Last year, humanity reached a rather unsettling milestone. The earth’s population reached seven billion, up from three billion just five decades ago. Experts expect the population to reach nine billion by 2050. That means nine billion mouths to feed.

If there is to be any chance that everyone will be fed, the way food is grown, marketed and consumed must be revolutionised. But the environmental and health challenges from increased food production itself must also be met. Food, once seen simply as a basic human need, has transmogrified into a global conundrum beset by looming health and environmental concerns.

Recent increases in food prices, which have already led to food riots and mass hunger, are already reminders of the dangers posed by an inability to feed people (see page 16). “We will have to produce the same amount of food in the next 40 years as we did in the past 8,000 years,” says Tony Simons, director-general of the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi. “It is essential, because if you have hungry people you have angry people. Food security is about human security.”

But while the number of people is growing, the amount of land on earth is not. This means new ways of farming must be used to increase yield (see page 18). More controversially, biotechnology companies say new breeding methods and genetically modified crops are the answer. Some have even suggested the cloning of animals to produce more meat

Europe’s role

Europe’s relationship with food is highly complex. Traditional food is strongly identified with regional culture, which perhaps explains why Europeans have been so suspicious of new food technology like genetically modified crops (see pages 18-19).

But while the rest of the world worries about food shortages, Europe is dealing with the opposite problem. The abundant supply of food in Europe over the past half century has led to overconsumption and, in turn, rising health and obesity concerns. Policymakers have struggled to find the best policy to change Europeans’ increasingly unhealthy diets (see page 20).

In the 1960s and 1970s, the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) were created with the objective of increasing agricultural output and fishing yield. In some ways the policies have been victims of their own success. Today, 75% of Europe’s fish stocks are overfished, according to the European Commission, and intensive agricultural practices pose dangers to biodiversity and water supply. Reforms of both policies currently being debated by MEPs and member states are attempting to balance this out, restricting farming and fishing in order to make it more sustainable (see page 20).

But Europe is not an island, and the global issue of food shortages will have its impact on this continent. The EU imports vast quantities of food and feed from other regions, leaving it exposed to global developments such as the drought in the United States this summer. Spiking commodity prices are already having an effect on grocery stores across Europe.

The growing middle class in India and China will also alter the picture. As those populations earn more, they choose to eat more meat and fish. This will drive up prices in Europe, and could oblige Europeans to switch to kinds of meat and fish not traditionally eaten before, such as low-trophic fish (see page 20).

These issues intersect with a wide array of EU policies stretching across agriculture, health, industry and environment. But is Europe preparing quickly enough for the fast-approaching new global reality? Time may be running out.