The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) has released a report on food, agriculture, and sustainability ahead of the Rio+20 Earth Summit. Although “Food and Agriculture: The Future of Sustainability” focuses primarily on environmental issues, it draws attention to the health implications related to the current global food system.
More than one billion people are malnourished, and our world population continues to expand rapidly. UNDESA points out that the issue of world hunger is one of access: We produce 4,000 calories of food per person per day, but famine, starvation, and food insecurity are widespread. We will have to produce greater yields of food while facing climate change, water shortages, and a host of other problems. Without sustainable farming methods, a decrease in food waste (30-40 percent of food is wasted along the production chain), and the cultivation of crops that are better for ecosystems and for us, we simply will not be able to turn the tide on world hunger.
The report also focuses on the fact that that there are as many overweight as malnourished people living in the world today, of whom at least 300 million are obese, and acknowledges “[t]he numbers may be difficult to believe.” A recent study in The Lancet found that global cancer rates could rise 75% by 2030. Although this will be due in part to people living longer, the world is increasingly adopting sedentary lifestyles and poor eating habits, which will contribute to the rise in cancer and other non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. UNDESA calls agricultural policy “curiously divorced from the vital issues of good nutrition” and calls for the cultivation of healthier foods.
Although it is clear that food production must increase, the current agricultural model is not sustainable. Apart from what I’ve discussed above, there are many threats to human health in our current system. For example, hyper-concentration of the food supply–we rely on only a few crops, despite a wealth of edible plants, and only a handful of varieties of those crops–poses a massive threat to global food security. We’re one bug away from another potato famine. The aggressive over-use of antibiotics, an unavoidable aspect of the confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) that produce much of our meat and dairy, is producing drug-resistant bacteria. Without structural changes to global food cultivation, production, and consumption that go beyond simple increases in how much we produce, we’re going to have some big problems.
When the world gathers in Rio in a few weeks, leaders and key stakeholders (minus President Obama, Prime Minister Cameron, and Chancellor Merkel, among others) will discuss the establishment of Sustainable Development Goals to carry on and complement the objectives of the Millennium Development Goals. Without a doubt, they will explore changes to our current agricultural model and food policies through the lens of environmental concerns, which are undeniably staggering. Global health must not be left out of the sustainability agenda, however. Ending hunger, stabilizing food prices and access, and decreasing the burden of non-communicable and drug-resistant diseases are all dependent on strengthened approaches towards sustainable agriculture and food. We cannot afford to continue with agribusiness as usual.
Header photo of nutritious orange-fleshed sweet potatoes in Tanzania, by the Gates Foundation, via Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
