The Age of Food: feeding the world in the era of peak people JULIAN - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

The Age of Food: feeding the world in the era of ‘peak people’ JULIAN CRIBB FTSE HORTICULTURE NEW ZEALAND CONFERENCE 2015 ROTORUA, JULY 28, 2015

Food will change ...  Food will change more in the next 100 years than it has in the last 1000  2100 menu ‘unrecognisable’ to today’s consumer  Change driven by:  fierce supply/demand pressures  global scarcities  changing climates  growing health and social impacts  new science & technologies

A ‘wicked’ problem... DEMAND: CONSTRAINTS:  ‘Peak water’  200,000 more people/day  ‘Peak land’  More babies + longer lives  ‘Peak oil’  Rich eat 35,000 more meals  ‘Peak Phosphorus’  Population >11 bn by 2100  ‘Peak fish’  Meat demand soaring in NICs  ‘R&D drought’  Food demand +100% by 2060s  ‘Capital drought’  ‘Climate extinction’

Peak water “By 2030, demand for water could be 40% greater than supply available” – UN Report, 2015. Groundwater mining Disappearing rivers Vanishing lakes Shrinking glaciers

 ‘As a typical meat-eating, Water in food... beer-swilling, milk-guzzling Westerner, I consume as much as a hundred times my own weight in water every day.” Food Litres to grow Fred Pearce Slice of bread 40 litres  Average human uses 1386 t water / year Tomato 13 litres Cup of coffee 140 litres 100,000 t a lifetime Glass of milk 200 litres Egg 135 litres Glass of wine 120 litres Kilo of grain 1.5 tonnes Cotton T-shirt 4 tonnes 1 kg chicken 6 tonnes 1 kg grainfed beef 15 tonnes

Vanishing land “The Earth is losing topsoil at a rate of 75 to 100 GT. per year. If soil loss continues at present rates, it is estimated that there is only another 48 years of topsoil left.” - Marler & Wallin, Nutrition Security Institute 2006

Declining nutrient density of food Sources: Lindlahr 1914, USDA 1963, 1997.

Megacities: mega- risks By 2050... By 2030... 7.7 billion will live in cities Total urban area = China Urban water use 2800 cu kms Cities cannot feed themselves

'Peak oil' Food & oil prices Food and oil prices: Car numbers are in lockstep locked together: growing 7x faster than oil supplies

Why we must recycle nutrients < 30-50% of world’s food is currently wasted or lost post-harvest Peak phosphorus 5 Sources of artificial fertilisers will be scarce by 2050 >

Peak fish “The maximum wild capture fishery potential from the world’s oceans has probably been reached .” - FAO Peak fish 90% of fisheries World sea fish catch ‘fully -fished or overfished’ Source: FAO SOFIA 2014

Knowledge drought World food R&D spend 35 R&D Stagnant stagnation crop yields

Devouring a Planet Every meal costs the Planet: • 10 kilos of topsoil • 1.3 litres of diesel • 800 litres of fresh water • 0.3g of pesticide

Killer diet  2 people in 3 now die of a diet- related disease (The Lancet, 2012)  Food kills 6x more people than tobacco  75% of healthcare costs linked to chronic disease F  1.4bn overweight/obese o o  Diabetes: world’s 7 th largest killer d by 2030 (WHO)  Food deaths are preventable deaths

Farm clearances • Global food system will wipe out 1.4 billion small farmers by 2050. • Affects all countries • 1 in 5 humans unemployed • Driven by globalisation of food chains • An area the size of Western Europe ‘land grabbed’ by investors since 2001

+ 4-5 o C warming by 2100 Climate impact  Holocene climate is extinct  5 o of warming : 50% less food? on food  Arable farming ‘highly vulnerable’ above 2 o  Rising risk of regional famines

The challenge To more double global food output with: - half the present fresh water - less land - no fossil fuels (eventually) - unaffordable fertilisers - less technology - inadequate investment - unreliable climate. > Huge new opportunities

Urban ‘sky farms’

Intensive systems Blue Farms, Sydney MiljoGartnieret, Norway Recycled nutrients • Recycled energy • No pesticides • Bio pest control • Automated crop • management Specialty crops •

Floating greenhouses, desert farms

Green cities: climate-proof food

Re-wilding half the world

Fish farm boom Farmed fish Wild fish

Algae boom By 2050 water plants (algae) will be the world’s largest crop: health food, stockfeed, transport fuel, plastic, textiles, chemicals, paper etc

Novel foods: 26,700 edible plants http://foodplantsinternational.com

Australia’s hidden harvest... 6,100 edible Australian native plants

Cultured meat 2011: first synthetic sausage 2013: first synthetic hamburger 2020: health profiled ‘meat’

Biocultures

A new respect for food…  Food Year in every junior school on Earth  Teach respect for food: how to eat for health & to sustain our food supply OR ? OR?

The ‘Age of Food’