Do we have enough food to feed everyone?
For the first 1804 years of modern History, the worldwide human population was under 1 billion people. Then in 123 years (from 1804 to 1927) the world population doubled to 2 billion. Today, there are 7.8 billion people on Earth and it only took from 1999 to 2011 for it to go from 6 to 7 billion.
The best way to represent human population growth is by using what is commonly known as the exponential growth curve. Bacteria that double at every generation display the same growth pattern. It is a pattern that results in more growth, the more individuals there are.
As the population becomes larger, its growth accelerates, causing it to become even larger, etc…
We have been aware of this phenomenon for several hundred years and its implications have been studied extensively.
Back in 1798, the Economist Thomas Robert Malthus realised that whilst human population growth is exponential, the growth in our food supply is not.
This realisation led him to conclude that the only possible future scenario if things continued down this path would be a massive population die-off as mouths to feed would exceed the available food
Over three hundred years later, with a population expected to reach 9 billion by 2042, skyrocketting levels of inequality and the threat of catastrophic climate change putting our global food and water supplies at risk, it is time to take this question very seriously.
Do we have enough food for everyone?
If the issue of feeding the world was as straightforward as giving food to all those who need it, we would have solved it already, wouldnt’t we?
Why has something that occurs to us (Westerners) as a straightforward matter; getting food on our plate, turn out to be such a huge global challenge?
Does the world produce enough food for everyone?
Are we already running out of food?
You would be easily forgiven for not knowing the answer to these questions but today, living in a global interconnected community, not knowing isn’t a luxury we can afford. Especially not in so-called “developed” countries.
Every year, over 9 million people die from hunger and hunger related disease worldwide, the majority of them women and children — 5.3 million children to be precise.
- That is more deaths than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined
- That is more people than the combined population of the smallest 72 countries in the world
- That is more people than the population of Austria or Togo or Paraguay or Libya or Singapore…
Does it make sense for this many people to die from ailments most of us never even think about?
Short answer; no it doesn’t because we already have enough food for everyone. The world produces much more food than its present population needs and we have time before running out.
That’s good news isn’t it? — Yes and no.
Yes, because that means we can feed everyone. No, because that means that we are not doing it.
As a global society, we are consciously letting 9 million people die every year unnecessarily.
Hunger is built into our food system
What if I told you that the reason nearly 1 billion people in the world do not get enough food has got nothing to do with food production or human population growth?
- One third of all food produced gloablly goes to waste
- 1.3 billion tonnes (or 1 trillion dollars) of food are wasted every year
- One quarter of the food wasted by the EU, UK and US could feed all the world’s starving people
There are many more shocking statistics like these, all of them point to one simple fact: there is enough food for everyone but our food system ensures that some miss out.
We have never had greater access to food than today, yet millions still die from hunger whilst food rots in landfills.
This problem is not reserved for wartorn countries or struggling economies either — the number of hungry people in the US and EU has been rising steadily too.
So why is so much food produced whilst so many go hungry?
Because our food system has little or nothing to do with feeding the world and a lot more to do with keeping people employed by companies who need to pay dividends to their shareholders and bonuses to their bosses.
Food Tank released a report on the true cost of food, showing what it costs society to keep supporting a food system that has no interest in feeding people.
Subsidies payed out to support intensive farming, which fails to feed everyone but produces immense waste, cost $20 billion in the US and €58 in the EU, mostly to support meat, dairy and fish production.
These three food groups combined account for more environmental damage than the transport industry, yet produce less food per unit area than any other plant based alternative.
These subsidies are supported by the lobbies that push for more production in the name of higher sales volumes, not of increased mouths to feed.
The result? Lower prices for unhealthy foods and an obesity epidemic in the West, costing $2 trillion in healthcare globally, while McDonald’s and Danone keep growing into some of the largest companies in the world.
Our food system costs trillions yet millions die of hunger every year while over a billion tonnes of food go to waste.
There is no problem with producing food, the problem is with which food is produced and for what reasons.
The 21st century food system is designed for a 21st century priority: profit. Health and food security do not even figure in the priorities of the companies producing our “food”.
What is the future outlook for world hunger?
The future of food production is bleak.
If we continue down the path we have embarked on, producing more food in the name of “feeding the world” while actually looking to maximise profits, we will end up destroying the life support systems we rely on, at which point we will really have a hunger problem we cannot solve.
If subsidies continue to be poured into the pockets of animal agriculture and fisheries, helping them to grow and produce ever more, the climate crisis will reach a point of no return.
The oceans cannot sustain anymore industrial fishing. Over 80% of fish stocks are overfished and nothing short of a worldwide moratorium can allow them to truly recover.
Intensive animal agriculture produces more CO2 than the transport industry, causing global warming on an unprecedented scale.
Industrial farming uses so much water and fertiliser that arable land is turning into desert and sources of fresh water are becoming polluted swamps.
If we continue to intensify any of these food production methods, world hunger will become much more widespread than it is today and with the world population growing at its current rate, we will run out of food.
But there is an alternative. We do not have to destroy our planet. We could end world hunger if we wanted.
We could chose to subsidise only regenerative techniques. We could ban the use of destructive techniques and end subsidies for foods that harm societal and planetary health.
We already understand plant biology enough to design permaculture farms yielding far more food per unit area than intensive farming whilst regenerating the land.
Technologies promoting vertical farming and self-sustaining cities are being developed worldwide.
A collective awareness of what food the human body needs is growing and nutrition science is improving by the day.
With the right political and financial backing, we could transform the food system, redistribute the currently available food supply and solve world hunger today and in the future.
We have two options:
- business as usual with a deeply unjust food system that is destroying human lives and the planet
- a complete overhaul of how, where and what food is produced with the sole purpose of feeding all human beings fairly within the limits of our planet
In conclusion
The taxpayer already pays a staggering amount because of food system that damages human health and fails to feed everyone.
The planet as a whole is being pushed past breaking point to provide for all, while in reality we let millions go hungry every day.
Rising inequality in so-called developed and developing nations is making access to nutritious quality food harder than ever.
To end world hunger we need to transform the way we see food, the kind of food we produce and how we produce it.
It does not only make moral sense to do so but it also makes economic sense.
We must:
- Consider food a human right, not a commodity
- Reduce inequality in any and all ways
- Invest in food distribution, not intensification
- End subsidies for environmentally and economically damaging food production methods
- Educate everyone about nutrition and what foods to eat for a healthy life
It is our duty, as informed citizens, to demand this change from politicians and it is our duty, as decent human beings, to settle for nothing less.
There are no excuses for the avoidable 9 million deaths a year from hunger and malnutrition.
There will be no excuses for the many more millions over the coming years if we don’t act.
We have enough food to feed everyone, it is high time we did.
