Too many people are hungry today, and many more are projected to be by mid-century.
Our starting point is sobering by any metric. For example, currently nearly a quarter of children under five around the world are permanently stunted –physically and cognitively - by malnourishment. More than 700 million are hungry—or by some measures, more than two billion.
Our current trajectory is equally grim. On our current course, food insecurity will rise dramatically over the next 25 years due to climate change, soil degradation, water scarcity, and biodiversity loss—and is likely to be worsened by both conflict and counter-productive policies. No matter the data or method used to assess the problem before us, the agricultural trends that must be sharply positive to achieve food security in the coming decades are mostly negative. The projected numbers vary, but the result is the same. This will lead to a more unpredictable, dangerous, and unstable world – hostile to humanity and to U.S. interests.
The United States should use its tremendous global comparative advantage in agricultural production and innovation, its historic standing as a provider of development and humanitarian assistance, and its global influence to address the problem of food insecurity in a manner that is consistent with both American values and American interests.
We have an unprecedented opportunity to reset and rebuild our policies, investments, and institutions to meet this challenge.
The FSLC intends to develop a blueprint to do just that.
The Food Security Leadership Council is singularly focused on positioning the United States to make a strategic impact on global food security. As such, we are primarily focused on strengthening, in the face of significant global headwinds, food availability—through production, trade, and aid. Food availability is the foundation on which all other elements of food security depend, it is at risk, and it requires strong international leadership and multilateral collaboration to address.
We believe in the positive power of American leadership in global food security efforts. And importantly, we believe that the United States could do much better than it has in the past.
The shuttering of USAID, the termination of many agricultural research programs, and the ripple effect of this abroad has changed the world. While some might argue for a return to the past, a better course would be to start with a clean slate unencumbered by oldstructures, concepts, strategies and programs. Our working assumption is that restoration of what came before is unrealistic, unwise and unnecessary. We seek transformation, not a return to the status quo ante.
The Food Security Leadership Council will delve into the details of what the U.S. should do to regain leadership and address the global scourge of hunger. This will mean getting the agricultural basics right – crops, soil, and water, for example—while opening our minds to transformative innovations in our food systems. We will do this through six lenses:
1. Food and Agricultural Innovation
2. Multilateral Policy
3. Public Data and Early Warning
4. Trade
5. International Agricultural Development
6. Humanitarian Response
For each, we will identify the most important and strategic measures the U.S. could take with partners to make substantial progress towards ending hunger.
The first step in this journey is to begin to understand the nature and magnitude of the challenge and the headwinds we face in addressing it.
FSLC will release analyses of our current trajectory and the additional headwinds we face in the coming weeks. As an introduction:
Many are hungry today. Estimates of the current number of people who are food insecure have consistently exceeded 700 million in recent years. More than 300 million are acutely food insecure, with their lives or livelihoods in immediate danger. Through a separate methodology, the FAO assesses that 2.4 billion did not have access to nutritious, safe and sufficient food in 2022.
Food demand is rising. Food demand will rise significantly in the coming years—up to three to nine times in some places. This is fueled both by the expected growth in global population of 1.5 billion and by a growing demand for meat and dairy.
Nutrition is even harder to achieve. If the goal is not just to achieve food (i.e., caloric) security, but to achieve nutrition security, we are likely even farther behind than current projections would indicate. Nutrition security requires adequate intake of both macro- and micro-nutrients. Fruits and vegetables are important sources. Some 92% of production of these are not internationally traded, making local production and consumption essential.
Productivity growth has stalled. Agricultural productivity—the outputs achieved for a given amount of factors such as land, labor, capital, and other inputs—is no longer rising at the rates necessary to sustainably feed the world, though we have relied in consistent productivity growth in the past.
Climate change will continue to depress crop yields, increase pressure from pest and disease, and introduce constant challenges due to unpredictability. Climate change has been a net negative for crop production, though the effect varies by crop, location, and climate projection. For staple crops in some production areas, the yield losses could be 30 - 40 percent per decade.
Soil degradation will depress crop yields, increase input costs, and reduce available arable land. Healthy soils can increase productivity, fertilizer and water efficiency, and resilience to extreme weather, pest and disease. Yet, the state of our global soils is fragile and declining. By 2015 more than a third of the world’s soil was moderately to highly degraded. On the current trajectory, soils worldwide could degrade by 90 percent by mid-century. Recently, the world has lost 100 million hectares of healthy and productive land each year-- twice the size of Greenland.
Water is increasingly scarce and in higher demand. Today, 70% of groundwater withdrawals are used for agriculture, and agriculture faces increasing competition for water from cities and industry. But the supplies themselves are at risk. Currently, 21 of 37 of the largest aquifers are being depleted faster than they can recharge, and increasing temperatures are increasing water requirements.
Conflict will continue to be both a cause and result of food insecurity. Conflict disrupts livelihoods, economic systems, and agriculture. It contributes to forced displacement and migration. Seventy percent of acutely food-insecure people live in fragile or conflict-affected countries. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a major food exporter, food prices shot up with significant welfare losses for poor households in developing countries. In the aftermath, there were over 12,500 protests in countries experiencing price increases.
Trade policies can distort the global food system. About 23% of food consumed globally depends on international trade. Trade diversifies available foods and stabilizes prices in the face of variations and fluctuations in supply and demand around the world. Policies that distort trade and commodity markets reduce the resilience of the system and cause price fluctuations—and are most often used just when the system is at its weakest.
Investment in agricultural R&D is slowing. The United States led the world in agricultural innovation through the 20th century, backed by strong public investments in R&D. These investments allowed the United States to more than double domestic productivity between 1960 and the turn of the century. They also helped launch the Green Revolution, resulting in innovation-driven yield gains on staple crops that are credited with saving a billion lives. Now, the returns on investment of agriculture R&D are estimated to be ten to one or more. But over several decades, the United States has ceded its leadership role in this space. By 2002, federal investments in ag R&D started declining in real terms, and by the mid-2000s, China surpassed the United States in public R&D spending. Today, China’s spending is double that of the United States, and U.S. public ag R&D spending is a third lower in real terms than it was at its peak.
The Food Security Leadership Council brings together the most innovative minds to identify the most strategic, evidence-based, and highest impact endeavors for U.S. political leadership. Our focus is the development of an actionable Blueprint for U.S. Leadership in Global Food Security.
The United States, in partnership with other countries, can strengthen food security at home and abroad through visionary leadership. Doing so advances both our core values and our core interests.
Dr. Cary Fowler is the former U.S. Special Envoy for Global Food Security and a leading advocate for crop diversity and food system resilience. Widely known as the “father” of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, he has led global efforts to conserve plant genetic resources, including the UN’s first assessment and Global Plan of Action adopted by 150 countries. A World Food Prize laureate, he is Professor Emeritus at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and lives on a farm in Rhinebeck, New York.
