My crucial guide on a hunger free world

Last night, close to one billion people went to sleep hungry. The share of the world's hungry is highest in sub-Saharan Africa. These countries 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. Fighting hunger is a global mission and #ZeroHunger is also one of the main #SustainableDevelopmentGoals (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.