The challenge of providing global food security is clear, the World Food Summit forecasts our world population to exceed 9 billion people by 2020. With 9 billion people to feed, gross food demands are estimated to increase by 60% across all continents. The possible solutions that we propose not only tackle the issue of ending world hunger, but also addresses ensuring sustainable practices and improving upon overall nutrition. We believe that this topic is a vital global challenge because the resolution is not just about food but all aspects of our economies and societies.
There are four major contributing factors to our issue: exponential population growth rates, alternative diets, global warming, and a diminishing farming workforce. Growth rates across developing and developed countries vary considerably, the most significant rising population trends are observed in developing areas. Asia and Africa are currently on pace to have the largest population increases until 2050 and the African population is speculated to double by that time. As people increase their purchasing powers they tend to eat more meat, dairy, and processed foods. This shift of affluent individuals’ diets to include more meat and milk products adds more stress on food suppliers because they will require much more grain to produce. To put it into perspective, the total cost of one ½ lb all-beef burger patty is added up to 6.7 lbs of grain, 52.8 gallons of water for feed crops, 74.5 square feet of land, and 1036 BTUs of energy for transportation and production. The Global Warming crisis negatively impacts water scarcity and climate patterns which causes more of our landmass to become arid. If land degradation rates continue our food productions will only be able to feed half of our world population by 2050. Lastly, in developed countries, only a mere 2% of the workforce is employed in the agribusiness sector. With such a small portion of individuals working to supply food, many dangerous trends such as over farming and arable land loss from urban sprawl have emerged.
Our first proposal is to increase the volume of GMOs in the global market that are engineered to be more robust, more sustainable, and have a better nutritional profile compared to Non-GMO crops. The commercial sale of GM foods began in 1994 and its first application was used in a delayed-ripening tomato. Although 90% of common crops are genetically modified in America, many areas such as Europe, have completely banned the practice of genetically altering products made for food consumption. The general public displays a lot more distrust in GMO products compared to the scientific community but all the GM foods in America are held to the same expectations and regulations as Non-GMO foods. Even if GM foods become an option for consumers in areas that have not been given access to these products, changing the public perception is crucial because no impact will be made unless people actually eat the produce.
The benefits from current GMO practices allow farmers to be less reliant on the usage of pesticides, maintain yields with less irrigation, and create produce that overall have longer shelf lives. A more recent benefit that GM foods have been able to acquire are improved nutritional profiles. For example, soybean seeds have been modified so that they can be processed into trans-fat free oils. This specific application would create an impact on more developed areas where a reliance on processed foods have resulted in unhealthy diets comprised of high amounts of empty calories. Scientists are now in the developmental phases of generating extra Vitamin-A rich bananas and rice that can be distributed in developing areas such as Uganda, where a large portion malnourished children suffer from Vitamin-A deficiency. Another possibility that is being explored with GM foods is being able to create hypoallergenic products such as peanuts for those who cannot consume tradition forms of certain foods. In conclusion, GM foods play such big roles across various societies and these roles will only expand as we are able to find new ways to benefit from different modifications.
Major health concerns of GMOs are that they have been known to trigger certain allergic reactions, correlate with cancer formation, and are speculated to create antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Statistics from the CDC show that food allergies in children have increased by 5.1% in just the past decade. Because certain GM foods are engineered with proteins from other foods such as peanuts, food items must be properly labeled and tested for triggering allergic reactions before they hit the shelves. Multiple independent studies have tested Roundup-tolerant tomatoes and observed cancer development in lab rats. This is just one specific example of how genetically engineered foods may be correlated to cancer, but more testing must be carried out in order to conclude that there is causation. In order to create resistant crops, scientists combine antibiotic-resistant genes with crops and this practice has given arise to multiple strands of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Currently we have only explored the tip of the iceberg for all the possible benefits that GMOs can provide. Although almost all of us have encountered GMOs at least once within our lifetimes, we must proceed cautiously as we allow this technique to expand its role in our lives. GM foods have been produced for over two decades now but GM animals are also on the horizon. Finally, even if these products meet the regulations and expectations of food products, the public must be convinced that these goods do not cause negative side effects. Just because consumers are given the option to purchase GMOs, it is not guaranteed that they will choose to purchase them.
Secondly, to combat the global food security issue we want to use additional substitutes for traditional foods, such as Soylent. Soylent is a meal replacement drink that is packed into a 14-ounce bottle or a couple scoops of powder that you mix with water. This drink contains: 20 grams of protein, 37 grams of carbohydrates, 21 grams of fat, and 20% of your daily needs of vitamins and minerals, such as, Vitamin A, Vitamin K, Vitamin B12, Vitamin D, magnesium, iodine, and many other vitamins and minerals. On top of that Soylent is vegan, meaning there are no animal products in Soylent. There are a few other meal replacement drinks similar to Soylent out in the market today, such as, Huel, Ample, Joylent, Ketochow, Ambronite, and many more smaller brands. These meal replacements will help address the issues of global food security by reversing some effects of its major contributing factors that we mentioned earlier.
Global warming effects food security because projected increases in temperatures, changes in precipitation patterns, and a higher occurrence of extreme weather events will negatively affect agricultural productivity. One way to stop or slow down global warming is through eating vegan foods. Thankfully, substitutes for traditional foods, such as Soylent, are vegan. A study published in the journal Science, reveals that meat and dairy production is responsible for 60 per cent of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions, while the products themselves provide just 18 percent of calories and 37 percent of protein around the world. The release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere leads to the greenhouse effect which in turn causes global warming. By replacing just a meal or two a day with one of these vegan drinks you can decrease your individual impact on the environment. Altogether, on a large-scale transition to food substitutes, we can relieve the earth of many human-caused disturbances.
As mentioned before, consumers tend to choose to meats and dairy products as their purchasing powers increase. However, there is a new trend going around in the world where people are way more health conscious than they have ever been. People are very concerned about their macros nowadays, so having a product that is very simple to consume and is very nutritious makes it very appealing for the health-conscious society we live in today. By just drinking five bottles of Soylent, one can meet all their daily recommendations of nutrients. Products like these make it very easy to maintain a healthy, nutritious, and balanced diet without having to deal with the responsibilities of food prep.
Although there are many advantages to using substitutes for traditional foods, there are some disadvantages as well. One disadvantage is that it would be very hard to convert people’s dependence from traditional meals to alternative liquid substitutes. The act of chewing all of your meals, versus, drinking all of your meals is very different and it would take a lot of work converting people. Secondly, substitutes to traditional foods, such as Soylent, are somewhat expensive. One serving of Soylent, or their competitors, costs between two and three dollars. This would make it very expensive to implement on a global scale because there are billions of people that need to be fed in the world. On top of that, a lot of people do not have access to clean drinking water, 2.1 billion people to be exact. This makes the implementation of these products harder because when you receive these meal replacement powders, you need to mix them with water to healthily consume the meal.
Overall, there are many benefits for using substitutes to traditional food because it is a great alternative diet in terms of providing a nutritious profile and creating a smaller production footprint. On top of that, it is very easy to transport and holds an impressive shelf life, which are both important factors when trying to tackle world hunger. However, it might be hard to implement the use of these products on a large scale because the price of these products average between two and three dollars per serving. That is very expensive considering there are billions of people to feed and they would need five servings a day to reach their daily recommended nutrition.
Another way that we can increase the amount of food that we have on earth and decrease food waste is by implementing cold chain management for all food industries. An unbroken cold chain is an uninterrupted, temperature controlled series of refrigerated production, storage, and distribution. This process helps preserve and extend the shelf life of food, such as fresh agricultural produce, frozen food, seafood, and pharmaceutical drugs. The cold chain is more than just refrigerated transit, it is a science, a technology, and a process. It is a science because it requires understanding of the chemical and biological aspects of product perishability. It is a technology because it is physical and requires controlled temperatures throughout the chain. Lastly, it is a process because it consists of a series of tasks such as manufacture, store, transport, and monitoring.
Improper refrigeration of food during transportation and storage costs billions of US dollars per year. Roughly one-third of food produced in the world gets lost or wasted. Thus, using cold chain management would save that one-third of food waste, which can be distributed to feed the growing population. Introducing refrigeration to different areas of the supply chain will allow food products to arrive safely to their final destination and have a longer shelf life. Food waste is also a political issue since it emits 3.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, which is slightly behind the greenhouse gases China and the U.S. emits. Many politicians propose plans to try to save the environment and stop global warming. Therefore, the cold chain would be a beneficial solution that would attract both businesses and consumers.
While cold chain management seems ideal, it is not very simple to implement. It is very expensive to have and maintain, especially if every company were to use it. It can cause issues like increased shipping costs and taxes, which makes the idea less appealing. Moreover, cold chain management requires proper skills and experience in order for it to be successful. If the organization you hire for supply chain management lacks experience in your industry, the quality of your products may diminish. The cold chain management is very difficult to manage since there are many steps to the process, involving different skill sets.
According to the FAO, nearly 33% of produced foods are wasted globally. Food waste is not only limited to the consumer/retail stage, but loss is also common throughout the production stage. From storage to transport, many issues arise throughout the supply chain. A distinction between food loss and waste clearly exists. Food loss refers to goods being lost (transport for example) whereas waste refers to spoilage or disposal by consumers. Consequently, our next proposal is to combat food loss/waste with a series of campaigns.
When tackling such an issue and implementing movements regarding this topic, it is crucial to understand the demographics of food loss and waste. North America/Oceania and Europe seem to be the backbone of loss and waste while the production phase (harvesting, transport, etc.) seems to be a clear majority to the issue rather than consumers (refer to figure 1). Moreover, developing countries endure the greatest struggle in preserving goods throughout the harvesting phase. With these presented factors, it is of utmost importance to gear the campaigns in various conducts.
Regarding to how we will tackle the situation, these campaigns will be broken down into three distinct categories: harvest, post-harvest, and retail. Concerning harvest, efficient practices will be expanded to farmers. Post-harvest (packaging, transportation, etc.) improvements will include working with individuals to train and promote appropriate conduct to prevent food loss. These practices will not be discussed in great depth as they have been outlined throughout the other elements of the paper such as vertical farming for harvest expansions and cold chain management for post-harvest developments. The last category, retail awareness, would consist of two separate campaigns: media and print. Media campaigns (social media, television, etc.) target developed nations whereas print media (pamphlets, newspapers, etc.) aim toward developing nations. These movements would consist of factual data and empathetic expressions to accumulate both consumers who lack complete attention to the issue and those who have not chosen to accept the conditions with its true weight.
Economically speaking, we hope to see a long-term benefit of such programs. In increasing awareness, developing nations will spread and maintain newly found practices through time. An increasingly conscious society in all nations will eventually prevent unwarranted waste. Therefore, in the long run, we foresee growth throughout the food industry specifically in developing nations due to increased supply. Moreover, consumers save money with a new-found awareness of appropriate portions. Despite these positives, there can be multiple disadvantages to such actions.
First, there is a heavy financial requirement to implement training programs, media advertising, etc. No guarantee exists for the expenses to be covered by organizations to fulfill each aspect of the campaigns. Next, awareness campaigns are often ignored by consumers due to a lack in incentives. Lastly, a substantial amount of real data cannot be gathered for many of the aspects (especially the print/media campaigns) as this solution is dependent upon individual behavior that may or may not have been influenced by the implementation of such campaigns. Overall though, these movements hope to increase efficient practices throughout the harvest/post-harvest phase and bolster awareness regarding consumers. Additionally, not only do we plan on creating campaigns but also to promote movements by organizations such as the FAO, EPA, etc.
Figure 1:
An emerging trend in the agribusiness sector is a transition towards smart farming farming techniques. According to The Smart AKIS (2018), smart farming represents a farming method combining both modern Information Communication Technologies (ICT) and agriculture.
Popular examples of smart farming applications include: Management Information Systems, Precision Agriculture, agricultural robotics and automation. MIS helps farming operations by providing a scheduled system for gathering and generating data for the farm. Not only will this practice allow farmers to accumulate data, but it will also allow them to better communicate and analyze the data they collect. Precision Agriculture is based on the technology of spatial geography and temporal controlling, this technique can precisely adjust the water and temperature while farming to better protect the crops and fruits to increase productivity. This strategy minimizes irrigation waste and monitors factors to ensure an optimal environment. Agricultural automation and robotics uses the latest robotic and AI technology and applies them to all levels of agricultural production, such as automated tractors and farm drones.
The advantages of smart farming are substantial: it lowers the environmental impact to produce yields, helps farmers collect more accurate information, and improves the overall quality of crops. Farmers can now maximize yields but still have a minimum impact on the environment by carefully monitoring crop conditions to use resources like water, fertilizers, or electricity as sparingly as possible. The precise control of fertilizer and watering will increase the overall quality of the crops. Drones can collect accurate data about the crops and automated equipment such as tractors can carry out the work that historically had to be carried out manually. However, there are significant drawbacks and consequences of smart farming. For example smart farming requires access to the internet at all times, incurs much higher production costs, and also forces farmers to overcome a learning curve in the process of becoming familiarized with the new technologies. Internet access is not always guaranteed in less developed countries, and a lot of investments must be made into the infrastructure in order to provide the basic network to build smart farming practices upon. Most farmers will be required to learn the technology of smart farming which might affect the production levels during this learning period. Although smart farming can bring in higher crop yields with a smaller impact on earth and its resources, the high costs from infrastructure and technology investments may pose as a barrier that dissuades many farmers from adopting these practices.
We are currently living at a turning point in human history; we are moving from neglecting our environment to finally taking responsibilities for our unsustainable habits and beginning to support and refurbish the damaged home we call earth. Current environmental debates are usually set around coal production and automobiles as the primary determinants of our environment; however, we are commonly neglecting to acknowledge one of the most significant causes of environmental degradation, farming. Agriculture is the leading cause of water pollution and is also causing deforestation across the world as 38% or 800 million hectares are used for farming. This clearing of land is killing the very trees that are a vital filtration source for the atmosphere (Despommier). In 2001, Dickson Despommier and his students at Columbia found a solution they called “Vertical Farming” which addresses many of the negative effects of soil farming. The replacement for the 10,000-year-old practice of soil farming is to grow plants inside of large abandoned buildings in urban environments using a process known as “aeroponic farming.” This process yields buildings full of plant racks stacking ten or twenty high where plants are misted in nutrient-rich water while UV lights hang above to act as the sun (Frazier). This process allows for plants to be grown in a controlled environment which yields fresh produce only a block away from consumer with no need for without harmful pesticides. Vertical farming is a necessary replacement for soil farming because the negative externalities of our current method of food production is helping lead to the destruction of our earth. Vertical farming provides a new production method that is both immensely sustainable as well as provides fresher and safer food to the end consumer.
The current rate of population growth poses an imminent threat for land shortage as land will be needed for both the housing of the growing population and for increased farmland. The current amount of farmland in the world is equivalent to the area of South America, and if we continue with soil farming that size will not be shrinking; and as we continue to expand our farms we will cut down the forest crucial to our world’s ecosystem (Stell). As the amount of pollutants emitted in our atmosphere continues to grow and the effects of global warming become more extreme, it is more important than ever to have ecosystems containing trees and plants to help purify the air of carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. If we are going to continue to deforest more land to provide more farmland, we will be further cutting into the earth’s ability to filtrate out the pollutants of humans which will speed up the effects of global warming. Soil farming is detrimental to our environment through its rampant use of chemical. Thus soil farming is the problem to be solved.
The greatest benefit of soil farming in its most basic form is that it relies on nothing more than the sun, the rain, and the farmer to till the land and plant the seeds. Farming outdoors in mother nature has no need for pumping in water or using electricity to power the UV lights. Stan Cox, one of the most outspoken disbelievers in vertical farming, argues that, “growing crops in buildings (even abandoned ones) would require far more construction materials, water, artificial nutrients, energy for heating, cooling, pumping, and lifting, and other resources per acre than are consumed even by today’s conventional farms.” Cox, however, fails to understand that while running a vertical farm may be more costly in resources its ability to produce in a much more efficient manner per acre, up to twenty times the amount of soil, means vertical farms are producing much more per acre than soil farms (Despommier). One of vertical farming’s greatest advantages and disadvantages is that it is grown in a sealed environment. Being in a sealed environment means that plant growth can be highly monitored allowing for vertical farms to produce not one but many yields per year. Cox, however, offers the argument that this confinement of plants is indeed a negative, “epidemics and infestations can explode into total losses overnight on a plant grown in confinement.” (Cox) While Cox’s point may have some validity, we must decide whether the use of harsh, polluting chemicals is worth saving a small number of crops that could be affected by infestations in a sealed environment. Vertical farming is not a flawless system like any other thing in the world. However, it improves upon many of the negatives of soil farming and addresses many of the counter-arguments posed that it is a less-efficient system of production.
As humanity, we have consciously decided to begin looking to convert to a more sustainable way of living with increased usage of electric transportation, wind farms, and solar power. However, we must not let the threat of produce production escape our minds. Methods such as Vertical Farming and GMO produce are highly scientific approaches to farming which maximize the amount of fresh produce delivered compared to its environmental impact. The world has yet to explore the marvels of modern food production methods yet we should begin to embrace major produce breakthroughs just as we have shown immense support for Elon Musk and his Teslas.
Works Cited
- “Food Loss and Food Waste.” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAO, www.fao.org/food-loss-and-food-waste/en/.
- “Key Facts on Food Loss and Waste You Should Know!” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAO of the UN, www.fao.org/save-food/resources/keyfindings/en/.
- “Food Loss and Waste.” U.S. Department of Agriculture, USDA, www.usda.gov/foodlossandwast
- “Food temperature cold chain monitoring sensors ensure better food safety.” SigFox. https://www.sigfox.com/en/food-temperature-cold-chain-monitoring-sensors-ensure-better-food-safety
- Dong, James. “Can Soylent help the food crisis?”. Medium. Feb. 8, 2018. https://med
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