AGRICULTURE AND FOOD SYSTEMS OUR CURRENT CHALLENGE - Food Systems Failure - page 19

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AGRICULTURE AND FOOD SYSTEMS OUR
CURRENT CHALLENGE
Jules Pretty
Scale and immediacy of the hallenge
Despite a significant growth in food production over the past half-century, one of the
most important hallenges facing society today is how to feed an expected popula-
tion of some nine billion by the middle of the twentieth century. To meet expected
demand for food without significant increases in prices, it has been estimated that we
need to produce 70-100 per cent more food in light of the growing impacts of climate
hange and concerns over energy security (FAO, 2009; Godfray et al. , 2010). It will also
require finding new ways to remedy inequalities in access to food. Today the world
produces sufficient food to feed its population, but there remain more than one billion
people who suffer from food insecurity and malnutrition (IAASTD, 2009).
his hallenge is ampliied further by increased purhasing power and dietary
shifts in many parts of the globe, barriers to food access and distribution, particularly
in the poorest regions, and pressure to meet the Millennium Development Goal of
halving world poverty and hunger by 2015 (World Bank, 2007; Prety, 2008; IAASTD,
2009; Royal Society, 2009). Despite the emergence of many innovations and tehnolo-
gical advances in recent decades, this combination of drivers poses novel and complex
hallenges for global agriculture, whih is under pressure to ensure food and energy
security in ways that are environmentally and socially sustainable (National Researh
Council, 2010).
Complicating maters further, the past half-decade has seen growing volatility of
food prices with severe impacts for the world's poor, most notably during the food
price peaks of 2007-08 and 2010-11, and political and scientific controversy over the
role that biofuels play (FAO, 2008; Searhinger et al. , 2008; Fargione et al. , 2008) in
afecting carbon sinks and emissions. Indeed, land use hange (for any purpose) is
already implicated as a major driver of global hange (Tilman et al. , 2001; Rokstrom