Food Security

Table of Contents

Introduction

"According to estimates from the Food and Agriculture Organisation, some 828 million people, almost one in ten, are currently undernourished, regularly not getting enough food in order to lead an active and healthy life. At the same time, agriculture is producing more food than ever before, both in total numbers as well as on a per capita basis, despite the fact that the world population is growing. If the harvest was used entirely and as effectively as possible as food, it could already feed 12 to 14 billion people." - https://www.globalagriculture.org/report-topics/hunger-in-times-of-plenty.html



On this page we'll explore what the greatest threats to food security are; growing threats associated with climate change; and simple ways we can help ensure enough food will be accessible for everyone.

Click the button beneath to understand more about 

Types & Causes of Food Loss & Waste

If we grow more than enough food to feed everyone, then where does this food go, and why don't those in need receive their fair share?


According to Wikipedia: "Food loss and waste is food that is not eaten. The causes of food waste or loss are numerous and occur throughout the food system, during production, processing, distribution, retail and food service sales, and consumption. Overall, about one-third of the world's food is thrown away. A 2021 metaanalysis that did not include food lost during production, by the United Nations Environment Programme found that food waste was a challenge in all countries at all levels of economic development. The analysis estimated that global food waste was 931 million tonnes of food waste (about 121 kg per capita) across three sectors: 61 per cent from households, 26 per cent from food service and 13 per cent from retail."


Since the metaanalysis didn't include food loss during production, this section will start with opportunity cost loss, then work our way through the food system to the point of retail and consumer waste.

Opportunity Cost Loss

"Unlike conventional food loss, opportunity food loss is hidden food that can be recovered via changes in diets." It refers to the potential food that could be produced with the same amount of space, water, nutrients, and energy, if less intensive foods were produced instead of the current food type.

According to this paper "We find that although the characteristic conventional retail-to-consumer food losses are ≈30% for plant and animal products, the opportunity food losses of beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs are 96%, 90%, 75%, 50%, and 40%, respectively. This arises because plant-based replacement diets can produce 20-fold and twofold more nutritionally similar food per cropland than beef and eggs, the most and least resource-intensive animal categories, respectively. Although conventional and opportunity food losses are both targets for improvement, the high opportunity food losses highlight the large potential savings beyond conventionally defined food losses. Concurrently replacing all animal-based items in the US diet with plant-based alternatives will add enough food to feed, in full, 350 million additional people, well above the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food waste. These results highlight the importance of dietary shifts to improving food availability and security."

Extrapolated out this gives us:


Opportunity Food Losses of...


...followed by...

Conventional Retail-to-Consumer Food Losses for...

Scientists have determined that the USA could feed an additional 800 million people with the 40% of crops they currently waste as feed for livestock.

The USA's human population is currently around only 331.9 million people, as of 2022.

Meanwhile, the number of hungry people world wide recently rose from around 800 million to 828 million people going to bed hungry every night in 2022.

The Fishing Industry's Wastefulness (Fishmeal Used as Feed Increases Hunger) 

Currently subsidies pay for up to 3 times more than the sustainable number of fishing vessels to be at sea. 

Each year ships go further, with better equipment and bigger nets to pull fish from deeper parts of the oceans. Despite this they catch less fish as the populations of fish species continue to drop. Bottom trawlers damage the coral and other ecosystems that fish use to feed and breed in, fishing quotas that are based on politics and money instead of science, plus the drive to catch big fish while throwing back the smaller species (despite fish generally dying from sock, crushing, suffocation, or get "the bends") are all pushing fish populations to the brink.

In 2018, we were warned that 90% of global fisheries had already been used up, with not enough large, adult fish left to help their populations to remain viable, thanks to humanity's obsession with harvesting the largest fish (the 6 population collapses of various types of cod serve as a good examples of this pattern). 


In fact, at our current rate of extraction, it's estimated that our oceans will run out of fish by 2048!


Around 1/3rd of the global catch is estimated to be thrown back. Sometimes this includes endangered species like dolphins, whales, and turtles who can't legally be sold, but who are usually dead by the time the net had been brought in.

Of the retained annual catch, an estimated 37% of the global catch is fed to livestock, particularly aquaculture (mostly farmed fish), followed by pigs, poultry, and other livestock. Unfortunately, scientists have pointed out that despite these industries promises that fishmeal is primarily "waste", data shows that 90% of those species are not only safe for human consumption, but many are important traditional foods for many coastal communities.

When international fishing vessels from richer countries steal fish from poorer nations, with less-advanced technology or environmental protections, fishing contributes to hunger, increased rates of violence, and mass migration to wealthier nations.

Some organizations now pay fishing communities to simply remove ghost gear from their coral reefs where there are little to no fish left. This gives people the opportunity to earn a living while giving the local fish species a break from constant harvest, plus the benefit of a safer environment to eventually repopulate.

As touched on, above, under "Opportunity Cost Loss" an incredible amount of nutrients from fishmeal is lost when fed to livestock instead of directly to people. 

Much of this is because only a small amount of the energy used to harvest, run processing equipment, shipping, and making packaging ends up resulting in energy transferred to the animals.

Then we get into the problem of the Feed Conversion Ratio. This is where livestock use most of the remaining energy for homeostasis, movement, thinking, and digesting their food. Most of the nutrients and protein is excreted as manure, urine, or turned into inedible portions of the animal such as bones, brain, scales, hooves, and so on. 

The graph in this section shows how little of the "waste" fish we catch each year actually ends up resulting in accessible food for humans. A further 27% of sea food ends up as waste due to "poor planning", poor infrastructure, refrigeration failures, or shipping issues. 

However that statistic falls under "Food Waste" which is the second step of food loss at an estimates 40% for animal products, and only 30% for plant-based foods.

Food Waste

"These values rise further due to extra losses from production to retail which are estimated to be ≈10% (21). Food waste, a subset of food loss, is due to human activities and choices independent of losses due to such natural phenomena as pest outbreaks or climate variability." - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1713820115#:~:text=We%20find%20that%20although%20the,%2C%20and%2040%25%2C%20respectively

Soy

This nutritionally dense legume is the world's second greatest driver of deforestation. 

Organic soy is generally reserved for human consumption, but in places like the Amazon where there is little to no regulation, dangerous/banned pesticides are sprayed liberally on soy destined for sale as livestock feed in the USA, Europe, and China. These pesticides harm farm workers, wildlife, and waterways. The majority of nutrients fed to livestock then pass through the animal, instead of in the stomachs of people, ending up in our waterways as dangerous levels of pollution.

Comparing Footprints of Foods

General Food Production & Foods

Dairy and Dairy Alternatives

Land Use by Food Type

Half of the World’s Habitable Land is Used for Agriculture explains that "For much of human history, most of the world’s land was wilderness: forests, grasslands and shrubbery dominated its landscapes. Over the last few centuries, this has changed dramatically: wild habitats have been squeezed out by turning it into agricultural land.

If we rewind 1000 years, it is estimated that only 4 million square kilometers – less than 

4% of the world’s ice-free and non-barren land area was used for farming.

In the visualization we see the breakdown of global land area today. 10% of the world is covered by glaciers, and a further 19% is barren land – deserts, dry salt flats, beaches, sand dunes, and exposed rocks.1 This leaves what we call ‘habitable land’. Half of all habitable land is used for agriculture.2

This leaves only 37% for forests; 11% as shrubs and grasslands; 1% as freshwater coverage; and the remaining 1% – a much smaller share than many suspect – is built-up urban area which includes cities, towns, villages, roads and other human infrastructure. 

There is also a highly unequal distribution of land use between livestock and crops for human consumption. If we combine pastures used for grazing with land used to grow crops for animal feed, livestock accounts for 77% of global farming land. While livestock takes up most of the world’s agricultural land it only produces 18% of the world’s calories and 37% of total protein.3

The expansion of agriculture has been one of humanity’s largest impacts on the environment. It has transformed habitats and is one of the greatest pressures for biodiversity: of the 28,000 species evaluated to be threatened with extinction on the IUCN Red List, agriculture is listed as a threat for 24,000 of them.4 But we also know that we can reduce these impacts – both through dietary changes, by substituting some meat with plant-based alternatives and through technology advances. Crop yields have increased significantly in recent decades, meaning we have spared a lot of land from agricultural production: globally, to produce the same amount of crops as in 1961, we need only 30% of the farmland.

With solutions from both consumers and producers, we have an important opportunity to restore some of this farmland back to forests and natural habitats."

Deforestation for Food

As you can see in the graph below, we've eaten away at our grasslands and forests over the last 2,000 years, already losing around 1/3rd of our forests, and the majority of our grasslands to make way for agriculture. 2/3rds of which are dominated by feed crops and grazing land.

Nutritional Value of Foods
vs
Environmental Impact Scores

Comparing Types of Sausage

This chart shows the nutritional value of ruminant (cows, sheep, goats, etc.), pork, poultry, vegetarian, and vegan sausages, vs their environmental impact scores. As you can see, the plant-based sausages had higher nutrition scores, while sitting in the low environmental impact segment of the chart. Poultry-based tended to score medium points in both measurements, while pork and ruminant-based sausages tended to have medium to low nutritional scores, and the highest ranges of negative environmental impact.

This chart shows how different food types influence the environment compared to one another. The foods are gathered in like groups with hot drinks and drinks containing dairy having the higher impact than colder and milk-free beverages. The fruits, vegetables, and nut selection have low impact, but nutrient powders, dried fruit, and nuts have the higher impact in this group. Cereals and breads have relatively low impact. In the section Plant-Based alternatives real animal products are compared to their plant-based alternatives, showing that Beef and Lamb have the highest impact of all foods listed in the chart, meat and cheese are among the next highest footprint while dairy alternatives and plant-based meat alternatives have a lower ecological footprint than the majority of prepared foods like chilled deserts, canned foods, chocolate, popcorn, nutrient powders, nuts, fried fruit, biscuits, cereal bars, ready meals, pizzas, pastries, home baked goods, jams or spreads.

This chart and legend helps map out the overall environmental and nutritional impact of a wide variety of foods. The environmental impact score breaks down into water scarcity, GHGs, Land Use and eutrophication potential. The nutritional impact score lists out sugar, saturated fats, sodium, and calories.

The thick link in the middle shows the mean, while the coloured sections indicates the measurement ranges for each measurement, and the colour itself indicates the type of food or drink.

Ideally we'd want to pick as many foods for our diets from foods with healthy nutrition scores, and low environmental impact stats.

Solutions

Food Recovery Hierarchy

Using this graph as our guide, we've listed methods to reduce opportunity cost loss then move down the hierarchy to reducing food waste, and ending with the most to least environmentally friendly ways to handle food waste.

Produce & Consume Less Intensive Foods

Calls to Action

This solution needs to include people from all walks of society:

Level 1-3 Actions

Level 3 Actions

Too much milk in Europe | DW Documentary 28:33 minute video


Video Description: "Europe produces too much milk. The surplus milk is processed by the ton into powdered milk for export to Africa. The results can be disastrous.

African milk farmers simply cannot compete with European price dumping. Our agricultural exports torpedo all development efforts.

European dairy products sell for next to nothing – it’s just one of the consequences of the crisis that has been raging since the abolition of milk quotas in 2015. Never before was milk so cheap in our supermarkets: European farmers have reacted to falling prices with rising production. But what happens to what is not sold here? Export is the magic word for policy makers in German agriculture.

For countries like Cameroon, the wave of milk washing over it from Europe is a disaster. These developments stifle promising approaches within the country’s dairy sector. Dairies, some of them even funded with European development aid, lie empty because the farmers refuse to deliver milk to them. They know that their milk has no chance against the indirectly subsidized produce from Europe. "It’s not fair”, says Hayatou El Hadji Souley, dairy farmer in Cameroon. "We should be increasing our home production in order to improve people’s lives here”. That is exactly what German politicians are calling for, too. They want conditions to improve in Africa so that economic migrants won’t feel obliged to come to Europe."

Eat Ugly Food

A staggering amount of food is thrown away simply for "looking ugly", being slightly misshaped, being too large or small, and other cosmetic reasons. 

We can reduce much of this buy picking "ugly" produce when we shop, otherwise groceries will habitually throw away anything customers don't buy.

Make jams, sauces, soups, stews, cakes and berry pies with lightly damaged foods. Simply cut awa

Divert Potential Food Waste to Hungry People

Click the Combat Hunger button to learn where you can give or receive food. We've tried to include as many organizations and apps as possible which help divert potential food waste to people in need, but some are just accepting monetary donations and volunteers in countries where food supplies are short and need to be imported from elsewhere.

Food Waste to Pets

Livestock and pets in the UK currently consume around 10% of the world's palm meal, greatly contributing to deforestation in Asian countries.

Industrial Uses

Used cooking oil can be converted into biofuels which would be more efficient than than growing crops specifically for biofuels, a system that actually threatens our food security by competing for land.

The stems of crops including hemp, flax (which produces linen), nettles, and more can produce sustainable textiles.

Some types of waste can be used for faux leather including pineapple and mango skins.

Artists can derive paints or dyes from food and crop wastes.

Composting

Animal products can't be safely composted in domestic compost piles. Meat and related byproducts including hooves and bones, dairy, and eggs can all transmit disease via compost.

Plants can also transmit viruses, disease and fungi via compost, but these will generally not have made it to you via our food system. This is why you will often read gardening advice that suggests throwing away or burning diseased plant material instead of composting the material.

If you can't compost in your own home or garden, then consider signing up for a composting program, or share with your community using an app like ShareWaste.

Last Resort: Landfill or Incineration

These options aren't ideal, but they can be used to produce energy. Some communities are even covering old landfills to create new parks and wild spaces.

Diversify Crops & Diet

Diversity is Mother Nature's secret weapon against disasters including disease, floods, blights, and droughts. When we rely too heavily on only a small number of food sources (something fairly new to human society) genetic diversity, even within a certain crop type can be the difference between famine and surviving till the following growing season. 

For this reason groups and individuals around the world are saving seeds and cuttings, sharing, and storing even the rarest genetic strains for generations to come. Scientist and students are experimenting on preservation techniques, breeding and other types of genetic manipulation, looking for ways to make our food system more robust.

Orphan Crops

In addition to common crops that we all know, there a thousand of barely-known foods that are only used in certain regions or cultures, and these could provide us with not only a vaster array of nutrients (of even medicines and other resources), despite massive climate variations, diseases, pests, and soil loss (though these issues obviously need to be addressed all the same!). 

Preserving Biodiversity

Biodiversity protects against diseases, pests, frosts, droughts, and floods which can all lead to famines. Around the world famers, scientists, and activists are working together to preserve biodiversity before it is lost due to the pressures of mega farms, globalization, and capitalism.


Seed Banks & Seed Vaults

Learn more about seeds, seed swaps, and how to preserve seeds on our Seed page.

Resources

Africa

Maps

Africa

Organizations

This section focuses on organizations who aim to preserve global and local food security. Click the Combat Hunger button to find groups focused on feeding the hungry. We specifically made a point to look for those that focus on environmentally-friendly foods and reducing food waste. These include vegan organizations and those that take food which would otherwise be thrown into landfills or incinerated (some of the organization listed do not specifically fall under either category).

The organizations bellow focus on other methods of increasing food security.

International

Europe

UK

North America

Mexico

USA

Grants

International

North America

Mexico

USA