GLOBAL OVERVIEW
HOW TO FEED 10 BILLION PEOPLE
Only a revolution can save us. Luckily, it is already underway. Technology, science and big data are radically changing agriculture around the world By Axel Reiserer, OPEC Fund
I n 2015, the international community committed itself to ending hunger in Sustainable Development Goal 2 of the 2030 Agenda under the banner “Zero Hunger”. Today, we are far off track from achieving this goal. According to the latest estimates by the UN World Food Programme (WFP), currently as many as 830 million people are unsure of where their next meal is coming from. More than 325 million people are facing high levels of food insecurity in 2023 – more than double the number in 2020. The reasons why “the world is hungrier than ever”, as the WFP puts it, are manifold: The number one driver
remains conflict, with 70 percent of the world’s hungry people living in areas afflicted by war and violence. Secondly, climate shocks destroy lives, crops and livelihoods and undermine people’s ability to feed themselves. The effects of the war in Ukraine have disrupted global fertilizer production and exports – reducing supplies, raising prices and threatening harvests. High fertilizer prices could turn the current food affordability crisis into a food availability crisis, with production of maize, rice, soybean and wheat all falling in 2022.
to increase food production. The world’s population is expected to grow to nearly 10 billion by 2050 and according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 70 percent more food will be needed in 2050 than was produced in 2009, the
year FAO made its calculation. Experts have identified four main developments that are putting pressure on agriculture to meet the demands of the future: demographics, scarcity of natural resources, climate change and food waste.
As if this were not enough, the world is also facing huge demand
Global urbanization between 2020 and 2050 could lead to a net addition of 2.4 billion people to towns and
URBANIZATION
cities. Urbanization stimulates improvements in infrastructure, such as “cold chains” for food safety, and it tends to raise incomes, increasing demand for processed foods and animal-sourced food: Annual per capita meat consumption is projected to reach 45.3 kg per person in 2030, up from 36.4 kg in 1997-99, the World Health Organization (WHO) says. The consumption of food, however, comes at a price. Increased meat production has severe impacts on the environment: Raising livestock accounts for nearly 25 percent of all global water
While the world’s population is growing rapidly and putting existing food systems under huge
strain, the global diet is changing too as a result of shifting demographics: There is a growing demand for high-value animal protein, a trend that is being driven by urbanization and rising incomes. Urbanization also means that the
rural population is shrinking and ageing with severe implications for the workforce and production patterns.
use in agriculture and is responsible for 18 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It takes 4 kg of CO₂ to make 1 kg of red meat.
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