Food

The world currently struggles to feed everyone sustainably. But this doesn't have to be the case. There are enough resources to feed our growing population - if resources are used efficiently & ethically.

Problems

Current food-related problems include:

• Hunger & malnutrition
  • About 829 million people lack calories or protein (1 in 10 people worldwide).
  • Even more people lack vitamins & minerals, even if they get enough calories & protein.
• Environmental impact
  • Habitat loss, due to agriculture using so much land.
  • Methane emissions, such as from cows.
  • CO2 emissions from fertilizer production.
  • Pollution from pesticides and fertilizers.
• Animal cruelty
  • Particularly bad in factory farms, which are the source of most animal products.

These problems are magnified by inefficiency:

Solutions

Even without any fundamental changes to food production, we can still end hunger and habitat loss by reducing any of the inefficiencies in the diagram above. What this means in practice:

• Making food more plant-based
  • Reducing animal consumption to its sustainable limit
• Reducing food waste in various ways
• Not burning food as biofuel

Another efficiency-related thing do is increase crop yields. Especially in places where yields are low.

Suburban farming & gardening can also help to some extent, but best case scenario, could only contribute about 1/10th of the global food supply.

The current problems of meat could be potentially solved by lab-grown meat, but this is nowhere near scaleable yet.

Different farming practices may also offer solutions. This wiki doesn't have enough information on this yet. Join the discussion and help build this page!

Bottom line

All 8 billion people could be well-fed & healthy, without destroying the planet, and without anywhere near as much harm to animals. But all of this requires both personal changes and systemic changes.