Last night, 95O million people went to sleep hungry. That’s
a larger number than the populations of the U.S. and Europe combined, and the
effects of not having enough food makes hunger (and malnutrition) the No. 1 public
health risk worldwide—greater than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.
226.7 million People are starving in Africa. The countries
most affected by extreme poverty and hunger in Africa are mainly
those located south of the Sahara. One in four people suffers from hunger there
– which means that the share of the world's hungry is highest in
sub-Saharan Africa.
Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa which have been affected by
adverse weather conditions linked to El Niño, along with the increased number
of violent conflicts, face rising food insecurity from disrupted food
production and, consequently, increasing levels of undernourishment of its
people.
The devastating effects of conflicts have been severe in
countries such as Nigeria, South Sudan, Yemen, Syria and Somalia, where more
than 20 million people face severe food insecurity. In addition to the
detrimental effect conflicts have on the severity of food insecurity, there is
a growing concern in these countries on the conflicts which are triggered by
the presence of food insecurity and malnutrition.
In the last ten years, humanitarian assistance and spending
needs have grown by almost 130 percent, with only approximately 40 percent
covering needs in the food and agriculture subsectors. The surge in
humanitarian needs, as well as the potential for agricultural development and
rural resilience-building to provide a buffer against crises -- highlights the
need for a new way of responding to the food security challenges.
But still, much more needs to be done. Achieving global food
security will require progress in the following areas:
·
Increasing production to expand the caloric
output of food and feed at rates that will match or exceed the quantity and
quality requirements of a growing population whose diets are changing because
of rising incomes. This increase must be fast enough for prices to drop
(increasing the accessibility of the available food to the world’s poor) and be
achieved by increasing the productivity of the small farmers in the
less-developed countries so as to raise their incomes even as prices drop.
·
Such productivity increases will require all
available technology, including the use of biotechnology, an approach that
every scientific body has deemed to be safe but is being bitterly fought by the
organic food growers’ lobby and various (mainly European) nongovernmental
organizations.
·
Climate change has increased the vulnerability
of poor farmers in rain-fed areas and the populations who depend on them.
Special attention must be given to the production of more drought-resistant,
saline-resistant, and less-thirsty plants for the production of food and feed
staples.
·
Additional research is needed to develop techniques
to decrease post-harvest losses, increase storability and transportability, and
increase the nutritional content of popular foods through biofortification.
·
Biofuels should not be allowed to compete for
the same land and water that produce food for humans and feed for their
livestock. We simply cannot burn the food of the poor to drive the cars of the
rich. We need to develop a new generation of biofuels, using cellulosic grasses
in rain-fed marginal lands, algae in the sea, or other renewable sources that
do not divert food and feed products for fuel production.
·
Because it is impractical to seek food
self-sufficiency for every country, we need to maintain a fair international
trading system that allows access to food and provides some damping of sudden
spikes in the prices of internationally traded food and feed crops.
·
The scientific, medical, and academic
communities must lead a public education campaign about food security and sound
eating habits. Just as we have a global antismoking campaign, we need a global
healthy food initiative.
·
And we need to convince governments to maintain
buffer stocks and make available enough food for humanitarian assistance, which
will inevitably continue to be needed in various hot spots around the world.
NEW TECHNOLOGIES TO THE RESCUE
No single action is going to help us solve all the problems
of world hunger. But several paths are open to us to achieve noticeable change
within a five-year horizon. Many policy actions are already well understood and
require only the will to pursue them.
But there are a few more actions that will become effective
only when combined with the development of new technologies that are almost
within our grasp. Critical advances in the areas of land, water, plants, and
aquatic resources will enable us to take a variety of actions that can help put
us back on track to significantly reduce hunger in a few short years.
Land. Agriculture
is the largest claimant of land from nature. Humans have slashed and burned
millions of hectares of forest to clear land for farming. Sadly, because of
poor stewardship, much of our farmland is losing topsoil, and prime lands are
being degraded. Pressure is mounting to further expand agricultural acreage,
which means further loss of biodiversity due to loss of habitat. We must resist
such pressure and try to protect the tropical rainforests in Latin America,
Africa, and Asia. This set of problems also calls for scientists to:
·
Rapidly deploy systematic efforts to collect and
classify all types of plant species and use DNA fingerprinting for taxonomic
classification. Add these to the global seed/gene banks and find ways to store
and share these resources.
·
Use satellite imagery to classify soils and
monitor soil conditions (including moisture) and launch early warning campaigns
where needed.
·
For the longer term, conduct more research to
understand the organic nature of soil fertility, not just its chemical
fertilizer needs.
Water. Water is
life. Humans may need to consume a few liters of water per day for their
survival and maybe another 50 to 100 liters for their well-being, but they
consume on average about 2,700 liters per day for the food they consume:
approximately one liter per calorie, and more for those whose diet is rich in
animal proteins, especially red meat. At present, it takes about 1,200 tons of
water to produce a ton of wheat, and 2,000 to 5,000 tons of water to produce a
ton of rice.
Rainfall is also likely to become more erratic in the
tropical and subtropical zones where the vast majority of poor humanity lives.
Floods alternating with droughts will devastate some of the poorest farmers,
who do not have the wherewithal to withstand a bad season. We absolutely must produce
“more crop per drop.” Some of what needs to be done can be accomplished with
simple techniques such as land leveling and better management of irrigation and
drainage, but we will also need plants that are better suited to the climate
conditions we expect to see in the future. Much can be done with existing
knowledge and techniques, but we will be even more successful if we make
progress in four critical research areas:
·
First, we know hardly anything about
groundwater. New technologies can now map groundwater reservoirs with satellite
imagery. It is imperative that an international mapping of locations and extent
of water aquifers be undertaken. New analysis of groundwater potential is badly
needed, as it is likely that as much as 10% of the world’s grain is grown with
water withdrawals that exceed the recharge rate of the underground reservoirs
on which they draw.
·
Second, the effects of climate change are likely
to be problematic, but global models are of little help to guide local action.
Thus, it is necessary to develop regional modeling for local action. Scientists
agree on the need for these models to complement the global models and to
assist in the design of proper water strategies at the regional and local
scales, where projects are ultimately designed.
·
Third, we need to recycle and reuse water,
especially for peri-urban agriculture that produces high-value fruits and
vegetables. New technologies to reduce the cost of recycling must be moved
rapidly from lab to market. Decision-makers can encourage accelerated
private-sector development programs with promises of buy-back at reliable
prices.
·
Finally, the desalination of seawater, not in
quantities capable of supporting all current agriculture, but adequate to
support urban domestic and industrial use, as well as hydroponics and
peri-urban agriculture, is possible and important.
Plants. Climate
change is predicted to reduce yields unless we engineer plants specifically for
the upcoming challenges. We will need a major transformation of existing plants
to be more resistant to heat, salinity, and drought and to reach maturity
during shorter growing seasons.
Research can also improve the nutritional qualities of food
crops, as was done to increase the vitamin A content of rice. More high-risk
research also deserves support. For example, exploring the biochemical pathways
in the mangrove that enable it to thrive in salty water could open the
possibility of adding this capability to other plants.
Too much research has focused on the study of individual
crops and the development of large monoculture facilities, and this has led to
practices with significant environmental and social costs. Research support
should be redirected to a massive push for plants that thrive in the tropics
and subtropical areas and the arid and semiarid zones. We need to focus on the
farming systems that are suited to the complex ecological systems of small
farmers in poor countries.
This kind of research should be treated as an international
public good, supported with public funding and with the results made freely
available to the poor. Such an investment will reduce the need for humanitarian
assistance later on.
Aquatic resources.
In almost every aspect of food production, we are farmers, except in aquatic
resources, where we are still hunter-gatherers. In the 19th century, hunters
almost wiped out the buffaloes from the Great Plains of the United States.
Today, we have overfished all the marine fisheries in the
world, as we focused our efforts on developing ever more efficient and destructive
hunting techniques. We now deploy huge factory ships that can stay at sea for
months at a time, reducing some species to commercial extinction.
We need to invest in the nascent technologies of fish
farming. There is some effort being made to promote the farming of tilapia,
sometimes called the aquatic chicken. In addition, integrating some aquaculture
into the standard cropping techniques of small farmers has proven to be
ecologically and economically viable.
The private sector has invested in some high-value products
such as salmon and shrimp. But aquaculture is still in its infancy compared to
other areas of food production. A massive international program is called for.
Marine organisms reproduce very quickly and in very large
numbers, but the scientific farming of marine resources is almost nonexistent.
Proper farming systems can be devised that will be able to provide cheap and
healthy proteins for a growing population.
About half the global population lives near the sea. Given
the billions that have gone into subsidizing commercial fishing fleets, it is
inconceivable that no priority has been given to this kind of highly promising
research. Decisionmakers must address that need today.
Our global goal should be that all people enjoy food
security: reliable access to a sufficient quantity, quality, and diversity of
food to sustain an active and healthy life. Most developed countries have
achieved this goal through enormous advances in agricultural techniques, plant
breeding, and engineering schemes for irrigation and drainage, and these
advances are making a difference in developing countries as well.
Finally, fighting hunger is a global mission and zero hunger
is also one of the main Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Achieving this
requires strong determination and commitment from individual nations.
Formulating policies that support better agricultural investments, providing
agriculture subsidies and incentives, promoting child and women health care,
prioritising nutrition programmes, and boosting the production and consumption
of climate resilient native nutritional crops are some of the elementary
practices that will be crucial in defeating hunger and creating a zero hunger
world by 2030.
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