In this talk for the Food Systems Academy, Paul Rogers puts the challenges of transforming food systems in a global, human security context. He argues that food is at the centre of the third great transition humankind has to go through.
With nearly 870 million people chronically undernourished, and progress towards the Hunger Millennium Development Goal ebbing since 2008, feeding the world will continue to be a major global challenge. Proper nitrogen management will be a crucial part of solving our global hunger crisis while ensuring sustainability for future generations.
Current debates warn of growing food insecurity as global warming and climate change have devastating effects on crops, livestock and even fisheries. Anna Alissa Hitzemann discusses one way to address food insecurity: to help those most affected by price volatility of food become less dependent on the free market
due to a complex range of interconnected issues from climate change to misguided economic policies, political failure and social marginalisation, over 2 billion people across the world live in constant food insecurity. Anna Alissa hitzemann takes a sustainable security approach to look at the importance of “physical and economic access to basic food” by exploring the links between food insecurity and violence.
Michael Kugelman of the Woodrow Wilson International Center, argues that the factors that first sparked many of the land acquisitions during the global food crisis of 2007-08 — population growth, high food prices, unpredictable commodities markets, water shortages, and above all a plummeting supply of arable land — remain firmly in place today. He writes that land-lusting nations and investors are driven by immediate needs, and they have neither the incentive nor the obligation to slow down and adjust their investments in response to the wishes of distant international bureaucrats. This, he argues, has serious consequences for global security.