an addict tried to hang on to a relationship with the user, would there be fewer addicts in the world? Christmas breakfast with Dad was followed by Charles whisking him away to Colorado where pot had just been legalized. I haven’t talked to Dad since that Christmas.

As Korsha Wilson stated in her YES! Magazine article, “Cooking Stirs the Pot for Social Change,” “Sometimes what we don’t cook says more than what we do cook.” When it comes to addiction, what isn’t served is more important than what is. In quiet moments, I like to imagine a meal with my family–including Dad. He’d have a spot at the table in my little fantasy. No alcohol would push him out of his chair, the cigarettes would remain seated in his back pocket, and the stench of weed wouldn’t invade the dining room. Fruit salad and gumbo would fill the table—foods that Dad likes. We’d talk about trivial matters in life, like how school is going and what we watched last night on TV.

Dad would feel loved. We would connect. He would feel less alone. At the end of the night, he’d walk me to the door and promise to see me again soon. And I would believe him.

Emma Lingo spends her time working as an editor for her school paper, reading, and being vocal about social justice issues. Emma is active with many clubs such as Youth and Government, KHS Cares, and Peer Helpers. She hopes to be a journalist one day and to be able to continue helping out people by volunteering at local nonprofits.

Powerful Voice Winner: Hayden Wilson

Bittersweet Reunion

I close my eyes and envision a dinner of my wildest dreams. I would invite all of my relatives. Not just my sister who doesn’t ask how I am anymore. Not just my nephews who I’m told are too young to understand me. No, I would gather all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins to introduce them to the me they haven’t met.

For almost two years, I’ve gone by a different name that most of my family refuses to acknowledge. My aunt, a nun of 40 years, told me at a recent birthday dinner that she’d heard of my “nickname.” I didn’t want to start a fight, so I decided not to correct her. Even the ones who’ve adjusted to my name have yet to recognize the bigger issue.

Last year on Facebook, I announced to my friends and family that I am transgender. No one in my family has talked to me about it, but they have plenty to say to my parents. I feel as if this is about my parents more than me—that they’ve made some big parenting mistake. Maybe if I invited everyone to dinner and opened up a discussion, they would voice their concerns to me instead of my parents.

I would serve two different meals of comfort food to remind my family of our good times. For my dad’s family, I would cook heavily salted breakfast food, the kind my grandpa used to enjoy. He took all of his kids to IHOP every Sunday and ordered the least healthy option he could find, usually some combination of an overcooked omelet and a loaded Classic Burger. For my mom’s family, I would buy shakes and burgers from Hardee’s. In my grandma’s final weeks, she let aluminum tins of sympathy meals pile up on her dining table while she made my uncle take her to Hardee’s every day.

In her article on cooking and activism, food writer Korsha Wilson writes, “Everyone puts down their guard over a good meal, and in that space, change is possible.” Hopefully the same will apply to my guests.

When I first thought of this idea, my mind rushed to the endless negative possibilities. My nun-aunt and my two non-nun aunts who live like nuns would whip out their Bibles before I even finished my first sentence. My very liberal, state representative cousin would say how proud she is of the guy I’m becoming, but this would trigger my aunts to accuse her of corrupting my mind. My sister, who has never spoken to me about my genderidentity, would cover her children’s ears and rush them out of the house. My Great-Depression-raised grandparents would roll over in their graves, mumbling about how kids have it easy nowadays.

After mentally mapping out every imaginable terrible outcome this dinner could have, I realized a conversation is unavoidable if I want my family to accept who I am. I long to restore the deep connection I used to have with them. Though I often think these former relationships are out of reach, I won’t know until I try to repair them. For a year and a half, I’ve relied on Facebook and my parents to relay messages about my identity, but I need to tell my own story.

At first, I thought Korsha Wilson’s idea of a cooked meal leading the way to social change was too optimistic, but now I understand that I need to think more like her. Maybe, just maybe, my family could all gather around a table, enjoy some overpriced shakes, and be as close as we were when I was a little girl.

 Hayden Wilson is a 17-year-old high school junior from Missouri. He loves writing, making music, and painting. He’s a part of his school’s writing club, as well as the GSA and a few service clubs.

 Literary Gems

We received many outstanding essays for the Fall 2018 Writing Competition. Though not every participant can win the contest, we’d like to share some excerpts that caught our eye.

Thinking of the main staple of the dish—potatoes, the starchy vegetable that provides sustenance for people around the globe. The onion, the layers of sorrow and joy—a base for this dish served during the holidays.  The oil, symbolic of hope and perseverance. All of these elements come together to form this delicious oval pancake permeating with possibilities. I wonder about future possibilities as I flip the latkes.

—Nikki Markman, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, California

The egg is a treasure. It is a fragile heart of gold that once broken, flows over the blemishless surface of the egg white in dandelion colored streams, like ribbon unraveling from its spool.

—Kaylin Ku, West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South, Princeton Junction, New Jersey

If I were to bring one food to a potluck to create social change by addressing anti-Semitism, I would bring gefilte fish because it is different from other fish, just like the Jews are different from other people.  It looks more like a matzo ball than fish, smells extraordinarily fishy, and tastes like sweet brine with the consistency of a crab cake.

—Noah Glassman, Ethical Culture Fieldston School,  Bronx, New York

I would not only be serving them something to digest, I would serve them a one-of-a-kind taste of the past, a taste of fear that is felt in the souls of those whose home and land were taken away, a taste of ancestral power that still lives upon us, and a taste of the voices that want to be heard and that want the suffering of the Natives to end.

—Citlalic Anima Guevara, Wichita North High School, Wichita, Kansas

It’s the one thing that your parents make sure you have because they didn’t.  Food is what your mother gives you as she lies, telling you she already ate. It’s something not everybody is fortunate to have and it’s also what we throw away without hesitation.  Food is a blessing to me, but what is it to you?

—Mohamed Omar, Kirkwood High School, Kirkwood, Missouri

Filleted and fried humphead wrasse, mangrove crab with coconut milk, pounded taro, a whole roast pig, and caramelized nuts—cuisines that will not be simplified to just “food.” Because what we eat is the diligence and pride of our people—a culture that has survived and continues to thrive.

—Mayumi Remengesau, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, California

Some people automatically think I’m kosher or ask me to say prayers in Hebrew.  However, guess what? I don’t know many prayers and I eat bacon.

—Hannah Reing, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, The Bronx, New York

Everything was placed before me. Rolling up my sleeves I started cracking eggs, mixing flour, and sampling some chocolate chips, because you can never be too sure. Three separate bowls. All different sizes. Carefully, I tipped the smallest, and the medium-sized bowls into the biggest. Next, I plugged in my hand-held mixer and flicked on the switch. The beaters whirl to life. I lowered it into the bowl and witnessed the creation of something magnificent. Cookie dough.

—Cassandra Amaya, Owen Goodnight Middle School, San Marcos, Texas

Biscuits and bisexuality are both things that are in my life…My grandmother’s biscuits are the best: the good old classic Southern biscuits, crunchy on the outside, fluffy on the inside. Except it is mostly Southern people who don’t accept me.

—Jaden Huckaby, Arbor Montessori, Decatur, Georgia

We zest the bright yellow lemons and the peels of flavor fall lightly into the batter.  To make frosting, we keep adding more and more powdered sugar until it looks like fluffy clouds with raspberry seed rain.

—Jane Minus, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Bronx, New York

Tamales for my grandma, I can still remember her skillfully spreading the perfect layer of masa on every corn husk, looking at me pitifully as my young hands fumbled with the corn wrapper, always too thick or too thin.

—Brenna Eliaz, San Marcos High School, San Marcos, Texas

Just like fry bread, MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat) remind New Orleanians and others affected by disasters of the devastation throughout our city and the little amount of help we got afterward.

—Madeline Johnson, Spring Hill College, Mobile, Alabama

I would bring cream corn and buckeyes and have a big debate on whether marijuana should be illegal or not.

—Lillian Martinez, Miller Middle School, San Marcos, Texas

We would finish the meal off with a delicious apple strudel, topped with schlag, schlag, schlag, more schlag, and a cherry, and finally…more schlag (in case you were wondering, schlag is like whipped cream, but 10 times better because it is heavier and sweeter).

—Morgan Sheehan, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Bronx, New York

Clever Titles

This year we decided to do something different. We were so impressed by the number of catchy titles that we decided to feature some of our favorites. 

“Eat Like a Baby: Why Shame Has No Place at a Baby’s Dinner Plate”

—Tate Miller, Wichita North High School, Wichita, Kansas 

“The Cheese in Between”

—Jedd Horowitz, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Bronx, New York

“Harvey, Michael, Florence or Katrina? Invite Them All Because Now We Are Prepared”

—Molly Mendoza, Spring Hill College, Mobile, Alabama

“Neglecting Our Children: From Broccoli to Bullets”

—Kylie Rollings, Kirkwood High School, Kirkwood, Missouri  

“The Lasagna of Life”

—Max Williams, Wichita North High School, Wichita, Kansas

“Yum, Yum, Carbon Dioxide In Our Lungs”

—Melanie Eickmeyer, Kirkwood High School, Kirkwood, Missouri

“My Potluck, My Choice”

—Francesca Grossberg, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Bronx, New York

“Trumping with Tacos”

—Maya Goncalves, Lincoln Middle School, Ypsilanti, Michigan

“Quiche and Climate Change”

—Bernie Waldman, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Bronx, New York

“Biscuits and Bisexuality”

“W(health)”

—Miles Oshan, San Marcos High School, San Marcos, Texas

“Bubula, Come Eat!”

—Jordan Fienberg, Ethical Culture Fieldston School,  Bronx, New York

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Essay on Sustainable Agriculture

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction: What Is Sustainable Agriculture?

Importance of sustainable agriculture, population growth, per capita food consumption, sustainable agriculture and technology, green politics, conclusion of sustainable agriculture.

Bibliography

Sustainable agriculture has dominated the sociological understanding of the rural world largely. Following the enthusiasm around the concept as a means of eradication of poverty and turning the economy to a “resource-efficient, low carbon Green Economy”. Global population, and consequently consumption has increased.

However, technological development has matched the demand for food in terms of food production, but the distribution of food is not evenly distributed. This has brought forth the question of the possibility of supplying adequate food to the ever-growing global population.

Further, the challenges posed by depleting non-renewable sources of energy, rising costs, and climate change have brought the issue related to sustainability of food production and the related social and economic impact of the food production into forefront. This paper outlines the meaning and technology related to sustainable agriculture and tries to gauge its impact as a possible solution to the impending food crisis.

Sustainable agriculture is a process of farming using eco-friendly methods understanding and maintaining the relationship between the organisms and environment. In this process of agriculture and animal husbandry are combined to form a simultaneous process and practice. In other words, sustainable agriculture is an amalgamation of three main elements viz. ecological health, profitability, and propagating equality.

The concept of sustainability rests on the principle of not wasting any resources that may become useful to the future generations. Therefore, the main idea of sustainability rests on stewardship of individual and natural resources. Before understanding the technology involved in sustainable agriculture, it is important to know why we need it in the first place.

The rise in population growth and urbanization of people has led to a dietary change of the world population, which now rests more on animal protein. Therefore understanding the demographic changes in the world population has become an important parameter to judge the future demand for food.

As population growth rate is the key variable that affects the demand for food, therefore understanding the number of people increasing worldwide is important. According to the UNDP results, the annual population growth rate had declined from 2.2% in 1962 to 1.1% in 2010, however, this increase to indicate an increase of 75 million people.

However, this increase in population is not equitably distributed as some areas such as Africa, Latin America, and Asia face a growth rate of 2% while others such as the erstwhile Soviet bloc countries have a negative rate.

According to the UNDP predictions, population worldwide is expected to increase to 9 billion in 2050 from the present 7 billion. Therefore, the uncertain growth in population is expected to affect food demand and therefore food production.

Undernourishment is a prevalent problem in the developing world, wherein almost 20% of the developing world that is more than 5 billion people is undernourished.

Further, in emerging economies, food consumption is increasing with increased preference for animal protein such as meat, dairy products, and eggs. Therefore, the growth of consumption of animal protein has increased the necessity of grazing of livestock, therefore, increasing further pressure on the food supply.

It is believed that the increase in the demand for food due to the increase in global population and changes in dietary habits of the population. In the past, the demand for food and the rate of production has remained at par, but the unequal distribution of food has led to the major problem in food supply and starvation in various parts of the world.

Another problem that food production in the future faces is the constraint of non-renewable natural resources. The most critical resources, which are becoming scant for the future generations are –

• Land : Availability of land globally to cultivate food has grown marginally due to the increase in global population. The availability of land available per person to grow food has declined from 1.30 hectares in 1967 to 0.72 hectares in 2007. Therefore, a clear dearth in agricultural land is a deterrent to future agriculture.
• Water : The world comprises of 70% freshwater resources, available from rivers and groundwater. Deficiency of freshwater has been growing as usage of water has increased more than twice the rate of population growth. As water is required for irrigation purposes, water availability to is not equally distributed around the world. Therefore, reduced water supply would limit the per capita production of food.
• Energy : Globally, the scarcity of the non-renewable resources of energy is another concern. The global demand for energy is expected to double by 2050, consequently increasing energy prices. Therefore, food production for the future will have to devise a technology based on renewable sources of energy.

The question of sustainability in agriculture arose due to some pressing issues that have limited the utilization of erstwhile processes and technologies for food production. However, it should be noted that sustainable agriculture does not prescribe any set rule or technology for the production process, rather shows a way towards sustainability.

Sustainable agriculture uses best management practices by adhering to target-oriented cultivation. The agriculture process looks at disease-oriented hybrid, pest control through use of biological insecticides and low usage of chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Usually, insect-specific pest control is used, which is biological in nature.

Water given to the crops is through micro-sprinklers which help is directly watering the roots of the plants, and not flooding the field completely. The idea is to manage the agricultural land for both plants and animal husbandry.

For instance, in many southwestern parts of Florida’s citrus orchards, areas meant for water retention and forest areas become a natural habitat for birds and other animals. The process uses integrated pest management that helps in reducing the amount of pesticide used in cultivation.

Sustainable agriculture adopts green technology as a means of reducing wastage of non-renewable energy and increase production. In this respect, the sustainable agricultural technology is linked to the overall developmental objective of the nation and is directly related to solving socio-economic problems of the nation.

The UN report states, “The productivity increases in possible through environment-friendly and profitable technologies.” In order to understand the technology better, one must realize that the soil’s health is crucial for cultivation of crops.

Soil is not just another ingredient for cultivation like pesticides or fertilizers; rather, it is a complex and fragile medium that must be nurtured to ensure higher productivity. Therefore, the health of the soil can be maintained using eco-friendly methods:

Healthy soil, essential to agriculture, is a complex, living medium. The loose but coherent structure of good soil holds moisture and invites airflow. Ants (a) and earthworms (b) mix the soil naturally. Rhizobium bacteria (c) living in the root nodules of legumes (such as soybeans) create fixed nitrogen, an essential plant nutrient.

Other soil microorganisms, including fungi (d), actinomycetes (e), and bacteria (f), decompose organic matter, thereby releasing more nutrients. Microorganisms also produce substances that help soil particles adhere to one another. To remain healthy, soil must be fed organic materials such as various manures and crop residues.

This is nothing but a broader term to denote environment-friendly solutions to agricultural production. Therefore, the technology-related issue of sustainable agriculture is that it should use such technology that allows usage of renewable sources of energy and is not deterrent to the overall environment.

The politics around sustainable agriculture lies in the usage of the renewable sources of energy and disciplining of the current consumption rates. The politics related to the sustainable agriculture is also related to the politics of sustainable consumption.

Though there is a growing concern over depleting food for the future and other resources, there is hardly any measure imposed by the governments of developed and emerging economies to sustain the consumption pattern of the population.

The advocates of green politics believe that a radical change of the conventional agricultural process is required for bringing forth sustainable agriculture. Green politics lobbies for an integrated farming system that can be the only way to usher in sustainable agricultural program.

Sustainable agriculture is the way to maintain a parity between the increasing pressure of food demand and food production in the future. As population growth, change in income demographics, and food preferences change, there are changes in the demand of food of the future population.

Further, changes in climate and increasing concern regarding the depletion of non-renewable sources of energy has forced policymakers and scientists to device another way to sustain the available resources as well as continue meeting the increased demand of food.

Sustainable agriculture is the method through which these problems can be overlooked, bringing forth a new integrated form of agriculture that looks at food production in a holistic way.

Batie, S. S., ‘Sustainable Development: Challenges to Profession of Agricultural Economics’, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, vol. 71, no. 5, 1989: 1083-1101.

Dobson, A., The Politics of Nature: Explorations in Green Political Theory, Psychology Press, London, 1993.

Leaver, J. D., ‘Global food supply: a challenge for sustainable agriculture’, Nutrition Bulletin, vol. 36 , 2011: 416-421.

Martens, S., & G. Spaargaren, ‘The politics of sustainable consumption: the case of the Netherlands’, Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy, vol.1 no. 1, 2005: 29-42.

Morris, C., & M. Winter, ‘Integrated farming systems: the third way for European agriculture?’, Land Use Policy, vol. 16, no. 4, 1999: 193–205.

Reganold, J. P., R. I. Papendick, & J. F. Parr, ‘Sustainable Agriculture’, Scientific American , 1990: 112-120.

Townsend, C., ‘ Technology for Sustainable Agriculture. ‘ Florida Gulf Coast University, 1998. Web.

United Nations, ‘ Green technology for sustainable agriculture development ‘, United Nations Asian And Pacific Centre For Agricultural Engineering And Machinery, 2010. Web.

—, ‘ Sustainable agriculture key to green growth, poverty reduction – UN officials ‘, United Nations, 2011. Web.

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The Global Benefits of Reducing Food Loss and Waste, and How to Do It

• Food Loss and Waste
• food security

One-third of all food produced globally by weight is lost or wasted between farm and fork — that's  more than 1 billion tonnes . Converted into calories, this equates to 24% of the world’s food supply going uneaten. At the same time,  1 in 10 people globally remain malnourished.

This scale of food loss and waste harms not only human health and nutrition but also economies and the environment. Wasted food takes a major financial toll, costing the global economy more than $1 trillion every year. It also fuels climate change, accounting for approximately 8%-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

And if current trends persist, food loss and waste will double by 2050.

Here, we delve into the scope of this challenge and the global benefits of reducing food loss and waste, as well as solutions at the individual, local and national levels.

What Causes Food Loss and Waste?

While food loss and food waste are often talked about together, these terms encompass different issues throughout the food system. Food loss refers to loss at or near the farm and in the supply chain, for example, during harvesting, storage or transport. Food waste occurs at the retail level, in hospitality and in households.

Food loss and waste are caused by a wide range of issues, from technological challenges to consumer behaviors. Some common drivers of food loss include:

• Inadequate technology : Poor infrastructure, such as roads that flood or are hard to travel consistently, can prevent food from making it from farm to table. Lack of cold storage is another major concern for ensuring food can arrive fresh to markets. Farmers may also struggle with inadequate equipment such as old or inefficient machinery that makes it difficult to harvest all of a crop.
• Suboptimal packaging : How foods are packaged can make a big difference in the length of time they stay safe to eat. Many people are justly concerned about the environmental impacts of excessive packaging, but it’s important to remember that correct packaging can help foods stay fresher for longer, thereby reducing spoilage and the associated  methane emissions  that result from wasted food. An underappreciated fact is that the environmental impact of wasted food is greater than that of packaging waste. So, while it’s important to limit this waste, it’s also important to use correct packaging to reduce food spoilage.

Some common reasons for food waste include:

• Poor food management : Examples include insufficient skills and knowledge among staff who prepare food, which can lead to unnecessary waste during cooking, and inflexible procurement requirements such as retailers only stocking perfect-looking produce or not accepting a farmer’s oversupply of crop. Food waste can also occur when retailers and food providers do not adequately forecast and plan for demand to meet supply (or vice versa).
• Consumer behaviors : Households account for the majority of food wasted at the consumer and retail level. This often results from a lack of awareness of the scale of the issue and insufficient education about how to properly use up and store food at home. Food waste also stems from  norms and attitudes  that say wasting food is normal, as well as concerns about possible risks of eating food past its sell-by or use-by date label.

There used to be a view that food waste, which happens at the consumer level, tended to be more of a developed country problem while food loss, which can arise from issues in farming and supply chains, was a greater problem in developing countries. But recent research has shown this isn’t true.

Work by the  UN Environment Programme  shows that food waste occurs at roughly the same level in middle-income countries as in high-income countries. Good-quality data is still limited, but there is a reasonable amount of information to back up this conclusion. Similarly, recent work by the  World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF)  concluded that food loss on farms is a problem in high-income countries as well as middle- and lower-income countries. These recent studies show that both issues must be addressed on a global scale.

The Global Benefits of Reducing Food Loss and Waste

The  UN’s Sustainable Development Goals  include a call to halve food waste and reduce food losses by 2030 for good reason. Reducing food loss and waste generates benefits for economies, for businesses and consumers, for human health and for the environment.

Improved global nutrition and food security

Reducing food loss and waste can play a big role in providing a healthy, nutritious diet to a growing global population. Not only does one third of all food produced by volume go uneaten, but perishable foods with higher nutritional value, such as fruit and vegetables, are particularly prone to loss and waste: More than 40% of produce by weight is lost or wasted worldwide each year. Ensuring more of the global food supply is used to feed people, rather than perishing or ending up in landfills, is an important strategy for addressing hunger in a world where hundreds of millions still face malnutrition.

Reduced greenhouse gas emissions

Project Drawdown  has listed reducing food loss and waste as the single-best strategy for reducing emissions and fighting the climate crisis. Because up to 10% of global emissions result from food loss and waste, it’s simply not possible to achieve the Paris Agreement’s goal to stay within 1.5-2 degrees C (2.7-3.6 degrees F) of warming without tackling this issue.

Emissions from food loss and waste result from the energy and inputs used to produce food that’s ultimately not consumed, as well as the methane that’s emitted when food rots in fields or landfills. Although shorter lived than carbon dioxide, methane is an especially potent greenhouse gas with over  80 times the warming power  of CO2. By reducing food loss and waste, we avoid its associated planet-warming emissions.

Improving existing food systems  will also help the world feed more people without expanding cultivated areas. Agricultural expansion is a major driver of greenhouse gas emission s and often results in deforestation, which releases stored carbon dioxide and lowers the land’s carbon storage capacity. In addition, increasing the efficiency of food production could potentially liberate agricultural land for reforestation, an important way to  remove carbon  from the atmosphere. 

WRI has identified alleviating land use pressures — through efforts like reducing the need to produce more food to compensate for loss and waste — as a key strategy to address  the global land squeeze .

Financial savings for businesses and consumers and increased financial security for farmers

Reducing consumer food waste by even 20%-25% by 2030 could save the world an estimated  $120-$300 billion  per year. These savings play out on an individual level as well as a systemic one; by consuming more of what they purchase, households can reduce their overall spending on food. Eliminating avoidable food waste would save the average family in the United Kingdom more than £700 ($870) each year, while in the United States, the average family would save approximately $1,800.

Reducing food losses — especially post-harvest losses, including food that’s grown but never makes it to market — will also improve farmers’ incomes.

Without the resources to buy up-to-date equipment, many farmers must rely on manual approaches or old, broken equipment that limits their potential yields. Targeted loans and financing can help these farmers buy better equipment, allowing them to harvest more and better-quality crops in a shorter amount of time. The efficiency savings may then lead to higher income. In addition, many smallholder farmers are women who would especially benefit from access to finance and new equipment; reduced food losses could mean they are better positioned to feed, educate and care for their families.

How to Reduce Food Loss and Waste at a Systemic Level

Because food loss and waste happen at every stage of the supply chain, everyone has a vital role to play in addressing this issue.

Households can reduce food waste by focusing on smart shopping and food storage. Some strategies include writing a shopping list, planning meals so that when you go shopping you know what and how much you need, understanding the difference between use-by and best-by date labels, making sure your fridge is set to the optimal temperature, understanding how best to store different foods and making the most of your freezer for leftovers.

Restaurants

Restaurants can reduce food waste by monitoring and managing food usage and ordering. Strategies include measuring food waste in the kitchen to understand what foods are being wasted and designing a fix, engaging staff to understand the importance of minimizing waste, avoiding super-sized portions, and focusing on a smaller range of menu offerings in order to better forecast supply ordering.

In September 2022, Ingka Group, IKEA’s largest retailer, became the  world’s first major company  to cut food waste in half, having done so across all its IKEA restaurants in 32 markets. Such savings can also bring financial benefits for restaurants, with the average restaurant examined in a Champions 12.3 study saving  $7 for every $1 invested  in programs to combat food waste.

Retailers can reduce food waste by improving stocking and food handling practices. Strategies include measuring the amounts and types of food being wasted to identify hotspots that can be reduced; training staff in temperature management, product handling and stock rotation; accepting less-than-perfect looking produce; and educating customers about better food management — for example, how to meal plan and understand date labels, and tips for safe food handling at home.

Many retailers in the UK now include storage advice on food packs (such as “Store in the fridge”) and give customers menu cards with ideas for cooking the produce or foods they purchase. Some are also removing “Best before” date labels from fruit and vegetables, which can help consumers avoid throwing away food that is still perfectly edible. Retailers are explicitly telling customers that these measures are intended to reduce waste and encouraging people to use their senses to tell if food is still good to eat.

Food producers

Farmers, ranchers and fishers can reduce food losses by improving farming practices; for example, by ensuring produce is harvested at the right maturity and using appropriate harvesting equipment to maximize yield while minimizing crop damage. They can also improve their skills or use tools to better schedule harvesting, including accessing better data on weather via new apps like  Mausam  (which is published by India's Ministry of Earth Sciences). And they can engage customers such as wholesale retailers to communicate implications of order changes.

Food distributers

Packing, storage and distribution facilities can reduce food loss and waste by re-examining handling, storage and transportation to ensure adoption of best practices and reduce damage. They can also use technological interventions to optimize the transport of food, and work upstream with customers to provide planning tools and handling and storage technologies that help them reduce losses.

For example, bar coding is being used to track food’s transportation journey, so managers can know where a product has been, for how long, and in what temperatures and conditions. This allows retailers to more accurately label and handle food to maximize shelf life, while also providing traceability in the event of a recall.

Processors and manufacturers

Processors and manufacturers can reduce food loss and waste by implementing technical solutions in the supply chain. Strategies include improving training to reduce technical malfunctions and errors during processing, reengineering production processes and product design to reduce waste, using product sizes and packaging that reduce waste by consumers and standardizing date labels to reduce confusion.

Governments and policymakers

Governments and policymakers can reduce food loss and waste through educational programs, policies and financial incentives that support more efficient food production and distribution. For example, they can embed food loss awareness, technical assistance and financial aid into agricultural extension services and farmer subsidy programs.

Governments can also promote policies to prevent unfair trading practices (such as last-minute order cancellations and unilateral or retroactive changes to contracts); remove barriers to food redistribution via policies such as liability limitations and tax breaks, which make it easier for food suppliers to donate safe but unsold food to charities or those in need; and support policies to standardize food date labelling practices to reduce confusion about product safety and quality and improve consumer understanding of the meaning of date labels. Finally, governments can make measurement and reporting of food loss and waste by large companies mandatory to facilitate benchmarking, transparency and learning.

Learn more about WRI’s work  Fighting Food Loss and Waste .

Relevant Work

We’ve woken up to plastic waste. is food waste next, 3 things to think about before buying your thanksgiving turkey, 4 surprising reasons to measure and reduce food loss and waste, can we really cut food waste in half, how you can help.

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Environmental Impacts of Food Production

What are the environmental impacts of food production? How do we reduce the impacts of agriculture on the environment?

By: Hannah Ritchie , Pablo Rosado and Max Roser

Agriculture has a significant environmental impact in three key ways.

First, it requires large amounts of fresh water , which can cause significant environmental pressures in regions with water stress. It needs water as input and pollutes rivers, lakes, and oceans by releasing nutrients.

It is a crucial driver of climate change, responsible for around one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions .

Finally, agriculture has a massive impact on the world’s environment due to its enormous land use . Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture.

Large parts of the world that were once covered by forests and wildlands are now used for agriculture. This loss of natural habitat has been the main driver for reducing the world’s biodiversity . Wildlife can rebound if we reduce agricultural land use and allow natural lands to restore.

Ensuring everyone has access to a nutritious diet sustainably is one of the most significant challenges we face. On this page, you can find our data, visualizations, and writing relating to the environmental impacts of food.

Key insights on the Environmental Impacts of Food

Food production has a large environmental impact in several ways.

What are the environmental impacts of food and agriculture?

The visualization here shows a summary of some of the main global impacts:

• Food production accounts for over a quarter (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions. 1
• Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. Habitable land is land that is ice- and desert-free.
• 70% of global freshwater withdrawals are used for agriculture 2 .
• 78% of global ocean and freshwater eutrophication is caused by agriculture. 1 Eutrophication is the pollution of waterways with nutrient-rich water.
• 94% of non-human mammal biomass is livestock. This means livestock outweigh wild mammals by a factor of 15-to-1. 3 This share is 97% when only land-based mammals are included.
• 71% of bird biomass is poultry livestock. This means poultry livestock outweigh wild birds by a factor of more than 3-to-1. 3

Tackling what we eat, and how we produce our food, plays a key role in tackling climate change, reducing water stress and pollution, restoring lands back to forests or grasslands, and protecting the world’s wildlife.

Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture

Around half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. Habitable land is land that is ice- and desert-free. This is what the visualization shows.

Agricultural land is the sum of pasture used for livestock grazing, and cropland used for direct human consumption and animal feed.

Agriculture is, therefore, the world’s largest land user, taking up more area than forests, or wild grasslands.

Three-quarters of this agricultural land is used for livestock, which is pasture plus cropland used for the production of animal feed. This gives the world just 18% of global calories, and 37% of its protein. The other quarter of land is for crops for human consumption, which provide the majority of the world's calories and protein.

More than three-quarters of global agricultural land is used for livestock, despite meat and dairy making up a much smaller share of the world's protein and calories.

What you should know about this data

• Other studies find similar distributions of global land: in an analysis of how humans have transformed global land use in recent centuries, Ellis et al. (2010) found that by 2000, 55% of Earth’s ice-free (not simply habitable) land had been converted into cropland, pasture, and urban areas. 4 This left only 45% as ‘natural’ or ‘semi-natural’ land.
• The study by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018) estimates that 43% of ice- and desert-free land is used for agriculture. 83% of this is used for animal-sourced foods. 1
• The difference in these figures is often due to the uncertainty of the size of ‘rangelands’. Rangelands are grasslands, shrublands, woodlands, wetlands, and deserts that are grazed by domestic livestock or wild animals. The intensity of grazing on rangelands can vary a lot. That can make it difficult to accurately quantify how much rangelands are used for grazing, and therefore how much is used for food production.
• But as the review above showed, despite this uncertainty, most analyses tend to converge on an estimate of close to half of habitable land being used for agriculture.

Food is responsible for one-quarter of the world’s emissions

Food systems are responsible for around one-quarter (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions. 1

This includes emissions from land use change, on-farm production, processing, transport, packaging, and retail.

We can break these food system emissions down into four broad categories:

30% of food emissions come directly from livestock and fisheries . Ruminant livestock – mainly cattle – for example, produce methane through their digestive processes. Manure and pasture management also fall into this category.

1% comes from wild fisheries , most of which is fuel consumption from fishing vessels.

Crop production accounts for around a quarter of food emissions. This includes crops for human consumption and animal feed.

Land use accounts for 24% of food emissions. Twice as many emissions result from land use for livestock (16%) as for crops for human consumption (8%).

Finally, supply chains account for 18% of food emissions . This includes food processing, distribution, transport, packaging, and retail.

Other studies estimate that an even larger fraction – up to one-third – of the world's greenhouse gas emissions come from food production. 5 These differences come from the inclusion of non-food agricultural products – such as textiles, biofuels, and industrial crops – plus uncertainties in food waste and land use emissions.

Food production is responsible for one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions

One-quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions result from food and agriculture. What are the main contributors to food's emissions?

How much of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food?

Estimates of food emissions can range from one-quarter to one-third. Where do these differences come from?

• The source of this data is the meta-analysis of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in Science . 1 This dataset is based on data from 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.
• Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail.
• Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO 2 eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO 2 . In this study, CO 2 eq and warming effects are measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP 100 ).

Emissions from food alone would take us past 1.5°C or 2°C this century

One-quarter to one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions come from our food systems. The rest comes from energy.

While energy and industry make a bigger contribution than food, we must tackle both food and energy systems to address climate change.

Michael Clark and colleagues modeled the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that would be emitted from food systems this century across a range of scenarios.

In a business-as-usual scenario, the authors expect the world to emit around 1356 billion tonnes of CO 2-we by 2100.

As the visualization shows, this would take us well beyond the carbon budget for 1.5°C – we would emit two to three times more than this budget. And it would consume almost all of our budget for 2°C.

Ignoring food emissions is simply not an option if we want to get close to our international climate targets.

Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow – an impossibility – we would still go well beyond our 1.5°C target, and nearly miss our 2°C target.

Emissions from food alone could use up all of our budget for 1.5°C or 2°C – but we have a range of opportunities to avoid this

If we want to meet our global climate targets we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from food. What options do we have?

• The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Michael Clark et al. (2020), published in Science . 6
• Their ‘business-as-usual’ projection makes the following assumptions: global population increases in line with the UN’s medium fertility scenario; per capita diets change as people around the world get richer (shifting towards more diverse diets with more meat and dairy); crop yields continue to increase in line with historical improvements, and rates of food loss and the emissions intensity of food production remain constant.
• This is measured in global warming potential CO 2 warming-equivalents (CO 2-we ). This accounts for the range of greenhouse gasses, not just CO 2 but also others such as methane and nitrous oxide. We look at the differences in greenhouse gas metrics at the end of our article on the carbon footprint of foods .

What we eat matters much more than how far it has traveled

‘Eat local’ is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. But it’s often a misguided one.

Transport tends to be a small part of a food’s carbon footprint. Globally, transport accounts for just 5% of food system emissions. Most of food’s emissions come from land use change and emissions from their production on the farm.

Since transport emissions are typically small, and the differences between foods are large, what types of food we eat matter much more than how far it has traveled. Locally-produced beef will have a much larger footprint than peas, regardless of whether it’s shipped across continents or not.

The visualization shows this.

Producing a kilogram of beef, for example, emits 60 kilograms of greenhouse gasses (CO 2 -equivalents). The production of a kilogram of peas, shown at the bottom of the chart, emits just 1 kilogram of greenhouse gasses. Whether the beef or peas are produced locally will have little impact on the difference between these two foods.

The reason that transport accounts for such a small share of emissions is that most internationally traded food travels by boat, not by plane. Very little food is air-freighted; it accounts for only 0.16% of food miles. 7 For the few products which are transported by air, the emissions can be very high: flying emits 50 times more CO 2 eq than boat per tonne kilometer.

Unlike aviation, shipping is a very carbon-efficient way to transport goods. So, even shipping food over long distances by boat emits only small amounts of carbon. A classic example of traded food is avocados. Shipping one kilogram of avocados from Mexico to the United Kingdom would generate 0.21kg CO 2 eq in transport emissions. 8 This is only around 8% of avocados’ total footprint.

Even when shipped at great distances, its emissions are much less than locally-produced animal products.

You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local

“Eat local” is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. How does the impact of what you eat compare to where it's come from?

• The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in Science . 1 This dataset is based on data from 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.

Meat and dairy foods tend to have a higher carbon footprint

When we compare the carbon footprint of different types of foods, a clear hierarchy emerges.

Meat and dairy products tend to emit more greenhouse gasses than plant-based foods. This holds true whether we compare on the basis of mass (per kilogram) , per kilocalorie , or per gram of protein, as shown in the chart.

Within meat and dairy products, there is also a consistent pattern: larger animals tend to be less efficient and have a higher footprint. Beef typically has the largest emissions; followed by lamb; pork; chicken; then eggs and fish.

• This data presents global average values. For some foods – such as beef – there are large differences depending on where it is produced, and the farming practices used. Nonetheless, the lowest-carbon beef and lamb still have a higher carbon footprint than most plant-based foods.
• The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in Science . 1 This dataset covers 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.
• Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO 2 eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO 2 . For CO 2 eq, this is measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP 100 ).

There are also large differences in the carbon footprint of the same foods

The most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the food system is to change what we eat .

Adopting a more plant-based diet by reducing our consumption of carbon-intensive foods such as meat and dairy – especially beef and lamb – is an effective way for consumers to reduce their carbon footprint.

But there are also opportunities to reduce emissions by optimizing for more carbon-efficient practices and locations to produce foods. For some foods – in particular, beef, lamb, and dairy – there are large differences in emissions depending on how and where they’re produced. This is shown in the chart.

Producing 100 grams of protein from beef emits 25 kilograms of carbon dioxide-equivalents (CO 2 eq), on average. But this ranges from 9 kilograms to 105 kilograms of CO 2 eq – a ten-fold difference.

Optimizing production in places where these foods are produced with a smaller footprint could be another effective way of reducing global emissions.

Less meat is nearly always better than sustainable meat, to reduce your carbon footprint

Plant-based protein sources still have a lower footprint than the lowest-impact meat products.

Explore data on the Environmental Impacts of Food

Research & writing.

‘Eat local’ is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. But transport tends to account for a small share of greenhouse gas emissions. How does the impact of what you eat compare to where it’s come from?

Hannah Ritchie

One-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions result from food and agriculture. What are the main contributors to food’s emissions?

Food production and climate change

What are the carbon opportunity costs of our food?

Food miles and transport.

Very little of global food is transported by air; this greatly reduces the climate benefits of eating local

Environmental impacts of meat and dairy.

Dairy vs. plant-based milk: what are the environmental impacts?

The carbon footprint of foods: are differences explained by the impacts of methane?

If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares

Land use and deforestation.

Cutting down forests: what are the drivers of deforestation?

After millennia of agricultural expansion, the world has passed ‘peak agricultural land’

To protect the world’s wildlife we must improve crop yields – especially across Africa

Other articles on food impacts.

Food waste is responsible for 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions

Is organic really better for the environment than conventional agriculture?

More key articles on the environmental impacts of food, yields vs. land use: how the green revolution enabled us to feed a growing population.

Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers . Science , 360(6392), 987-992.

FAO. (2011). The state of the world’s land and water resources for food and agriculture (SOLAW) – Managing systems at risk. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome and Earthscan, London.

Bar-On, Y. M., Phillips, R., & Milo, R. (2018). The biomass distribution on Earth . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 115(25), 6506-6511.

Ellis, E. C., Klein Goldewijk, K., Siebert, S., Lightman, D., & Ramankutty, N. (2010). Anthropogenic transformation of the biomes, 1700 to 2000 . Global Ecology and Biogeography, 19(5), 589-606.

Crippa, M., Solazzo, E., Guizzardi, D., Monforti-Ferrario, F., Tubiello, F. N., & Leip, A. J. N. F. (2021). Food systems are responsible for a third of global anthropogenic GHG emissions. Nature Food, 2(3), 198-209.

Clark, Michael A., Nina GG Domingo, Kimberly Colgan, Sumil K. Thakrar, David Tilman, John Lynch, Inês L. Azevedo, and Jason D. Hill. “ Global food system emissions could preclude achieving the 1.5° and 2° C climate change targets .” Science , 370, no. 6517 (2020): 705-708.

’Food miles’ are measured in tonne-kilometers which represents the transport of one tonne of goods by a given transport mode (road, rail, air, sea, inland waterways, pipeline etc.) over a distance of one kilometer. Poore & Nemecek (2018) report that of the 9.4 billion tonne-kilometers of global food transport, air-freight accounted for only 15 million. This works out at only 0.16% of the total; most foods are transported by boat.

We get this footprint value as: [9000km * 0.023kg per tonne-kilometer / 1000 = 0.207kg CO2eq per kg].

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Focus: Nutrition and Food Science

Food sustainability in the context of human behavior.

The long-term goal of food sustainability is to produce enough food to maintain the human population. The intrinsic factors to guarantee a sustainable food system are a fertile land, water, fertilizers, a stable climate, and energy. However, as the world population grows, the volume of food needed in the future will not depend just on these intrinsic factors, but on human choices. This paper analyzes some of the human actions that may affect the sustainable future of the food supply chain, including diet, obesity, food miles, food waste, and genetically modified organisms.

Introduction

In addition to food directly harvested from the wild, food is mostly produced at farms, and therefore, food sustainability is directly linked to sustainable agriculture. In 1990, the U.S. Congress addressed the issue of sustainable agriculture in the farm bill, which stated that “sustainable agriculture means an integrated system of plant and animal production practices having a site-specific application that will, over the long term:

• provide human food and fiber needs;

• enhance environmental quality and the natural resource base upon which the agricultural economy depends;

• make the most efficient use of nonrenewable resources and on-farm resources and integrate, where appropriate, natural biological cycles and controls;

• sustain the economic viability of farm operations; and

• enhance the quality of life for farmers and society as a whole.”

Based on the U.S. Congress’ definition and the now famous 1997 United Nations’ definition about sustainable development, which states that “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” definitions of sustainability have emerged in all sectors of the population.

Most businesses have embraced what is called the three dimensions of sustainability, or “triple bottom line,” and some variations like “people-planet-profit,” “the three pillars,” or “the three E’s,” for economy, equity, and ecology. This idea is based on the premise that for a company to be sustainable it needs to be economically feasible, environmentally dependable, and socially responsible. The concept of the triple bottom line goes even further by allowing interchangeability, which means that if a business falls short in one of the dimensions, it can make up by “investing” in another dimension. For instance, a mining company is environmentally unsustainable in the long term because it depletes the resource. However, according to the triple bottom line concept, this company could compensate by making social contributions.

The general public has their own ideas of food sustainability, which often includes concepts like social justice, animal welfare, fair labor and trade, local farming, organic food production, and the concept of “natural,” just to mention the most important ones. There is no official definition of natural. So different people have different ideas of the meaning of “natural.” Another idea that most of the time is wrongly attributed to food sustainability by the general public is food miles. Many people believe the biggest impact on the whole environmental impact of food products is transportation and therefore favor local products, which in many cases is not necessarily true.

Regardless of definitions and beliefs, food sustainability is about generating food at a productivity level that is enough to maintain the human population. Sustainable food production is fundamentally grounded on the availability of fertile land, water, nutrients, and an adequate climate. In addition, the volume of food needed to feed humans is linked to intended or unintended human behavior. This paper analyzes some population attitudes and choices that have an impact on both the volume of food needed and the environmental impact to produce it.

The Effect of Diet

Besides their effect on health, different diets have different environmental impacts. One change in the global diet in the last 50 years has been the increased consumption of animal protein, which correlates with increased affluence around the world [ 1 ]. Production of animal protein is very tasking on the environment. One reason for this is the efficiency (or inefficiency) of conversion of feed into animal tissue, ruminants being the most inefficient animals to convert feed into muscle. On average, to produce 1 kcal of beef using a feedlot system, which is common in North America and is now becoming popular around the world, takes the input of 40 kcal of energy. Grass-fed beef takes approximately half of that energy. The advantage of ruminants is that they can ingest low-grade feed because they are capable of digesting cellulose. Monogastric animals like swine and poultry are more efficient at converting feed into muscle, but they require specialized diets with low cellulose content. Swine, turkey, and chicken need an input of 14, 10, and 4 kcal of energy respectively per 1-kcal output [ 2 ].

In addition to land use, livestock production has an enormous role in soil destruction, water depletion and pollution, impact on biodiversity, and a disturbance of the nitrogen and carbon cycles. Livestock grazing occupies the equivalent of 26 percent of ice-free surface of the planet in addition to 33 percent of arable land dedicated to the production of feed crops [ 3 ]. Besides land use, cattle raising has a profound impact on soil properties. The constant animal traffic, especially cattle, compacts the soil, which reduces water infiltration and promotes runoff. Runoff not only translates into soil erosion but also carries nutrients to surface water [ 3 ].

Ruminants, in particular, are major producers of greenhouse gases through enteric fermentation. Besides carbon dioxide, a byproduct of enteric fermentation is methane, which has a greenhouse potential twelve times higher than carbon dioxide. Ammonia is another gas resulting from animal production. Ammonia is not a greenhouse gas but has local and regional effects and is responsible for alteration of the nitrogen cycle [ 2 ].

One way to reduce the environmental impact of animal production would be a diet with more vegetable protein. One disadvantage is that vegetable protein does not have a complete amino acid profile, thus requiring the right combination to have all the essential amino acids in the diet. A second disadvantage is that vegetable proteins are more difficult to get broken down by the human digestive system. Nevertheless, perhaps the most difficult issue that we humans confront in the reduction of consumption of animal products is the undeniable preference we have for animal protein.

Insects are another source of protein used in many countries around the world but not very well accepted yet in western countries. Insects have a significant advantage in terms of lower environmental impact in relation to traditional livestock. Insects need much less water and produce fewer greenhouse gases and ammonia emissions. According to one source, the emission of greenhouse gases from insects is 1 percent of the emissions of ruminants for the same amount of protein [ 4 ].

Obesity and Overconsumption

Worldwide, an estimated 1.9 billion adults, 18 years and older, are overweight, and out of these over 650 million are obese. More alarming is the fact that 41 million children under the age of 5, and more than 340 million children and adolescents aged 5 to 19 were reported overweight or obese by the WHO in 2016 [ 5 ].

Weight increase and obesity is the result of consuming more calories than the calories spent in physical activities. Most foods can cause weight gain, but the main offenders are calorie dense foods. According to FAO, Americans eat an average of over 3,600 calories a day, which is well above the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommendations of 2,000 to 2,600 calories per day for a sedentary adult male and 1,600 to 2,000 for a sedentary adult female [ 6 ]. Besides consuming too many calories, Americans, especially children, are getting their calories from calorie dense foods and sweetened beverages made with fats and sugars [ 7 ].

The growing obesity pandemic presents one more challenge for agricultural sustainability. In addition to keeping up with food production to tend to a growing population, more food will be needed to maintain population’s extra weight.

Overweight and obesity have both significant health and environmental implications. Being overweight decreases physical activity and personal mobility leading to increased use of motor vehicles [ 8 ]. Even airlines have recognized the effect of the increased average weight of passengers on fuel consumption [ 8 ]. Other scientists are studying the impact of obesity on the environment from direct emissions of CO 2 through respiration, which is proportional to body mass. According to results reported by Gryka et al . [ 9 ], a 10-kg weight loss of all overweight and obese people would translate into a 0.2 percent reduction in the global CO 2 emissions. Although this percentage is small, the main issue, however, is the extra burden placed on the environment to produce, process, and transport additional food to provide the extra calories required by overweight populations.

A 2009-study reported that an overweight population with an average body mass index of 29 needs 19 percent more calories than a normal population with a body mass index of 24.5 [ 10 ]. To produce these extra calories, more land, water, fertilizer, and fossil fuels are needed.

Local vs. Transported

It is often believed that locally produced foods have a lower environmental impact than food grown or raised somewhere else and transported; and “food miles” is the indicator commonly used to illustrate how far the food has traveled from production to consumption [ 11 ]. Nevertheless, does the food produced locally have a lower environmental impact than food produced in other regions and transported? The answer is it depends on the food product and the transportation mode. As a general rule, the faster the transportation mode the higher the environmental impact it produces. Regarding energy used, planes have the highest consumption per ton of food transported followed by trucks, trains, inland barges, and maritime ships [ 2 ].

Because of the perishable nature of foods, not all food products can be transported with all transportation modes. Dry materials, such as grains, can be carried in barges or maritime ships. Fresh produce and fruits, on the other hand, have to rely on faster transportation modes such as trains, trucks, and planes [ 2 ]. On average in the U.S., the energy used to transport foods represents only 14 percent of the total energy used to produce, process, distribute, and prepare the food at home, restaurants, and institutions [ 12 ].

Another factor to consider in the debate of local vs. transported is climate and seasons. Fruits and vegetables cannot be grown in high latitude climates in open agricultural fields during winter. The only alternative is to use greenhouses or to transport the food from temperate climates. If grown in greenhouses, plants need supplemental light and heat with the resulting expenditure of energy and the emission of greenhouse gases.

Other foods are more favorable to be produced throughout all the seasons in specific parts of the world. A classic example is lamb meat produced in New Zealand vs. in the UK. Even when grazing is the main source of nutrition for both countries, pastures are more productive in New Zealand due to more solar irradiation and less use of synthetic fertilizers. Therefore, an advantage may exist in terms of lower environmental impact for lamb produced in New Zealand instead of the UK even when factoring transportation by ship to the UK [ 13 ].

Another consideration is seasonality. In this day and age, especially in developed countries, and as a result of low-cost transportation and logistics, most food products are available all year round. Due to their short shelf life, fruit and vegetables are in most cases transported by plane with the associated environmental impact. On average, the operational energy of a long-haul cargo plane, expressed in MJ/metric ton-km, is around four times more than a truck and 30 times more than a train [ 14 ].

According to estimates, of the 200 million metric tons of food produced annually in the U.S., 60 million metric tons go to waste [ 15 ]. From the analysis of food waste that reaches landfills, 47 percent of the waste comes from the residential sector [ 15 ].

Clearly, not all food waste is edible. Food waste can be classified into three main types: avoidable, possibly avoidable, and unavoidable. Avoidable waste is food or drinks that before disposal were perfectly edible or drinkable and for no particular reason were discarded. Potentially avoidable are parts of foods that are eaten by some people and discarded by others. For instance, some fruit peels are edible, but some people prefer not to eat them. The third category, unavoidable food waste, encompasses inedible parts of the food like bones, eggshells, inedible peels, and spent coffee grains [ 16 ].

What are the reasons for the food waste generated by the residential sector? There are several, the most important ones being: availability of inexpensive food, poor purchase planning, perishable nature of foods, and confusing shelf life statements.

It is fair to say that the main drive to food waste at the household level in the U.S. is that food is inexpensive. According to USDA data, the disposable income to buy food to eat at home has decreased from 10 percent in 1970 to around 6 percent in 2009 [ 17 ]. In the same period, food waste increased by 50 percent [ 18 ]. It is important to point out that in the same period, food eaten away from home rose only from 3.5 to 4 percent [ 17 ].

Another reason food purchased to be consumed at home is often wasted is a combination of lack of purchasing planning and the nature of perishable food, especially fruits and vegetables. Very often, this is exacerbated by packages containing a large volume of food at a reduced price, which is often offered in wholesale clubs.

Most foods in the U.S. have some shelf life statement such as “use by,” “sell by,” or “best by” date. “Use by,” mostly used in meat, fish, and cheese, is a firm expiration date that is related to the safety of the food. “Sell by” is a statement aimed at retailers, which informs them when the product has to be pulled from the shelf. Typically, one-third of the product’s shelf-life remains after the sell-by date for the consumer to use at home. “Best by” is an indicator to the consumer about when the product will have an optimal quality [ 19 ]. Unfortunately, most consumers are not acquainted with the exact meaning of these terms and take them as firm expiration dates. As a consequence, they do not buy the products close to these dates, or they discard the food products once they reach the “sell by” or a “best by” date [ 19 ].

Besides being morally questionable, food waste uses resources to produce and transport extra food such as land, energy, water, and fertilizers with the consequent emission of greenhouse gases. At the end of the cycle, wasted food needs to be transported and disposed of with subsequent land use, fuel use, and emission of greenhouse gases from trucks, machinery, and decomposing food [ 18 ].

Genetically Modified Organisms

Projections indicate that the world population will increase to 9.2 billion by 2050. To provide food for this growing population, a substantial increase in agricultural production will be required. Scientists have estimated that the agricultural production has to grow at a rate of 1.1 percent annually to cover food demand in 2050 [ 20 ].

Agricultural biotechnology based on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) offer new prospects and opportunities to increase the productivity of agriculture while decreasing the environmental detriment caused by current agricultural practices. Genetically modified organisms, also known as “genetically modified food,” refer to the alteration of the genetic makeup of crops by the insertion of novel genes from other sources or deletion of existing genes. Scientists and farmers agree that there are many advantages in applying biotechnology in the food industry, including the possibilities of solving the world’s hunger problem, developing superfoods with added vitamins and nutrients, while generating economic growth for the farmers [ 21 ].

The first generation of GMO crops, mainly GMO soybeans, canola, corn, and cotton were approved for commercialization in 1996. The goal of this first generation of genetically modified crops was primarily the improvement of pest management such as herbicide tolerance, insect resistance, some yield enhancement, but not profitability. The rapid adoption of these technologies in agriculture demonstrated their benefits to farmers around the world, but did not have a tangible benefit to the consumers. The second generation of GMO crops focused on output traits such as enhanced nutritional features and processing characteristics. These had no impact on profits received by farmers because the products are indistinguishable from conventional crops. The most recent third generation of genetically modified crops, which are currently produced only at small scale, includes plants engineered to generate specialty chemicals, including biodegradable plastics, adhesives, and synthetic proteins. A particular subset of the third generation of GMOs, also known as “Pharmacrops,” has been genetically modified to produce vaccines and antibodies [ 22 ].

Despite its benefits, controversial debates on the advantages of GMOs persist. After two decades using and developing GMO crops, some social and environmental implications have recently raised serious concerns. Some of the negative socio-economic effects include corporate dominance, land concentration, loss of farm jobs, and an increase in income inequality. Many argue that it is still too early to know for sure if GMOs will not have an adverse impact on the environment and human health in the long term. Environmentalists have expressed their growing concern regarding the possibility of engineered genes exposure to wild populations. Others fear that the use of biotech crops will affect the biodiversity by the persistence of genes after a GMO has been harvested, the susceptibility of non-target organisms, and the instability of new genes. As for human health, the main fear has been the creation of new allergens and the gene transfer from GMO foods to human cells or the intestinal microflora. Another hazard is the transfer of genes from GMO plants into conventional crops, as well as the mixing of GM crops with those derived from conventional seeds, which could have an indirect effect on food safety and food security [ 22 ].

GMOs promoters, on the other hand, consider biotechnology agriculture a crucial tool to enhance crop productivity, food quality, and the production of vaccines and therapeutic medicines. GMO crops advocates claim that there is enough evidence that GMOs are essential for promoting sustainable agriculture since it can decrease agriculture’s environmental footprint by reducing the use of pesticides, saving fossil fuels, lowering CO 2 emissions and conserving soil and moisture [ 21 ].

Even though GMO crops are not presented as the “absolute solution,” they could undoubtedly make a significant contribution to find a solution to the global food security problem. A recent meta-analysis of 147 published biotech crop studies from 1995 to 2014 concluded that biotech crops have generated multiple and tangible benefits over the past 20 years [ 23 ]. According to this study, on average, the adoption of GMO technology has reduced the use of chemical pesticides by 37 percent, increased crop yields by 22 percent, and increased farmer profits by 68 percent. There are also health benefits for farm workers as a result of less chemical pesticide spraying [ 22 ]. The adoption of GM insect resistant and herbicide tolerant technology has reduced pesticide spraying by 581.4 million kg (8.2 percent reduction), and the environmental impact associated with herbicide and insecticide use on these crops, measured by the EIQ indicator, dropped by 18.5 percent since 1996 [ 24 ].

In spite of the fears, very likely GMO technology will play an increasingly significant role in agricultural sustainability in the years to come. This technology offers the opportunity to generate new crop varieties that would be more resistant to pest or drought, and consequently will increase and enhance productivity yields to ameliorate hunger and the food insecurity problem worldwide.

The food system, particularly in terms of emission of greenhouse gases, has impacts at all stages of the supply chain. However, the agricultural stage is the single largest greenhouse gases emitter with meat and dairy products as the most greenhouse gases-intensive foods. Nevertheless, the role of humans and their consumption patterns have a significant impact on the production of food and the population set of beliefs and attitudes will dictate whether or not the long-term sustainability of the food supply chain can be achieved.

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What You Need to Know About Food Security and Climate Change

#ShowYourStripes graphic by Professor Ed Hawkins (University of Reading) https://showyourstripes.info/

What is the state of global food security today, and what is the role of climate change?

The number of people suffering acute food insecurity increased from 135 million in 2019 to 345 million in 82 countries by June 2022, as the war in Ukraine, supply chain disruptions, and the continued economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic pushed food prices to all-time highs.

Global food insecurity had already been rising, due in large part to climate phenomena. Global warming is influencing weather patterns, causing heat waves, heavy rainfall, and droughts. Rising food commodity prices in 2021 were a major factor in pushing approximately 30 million additional people in low-income countries toward food insecurity.

At the same time, the way that food is often produced today is a big part of the problem. It’s recently been estimated that the global food system is responsible for about a third of greenhouse gas emissions—second only to the energy sector; it is the number one source of methane and biodiversity loss.

It’s recently been estimated that the global food system is responsible for about a third of greenhouse gas emissions—second only to the energy sector; it is the number one source of methane and biodiversity loss.

Who is most affected by climate impacts on food security?

About 80% of the global population most at risk from crop failures and hunger from climate change are in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, where farming families are disproportionally poor and vulnerable. A  severe drought caused by an El Nino weather pattern or climate change can push millions more people into poverty. This is true even in places like the Philippines and Vietnam, which have relatively high incomes, but where farmers often live at the edge of poverty and food price increases have an outsized impact on poor urban consumers.

How might climate change affect farming and food security in the future?

Up to a certain point, rising temperatures and CO2 can be beneficial for crops. But rising temperatures also accelerate evapotranspiration from plants and soils, and there must also be enough water for crops to thrive.  

For areas of the world that are already water-constrained, climate change will increasingly cause adverse impacts on agricultural production through diminishing water supplies, increases in extreme events like floods and severe storms, heat stress, and increased prevalence of pests and diseases.

Above a certain point of warming -- and particularly above an increase of 2 degrees Celsius in average global temperatures – it becomes increasingly more difficult to adapt and increasingly more expensive. In countries where temperatures are already extremely high, such as the Sahel belt of Africa or South Asia, rising temperatures could have a more immediate effect on crops such as wheat that are less heat tolerant.

Without solutions, falling crop yields, especially in the world's most food-insecure regions, will push more people into poverty – an estimated 43 million people in Africa alone could fall below the poverty line by 2030 as a result.

How can agriculture adapt to climate change?

It’s possible to reduce emissions and become more resilient, but doing so often requires major social, economic, and technological change. There are a few key strategies:

Use water more efficiently and effectively, combined with policies to manage demand . Building more irrigation infrastructure may not be a solution if future water supply proves to be inadequate to supply the irrigation systems—which our research has shown may indeed be the case for some countries. Other options include better management of water demand as well as the use of advanced water accounting systems and technologies to assess the amount of water available, including soil moisture sensors and satellite evapotranspiration measurements . Such measures can facilitate techniques such as alternate wetting and drying of rice paddies, which saves water and reduces methane emissions at the same time.

Switch to less-thirsty crops . For example, rice farmers could switch to crops that require less water such as maize or legumes. Doing so would also help reduce methane emissions, because rice is a major source of agri-food emissions. But a culture that has been growing and consuming rice for thousands of years may not so easily switch to another less thirsty, less emitting crop.

Improve soil health . This is hugely important. Increasing organic carbon in soil helps it better retain water and allows plants to access water more readily, increasing resilience to drought. It also provides more nutrients without requiring as much chemical fertilizer -- which is a major source of emissions. Farmers can restore carbon that has been lost by not tilling soil and by using cover crops, particularly with large roots, in the rotation cycle rather than leaving fields fallow. Such nature-based solutions to environmental challenges could deliver 37% of climate change mitigation necessary to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. But getting farmers to adopt these practices will take time, awareness-raising and training. In places where farm plots are small and farmers can’t afford to let fields lie fallow or even rotate with leguminous crops, improving soil health could pose a challenge.  

What is the World Bank doing to help countries build food security in the face of climate change?

The World Bank Group’s Climate Change Action Plan (2021-2025) is stepping up support for climate-smart agriculture across the agriculture and food value chains and via policy and technological interventions to enhance productivity, improve resilience, and reduce GHG emissions. The Bank also helps countries tackle food loss and waste and manage flood and drought risks. For example, in Niger, a Bank-supported project aims to benefit 500,000 farmers and pastoralists in 44 communes through the distribution of improved, drought-tolerant seeds, more efficient irrigation, and expanded use of forestry for farming and conservation agriculture techniques. To date, the project has helped 336,518 farmers more sustainably manage their land and brought 79,938 hectares under more sustainable farming practices.

Website:  Climate Explainer Series

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Feeding the world sustainably

A burst of technology in the 1960s— the Green Revolution—raised agricultural output significantly across developing economies. Since then, rising incomes have boosted protein consumption worldwide, and elevated new challenges: greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture are increasing (more than a fifth of all emissions worldwide), while a host of practices, from waste to overfishing, threaten the sustainability of food supplies. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought these concerns to the fore: the disease has disrupted supply chains and demand, perversely increasing the amount of food waste in farms and fields while threatening food security for many.

As agriculture gradually regains its footing, participants and stakeholders should be casting an eye ahead, to safeguarding food supplies against the potentially greater and more disruptive effects of climate change. Once again, innovation and advanced technologies could make a powerful contribution to secure and sustainable food production. For example, digital and biotechnologies could improve the health of ruminant livestock, requiring fewer methane-producing animals to meet the world’s protein needs. Genetic technologies could play a supporting role by enabling the breeding of animals that produce less methane. Meanwhile, AI and sensors could help food processors sort better and slash waste, and other smart technologies could identify inedible by-products for reprocessing. Data and advanced analytics also could help authorities better monitor and manage the seas to limit overfishing—while enabling boat crews to target and find fish with less effort and waste. Agriculture is a traditional industry, but its quest for tech-enabled sustainability offers valuable lessons.

JUMP TO A SECTION

Agriculture takes center stage in the drive to reduce emissions, using artificial intelligence in the fight against food waste, making fisheries sustainable—and profitable—with advanced analytics, the quest for sustainable proteins.

Cross-sector investment opportunities will lead the way.

More than one-fifth of the world’s greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions stem from agriculture—over half from animal farming. 1 Does not include land use, land-use change, and forestry. Non-CO 2 emissions converted using 20-year global-warming-potential (GWP) values based on the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  Unless these emissions are actively addressed, they will probably increase by 15 to 20 percent by 2050 as the Earth’s population rises and the need for food continues to grow. Limiting the impact of climate change will require shifts in what we eat, how much we waste, and how we farm and use our land.

There is no clear path to fully eliminating agricultural emissions. Nonetheless, a wave of transformation is within reach of the food industry and the broader agricultural market. Historically, agricultural innovation has arisen at points of intersection with other industries as creative firms borrowed and built on advances in areas such as human health, chemicals, advanced engineering, software, and advanced analytics. Cross-cutting opportunities portend the next wave of innovation to reduce agricultural emissions by capturing food-process efficiencies (exhibit).

While the abatement costs vary and the market opportunities continue to evolve, mitigation measures could reduce emissions  by about 20 to 25 percent by 2050. In this article, we highlight the top three cost-negative or cost-neutral measures in which business actors will play a critical role. Scaling up these solutions will require investment, technological innovation, and behavioral change—particularly among farmers around the world.

Zero-emissions farm equipment

The largest amount of emissions abatement from a single measure can be achieved by shifting from traditional fossil-fuel equipment—such as tractors, harvesters, and dryers—to their zero-emission counterparts. This transition alone would realize cost savings of $229 per ton of carbon-dioxide equivalent (tCO 2 e) 2 Used to compare emissions of greenhouse gases. and transform the $139 billion global agricultural-equipment industry.

Unfortunately, the current market penetration of zero-emission equipment is lower in farming than it is in consumer vehicles: market leaders are only at the stage of piloting proofs of concept. The right investments by machinery manufacturers  would make it possible to achieve total-cost-of-ownership parity between, for example, tractors powered by internal-combustion engines and tractors powered by zero-emissions sources (such as battery electric power) by around 2030. Like early investors in passenger electric vehicles (EVs), investors in agricultural EV technology are now poised to benefit from first-mover advantage. AGCO’s Fendt, Rigitrac, and Escorts’ Farmtrac each showcase electric-tractor models, and John Deere has battery-run and corded electric-tractor prototypes. If electric farm equipment captured just 10 percent of the 2030 market, this would represent an opportunity of $13 billion.

Battery capacity and charging speeds have been the main obstacles to the adoption of electric farm equipment. However, battery weight is less problematic for farm equipment than for passenger vehicles. A rapid reduction in prices for batteries, which alone account for up to 40 percent of tractor-component costs, will help further overcome adoption barriers. 3 See Markus Forsgren, Erik Östgren, and Andreas Tschiesner, “Harnessing momentum for electrification in heavy machinery and equipment,” April 2019. 

Animal health monitoring

As our colleagues have noted, achieving a 1.5-degree warming pathway 4 A 1.5-degree pathway is an estimate of the extent of change required by each sector of the global economy to curb increases in greenhouse-gas emissions sufficiently and limit temperature increases in the years ahead to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels—a level of increase that, scientists estimate, would reduce the odds of initiating the most dangerous and irreversible effects of climate change. would require a significant reduction in human consumption of animal protein (for more, see “ Climate math: What a 1.5-degree pathway would take .”) The agricultural sector has a major role to play by meeting the world’s animal-protein needs with fewer, healthier animals that generate lower emissions from enteric fermentation and by improving manure management. These steps could reduce emissions by more than 400 million tons of carbon-dioxide equivalent (MtCO 2 e) by 2050 (realizing savings of $5 per tCO 2 e) and generate productivity benefits that would improve agricultural economics.

Emerging biological technologies and computational capabilities, such as gene sequencing and artificial intelligence, enable farmers to detect disease early—and even prevent it—by applying predictive algorithms to existing and new sources of data. For example, Moocall, an Irish company collaborating with Vodafone, aims to reduce cow mortality rates from birth-related complications by up to 80 percent by placing (on the animal’s tail) a palm-sized sensor alerting farmers to how long a cow has been calving. In North America, which has the third-largest cow inventory (after Brazil and China), overall cattle-herd productivity improvements could reach 8 percent. 5 “Study to model the impact of controlling endemic cattle diseases and conditions on national cattle productivity, agricultural performance and greenhouse gas emissions,” ADAS, February 2015, randd.defra.goc.uk.

However, implementing these technologies has proved to be expensive, and they are not yet well understood or embraced by farmers. Moreover, health challenges vary greatly by region and species, so a silver bullet is unlikely. Innovative business models and commercial investment will be required to overcome these barriers: for example, the global technology company Fujitsu has developed an algorithm-based “connected cow” service to make milk production more profitable. 6 “Akisai Food and Agriculture Cloud GYUHO SaaS (cattle breeding support service),” Fujitsu, fujitsu.com. We expect more commercial investment in coming years, given the continued decline in the cost of such technologies and their multiple applications, including new vaccinations and advanced diagnostics.

Achieving a 1.5-degree-warming pathway would require a significant reduction in human consumption of animal protein.

GHG-focused breeding

New breeding programs using sophisticated genetic-selection capabilities can help curb enteric fermentation, potentially reducing overall emissions by 500 MtCO 2 e at virtually no cost by 2050. Today, breeding for methane efficiency has achieved a 20 percent variation in methane production. More GHG-focused programs will be possible as increasing demand for animal protein continues to drive growth in the animal genetic-products market (worth $4.2 billion in 2018).

While genetic-breeding programs are still in their infancy, government and industry are leading the effort to drive adoption. In November 2019, a consortium funded by the New Zealand agricultural sector and the country’s government launched a “global first” genetics program to breed sheep that produce less methane per mouthful of grass. 7 “Sheep farmers now able to breed ‘low-methane’ sheep,” Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium, pggrc.co.nz. Even with such programs, large-scale adoption throughout the industry will require economic incentives: market payments or credits for methane reductions.

To implement solutions at scale, additional investments will be needed in genetic-selection capabilities to address the immaturity and lack of breed-specificity of most genetic programs. New breeding techniques, such as those using CRISPR-Cas9, 8 A new technology that allows editing of DNA sequences. could lower barriers to entry for innovators and allow for more specificity.

A new agricultural ecosystem will be needed to mitigate the increase in agricultural GHG emissions while meeting the world’s food needs. In the near term, the reduction of emissions will depend largely on today’s technologies and opportunities. But next-horizon technologies (such as gene editing, novel feed additives, and aerobic rice) are also needed. Players in industries ranging from automotive and energy to pharmaceuticals have important roles to play. It will take a village to feed our global village.

For the full report on which this article is based, see “ Reducing agriculture emissions through improved farming practices .”

About the authors

Daniel Aminetzah is a senior partner in McKinsey’s New York office, Joshua Katz is a partner in the Stamford office, and Peter Mannion is a consultant in the Dublin office.

AI can help accelerate the move toward a circular economy in the agricultural sector.

Roughly one-third of all food is wasted before it is consumed by people. The methane emissions that result are 86 times more potent in driving temperature increases than CO 2 emissions are, when looking over a 20-year time frame. 9 Francois-Marie Breon et al., “Anthropogenic and natural radiative forcing,” AR5 climate change 2013: The physical science basis, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2013, fifth assessment report, Chapter 8, ipcc.ch. Emerging applications for artificial intelligence (AI) are helping to create opportunities for “designing out” food waste in the value chain: from farming, processing, and logistics to consumption. In effect, AI can accelerate the transition to an agricultural circular economy, in which growth is decoupled from the consumption of finite resources. Circular-economy principles, which historically have taken root slowly and gradually, rest on designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems. Here are three areas where AI has the potential to jump-start a circular economy in agriculture, while potentially unlocking more than $100 billion in value for players globally. 10 For more, see Sustainability blog, “How AI can unlock a $127B opportunity by reducing food waste,” blog entry by Clarisse Magnin, March 27, 2019.

Efficient farming practices

AI can help farmers avoid expensive and time-consuming field trials by identifying the best-performing regenerative agriculture practices. For example, CiBO Technologies uses data analytics, statistical modeling, and AI to simulate field trials and agricultural ecosystems under different conditions. Global stakeholders could learn to improve profitability and sustainability by exploring possible outcomes virtually without the risk of damaging the environment or sacrificing yield. Combining AI algorithms with robotic technologies can further automate and increase control in the farming process. For instance, AI can be used to interpret images of crops, such as strawberries, to help determine when food should be harvested; the harvesting, in addition, can be done with autonomous robots. This might reduce food waste in the field, and it could enable more accurate yield forecasting by improving information along the supply chain and by maximizing storage and cooling facilities.

Reducing food waste

AI algorithms can help with food sorting during processing by analyzing images and data from cameras, X-rays, lasers, and near-infrared spectroscopy. The ability to automatically sort nonuniform produce, such as carrots and potatoes, can reduce waste by sorting for best use, size, shape, and quality, removing a manual process that can be time consuming, expensive, and inaccurate. Some companies, such as Wasteless, are helping supermarkets and other retailers sell food before the expiration date by using AI-enabled tracking and dynamic pricing. In institutional and restaurant settings, new tools are now being used to capture, track, and categorize data on food waste. What’s more, algorithms can forecast and predict sales, enabling restaurants, retailers, and other hospitality institutions to connect supply to demand more effectively.

Repurposing inedible nutrients

Even if all surplus food were redistributed, a large volume of inedible by-products, along with food waste, would continue to be generated. Could these organic materials contain value that could be repurposed? The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Senseable City Lab and the Alm Lab, for instance, are offering a glimpse of the potential with their Underworlds prototype smart-sewage platform. The platform combines physical infrastructure and bio-chemical measurement technologies with artificial intelligence to interpret and act on findings about the pathogens in human sewage; eventually this knowledge could repurpose sewage for use in regenerative food systems.

AI is poised to play an important role for agriculture in the transition to a circular food system. It could revolutionize the way food is grown, harvested, distributed, and enjoyed. As more data sources become available and as computational capabilities grow, AI could help match food supply and demand more effectively, improve supply-chain efficiency, and curb overproduction, overstocking, and waste.

This article is based on the report Artificial intelligence and the circular economy: AI as a tool to accelerate the transition , written in collaboration with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and Google, with research and analytical support provided by McKinsey & Company.

Anna Granskog is a partner in McKinsey’s Helsinki office, Eric Hannon is a partner in the Frankfurt office, and Chirag Pandya is an associate partner in the London office.

Data and digital technologies could transform a traditional industry while helping stem the damage to ocean ecosystems.

Gathering data and applying the power of advanced analytics can help tackle problems in surprising ways. The distressed state of the oceans is a case in point. Decades of overfishing is depleting the oceans at an alarming rate, at a time when the emerging world increasingly depends on seafood for protein. Finding a more sustainable means of fishing while preserving ocean ecosystems is a sprawling problem. The fishing industry is feeling the effects: today, it takes five times the effort to haul in a catch as it did in 1950. 11 Measured in kilowatt-hours expended. We looked at how fisheries, government authorities, and food companies could deploy advanced analytics to improve monitoring and raise the efficiency of their operations. In addition to giving the fishing industry new tools for more profitable, sustainable operations, there’s also a climate bonus: reeling in a ton of fish protein has less than a tenth of the greenhouse-gas intensity of equivalent protein harvested from ruminant livestock.

Oceans in danger

Recognizing the threats, national governments have moved to strengthen and improve management and regulation. Yet regional gains often are negated by overfishing or illegal catches in adjacent zones. Many of today’s efforts, including reporting of catches, industry information sharing, and regulatory enforcement, could be bolstered by tighter collaboration.

A bounty of data

Much like agriculture onshore, the fishing industry is geographically dispersed with operators large and small. Farmers plow their fields guided by data on weather and soil conditions. While most fisheries still operate in a traditional way, something similar is starting to take shape in fishing. Radar and optical sensors on satellites can pick up patterns in the ocean environment such as temperature and signals of fish movements. While that information is valuable for fisheries, it also helps authorities track boat locations and movement. Camera-equipped drones, meantime, operating not only in the air but undersea, give some boats today a more comprehensive view of nearby fishing conditions. Looking forward, advanced sensors and monitors could automatically collect data on the gear used, species caught or discarded, volume of hauls, and more that’s often done by fishermen. Governments, meanwhile, have pushed for better data to help keep watch on illegal fishing, mandating that larger vessels be equipped with monitoring systems that transmit location, speed, and direction.

Over time, much more information could be integrated with Internet of Things technologies that link sensors to satellite- and land-based communications networks. Crunching the data by using advanced analytics and machine learning would ultimately help balance competing interests—helping fisheries manage a risky, volatile business while providing authorities with better information for policing and shaping sustainability policies.

Turning the tide with analytics

Let’s look on deck. Boat captains with larger commercial fisheries have used technologies such as sonar, though many still rely on intuition, experience, and basic observations to navigate and detect fish. Contrast that with what’s potentially ahead: fish detection supported by targeted analytic models that could provide daily forecasts for entire fishing territories, helping to track species that are in high demand. And Internet of Things sensors that monitor ocean conditions could help boats define optimal, energy-efficient routes.

Then there’s the catch itself. Fishermen often have low visibility into what’s in their nets until it’s pulled onboard—leading to waste. Intelligent sensors of the future will allow crews to automatically and continually monitor parameters such as species and fish size. One analytics tool that larger companies already are using factors in sea temperatures and plankton clusters to model where fish will be, lowering costs for targeting desired species and reducing waste. Poorer regions stand to benefit as well. Fishermen in emerging markets are already gaining greater access to market information by using their cell phones.

On shore, fisheries managers often plan operations hobbled by data scarcity—using landed catches that furnish little forward visibility. Analytics tools promise to offer a more dynamic view of fleets, allowing managers to guide boats and continually monitor stocks. Automatic scanning and intelligent systems that monitor product quality could replace manual sorting of catches. Quality and traceability loom large, as sustainability-conscious consumers demand greater transparency into how and where fish are caught. What’s ahead? Researchers are investigating tagging fish using radio frequency identification (RFID) and certifying catches with distributed ledger technologies (blockchain).

For authorities, analytics can help bridge a different gap. Information on fishing activity is partial at best, and coordination among multiple stakeholders—governments, industry, and NGOs—is challenging. That said, sharing the flow of information from advanced monitoring technologies would give authorities a real-time vision of global fishing activities. It would also help them design more efficient surveillance plans across territorial waters. Decentralized, reliable information-management systems requiring little human intervention could ease adoption. One example: analytics-software tools can flag when a boat slows down in a no-take zone, alerting authorities to the suspicious behavior. NGOs are helping to change mind-sets. To promote sustainability research, Global Fishing Watch distributes information gleaned from government and satellite data on more than 65,000 fishing vessels. Over time, shared, detailed catch data from cameras and image-recognition software powered by artificial intelligence will help governments fine-tune regulations and fishing quotas more dynamically to manage ocean resources.

Looking ahead

Our modeling research suggests that for fisheries, there are financial incentives for analytics-guided strategies. We found that optimizing fishing activity over an entire season, monitoring of equipment to minimize downtime, identifying fuel economies from analyzing navigation data, and implementing information-based labor efficiencies could reduce industry costs by $11 billion, or just under 15 percent of today’s spending.

For governments, one obstacle will be confronting geopolitical challenges. Some bad actors will continue efforts to game a system where the regulatory map has gaps and where some nations benefit by turning a blind eye to wayward fisheries. Better data and analytics capabilities should move the enforcement needle, helping pinpoint hot spots where illegal fishing continues and identifying chronic offenders for enforcement action. The benefits of data sharing and better analytics tools, meanwhile, will continue to align the interests of fisheries and governments for better resource management. An era of precision fisheries will be key to sustaining the oceans’ riches.

For more, see “ Precision fisheries: Navigating a sea of troubles with advanced analytics .”

Julien Claes is an associate partner in McKinsey’s Brussels office, where Antoine Stevens is a specialist; Elin Sandnes is a partner in the Oslo office.

The authors wish to thank Anupama Agarwal, Philip Christiani, Michael Chui, and Bryce Hall for their contributions to this article.

Concerns about health, animal welfare, and climate are bolstering interest in a range of alternative proteins.

Meat has always been a protein mainstay for human beings—the main source in developed markets and a rising one in developing markets as they get richer. In recent years, meanwhile, consumer awareness and interest in alternative-protein sources has grown steadily. That’s particularly true in wealthier countries, where a desire for better health and animal welfare, along with environmental concerns, are shaping preferences. On the last point, our colleagues have shown that proteins produced from ruminant livestock (cows and sheep) are 30 times more greenhouse-gas intensive than those from vegetable proteins. In fact, if cows were classified as their own country, they would emit more greenhouse gases than any country except China .

Sources of alternative proteins include a mix of plant-based proteins (soy, pea), new animal sources (insects), biotechnological innovations (lab-cultured meat), and mycoproteins (derived from fungi). Several entrants in the alternative-protein industry are rolling out new technologies and ingredients, looking to lock in leading positions in a growing market. (For interviews with executives and entrepreneurs at companies breaking ground in alternative-proteins, see “ The future of food: Meatless? ”) Consumers tend to find the recent protein innovations appetizing, and companies are fueling awareness with aggressive marketing efforts.

If cows were classified as their own country, they would emit more greenhouse gases than any country except China.

While aggregate consumption of meat-based proteins worldwide continues to grow, a shift in preferences may be one reason (among several) why meat’s overall growth rate is expected to decline by half over the next decade . Sales of plant-based food (the largest source of alternative protein) rose 17 percent in the United States in 2018, 12 Caroline Bushnell, “Newly released market data shows soaring demand for plant-based food,” the Good Food Institute, September 12, 2018, gfi.org. and the use of alternative protein as a food ingredient is predicted to continue growing. Alternative proteins, of course, are still a small slice of the market for meat ($2.2 billion compared with approximately $1.7 trillion, respectively 13 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, June 3, 2019, fao.org. ). But innovation is rife. The share of new products released with an alternative-protein claim grew from 2 percent to more than 5 percent of the market from 2007 to 2016, according to market researcher Mintel, while consumer interest in alternative-protein products and diets, as measured by online-search results, has increased markedly in many cases.

A look at four types of alternative proteins highlights trends in demand and innovation and suggests where meat protein trends might be heading.

Pea protein

Pea protein is expected to lead the alternative-protein market in the short and medium term, though the product faces certain challenges. The past few years witnessed a limited supply of pea protein caused by a shortage in processing capacity. Producers of mainstream products such as veggie burgers will likely use soybean protein, where input costs are lower and supplies are more stable. However, high-end products will likely use pea protein to cater to consumer expectations of a niche ingredient, which is a product that touts health claims and is for sale at a premium price.

Cultured meat

Lab-grown cultured meat seeks to mimic the muscle tissue found in animals and has the same protein profile (and taste). The industry has received funding from a variety of sources including industry players. The cultured-meat industry is well positioned for the future, even with major technical challenges to overcome, including the difficulties in the development of an immortal cell line and recycling of blood ingredients, both of which help keep costs down. Scientists have been working on this protein since 2013, when the first lab-grown burger made its public debut. The price of cultured meat has already decreased significantly in the past nine years (the first lab-grown hamburger cost $325,200 in 2013 and then decreased to around $11 in 2015, with estimates from some cultured-meat companies indicating that costs will drop to less than $10 per pound by 2022 ).

Insect and mold protein

Crickets are the most common source of edible insects and a good source of protein. They have long been a dietary staple in many areas of Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Some producers are milling crickets for flour. However, it is currently cost prohibitive to isolate protein from the flour as the cost of the crickets is high, making the process difficult to scale. Some food producers are exploring grasshoppers as an edible protein , and a range of insect proteins are likely to be suitable for use in animal feed. Mold protein, meanwhile—or mycoprotein—is typically composed of whole, unprocessed, filamentous fungal biomass, commonly known as mold. It is mixed with eggs to create a meat-like texture for commercial products. It has been around since the 1980s and is produced through fermentation of biological feedstock. Mycoproteins are sold as a meat substitute primarily in Europe, and interest is growing in the US market as well, though consumer interest is still dampened by negative perceptions.

Animal protein will likely continue to dominate the market, driven by key advantages such as customer familiarity. However, there is room at the table for plant-based products, as evidenced by growing shifting customer concerns around traditional meat protein.

For more, see “ Alternative proteins: The race for market share is on .”

Jordan Bar Am is an associate partner in McKinsey’s New Jersey office, Zafer Dallal Bashi is a specialist in the Denver office, and Liane Ong is an associate partner in the Chicago office.

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Reducing agriculture emissions through improved farming practices

Climate math: What a 1.5-degree pathway would take

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The Food Sustainability Index (FSI), developed by Economist Impact with the support of the Fondazione Barilla, measures the sustainability of food systems in 78 countries around three key issues outlined in the 2015 Fondazione Barilla Milan Protocol and designed around the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): food loss and waste; Sustainable agriculture; and nutritional challenges. The Index looks at policies and outcomes around sustainable food systems and diets through a series of key performance indicators (KPIs) that consider environmental, social and economic sustainability.

This study defines sustainability as a food system’s ability to maintain itself without depletion or exhaustion of its natural assets or compromises to its population’s health, and without jeopardising future generations’ access to food. The Index seeks to address three main paradoxes identified in the 2015 Fondazione Barilla Milan Food Protocol:

Food loss and waste: 720–811m people in the world suffered from hunger in 2020,1 yet a third of food is lost or wasted. The volume of wasted food is four times the amount needed to feed those suffering from undernutrition worldwide.

Sustainable agriculture: The impacts of climate change on our agricultural systems are becoming more visible yet increasingly difficult to estimate. Although agriculture has the potential to capture greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and help mitigate the impacts of climate change, the environmental impacts of agriculture are becoming more evident and damaging. The shift away from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy such as biofuels reduces the area of land available to grow food.

Nutritional challenges: The hungry and the overweight coexist, and rising rates of obesity strain healthcare systems to the point of economic unsustainability. For every person suffering from undernutrition, two are overweight or obese.

The FSI research programme aims to raise awareness among governments, institutions and the general public about the need to address food sustainability issues and to monitor progress in addressing these. This project also supports global efforts around the SDGs. The Index is linked not only to SDG2 (Zero Hunger) but also to others, including SDG13 (Climate Action), SDG14 (Life below Water) and SDG15 (Life on Land). It also closely analyses SDG1 (No Poverty), SDG9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure), SDG11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and SDG12 (Responsible Consumption and Production).

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Agriculture Water Management, Food Security, and Sustainable Agriculture in the People's Republic of China and India under Climate Changeto

27 Pages Posted: 6 Sep 2024

Jeetendra Prakash Adyal

International Center for Biosaline Agriculture

Dil Bahadur Rahut

Asian Development Bank Institute

Augusto Becerra López-Lavalle

Tetsushi sonobe.

Date Written: July 24, 2024

Water shortage is one of the major environmental challenges in emerging Asian economies such as India and the People's Republic of China (PRC), presenting significant threats to livelihood and food security in coming decades. The growing population, increasing demand for food, rapid urbanization, and climate-induced water stress will make water an increasingly scarce and critical resource in these nations. Agriculture, as the largest water-consuming sector, accounting for 64% of water use in the PRC and 80% in India. Understanding both the demand and supply sides of water management in agriculture is crucial to addressing future water and food security in these countries. While there are significant differences between the PRC and India in agricultural water management, both countries have predominantly focused on supply-side measures, emphasizing sustainable production practices such as "more crop per drop". To manage agricultural water resources effectively and ensure long-term sustainability, it is essential to adopt a broader perspective that integrates a comprehensive food system and natural resource management approach. This holistic view will help in developing strategies that balance both the supply and Page 2 of 27 demand sides of water management, addressing the complex challenges of water scarcity in India and the PRC.

Keywords: agricultural water management, food security, sustainable agriculture, India, People's Republic of China

JEL Classification: Q25, Q50

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

International Center for Biosaline Agriculture ( email )

Dil bahadur rahut (contact author), asian development bank institute ( email ).

Kasumigaseki Building 8F 3-2-5, Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda-ku Tokyo, 100-6008 Japan

Kasumigaseki Building 8F 3-2-5 Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda-ku Tokyo, 100-6008 Japan

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