Feeding the World in 2050

The current world population is approximately 7 billion and it is estimated to increase to around 9 billion by the year 2050. However the land area available for growing food doesn’t seem to increase much due to the land degradation. If we don’t do anything, this world will be lack of foods, water and resources which means it will never be the same as now again. So, throughout this essay, I will be explaining about the causes of these problems and the possible solution to this problem. First of all, if this problem doesn’t stop, there are possibilities of famine occurring anywhere. Famine, refers to an extreme lack of food supplies or food access compared to its population and death rate. One reason that famine occurs might be the unequal distribution of food which means that some areas have more suitable environment or developed agriculture while other areas have poor environment or agriculture.

This makes one area become wealthy in food access while the other areas become lack of food access which the foods are unequally distributed. This usually happens in some Asian countries and many African countries because those countries doesn’t have suitable areas to grow food themselves in order to survive for example there are high chances of many African countries getting drought because those countries are closer to equator than any other countries. As you see in the picture below, people are waiting for the water in order to survive.

For the first time in human history, food access and resources will be limited on international scale by 2050. However this is not the first time this issue has been mentioned. And by year 2050, this issue will be frequently mentioned on a global scale just like the energy issues are today. To meet the food requirement, as the world population goes up to 9 billion, food production should be increased by 70 percent.

If we don’t do anything to solve this problem, it will result a serious disaster because the biggest worrisome is the infectious disease which might occur when it gets worse and more famine around the world. However the food shortage can be solved by few ways which is entomophagy, production of meat directly from the stem cell, genetic modification of plants, growing food using hydroponics/aeroponics (without soil) and growing algae as a food source. Out of these possible solutions, I will be explaining about entomophagy. The word, ‘Entomophagy’ comes from the greek term, entomos or entomon, defined as insects and ‘phagein’ defined as eating.

If you combine these two terms, it means to eat the insects. Of course these days, eating insects are rare in developed countries however insect is still popular as a food for developing countries in Central and South America, Asia and Africa. Inhabitants of many countries still eat insects for its nutritional value and taste. So in general, entomophagy doesn’t just mean eating bugs, but a lot more than that. The reason I chose entomophagy as a possible solution is that entomophagy is an efficient way to feed 9 billion of people and also, it is phrased as a creative and new way of interacting with nature.

According to the Entomological Society of Ameirca, Insects contain about the same about the same amount of protein but less fats than the original meats and 20 times better food conversion effects than original meats. Simply meaning that eating insects have a better effect in our body of eating meat than just eating original meats. Insects are also effective for our body nutrition. For example, 100 grams of cricket contain about 120 calories, 13g of protein, 5.5g of fat and 7.6g calcium. Compared to original beef, which contains 24g of protein per 100g, 100g of insects has half of protein as 100g of beef does however 100g of beef contains 288 calories and 21g of fats which is a lot more than what cricket contains. Insects are exothermic which means that they gain heat from their environment however birds and mammals are endothermic meaning they have to create heat themselves.

And the process of creating hit requires a lot of energy which gives a big advantage to insects, saving lots of energy. However there are some risks of allowing entomophagy. Most of the insects being used for eating is from wild nature so by just looking at it, we cannot be sure of what the insects might’ve exposed so no one knows whether it is safe to eat insects or not. To reduce the risk, the insects should be well cooked and baked because eating raw insects are like risking your life because it might’ve exposed to some chemicals found in nature. Entomophagy is one way of interacting with nature however we should be careful of its wild and huge environment.

However there will be lots of positive factors in economy and politic. First of all, positive outcome of economy by allowing entomophagy is the reduction of food inflation because just like these days, when such food is not produced enough, the price goes up so much that it’s a really worrisome that you might even think that the price might not go down again. For example, here in Japan, the overall price of vegetables went up and especially the price of cucumber went up by almost 2 times of its original price because the production wasn’t enough.

There was a huge food inflation of cucumber. Same for this situation, if the solution didn’t exist, there would be a huge inflation of food because there aren’t enough food supplies but there are much more people which makes the price of food go up by huge amount. So once this solution is admitted, the food inflation might be reduced and this also relates to politics, how the politicians will be arguing about the lack of food access in the future, is similar to how they argue about the lack of energy sources and oil today. So once this problem gets solved, world’s economy and politics will get on track.

In conclusion, it is estimated that the world population will increase up to 9 billion by 2050 and because of this, there won’t be enough food for every people therefore the solution I thought of is entomophagy which is eating insects because enough nutrition can be filled in our body by eating insects and it also reduces the food inflation and keep the economy stable. However there are some risks such as eating insects without knowing where it came from because there are possibilities of insects exposed to some kind of chemicals. Everything in this world has pros and cons but before this problem get worse, it needs to be solved.

References
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