Report urges change to meet increasing global food demand by 2050

The World Resource Institute’s new report, “Creating a Sustainable Food Future,” delves into the most critical question facing the global food system: How to feed the nearly 10 billion people expected to populate earth by 2050 in a way that doesn’t doom the planet. During the next 30 years, overall food demand is on course to increase by more than 50% and demand for animal-based foods by nearly 70%. Yet today, hundreds of millions of people remain hungry, agriculture already uses almost half of the world’s vegetated land, and agriculture and related land-use change generate one-quarter of annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The WRI report proposes a menu of options that could allow the world to achieve a sustainable
food future by meeting growing demands for food, avoiding deforestation, and reforesting or restoring abandoned and unproductive land—and in ways that help stabilize the climate, promote economic development, and reduce poverty. According to the report, achieving these goals requires closing three great “gaps” by 2050:

• The food gap—the difference between the amount of food produced in 2010 and the amount necessary to meet likely demand in 2050. WRI estimates this gap to be 7,400 trillion calories, or 56% more crop calories than were produced in 2010.
• The land gap—the difference between global agricultural land area in 2010 and the area required in 2050 even if crop and pasture yields continue to grow at past rates. WRI estimates this gap to be 593 million hectares (Mha), an area nearly twice the size of India.
• The GHG mitigation gap—the difference between the annual GHG emissions likely from agriculture and land-use change in 2050, which WRI estimates to be 15 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent (Gt CO2e), and a target of 4 Gt that represents agriculture’s proportional contribution to holding global warming below 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures. WRI therefore estimates this gap to be 11 Gt. Holding warming below a 1.5°C increase would require meeting the 4 Gt target plus reforesting hundreds of millions of hectares of liberated agricultural land.

The authors of the report have outlined five major areas for action: 1) curtailing growth in demand for food; 2) increasing agricultural productivity while restricting land expansion; 3) protecting and restoring forests and natural ecosystems; 4) increasing fish supplies; and 5) reducing agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“On the one hand, the challenge of simultaneously closing these three gaps is harder than often recognized,” wrote the authors. “Some prior analyses overestimate potential crop yield growth, underestimate or even ignore the challenge of pastureland expansion, and ‘double count’ land by assuming that land is available for reforestation or bioenergy without accounting for the world’s growing need to produce more food, protect biodiversity, and maintain existing carbon storage … On the other hand, the scope of potential solutions is often underestimated. Prior analyses have generally not focused on the promising opportunities for technological innovation and have often underestimated the large social, economic, and environmental co-benefits.”

Using a new model called GlobAgri-WRR, WRI estimates how three scenarios it calls “Coordinated Effort,” “Highly Ambitious,” and “Breakthrough Technologies” can narrow and ultimately fully close the three gaps. The authors conclude that “although a formidable challenge, a sustainable food future is achievable if governments, the private sector, and civil
society act quickly, creatively, and with conviction.”

Report (pdf)