Food and nutrition

Africa is now the world’s second fastest-growing continent. In this decade of seismic shifts in the global economy, Africa has defied the pessimists, accelerating its economic pulse and seeing significant improvements in its Human Development Indicators. But these positive developments have been tempered by a crisis in jobs, youth unemployment and growing inequality. These are now the challenges. Growth must bring jobs and opportunities for all. That will happen if growth is sustained and leads to the structural change and economic transformation that will enable the continent to join global value chains. It will do this by closing the infrastructure gap, speeding up economic integration, dealing with conflicts old and new, and developing human capital.
This is what makes the next decade so decisive. This is what makes this new Bank Strategy for 2013–2022 so vital.

Based on the general contention that the world is entering an intensified period of resource stress, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) asked Chatham House in July 2011 to conduct research to identify the most important natural resource trends affecting US national security over a 2020, 2030, and 2040 time horizon. The requested analysis covers water, fuel, food, and metals (also referred to as materials). The identified trends—which include patterns of demand, supply, availability, price levels, and price volatility—are shaped and influenced by emerging climate changes, evolving demographic patterns, increasing economic development, and human induced environmental degradation. The result is this report which considers how local and global availability of natural resources will affect US security interests in the medium term (to 2020) and long term (specifically 2030 and 2040). The 2020 date was selected to identify the most pressing policy relevant issues; 2030 was selected to support development of the NIC’s longer-range Global Trends series; and 2040 to support ongoing NIC projects exploring the national security impact of global food, water, and energy security.

The major assumption underpinning this analysis is that mounting prosperity in both the developed and the developing world will continue to drive increased consumer demand for key resources. At the same time, constraints in energy, water, and other critical natural resources and infrastructure, together with socio-economic shifts, will bring new and hard-to-manage instabilities. There will be an increasing risk of discontinuous and systemic shocks to 2040 as a consequence of these factors.

This report identifies potential natural resource stresses (in terms of aggregate availability, absolute prices, or rapid price changes) and analyzes their likely impact on the United States and states/regions of interest to the United States. The report also explores how these stresses will interact with one another and other pre-existing conditions, including poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions. Summary tables (Annex A) provide an overview of key resource-related threats and their potential impact on the United States and other major economies. The risk assessments are based on a continuation of today's practices and trends; alternate policy choices, market actions, and technology developments will likely change future risk assessments.

The nineteenth edition of the Agricultural Outlook, and the ninth prepared jointly with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), provides projections to 2022 for major agricultural commodities, biofuels and fish. Notable in the 2013 report is the inclusion of cotton for the first time and a special feature on China.

Higher costs and strong demand are expected to keep commodity prices well above historical averages with a high risk of price volatility given tight stocks, a changeable policy environment and increasing weather-related production risks. China is projected to maintain its self-sufficiency in certain key food commodities while increasing its trade and integration in world agricultural markets.

China’s economic growth and process of urbanisation are bringing about profound changes to China’s agrifood sector. With demand for agrifood products projected to double between 2009 and 2050, China’s agricultural sector is poised to contend with the challenges of depleting natural resource and rising input costs to maintain or improve productivity growth of most
major agricultural commodities.

With the population of China expected to increase to about 1.38 billion in 2050, the nature of food demand will depend on a number of factors, including income growth and urbanization. To investigate these developing trends, this study considers demand across three different income groups: urban high income, urban medium income and rural households. An updated version of the ABARES agrifood model (Linehan et al. 2012a) was used for the analysis. This model is an economic simulation model of global agricultural production, consumption and trade. In this report, agrifood products include primary agricultural products and lightly transformed agricultural products, such as flour and meat, but exclude highly processed food items. While it is projected that the majority of China’s future food demand will be met by an increase in domestic production, there are significant challenges with which the Chinese agrifood sector will need to contend to maintain or increase productivity growth. Investment in the industry is ongoing and required to ensure the degradation and availability of land and water resources, and rising costs for intermediate inputs, do not impede production growth.

The opportunities that Chinese demand growth will provide to food producers and exporters to 2050 are significant. To fully realize those opportunities, it will be important for Australian industries to utilize the working relationships with different agents in the food supply chain in China. For example, supermarkets and hypermarkets, which have an increasing presence in
urban food retailing in China, are playing an important role in meeting the demand for high‐value products by urban consumers. With higher incomes, urban consumers are also expected to increase their expenditure on convenience foods, fast food and restaurant food. Australian industries will need to be responsive to these changes if they are to successfully compete in the
Chinese market over the long term.

The global megatrends report assesses 11 global megatrends (GMT) of importance for Europe's environment in the long term. In assessing key drivers, trends and implications for Europe, it aims to provide an improved basis for strategic European environmental policymaking.

This report summarises EEA contributions to Target 2 Action 5 'Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services (MAES)' for the implementation of the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 (EC, 2011), the Strategy of the EU to meet the global targets of the Convention of Biodiversity (UN, 2010). Europe is becoming greener (Fuchs et al., 2014) but, at the same time, losing biodiversity. At least one-out-of-three species in Europe is threatened with extinction (IUCN, 2011a-d). Many ecosystems are pushed towards the provision of one service — mainly food production — at the cost of the other services they usually provide.
The EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 aims towards 'healthy' ecosystems that are rich in biodiversity and provide multiple services for human well-being.

This report describes the lessons learnt from cases of ‘sustainable intensification’ of agriculture, where farmers have increased food production on existing farmland without putting further pressure on the environment. It uses cases identified by the Foresight project ‘Global food and farming futures’ to demonstrate the potential for high yeild outputs from agriculture in Africa.

The study aims to indicate the directions of development and provide subsidies to policy makers about the trends of the main products of agribusiness. The results also seek to answer to a large number of users of various sectors of national and international economy to which the information now disclosed are of enormous importance. The trends will identify possible trajectories and structure visions of the future of agribusiness in the global context for the country to continue growing
and conquering new markets.

The aim of this paper is to provide policy-makers with a helpful overview of the technical and economic aspects of water use in agriculture, with particular emphasis on crop and livestock production. Through 2050, in many countries, agriculture will remain an important determinant of economic growth, poverty reduction, and food security, even as, over time, the proportion of agricultural revenue in national gross income declines. Water use in agriculture will remain substantial, irrigated areas will expand and competition for water will increase in all sectors. Most likely, overall supplies of land and water will be sufficient to achieve global food production goals in 2050; although poverty and food insecurity will remain pressing challenges in several regions and countries. Thus, the focus of this report is on the regional and national aspects of food security.

This paper sets out 5 different visions for water management in future cities, and explores the research and innovation challenges to achieve them.