World food security: prospects and trends

Abstract

A food-secure world produces enough food for its population and provides access to food for all its people. It must therefore ensure not only a balance between food availability and requirements, but also an end to famine, little seasonal or chronic undernutrition, and virtually no micronutrient deficiencies and nutrient-depleting illness. In 1990, we estimate that 15–35 million people were at risk of famine, 786 million were vulnerable to chronic undernutrition, and hundreds of millions suffered from micronutrient deficiencies, diarrhoea, measles, malaria, parasites, and other nutritional impairments. A normative scenario to achieve food security in the warmer, more crowded, more connected, but more diverse world of 2060 requires widespread acknowledgement of food as a human right, large increases in food production and income, a pervasive global safety net, and the capacity to cope with surprise. Some elements of these requirements are already in place. This normative scenario results in fewer than 100 million hungry people compared with other ‘business as usual’ scenarios that project a hungry population of 641 million in 2060 under current climate and 629–2087 million with climate change. Speculative and clearly optimistic, our normative scenario offers multiple pathways for achieving a food-secure world.