The Future of Food
Leading experts tell us what they think is coming next.
COMPILED BY ELIZABETH DICKINSON |
MAY/JUNE 2011
Three years ago, as markets were heading toward collapse, one set of prices made a startling and disruptive leap: food. With rice and wheat more than doubling, riots broke out from Haiti to Bangladesh, to Cameroon to Egypt. Then oil prices went down and the crisis waned. Today, however, it seems that was only a temporary reprieve. Inflation in the developing world is pushing up food prices again, floods and fires last year destroyed a significant chunk of the world's wheat harvest, and oil is shooting back up as well, bringing with it the cost of fertilizer and shipping. Worse, with the world's population set to hit 9 billion by 2050 on an increasingly arid globe, what we now call crisis may become the status quo. How did things get so bad? And is there any turning back?
Survey participants (58): Hakan Altinay, Kwadwo Asenso-Okyere, Emmanuel Asmah, Christopher A. Bailey, Robert Bates, David Beckmann, Andrew Bent, Pascal Bergeret, Nancy Birdsall, Masum Burak, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, David Byrne, Jake Caldwell, Edward Cameron, Hank Cardello, Paul Collier, Richard Conant, Raj Desai, Dickson D. Despommier, Shenggen Fan, Ted Friend, Julian Gaspar, Wenonah Hauter, Kjell Havnevik, Peter Hazell, Eric Holt-Giménez, Charles Hurburgh, Sallie James, Monty Jones, Calestous Juma, Charles Kenny, Homi Kharas, Mwangi S. Kimenyi, Russell Libby, Will Martin, Peter Matlon, Jeffrey McNeely, David Michel, Todd Moss, Dambisa Moyo, Johanna Nesseth Tuttle, Raymond C. Offenheiser Jr., Robert Paarlberg, Gregory Page, Carlo Petrini, Norman Piccioni, James Roth, Sara J. Scherr, Glen Shinn, Iain Shuker, Fawzi Al-Sultan, Yurie Tanimichi Hoberg, Mark Tercek, Carl-Gustaf Thornström, Camilla Toulmin, Kristin Wedding, Patrick C. Westhoff, Steve Wiggins.
Data sources: “The Future of Food and Farming” (2011), Government Office for Science, London; U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
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ADAM ONGE
12:59 AM ET
April 27, 2011
GM foods
Perhaps we should do more research on genetically modifying our crops and farm animals. Humans have done that for millennia through breeding. Now that we know a lot more about genes we can perhaps speed up this process to be able to feed, say 10 billion people in about 25 years.
GEORGEANDERSON
5:11 AM ET
April 27, 2011
Food Crisis Is Real
I don’t think there’s any getting away from the fact that the world has a food crisis on its hands. Or that it’s going to get a whole lot worse very quickly unless we see some radical change.
The UK is a predominantly service-led economy and has been for too many years. We now import 60%-70% of our foodstuffs. That’s far too high, when you consider that nobody is producing enough for those suppliers.
What we’ve got to do now is look to the land and think about producing much more of our own food. At Cucina, for example, we’re now thinking about establishing relationships with pig-farmers so that we can start making our own bacon.I hope they find the diet solution soon. And with dairies too, to start getting our own yoghurt, milk and cheese supplies.
BRONNIE ADAMS
6:38 AM ET
April 27, 2011
Food Crisis 2011
Food stockpiles all over the world are disturbingly low at this point. If a major global famine broke out not even the United States would be able to last for long. The U.S. government is supposed to be keeping a lot of food stockpiled in the event of an emergency, but that is just not happening.
Right now a desperate scramble for food is beginning. Quite a few nations that used to be huge food exporters are now importing a lot of their food. Prices for staples such as wheat, corn and soybeans are absolutely soaring, and the UN is projecting that they will continue to rise rapidly throughout 2011.
The G20 finance ministers and central bank governors met last week in Washington, D.C., alongside the World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings, and released a communiqué detailing the outcomes.
The G20 reiterated that their main objective is to “improve the living standards of all our citizens through strong economic and jobs growth.” Maintaining a focus on reducing global financial imbalances from the 2010 Seoul Summit, the ministers and governors also agreed to a set of guidelines and indicators that would standardize how countries are managing balance sheets.
Bronnie
SEO Expert
METABOLIC
11:31 AM ET
April 29, 2011
Fututre forecast?
With increasing population and diets, wastage of food , crop faliures due to drought and floods, future does not look too good.