"Factors weighing on the food supply chain include not producing enough calories to feed people, not enough land available to cultivate crops, greenhouse gas emissions from food production, lost biodiversity integral to agriculture, and a water shortage for agricultural use, according to Sunny Verghese, CEO of food and ag company Olam Group. "We need about $4.5 trillion of investment in finding the next breakthroughs to find a sustainable food future," Verghese said at the Fortune Global Forum in Saudi Arabia on Sunday."
"Ertharin Cousin, a former U.S. food and agriculture ambassador to the United Nations, thinks enough calories are being produced but said the problem is not enough nutritious calories are out there at the right price. "There are 2.4 billion people today who can't afford a diverse and nutritious diet because we don't grow what is required to support the diet diversity to meet human health as well as to meet the environmental challenges of the food system of today," she told Fortune's Matt Heimer."
"Despite their warnings, data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that food insecurity will improve this year. Its annual Global Food Assessment says per-capita income in 83 low- and middle-income countries will grow by 3.7% this year, while food price inflation in most of the monitored countries is expected to ease. This means the number of food-insecure people this year is projected to drop by about 221 million people to 604 million people, or 13.5% of the world's population."
Global food supply faces multiple constraints including insufficient production of nutritious calories, limited arable land, greenhouse gas emissions from food production, biodiversity loss integral to agriculture, and water shortages for farming. Approximately $4.5 trillion of investment is required to develop breakthrough innovations that enable a sustainable food future, but current investment levels are inadequate. An estimated 2.4 billion people cannot afford a diverse, nutritious diet because production and prices do not support required diet diversity. Short-term USDA projections expect food insecurity to ease this year, but long-term sustainable capacity would demand substantial additional land—about 593 million hectares annually.
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