On January 14th, 153 Nobel and World Food Prize laureates released an open letter titled “Hunger’s Tipping Point”, urging bold and immediate action to prevent an imminent global hunger crisis. By 2050, the global population is expected to rise by 1.5 billion. With the effects of climate change, soil degradation, biodiversity loss, and global conflict, the state of hunger worldwide is projected to worsen in the next 25 years. The open letter highlighted numerous potential agricultural innovations and called for political and financial support. On January 16th, an international group of experts met virtually to further discuss the letter and its findings.
“The solutions are within our reach, but only if we act with the urgency and scale that this moment demands,” Mashal Husain, the Chief Operating Officer for the World Food Prize Foundation, said in the webinar on Thursday morning. The webinar elaborated on key findings in the open letter, detailing the “transformational breakthroughs” that will be required to feed a growing global population. Joining the discussion were Dr. Alzbeta Klein, C.E.O. of the International Fertilizer Organization, Anna Nelson, Deputy Special Envoy for Global Food Security at the Department of State, Dr. Osama Ibrahim Faqeeha, Deputy of Environment in Saudi Arabia, Dr. Roy Steiner, Senior Vice President for the Food Initiative at the Rockefeller Foundation, and Dr. Ismahane Elouafi, Executive Managing Director of C.G.I.A.R., as well as Nobel Laureate Dr. Brian Schmidt and World Food Prize Laureate Dr. Cary Fowler.
Dr. Fowler expressed concern over the combined effects of climate change, soil degradation, and aquifer issues on crop production, stating that solutions would require doing more than simply improving “business as usual.” Fortunately, the scientific community already has numerous ideas for innovation. Dr. Elouafi discussed the potential uses of A.I. and genome editing, while Dr. Klein focused on improvements in fertilizer and crop nutrients. More potential solutions are detailed in “Hunger’s Tipping Point”, including crop photosynthesis enhancement, transition from annual to perennial crops, improvements in shelf life and storage, and the utilization of microorganisms and fungi as food.
Agricultural innovation has the potential to save billions from hunger, and is essential to ensuring global health and security. The overwhelming scientific evidence, backed by many renowned experts, makes the importance of these innovations extremely clear. These findings and propositions need to be taken seriously by governments and investors across the globe, with a focus on areas already facing food insecurity.
The open letter states that currently, 700 million people are food insecure worldwide, and 60 million children under the age of five are stunted from nutritional deficiencies. According to The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2024 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the world is not on track to meet “Sustainable Development Goal Targets 2.1 and 2.2,” which aim to “end hunger, food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition by 2030.” The World Health Organization found that 1 in 11 people faced hunger globally in 2023, and in 2022, 2.8 billion weren’t able to afford a healthy diet. Lack of access to healthy food is even more prominent in low-income countries, where the W.H.O. reported the percentage of people who could not afford a healthy diet to be 71.5%.
The extensive agricultural research and development required to meet global need will require strong political and financial backing, something these experts are acutely aware of. The laureates’ open letter addressed economic concerns, assuring that “the benefit of enabling healthy, productive, and secure lives for billions of people has returns that flow broadly through the global economy.” The most recent issue of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World published in July focuses primarily on financing. This economic appeal is historically founded, as the Green Revolution of the 1960s had economic benefits as well as humanitarian ones. According to “Two Blades of Grass: The Impact of the Green Revolution” from the Journal of Political Economy, “a 10-year delay of the Green Revolution would in 2010 have cost 17% of GDP per capita.” The hunger crisis may be an agricultural and humanitarian issue, but moving forward, economics will play a major role in whether the world develops adequate solutions in time.
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