1. Food security: the
challenges
Tim Benton
UK Champion for Global Food
Security & Professor of Ecology,
University of Leeds
tim.benton@foodsecurity.ac.uk
2. Today, food …
• Is the world’s biggest industry
• Is the world’s largest land user
• Is the world’s largest water user
• Is the world’s largest polluter and
undermines essential environmental
systems
• Contributes to more ill-health than any
other factor
• We need it, daily
• …but increasingly there isn’t enough of
it
6. Those of us who are well fed, well garmented and well ordered, ought not to forget that necessity makes frequently the
root of crime. It is well for us to recollect that even in our own law-abiding, not to say virtuous cases, the only barrier
between us and anarchy is the last nine meals we’ve had. It may be taken as axiomatic that a starving man is never a
good citizen. AH Lewis 1896
11. Population growth
To 2050:
Population will
increase 35% (7.0-
~9.2 bn),
1 bn more in next 12
yrs in Sub Saharan
Africa and Asia
• 1.6m per week
• 2000 cities the size
of Edinburgh or 1250
the size of Leeds or
116 New Yorks
12. Growth in global food demand
Animal protein expensive in
resources to produce (ENA)
• 35% more mouths by 2050
– Mainly in Asia, Africa and S. Am
• Richer people eat more:
– ~5bn people in middle class by 2030 (cf
1.8bn now), with associated higher
consumption (meat, dairy and total
volumes)
– Mainly in Asia
• 70% urbanised
– Understanding of food systems
• All add up to increased global food
demand (FAO estimate 60% more)
15. Other constraints on production
growth
• Resource and regulatory squeezes:
– Nitrogen
Cost–benefit analysis
– Fuel
highlights that the
environmental costs of
– Phosphate
all N losses in Europe
(estimated at €70–€320
– pesticides
billion per year at
current rates) outweighs
the direct economic
benefits of N in
agriculture. (European
Nitrogen Assessment 2010)
16. Increasing
competition
for water
Per Capita Water Requirement for Food
By 2050 over half
the world’s
population will not
have enough water
to meet demands
18. Increasing extremes
“…in France and northern Italy, where over 70,000 people
perished from heat-related causes….. Italy experienced a
record drop in maize yields of 36% from a year earlier,
whereas in France maize and fodder production fell by 30%,
fruit harvests declined by 25%, and wheat harvests (which
had nearly reached maturity by the time the heat set in)
declined by 21%”
Battisti 2009 Science
19. Changing weather
Historically, what was a 1 in 700 year event is
now a 1 in 7-10 year event
20. Extreme weather can have
Expected area
covered under
global impacts
“normal”
historical
conditions
0.1%
2.1%
2.1%
0.1%
PNAS, online Aug 2012
21. The same weather phenomenon
can be very large scale
Need to increase resilience throughout the food chain
24. Agriculture’s environmental
footprint is huge
Foley et al Science 2011 • 4.9b ha land used;
– 75% of current gains in agricultural land via
deforestation (FAOSTAT 2010; Lambin 2011)
– Must cease land conversion (Stern report,
TEEB)
• ~25% of global GHG is from agriculture and
associated land use change (Tillman 2011)
– 18% in UK from agric and food sector (~60%
fertiliser, ~40% livestock, Defra)
• 24% soils on agricultural land degraded
– 12m ha agricultural land lost p.a. (ISRIC 2009)
• >70% water extraction for agriculture (FAO 2004)
• Diffuse pollution
– ~€300 bn across Europe (Eur. Nitr. Ass. 2011)
• Loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services
28. “Sustainable
Agriculture” needs…
• Management of farming’s
impacts within
plots/fields
• management of land to
maintain other services
Sustainable agricultural landscapes require landscape planning:
many services depend on the amount, quality and
configuration of non-cropped habitat
29. There is no recipe for “sustainable
agriculture”
High yielding
organic
agriculture can
impact on
ecology in similar
ways to
conventional
farming
Gabriel et al 2013 J appl ecology
30. The most efficient production of services
and yield may require land sparing…
• If there is a trade-off between
farming production and ecology
then specialising different areas
to produce (mainly) one product
may produce more in aggregate
than trying to produce both on
the same land
Gabriel et al. 2009 J app Ecol; 2010 Ecol Letts; Hodgson et al 2010 Ecol. Letts
33. Supply-side: “Win win” solutions
• Manage soils better
– Fertility, reduced erosion, soil
“health”, soil carbon
• Reduce waste, utilising new
knowledge
– Precision Farming
– Chemical innovation for reduction of
leaching loss
– Recycling etc
• Value ecosystem services
Robotic weeding:
Weed recognition through machine vision (26 species);
– Pollination, natural enemies, water
applies Glyphosphate only to the leaf of the weed (~1 g – Manage landscape configuration
per hectare cf 720 g/ha) better
Simon Blackmore, Harper Adams • New crops and varieties
– Role for GM and other molecular
biology advances
34. We need to save land for
ecology
• Sustainable landscapes
• Sustainable
countries
• Sustainable world
36. IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT
PRODUCTION
Global food losses/waste is estimated to be 1.3 billion
tonnes per annum (pa), equating to approximately one
third of edible food intended for human consumption
The total food production of sub-Saharan Africa =
developed world food waste (230mt)
37. Can we change our attitude to
food?
• We want abundant, cheap,
safe, nutritious, high-welfare,
local and sustainable food –
but we can’t have it all
38. Thorny issues for
solutions
• Reducing waste from field to meal
• Sustainable and healthy diets and their adoption
• Incorporating the real cost of food into its price
and being willing to pay it: who has the power?
• The role of novel technologies and public
perceptions
• Economic growth vs sustainability and valuing
natural capital
• Managing competition for resources (land, water,
energy etc)
• Weighting local vs international impacts and
managing them
• Transport, logistics, sovereignty, aid, equity
41. The world is being used
unsustainably…
• Pick questions to work on
that matter
• Use your skills wisely
• Be creative, be bold
• Be a leader not a follower
• Make a difference…
42. The world is being
used unsustainably …
What are you doing about it?
What are you going to do about
it?
Many small changes add up to big
changes
Animal protein is
expensive to produce
(ENA)
43. Conclusions
• Food demand is increasing and supply is not
keeping pace
• Demand for food is likely to be a big driver of
environmental issues in coming decades
• Food insecurity has the potential to increase
migration, increase the disparity between rich
and poor and undermine social order
• There are huge research challenges ahead
• There are huge choices ahead about how we
meet our demand
• We can all do our bit by respecting food,
understanding food, reducing waste and
eating sensibly
• But we can’t have it all: an abundance of
cheap food worldwide produced with no
impact.
