Dr Tom MacMillan, Food Ethics Council

Can the world feed nine billion people?

The world’s population is set to reach 9.5 billion by 2050. Millions are undernourished, the world’s resources are already overstretched and increases in food production appear to have reached a plateau. So how can we possibly expect to feed an extra 3.5 billion people over the next 40 years? Dr Tom MacMillan attempts to provide an answer.

Debate: can the world cope with 9 billion people?

Somali children enjoy a liquid food drink provided by a local NGO in the port town of Kismayo (NASTEH DAHIR FARAH/AP/PA Photos)

We can feed more people, but only if we go about solving the real problem. The challenge isn’t simply to grow more food with scarcer resources. After all, the world has had plenty to go around for the past few decades, but hundreds of millions have still gone hungry.

The real problem is to share the world’s food and resources more fairly, so it is about what people consume, not just about what we can produce.

The rural hungry

Most of the world’s 923 million hungry people live in rural areas. Many produce food, but the reason they are hungry isn’t just that they can’t grow enough to eat. It is that they are so poor they can’t afford what food there is – some even have to sell what little food they’ve grown to pay off debts. So tackling poverty is fundamental to beating hunger.

This makes it more important to achieve modest increases in productivity for millions of small-scale farmers – driven by things like better access to local markets, which provide some income and an incentive to look after crops – than to invent new technologies that double yields on the biggest farms.

Pakistani people reach for a ration of donated food during food distribution in Karachi, Pakistan

In fact, if bigger farmers crowd out the marketplace then smaller producers, who depend on farming for a livelihood, stay poor and hungry however much more food gets produced.

Hunger is a problem in cities too. More than half the world’s people live in cities now and still more are expected to by 2050. But in the city, as in the rural areas, the prime target in feeding people must be to tackle poverty, not simply produce more.

Feeding 9.5 billion people calls for social safety nets: a living income for all in rich countries like the UK and, in poorer countries, well-aimed social protection programmes.

Fat rich people

A focus on fair shares also shows us that feeding the world isn’t somebody else’s business. While poor people go hungry because they consume too little, rich people consume too much. When food prices went up earlier this year, the pundits blamed China and India’s growing appetite for meat and dairy, diverting grain from direct human consumption to feed animals.

While millions suffer from undernourishment many in richer countries consume far more food than they need (PA Photos)

Yet in the USA and Europe we eat much more meat and dairy. Not only that, but our per-person demand for grain is rising faster than anywhere else, including China and India, driven by the growth in biofuels. Filling our fuel tanks emptied other people’s bellies.

The economy is driven by scarcity – when food prices go up, farmers respond by growing more. The challenge facing governments around the world is twofold: firstly, to make sure that if food costs more that’s because we’re paying fair prices and sharing the cost of protecting the environment, not because we’ve frittered away our natural resources.

Secondly, to make sure the poorest people in the world can afford to eat well, by listening to their needs, putting in place social safety nets and making marginal farmers the top priority for public spending on agricultural research and development.

Dr Tom MacMillan is director of the Food Ethics Council .

Further Reading

Debate: can the world cope with 9 billion people?

The ethical food checklist

The world's ecological footprint

How to eat fish sustainably

Why a vegetarian diet is better for the planet

Toilet trouble: how poor sanitation kills