Food resources past, present, future and effect of climate

Change on it.
Food :

Any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for

an organism and usually contains essential nutrients.

Global food system:

History shows that the global food system has always been
changing, and it will need to keep changing to meet the needs of
tomorrow.

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Factors affecting global food system:

Factors affecting global food system are:

•urbanization
• infrastructure
• government policy
• evolving consumer preferences
• rising incomes
•climate change

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The Past: The Origins of Agriculture

Humanity has relied solely on hunting, fishing, and

gathering for food for most of its two million years of
existence
Agriculture---the domestication of plants and animals
appeared only about 10,000 years ago due to widespread
climatic and ecological fluctuations and with an acceleration
of population growth to on the order of 0.1 percent per
year

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The first gardeners, in hunter--gatherer societies, were
likely to have been women. They selected favoured plants,
helped their cultivation.
Availability of domesticated plants and their cultivation
that enabled civilization of human kind, the living in
permanent settlements tending the surrounding gardens
and fields.
The availability of domesticated crops and a settled life-
style permitted populations to grow, continuing the
pressure to continue to rely on crops
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The Present: The Global Food System
Only a tiny handful of plant species have been
domesticated. There are about 2000--3000 species of
cultivated plants, but less than 100 important ones, from
a possible 250 000 (<0.04%).
The majority of the 30,000 edible plants growing around
us are quite nutritious. It’s ≥ 50 that they were common in
our food, but now we don’t eat them.
Our dinner plate hardly include about 12 edible
As only 05 crops now deliver 90% of the world’s calories.
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Summary of sources of human energy (kacl) and protein (g)

Food energy (kcal) Proteins (g)

World

Plant sources 2338 47.3

Animal source 445 27.3

Africa

Plant resources 2177 45.4

Animal sources 167 7.1

Asia and pacific

Plant resources 2343 87.2

Animal resources 343 20.1

Near east
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Plant sources 2441 88.1

Animal sources 329 20.1

Europe

Plant resources 2419 46.3

Animal resources 329 11.9

Latin America & Caribbean

Plant resources 2271 81

Animal resources 534 34.7

North America

Plant resources 2655 42.1

Animal resources 998 70.2

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The Future: More Crowded

we will need to feed more than 9 billion by 2050.

Population growth is a rapid expansion in the global middle
class
The middle class is expected to increase by more than 600
percent.
So it won’t just be a matter of feeding more people, but of
feeding them differently. The combination of these two
factors means we will need more food.

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it could be anywhere from 30 percent to 70 percent more
than we grow today.
Providing adequate nutrition for this larger population
will require at least a comparable increase
in effective food availability and probably a much higher
increase to allow for unequal distribution and better
diets.

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Effect of climate change on global food system
the climatic change could affect agriculture in several
ways :
•productivity, in terms of quantity and quality of crops.
•agricultural practices, through changes of water use
(irrigation) and agricultural inputs such
as herbicides, insecticides and fertilizers.

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•Environmental effects, in particular in relation of
frequency and intensity of soil drainage (leading to
nitrogen leaching), soil erosion, reduction of crop
diversity
•Rural space, through the loss and gain of cultivated
lands, land speculation, land renunciation, and
hydraulic amenities.
•Adaptation, organisms may become more or less
competitive, as well as humans may develop urgency to
develop more competitive organisms, such as flood
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resistant or salt resistant varieties of rice.