Abstract
Existing studies show how population growth and rising incomes will cause a massive increase in the future global demand for food. We add to the literature by estimating the potential effect of increases in human weight, caused by rising BMI and height, on future calorie requirements. Instead of using a market based approach, the estimations are solely based on human energy requirements for maintenance of weight. We develop four different scenarios to show the effect of increases in human height and BMI. In a world where the weight per age-sex group would stay stable, we project calorie requirements to increases by 61.05 percent between 2010 and 2100. Increases in BMI and height could add another 18.73 percentage points to this. This additional increase amounts to more than the combined calorie requirements of India and Nigeria in 2010. These increases would particularly affect Sub-Saharan African countries, which will already face massively rising calorie requirements due to the high population growth. The stark regional differences call for policies that increase food access in currently economically weak regions. Such policies should shift consumption away from energy dense foods that promote overweight and obesity, to avoid the direct burden associated with these conditions and reduce the increases in required calories. Supplying insufficient calories would not solve the problem but cause malnutrition in populations with weak access to food. As malnutrition is not reducing but promoting rises in BMI levels, this might even aggravate the situation.
Highlights
The growing demand for agricultural products is a much discussed and important topic
The United Nations formulate the goal of the global food system in the second Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) as to “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”
Where the average Body Mass Index (BMI) is above this level we model a decrease at the same rate
Summary
The growing demand for agricultural products is a much discussed and important topic. According to [1], the global agricultural production needs to increase on average by 1.1 percent per year between 2005/7 and 2050 to meet the increasing demand. Recent work of the EAT-Lancet commission [2] shows that by just meeting rising demand, global food systems would cause irreversible environmental damage and that a multitude of actions would be necessary to prevent this. The United Nations formulate the goal of the global food system in the second Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) as to “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”.
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