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Food Security: A Global Challenge
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About the lecture
In this module, we think about what food security is, and the challenge of achieving it across the world. We focus on: (i) the basic concept of food security as the ability to produce sufficient food for every person, and indicators that humanity is falling short of this such as obesity and malnutrition rates; (ii) how this may worsen as populations increase, dietary patterns change and agricultural land availability reduces; (iii) geographical inequalities in access to food; (iv) how food security relates to major environmental challenges, such as climate change and biodiversity loss; (v) the link between diet and health, in relation to both obesity and malnutrition.
About the lecturer
Professor Peter Jackson is Professor of Human Geography and Co-Director of the Institute for Sustainable Food at the University of Sheffield. He specialises in geographies of consumption and commodity chains, with a particular emphasis on food. His publications include Reframing Convenience Food (co-author, 2018), Anxious Appetites: Food and Consumer Culture (2015), and The Handbook Food Research (co-editor, 2013).
Hello, I'm Peter Jackson from the Department of Geography
00:00:06at the University of Sheffield.
00:00:09In this first session of my talk on food security,
00:00:12a global challenge, I want to introduce the term
00:00:17and explain
00:00:20the importance of a geographical perspective on the topic.
00:00:21So at its most basic,
00:00:25food security
00:00:27is about feeding the world
00:00:28the ability to produce sufficient,
00:00:30safe
00:00:33and affordable food for everyone.
00:00:34Today we are falling far short of that goal,
00:00:37with over 800 million people across the world
00:00:40being chronically undernourished.
00:00:44While almost two billion people worldwide are overweight or obese,
00:00:46the situation is bad
00:00:53and it's getting worse.
00:00:54By 2050
00:00:56the world's population will have grown
00:00:58to almost 10,000,000,002 billion more than the current population of 7.7 billion.
00:01:00At the same time, as the population is increasing rapidly
00:01:08available agricultural land
00:01:12is decreasing
00:01:14through the effects of urbanisation
00:01:16and the impact of climate change on where we can grow food.
00:01:18So the demand for food
00:01:23is outstripping our ability to supply that need.
00:01:24This is exacerbated by the so called nutrition transition,
00:01:29a shift from
00:01:34energy shift towards energy gents, diets
00:01:36in emerging economies. So, for example, in China.
00:01:40The diet has traditionally been one which is very heavy on rice and vegetables.
00:01:43As that country becomes more economically prosperous,
00:01:48it's shifting to middle class consumption patterns,
00:01:51which are heavy on meat and dairy.
00:01:54So we have a population worldwide outstripping our
00:01:57ability to supply food to that population.
00:02:00And we have changes within the demography of
00:02:04the world, which is increasing the demand
00:02:07for the most energy dense foods.
00:02:09I've described food security as a geographical issue.
00:02:13This is because there are massive global inequalities
00:02:16with widespread hunger,
00:02:20mainly in the global south,
00:02:22and high rates of overweight and obesity,
00:02:24mainly
00:02:28in the global north.
00:02:29Food security is widely regarded
00:02:31as one of the most significant global challenges of the 21st century,
00:02:33and it's linked
00:02:38to many of the other major challenges,
00:02:39including malnutrition,
00:02:42biodiversity loss,
00:02:44climate change,
00:02:46sorry degradation
00:02:48and the deterioration of water quality.
00:02:49Some proposed solutions as well see, towards the end of this talk,
00:02:53raise difficult ethical
00:02:58and political questions
00:03:00about public acceptability, for example, of GM foods,
00:03:02or about the environmental sustainability of, for example,
00:03:06Sawyer production in Brazil, which is leading to a rapid depletion of rainforests
00:03:11without changes to our consumption patterns, we will need to grow 50% more food
00:03:17by 2050.
00:03:23That's within a single generation.
00:03:25Some people have written about the need to live within planetary limits.
00:03:28There are certain areas where we are already
00:03:33in danger of moving beyond those limits,
00:03:36the so called safe operating space for humanity
00:03:39as
00:03:43rocks, Trump and his colleagues recognised in a landmark paper in Nature
00:03:43in 2009,
00:03:47the three areas where we're no longer
00:03:50living within the operating space for humanity,
00:03:52climate,
00:03:55biodiversity
00:03:56and the nitrogen cycle are all intimately connected with food.
00:03:58The food system
00:04:03is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.
00:04:04Driving climate change
00:04:08intensive farming
00:04:10is a major cause
00:04:12of biodiversity loss,
00:04:13and the widespread use of chemical fertilisers
00:04:16in intensive agriculture
00:04:19is a major disruptor
00:04:21of the nitrogen cycle
00:04:23on which the health
00:04:24of both terrestrial
00:04:26land
00:04:27and marine or C ecosystems depends.
00:04:28There are also close links between food and health
00:04:34as well as food and environment.
00:04:38There's a direct link between diet and health
00:04:41clearly true
00:04:44in areas of under consumption,
00:04:45where the lack of essential nutrients
00:04:47leads to chronic ill health,
00:04:50but also true
00:04:52for areas of over consumption,
00:04:53like Western Europe and North America,
00:04:55where unhealthy diets lead
00:04:57to increases
00:04:59in NCDs, non communicable diseases
00:05:01such as cancer,
00:05:04cardiovascular disease
00:05:06and diabetes.
00:05:08Over one quarter of the UK population
00:05:10is now defined as obese
00:05:13with a body mass index of more than 30
00:05:16and that proportion is projected to rise to more than 50%
00:05:19by 2050.
00:05:22So you'll all be aware of campaigns. Government led campaigns
00:05:25to reduce the consumption of
00:05:29saturated fat, salt and sugar,
00:05:31and to increase our consumption of fruit and vegetables.
00:05:34Think of campaigns like five a day for
00:05:37fruit and vegetable consumption or change for life
00:05:40to change dietary patterns and increased
00:05:43exercise.
00:05:46So that first session
00:05:49first section of the talk was about food security as a global challenge.
00:05:51And I'm now going to go on to talk about definitions of food security
00:05:56and why that topic is contested
00:06:00
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Jackson, P. (2023, March 06). Resources and Sustainability - Food Security: A Global Challenge [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/options/resources-and-sustainability?auth=0&lesson=12867&option=9551&type=lesson
MLA style
Jackson, P. "Resources and Sustainability – Food Security: A Global Challenge." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 06 Mar 2023, https://massolit.io/options/resources-and-sustainability?auth=0&lesson=12867&option=9551&type=lesson