Sight and Life Magazine 1/2011

SIGHT AND LIFE | VOL. 25 (1) | 2011WHAT'S NEW87ure of Food and Farming: Challengesfor Global Sustainability08icesThe report is comprehensive and coversfive specific challenges:1. Balancing future demand and supply sustainably, andensuring that food is affordable;2. Ensuring adequate stability in food supplies, and protectingthe most vulnerable from any volatility that does occur;3. Achieving global access to food, and an end to hunger;4. Managing the contribution of the food system to themitigation of climate change; and5. Maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services whilefeeding the world. The report emphasizes the need to buildin greater resilience to future food price shocks, highlightsthe vulnerability of the global food system and is a mustreadfor anyone interested in the food system.The UK Government Office for Science recently publishedthe Foresight Project Global Food and Farming Futures report,which provides an overview of the evidence and discussesthe challenges and choices for policy makers pertaining to allaspects of the global food system. The impetus for the developmentof the document was the question of how to balancethe competing pressures and demands on the global foodsystem. The project brought together evidence and expertisefrom a wide range of disciplines across the natural and socialsciences to assess what might enable or inhibit future change.The full report and executive summary can be found atwww.bis.gov.uk/foresight/our-work/projects/current-projects/global-food-and-farming-futures/reports-and-publications