Will we be able to feed 9 billion people in 2050?
The 9 billion people projected to inhabit the Earth by 2050 need not starve in order to preserve the environment, says a major report on sustainability out this week.
Agrimonde describes the findings of a huge five-year modelling exercise by the French national agricultural and development research agencies, INRA and CIRAD. It is the second report on sustainability launched this week to provide a healthy dose of good news.
The French team began with a goal – 3000 calories per day for everyone, including 500 from animal sources – then ran a global food model repeatedly, with and without environmental limits on farming. The aim was to see how the calorie goal could be achieved.
"We found three main conditions," says Hervé Guyomard of INRA. "The biggest surprise was that some regions will depend even more on imports", even as their production rises. This, he says, means that we will need to find ways to counter excessive fluctuations in world prices so that imports are not hindered.
The researchers compared two scenarios.
Agrimonde GO is based on the “Global Orchestration” framework of the UN`s Millenium Ecosystem Assessment: agriculture would continue to develop as it has in past decades.
Agrimonde 1 involves “increasing yields by using the ecological and biological functionalities of ecosystems to the greatest possible extent.”
A complex model examined the year-by-year impact of these approaches to 2050, in six regions: Middle East-North Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa; Latin America; Asia; former Soviet Union; and OECD countries.
The project aimed not only to see if agriculture could provide the minimum number of calories to support life, but also ensure that each person has access to a healthy and balanced diet produced by systems that respect the environment, bearing in mind the increasing scarcity of fossil fuels, and taking social needs into account.
The report concludes that both scenarios would produce enough food, but that the Agrimonde GO scenario would lead to significant environmental degradation. Agrimonde 1 would allow production to expand sustainably, if three conditions are met:
The food model that now prevails in industrialized countries must be changed, and not extended elsewhere. Changes required include reducing excessive food consumption, eliminating food loss and wastage, which currently amounts to 25% in the OECD countries.
Agricultural production must become ecologically sound. Changes required include the implementation of more ecologically friendly production processes, and more efficient use of fossil fuels. Agricultural must take advantage both of the latest scientific advances and of traditional agricultural knowledge.
The international trade in agricultural and food products must become more reliable. Trade between the OECD countries, the former USSR, and Latin America on one hand, and Africa, Asia and the Middle East, needs to be regulated for greater stability.
CI:19.484.196 SECCION: M511
