Next-Generation Farming Systems for Global Food Security
Abstract
Food security is one of the critical environmental, economic, and political challenges of the early twenty-first century. This analysis defines global food security and examines its remaining challenges and emerging opportunities. Population growth, urbanization, income convergence, changing diets, and biofuel mandates are projected to drive substantial increases in food, feed, fiber, and fuel demand, with these collectively exceeding 50% on a calorimetric basis and 70% by value over the next three decades in a no-policy baseline scenario. Climate change, declining soil health, water scarcity, and invasive species are anticipated to cause simultaneous declines in crop- and livestock-system productivity across all regions, as well as increased risk of sensitive production systems exceeding tipping points. Failed states, political turmoil, conflict, and socio-economic fragility in a broad swath of the equatorial belt associate tightly with biological and environmental constraints.
Despite the myriad uncertainties, enormous opportunities are also visible for both food-system stabilization and for moving toward a more integrated, biobased economy that engages with energy, water, and non-renewable resource questions. On balance, opportunities for farming systems to contribute to broader global economic, environmental, and equity objectives appear to have strengthened (M Antle et al., 2017) ; such wide-ranging contributions suggest that a deeper understanding of farming-systems concepts and analytical frameworks will set a foundation for rapidly advancing the debate, thereby defining emerging and alternative future scenarios and illuminating connections among issues. Attention to farming-systems approaches likewise dovetails with a parallel push toward sustainable agricultural intensification, or producing significantly more food, feed, fibre, and fuel while holding environmental impact within bounds.
Keywords: Global food security, Sustainable agricultural intensification, Climate change impacts, Farming systems and resilience, Biobased economy.
