Joe Biden’s special envoy for food security, Dr Cary Fowler has warned that the world could fall short of food by 2050 due to falling crop yields, insufficient investment in agricultural research and trade shocks.
Fowler, who is also known as the “father” of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a global store of seeds for the most significant crops, said that studies by agricultural economists showed the world needed to produce 50-60% more food by 2050 in order to feed its growing population. But crop yields rates were projected to decline by between 3-12% as a result of global heating.
“We’re going to fall fairly short of being able to provide that kind of increase in food production by mid-century,” Fowler was quoted as saying.
When asked whether he described the situation as an “existential crisis”, Fowler, who was in Canberra on Tuesday to give the keynote address at the Crawford Fund’s annual conference replied: “It’s pretty close to it, isn’t it?”
The title for the conference is Global Food Security in a Riskier World.
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Recall that he was appointed to the role of special envoy by Biden in 2022. His previous roles include with the Global Crop Diversity Trust and the Board for International Food and Agricultural Development.
Fowler said that Australian agriculture had much to offer globally in research and development around food security in a warming, drying climate, having built a world-leading industry despite poor soils and a challenging climate. The growing industry around Indigenous crops had also attracted global interest.
However, he warned that many countries had become lax about the challenge ahead off the back of huge gains in productivity that saw a massive increase in food production in the past century.
“We are in the midst of a global food crisis,” he said. “More than 700 million people were undernourished in 2022 compared to 613 million in 2019. It’s an incomprehensibly large number and a human tragedy. Every country is affected, including countries like Australia, but especially the most vulnerable around the world.”
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
