Hey, Check This Out! - Sustainability and Food

For this week’s blog, I read National Geographic’s article: “How to feed the world without destroying the planet”. This article explored the challenges of sustainably feeding a growing population which experts predict will reach 10 billion by 2050. Agriculture itself uses almost half of the world’s vegetated land, consumes 90 percent of all the water used by humanity and generates one-quarter of the annual global emissions that are causing global warming. What makes these numbers even more striking is that 12% of the world’s population still remains malnourished. In an interview, Richard Waite of the World Resources Institute (WRI) claims that ideally, to solve this issue we would need to increase the amount of produce per land area by at least 30 percent, stop cutting down trees, and reduce carbon emissions for food production by two-thirds. At the same time, poverty levels, pollution and negative environmental impacts of farming must decrease while natural habitats and freshwater resources must be maintained. 22 solutions are outlined by Waite and and co-author in the 565 page report titled: “Creating A Sustainable Food Future: Final Report.” National Geographic’s article highlights four of these solutions which are as follows: reduce the estimated one-third of food that is lost or wasted; shift heavy meat diets to plant based food; boost produce yields, specifically that of meat and milk; improve wild fisheries management and aquaculture. So many things can be done in each of these areas for example making improvements in storage units or even the product itself to extend shelf life and reduce waste. Secondly, eating sustainably does not necessarily mean everyone has to become a vegetarian, it just means people should be conscious of the quantity that they eat and try to incorporate more and more vegetables into their diet. We should work towards improving the current crop yield so that we can have multiple harvests each year without using additional land. In terms of fish, people should be held accountable for overfishing and plant-based foods such as algae should substitute for smaller fish in larger fish’s diets. I thought this article was very interesting because I knew about the challenges of feeding a growing population and the need for more sustainable food sources, I didn’t know any of the numerical data associated with it. I thought that the article offered decent solutions but they weren’t addressed to most people. Unless we are experienced farmers, some of these solutions can be difficult for us to handle ourselves but there are still many ways we can help out without having to design anything new. An easy example of this is by being conscious of your ecological footprint at home, by not buying more than you can eat, eating leftovers, or composting waste.

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