Got Food? - the Scientia Review

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Chapter 8 Global Food Systems Thomas Devlin, Ryan Thibodeau, and Abigail Yu Introduction Food is one of the few universal constants; it is a resource that all humans need to survive. This continuous need for food causes many problems across the globe because of the issue of feeding everyone healthily. At the moment, malnutrition and starvation plague the planet; the growing population will only exacerbate both of these issues. These quandaries also stem from the discrepancies between developed and developing countries. Eight hundred million currently live without food security and every minute twelve preschool-aged children die from hunger/malnutrition (Pinstrup-Andersen, 2008). Organizations and scientists across the world are working on improving the situation for everyone; one of the methods for doing this involves creating a global food system. A rural farmer waters his crops. Before delving into global food systems, it is best to understand food systems in a general sense. Food systems cover the following processes: growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consuming, and disposing of food. It is no wonder this topic arises whenever nutrition and agriculture are being debated. The systems of food are strongly influenced by politics, economics, and nature. The overall goal is to provide food security, meaning all households have access to food, to as many people as possible ("A primer on community", 2002). This causes sustainability to be one of the main priorities of all organizations and companies that produce food. Food systems encompass all matters that involve food. Community food systems are the most popular method of dispersing crops and meat in both developing countries and the more rural areas of developed countries. The goals of a community food system are: optimized health, better diet, stable base of family farms, marketing channels, and increased participation in food and agriculture policies. The participants in this system are small scale, and retail farms that both have small amounts of land and sell them directly to a consumer or a farmers' market. The market types that primarily serve a community are roadside stands and farmers' markets ("Lesson three", 2002). Local food systems are often successful but are strongly influenced by weather, climate, and amount of arable land ("A primer on community", 2002). These three variables can make it difficult for people in certain areas, such as cities and deserts, to obtain food, which explains why the global food system infrastructure is being designed to solve this problem. 82
There is already a basic infrastructure for global food in place around the world. The United States is a prime example of this. The United States imports eighty percent of fish and shellfish, forty five percent of fruits, fifty percent of nuts, and twenty percent of vegetables ("Food safety goes global", 2011). These trends clearly show that the foods that last longer while refrigerated are the best to import and export. This brings up the issue of sustainable food and food preservation techniques. Without even examining these two problems, however, there are a number of other items that will soon present themselves to be major dilemmas in light of pending climate change. As time passes, it is becoming apparent that a complete, working global food system will be necessary to maintain life on earth. By the year 2050, the global population will exceed nine billion people, much of that growth springing from developing countries. Also by 2050, the demand for food and water irrigation is expected to double. Because of this demand and climate change, there will be stress on many staple crops including rice, wheat, corn, and soybeans (Dooley, 2011). In the time period from 2005 to 2008 alone, prices for food surged, which is sure to continue. The main problem is that there is enough food to feed the world, yet poverty prevents some from being able to access it (Pinstrup-Andersen, 2008). The world needs a global food system in order sustain human life on earth. One of the steps taken to further the progress of a global food system was to do a full assessment of the conditions of all the major ecosystems on earth. The last time this was done was by the United Nations in the year 2000. The ecosystems were broken down into: forests, freshwater systems, coastal/marine habitats, grasslands, and agricultural lands. This altogether created PAGE, or the pilot assessment of global ecosystems and it showed the true impact of environmental change. In sobering results, all five groups of ecosystems were and are worsening, primarily a byproduct of mankind. Some of the causes for this are overfishing the oceans and disturbing the carbon, nitrogen, and water cycles on earth (Linden, 2000). Using this information, humans need to take action to develop a global food system that feeds people and ensures that the universal ecosystems do not collapse. One organization that is working to reform the global food system so that it is more effective in helping all people is the Slow Food Movement. Slow Food, its name a wordplay on "fast food", is an antiindustrialist-agriculture movement. They claim that the agro-industry is failing and targets politics as a source of this failure. Slow Food is working towards creating better tasting food for more people peacefully (Walsh, 2008). However, it will take much more than one movement to make a major change; the UN reported that 50 million more people went hungry in 2007 when compared to 2006. In recent years, food studies have become a mainstream discipline in the science world. There are conflicting views on the best kind of food system, yet the majority consensus is that an international level of food control is necessary to be having the most effective method of feeding people. The primary reason for this is the governance over the food system would be fairer if controlled by a non-partisan global organization as opposed to a series of self-interested companies. The global food debate also deals much with methods of producing food. Strategies which were once considered taboo are being used regularly, including using genetically modified organisms (Nicholson, 2011). As the situation progressively worsens, it is likely that people will be more open to new ideas in order to provide food for the global population. The rest of this chapter will cover a variety of topics dealing with global food. First, there will be an in-depth look at developing and developed countries. The later sections will deal with the problems the world is facing in creating a global food system. Following that will be some of the solutions both proposed and currently in place to solve some of these problems. Mankind is entering a tumultuous time in which sustainability of people and nature will be of major importance. Food is a universal constant, and we must do all in our power to ensure it is there for everyone. 83
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Got Food? Recent Advances in Food S
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Chapter 1 Diet and Nutrition Ingrid
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Economic Uncertainty It is simply n
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Administration announced that Omega
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An example of nutritional informati
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Malnutrition and Disease A growing
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Malnutrition Globally Although a gr
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thiamine compounds. Deficiency can
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BMJ-British Medical Journal (2012).
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Chapter 2 Vitamins and Minerals Bar
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The Dangers of Multivitamins and Su
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Vitamin A and Osteoporotic Hip Frac
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Type II diabetes is caused by the i
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Bibliography Alam S.M. (2011, Jan 2
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Riboflavin. (2011). In PubMed Healt
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Page 125 and 126: Future of GMO Crops A booming globa
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to the tropics, where an estimated
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The search for sustainable agricult
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water lost to evaporation. It is al
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Francis, C. A., & Porter, P. (2011)
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and science. In a similar way, know
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Sustainable and Alternative Agricul
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After the farmed organisms have mat
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Farmers seeking for a hydroponics m
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Chapter 14 Food Additives Naveena S
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Different regions in the world have
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However, probiotic lactobacilli fac
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and potentially harmful. In 1977 th
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Recent discoveries have led to the
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Phosphates and Kidney Disease A tea
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It is not yet confirmed that using
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Illustration Credits http://www.cho
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Fuel Types and Biomass Environmenta
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Kerosene and LPG are commonly used
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The map displays the amount of deat
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Global Politics on Cooking in Devel
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Lahkar, P. J., Samdarshi, S. K. (20
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