Threats to Global Food Supplies

There are many threats to global food supplies. Explain the problem, identity possible solutions, and assess the implications of implementing these solutions.

Because of the increasing world population and the growth of the environmental problems such as global warming and acid rain, global food supplies meet great challenges to feed so many people especially those in economically richer areas wasting foods. A series of problems following food supply shortage like the competition of land, water and energy are also existed. This essay will look into these problems, provide some possible solutions and evaluate them.

World population is a constant problem since 1900(Horiuchi, 1992) and it still grows at least in the next 40 years. There is a forecast that there will be 9.2 billion people in the world of 2050 predicted by the Royal Society (Black, 2010). How to prevent people from starving is a much more serious issue than the global financial crisis. The climate change caused by human activities is also damaging the food supply system. Environmental problems such as global warming or acid rain are changing the land and water for food production, making some of them not suitable to produce food.

The global food supply shortage is not the only problem happening now, there are many other ones. A larger population means people need more space to live and more water to drink, then ecosystem is disturbed by human beings in order to survive. Beneficial species are decreased, while harmful insects and animals spreading diseases are increasing, making chemical and genetic pollutions also increased. How to increase the yield production with less land, water and energy is really a serious challenge for the next generation.

Possible ways to solve those problems are globally discussed, such as finding more arable lands as the traditional way, using science like biotechnology, genetic technology to increase yields and reducing waste in the system of the food production by transporting foods from other countries. However, these methods all have some kinds of disadvantages. The first one is hard to achieve as more land, water and energy needed for human beings to live rather than putting into the argriculture system.For the second one, it still has some unknown threats to both the environment and human health, while if the third one is done, more carbon dioxide might be produced through transporting which worsen the environmental problems. “Eco-agriculture”, which is sustainable and less dependent on heavy use of energy, water, nutrients and other increasingly scarce industrial inputs, is strongly supported and recommanded by many experts. This new food producing system will be science-based, reuse the environmental waste and make global cooperation, which seems the most functional and environmental-friendly way to solve the problem.

To conclude, the global food supply shortage problem is an urgent problem in front of all human beings and not easy to be solved. It also causes other problems such as environmental problems and eco-system problems. Although many possible ways are putting forward to improve the global food supply, creating a new food supply system as “eco-agriculture” system required the coorperation of the whole planet may be the best way to solve it.

References:

Horiuchi, S. (1992) Stagnation in the decline of the world population growth rate during the 1980s. Science (pp.257, 761-765). Slaght, J.(2012) Diet and sustainability key to feeding the world: A food security report. In J.Slaght and A.Pallant.(Eds.),Reading and Writing Source book(pp.28-29). University of Reading, England: Garnet Education. Slaght, J.(2012) dealing with the situation. In J.Slaght and A.Pallant.(Eds.),Reading and Writing Source book(pp.28-29). University of Reading, England: Garnet Education.