In the next 30 years, Earth’s population will increase so much that it will exhaust the planet’s ability to grow enough food, according to a new analysis. And the global food system itself spurs climate change, alters landscapes and drives resource shortages. To top it off, as growing nations begin to eat more like the Western world, it will intensify these impacts. Now researchers have identified the improvements the planet needs to sustainably feed its booming population.
“Without concerted action, we found that the environmental impacts of the food system could increase by 50 to 90 percent by 2050,” Marco Springmann, an environmental sustainability and public health expert at the University of Oxford, who led the new research, said in a statement. “In that case, all planetary boundaries related to food production would be surpassed, some of them by more than two fold.”
Springmann wanted to know what options exist ...
