The Threats to Global Food Supplies and Possible Solutions to the Problem

It is predicted the global population will reach 9 million by 2050 (Black, 2010). The world is facing serious food supply risk and more challenging farming environment, whereas countless food is wasted every day instead of eaten. This essay discusses the impact of increasing land competition and food waste on global supply, explaining the causes of these issues, suggesting genetical techniques is a practical solution for the limited land issue, and analyzing different strategies to tackle food waste in developing and developed countries respectively.

Increasing farming land which is a primary way to raise food production in the past would be less possible now. One of the reasons would be that exploiting the land for agriculture in the past decades without appropriate management has led to desertification, salinization, and soil erosion, which means less arable land than before. Besides, the necessity of protecting the ecosystem and biodiversity has increased land competition. For example, because of the influence of farming, in Europe and North America, the amount of some special birds’ species has declined by 30% over 40 years (John, 2012).

In this situation, Modern genetics techniques can offer a possible solution to maximize yields on the limited amount of farming land. Genetically modification (GM) approach allows multiple desirable traits, such as disease-resistance and adaption to challenging climate, to be selected and combined, and today these techniques already can be easily applied (Godfray et al., 2010d). Species, such as sorghum millet, cassava, and banana have been produced successfully to help the world’s poorest area (IAASTD,2008). It seems like GM techniques would be a practical way to achieve higher production even if the amount of farming land is limited. On the other hand, the world is still in the early stage of GM food, and whether it has any potential threats to human health still needs time to be proved.

Another issue that may risk the global food supply is too much food wasted in different stages of the food industry. In developing countries, according to (Godfray et al., 2010), the primary reasons for food losses are the lack of efficient food-chain system, such as scant transport infrastructure and less functioning markets, as well as the deficiency in advanced storage facilities, which leads to a great amount of food spoilage, gluts and wastage. To tackle these problems, public investment in the food chain can improve the cooling storage system to reduce spoilage; management and financial service are required to reduce food surplus caused by a dysfunctional distribution network. If the food lost in the developing world can be minimized by enhancing investment, management, and capital, food supply in these countries could increase by roughly 30% - 40%, which will directly reduce the risk of future food shortage. However, a report shows increasing the usage of cold storage could harm the environment through more greenhouse gas emissions (WRAP, 2008). So continuous study on post-harvest storage should be encouraged to develop more advanced and sustainable techniques for food chain supply.

The task of reducing food wastage in the developed world is even more demanding. These wastes mainly happen at the retail, foodservice and home stages. Low food prices, high-quality standards and the date labeling, such as ‘used-before’ and ’used-by’, result in at least one-third of still edible food go to landfills. Besides, because of the legislation to control diseases, unwanted food cannot be used to feed animals. But meanwhile, over 3 million population living in poverty are suffering from undernourished or micronutrient (John, 2012). Raising might reduce some waste, it may cause an undesirable impact on both consumers and the food business. Godfray et al. (2010) suggest that alerting consumers, advocacy, education, and legislation could lower food waste. If the mass public is aware of the seriousness of the issue and has more knowledge about food safety, more food could be eaten rather than thrown to rubbish. Sound legislation is also important in terms of reusing unwanted food, for example, it should be re-examined and classified by different risk levels (Godfray et al., 2010); those that are safe for animal food can go to livestock.

To conclude, the world is facing to feed 9 million population in the following decades, however, simply increasing more farmland is becoming a less possible option, and although many people are suffering from hunger and malnourished, tons of food is still wasted in a different area in the world. To tackle these issues, firstly, advanced technology is required in various aspects, such as the genetic modification technique to produce well-yield species and upgraded storage approaches to improve food chain supply. On the other hand, reducing food waste is a tougher issue, efforts from multiple sides are demanded, such as individuals, enterprises, governments, and legislation. Feeding the growing global population could be one of the most vital issues related to all mankind, it only can be solved if people beware of it, and all the related fields contribute to it together.