Food and nutrition

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.

The quality of territorial foresight and, in particular, of urban foresight, is nowadays measured not so much in terms of the ability to anticipate possible futures, always challenged by the increasing uncertainty and the exponential rate of change, as in terms of the ability to construct collective visions of the future that are ambitious, proactive and engaging for stakeholders and citizens.
What foresight has to offer is its capacity to approach both long-term challenges, perceived in the present, as well as shared aims and values in a distant horizon. This publication attempts to address these challenges by ‘imagineering’ the future of cities though the application of methods and techniques drawn from the strategic foresight and prediction fields in a systematic, rigorous and holistic way.

For many years now the Committee of the Regions has been building a reputation of being "the EU's Assembly of Regional and Local Representatives".
It decided to contribute to the debate on metropolitan governance by pulling resources together with a long-standing international partner like the Forum of Federations (FoF). The going together with such a renowned global academic network on federalism in this project, provided the CoR with an unprecedented mix of analytical and policy expertise on urban and metropolitan issues to be able to offer to our members and the rest of the EU institutions.