Waistlines Worldwide Carry Enough Food for 300 Million People

"You can be lean without being really poor, and Japan seems to have pulled that off". Photo courtesy: this particular greg/CC BY 2.0

A few years back Mat quoted British journalist Fred Pearce, who questions the prevailing wisdom about overpopulation:

Rising consumption today is a far bigger threat to the environment than a rising head count. And most of that extra consumption is still happening in rich countries that have long since given up growing their population.

Mat concluded:

A reasonably equitable distribution of the planet's resources, among humans and non-humans, dictates that those of us at the top of the heap start consuming less, way less--Pearce's point in urging that long, hard look in the mirror.

Now new data show that this is literally true, particularly when it comes to food. When they look in the mirror it is not going to be a pretty sight. Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine used population and body mass index information to calculate the total body mass of the population. They then calculated how much of that was healthy body mass, how much was due to overweight and how much to obesity. It turns out that people in a lot of the wealthier countries in the world are carrying around a lot of extra pounds which have to be fed. One of the authors explained the meaning of this to the BBC:

When people think about environmental sustainability, they immediately focus on population. Actually, when it comes down to it - it's not how many mouths there are to feed, it's how much flesh there is on the planet.

There also appears to be a correlation between countries where people drive a lot and body mass. For example, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are in the top ten. Professor Roberts speculates:

One of the most important determinants of average body mass index is motor vehicle gas consumption per capita. So, it is no surprise to see many of the Arab countries in the list - people eat but they move very little because they drive everywhere.

The amount of excess body mass being carried around is the equivalent of three hundred million people.

Agricultural Industry Requires Major Overhaul

Agricultural farmland in Ukraine being prepared for planting wheat. Photo courtesy: Vincent Mundy/Bloomberg /Getty Images via guardian.co.uk

Billions more investment is needed in agriculture and food distribution systems around the world in the next few years, if widespread hunger is to be avoided, according to a group of leading scientists.

If that investment is directed towards sustainable forms of agriculture, then farming can also be made into a weapon in the fight against dangerous global warming, they said, as more environmentally-friendly farming methods can result in soils absorbing carbon dioxide rather than releasing it.

Agriculture has been neglected in international climate change negotiations, but if governments persist in ignoring the problem then millions are likely to go hungry, according to a new report published on Wednesday morning, before the next round of negotiations in South Africa later this month.

"If you intensify agriculture to produce more food while producing less [greenhouse gas emissions] then you deliver benefits in terms of climate change as well – reducing emissions and increasing food security in vulnerable regions," said Sir John Beddington, the UK's chief scientist and one of the authors of the report, Achieving food security in the face of climate change, published by the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change, convened by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.

Sir John added: "We need a socially equitable and global approach to produce the funding and policy initiatives that will deliver nutrition, income and climate benefits for all."

Investment should be targeted at the regions most vulnerable to climate change, as they are also the areas at greatest risk of food insecurity, the scientists said.

Another vital factor in improving food security is to reduce waste and improve food distribution systems. As much as half of the food produced is wasted before it reaches market in some developing countries, because of a lack of infrastructure such as refrigeration systems and reliable transport networks.

Waste is a problem not confined to the developing world, however – cheap food in the developed world has led to a culture of waste that means billions of tonnes of perfectly edible products are thrown away each year. The UK's Waste Resources Action Programme said this week there had been a sharp fall in household food waste, by 13% in the past year. But waste remains a serious problem – in the UK alone, at least £12bn worth of food is thrown away each year. Campaigners are preparing for an event in London on Friday to "feed the 5,000", using misshapen vegetables rejected by retailers to illustrate the enormous waste of edible food that takes place in the UK each day.

The scientists also called for a change in consumption patterns "to ensure that basic nutritional needs are met and to foster healthy and sustainable eating habits worldwide". An increasing amount of food production is geared towards feeding livestock, as people like to eat more meat as they grow more affluent.

The scientists also called for governments to create "comprehensive, shared, integrated information systems" on agriculture. But they said that the demands of an increasing global population for more food could be met without environmental harm, if farming methods were reformed and farmers educated in sustainable techniques.

Agriculture is likely to play only a minor role at Durban, where the next round of international climate change negotiations start at the end of November. Countries are hoping to sort out some of the details of a new agreement on climate change, such as how to ensure a flow of public and private sector finance from rich to poor countries, to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions and tackle the effects of climate change.