Maintaining food supply with increased efficiency
Being able to trace what's on your plate back to the farm it came from is becoming a standard requirement for all produce. James Byrne says it is a good thing consumers are taking notice because there are increasing pressures on maintaining food supply.
Australian’s have only recently started considering the provenance or their produce in a big way and it probably has a lot to do with shows like MasterChef highlighting regional products in primetime TV.
This is a good thing and it’s about time we started taking notice because the security of Australian produce is in danger if we, and the global community in general, keep on using the planet the way we are.
Globally, there are many pressures on maintaining food supplies. Population growth, changing world demographics and the changing food demands that come with that, competition for land and water, the use of food for biofuel generation and, of course, climate change are all leading researchers to think about how we produce food and how we will do it in 2050.
By far the most pressing concern is the population growth. By 2050 we will have approximately 9 billion people on the planet which will, at current levels, require an increase in food production of 70 percent. Traditionally, we have effectively matched food production and population growth, between 1961 and 2008 the population grew by 117 percent and at the same time food production grew by 179 percent, but much of this increase has been achieved by utilising more land rather than solely through agricultural innovation, particularly in the third world. The seemingly impossible task now is to achieve this 70 percent increase in food production by 2050 using no extra (and hopefully less) farmland. Dr Bruce Lee (Director Food Futures Flagship, CSIRO) put it succinctly at a recent agricultural biotechnology conference “in 1960 1ha fed two people but by 2030 that 1ha will have to feed five”.
There are a number of approaches that could be used to achieve this (many in fact have been written about, for example urban farming, synthetic meat or how we can feed seven billion) but there will come a time when the use of GM foods will become more widespread. Already in Australia it is nearly impossible to avoid eating GM crops due mainly to labelling laws not adequately covering products. This isn’t a bad thing, GM crops are being made to be healthier for us and the environment by becoming more salt tolerant, harder to be eaten by pests (and consequently less pesticide is used) and having increased yields. All of this helps us to achieve our goal of increased production with a lower footprint.
Other research being done is looking at how food packaging can increase the post-harvest life of products which will reduce wastage, reducing the cost of pest management and developing better strategies for food import and export.
Are we stuffed? Probably not but we need to adopt these new approaches as research proves their increases in efficiency or we will find ourselves in a world with reduced food options and quantities as we exacerbate climate change and push our agricultural capabilities to their limits.
James Byrne is completing his PhD in Microbial Pathogenesis following a Bachelor of Science with Honours at the University of Adelaide. During his time at the University James was Associate Lecturer in undergraduate biology, bringing his experience in communication and education to his role at RiAus. James has a long term interest in science communication, and previously volunteered for RiAus events. He occasionally writes popular science articles for various newspapers as well as COSMOS magazine, and formerly contributed as a guest blogger for Scientific American. James is passionate about applying his research and communication skills to promote science more widely to the public, and continues to advocate high quality science writing in the media and online. James’ blog at the Scientific American is called Disease Prone.
