The world is changing at an increasingly faster rate—income growth, shifts in consumption patterns, climate change, and natural resource depletion are all occurring faster now than at any time over the last century—and the responsiveness of our food system needs to change too if we want to ensure a sustainable and prosperous future. We need a food system that can feed every person, every day, in every country; that can raise incomes of the poorest people; that can provide adequate nutrition; and that can better steward the world’s natural resources. Urgently, we need a food system that shifts from being a major contributor to climate change to being part of the solution.
The amount of food the world consumes continues to increase with more people to feed, more calorie intensive diets, and more use of food crops for biofuels. Added to this is the high food loss and waste between farmers’ fields and dinner plates. World food prices have increased as grain stocks have declined. Farmers are responding to higher prices to produce more, but they are faced with rising water scarcity, degrading land, and increasingly extreme weather events. We need an agriculture and food system that can adequately respond to the world’s food needs.
Global diets are changing rapidly. While a billion people go to bed hungry every night, a similar number of people in developing countries are obese. Calorie consumption of the most undernourished needs to increase, and the changing nutrient content of foods and diets shaping poor nutrition and health outcomes need more attention. We still live in a world where seven million children die before their fifth birthday every year, and almost half of these deaths are associated with undernutrition.
Current food production and processing practices make agriculture the largest user of water, one of the largest polluters of the atmosphere through greenhouse gas emissions, and one of the largest user of mined elements (due to inorganic fertilizers)—all of which are finite. While other sectors are innovating to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, agriculture is lagging. The world needs to shift from denial to action to rapidly catch up. Water and fertilizer efficient agricultural practices must be more widely adopted, and emissions must be lowered and even removed wherever possible.
Production systems can and need to manage resources in a more integrated way, balancing trade-offs. We cannot produce the food we eat without preserving the ecosystem services provided from other sources such as forests, we cannot sustain forests without thinking how we will feed a growing population, and both require consideration of how we manage our watersheds and rural landscapes.
Even with urban migration, 4 of every 5 people in extreme poverty live in rural areas and most rely on agriculture for their livelihoods. We are within reach of ending extreme poverty globally within a generation. In order for us to achieve this remarkable milestone, incomes from agriculture in the poorest countries will need to increase substantially.
Global and local action, at scale, is needed to address this agenda—private sector innovation, effective government policy, partnering with civil society, universities, and global institutions. More open trade can facilitate a more responsive food system to shocks, better science can help adapt to climate change and lower emissions, better education can help inform diet choice, and more finance to support farming systems in poor countries can help raise farmer incomes. These are some of the ingredients needed. The world’s food system has made life and prosperity possible, let’s ensure that going forward we better shape a system that can provide the world with needed food, incomes, nutrition, and sustainable management of natural resources.
Juergen Voegele joined the World Bank in 1991 after working with the University of Hohenheim, the GTZ, and the BMZ Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation in Germany, including a three-year field assignment in Western Samoa. His initial assignments in the World Bank’s Washington headquarters included working in agriculture and natural resources divisions in the Europe and Central Asia Region and in the East Asia and Pacific Region. He held various assignments for the East Asia and Pacific Region, and in 1998, he transferred to the World Bank's Beijing, China Office to lead the Agriculture Unit. This article is part of the 2014 Global Action Report.
Photo: Kate Holt/Africa Practice (cc).
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The Urgency for Global Action on Food
July 10, 2014
The world is changing at an increasingly faster rate—income growth, shifts in consumption patterns, climate change, and natural resource depletion are all occurring faster now than at any time over the last century—and the responsiveness of our food system needs to change too if we want to ensure a sustainable and prosperous future. We need a food system that can feed every person, every day, in every country; that can raise incomes of the poorest people; that can provide adequate nutrition; and that can better steward the world’s natural resources. Urgently, we need a food system that shifts from being a major contributor to climate change to being part of the solution.
The amount of food the world consumes continues to increase with more people to feed, more calorie intensive diets, and more use of food crops for biofuels. Added to this is the high food loss and waste between farmers’ fields and dinner plates. World food prices have increased as grain stocks have declined. Farmers are responding to higher prices to produce more, but they are faced with rising water scarcity, degrading land, and increasingly extreme weather events. We need an agriculture and food system that can adequately respond to the world’s food needs.
Global diets are changing rapidly. While a billion people go to bed hungry every night, a similar number of people in developing countries are obese. Calorie consumption of the most undernourished needs to increase, and the changing nutrient content of foods and diets shaping poor nutrition and health outcomes need more attention. We still live in a world where seven million children die before their fifth birthday every year, and almost half of these deaths are associated with undernutrition.
Current food production and processing practices make agriculture the largest user of water, one of the largest polluters of the atmosphere through greenhouse gas emissions, and one of the largest user of mined elements (due to inorganic fertilizers)—all of which are finite. While other sectors are innovating to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, agriculture is lagging. The world needs to shift from denial to action to rapidly catch up. Water and fertilizer efficient agricultural practices must be more widely adopted, and emissions must be lowered and even removed wherever possible.
Production systems can and need to manage resources in a more integrated way, balancing trade-offs. We cannot produce the food we eat without preserving the ecosystem services provided from other sources such as forests, we cannot sustain forests without thinking how we will feed a growing population, and both require consideration of how we manage our watersheds and rural landscapes.
Even with urban migration, 4 of every 5 people in extreme poverty live in rural areas and most rely on agriculture for their livelihoods. We are within reach of ending extreme poverty globally within a generation. In order for us to achieve this remarkable milestone, incomes from agriculture in the poorest countries will need to increase substantially.
Global and local action, at scale, is needed to address this agenda—private sector innovation, effective government policy, partnering with civil society, universities, and global institutions. More open trade can facilitate a more responsive food system to shocks, better science can help adapt to climate change and lower emissions, better education can help inform diet choice, and more finance to support farming systems in poor countries can help raise farmer incomes. These are some of the ingredients needed. The world’s food system has made life and prosperity possible, let’s ensure that going forward we better shape a system that can provide the world with needed food, incomes, nutrition, and sustainable management of natural resources.
Juergen Voegele joined the World Bank in 1991 after working with the University of Hohenheim, the GTZ, and the BMZ Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation in Germany, including a three-year field assignment in Western Samoa. His initial assignments in the World Bank’s Washington headquarters included working in agriculture and natural resources divisions in the Europe and Central Asia Region and in the East Asia and Pacific Region. He held various assignments for the East Asia and Pacific Region, and in 1998, he transferred to the World Bank's Beijing, China Office to lead the Agriculture Unit. This article is part of the 2014 Global Action Report.
Photo: Kate Holt/Africa Practice (cc).
