Researchers from the University of Chicago (UChicago) and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) have found that feeding 10 billion people on Earth is not only possible, but also could be done sustainably, suggesting a comprehensive outline within the planet's environmental boundaries.
Supplying a sufficient and healthy diet for every person while keeping our biosphere largely intact will require no less than a technological and sociocultural U-turn, the researchers wrote. It includes adopting radically different ways of farming, dietary changes and reduction of food waste.
"We find that currently, agriculture in many regions is using too much water, land, or fertilizer. Production in these regions thus needs to be brought into line with environmental sustainability. Yet there are huge opportunities to sustainably increase agricultural production in these and other regions," said Johan Rockstrom, director of the PIK. "This goes for large parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, where more efficient water and nutrient management could strongly improve yields."
There is also the consumer end, said the researchers. For example, some portion of animal proteins would need to be substituted with more legumes and other vegetables.
Another crucial factor is reducing food loss. In line with scenarios adopted in the present study, the most recent IPCC Special Report on land use found that currently up to 30 percent of all food produced is lost to waste.
The most sensitive and challenging implication of the study relates to land, according to the researchers.
"Anything involving land tends to be complex and contested in practice because people's livelihoods and outlook depend on it," said the study's co-author Wolfgang Lucht, co-chair for Earth System Analysis at the PIK. "Transitioning to more sustainable land use and management is therefore a demanding challenge to policy-making. Key to success is that the regions affected need to see clear benefits for their development. Then there is a real chance that support for new directions will grow fast enough for stabilizing the Earth."
The study, posted on UChicago's website this week, has been published in Nature Sustainability.
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