Historically food security was the responsibility of ministries of agriculture, but today that has changed. Recent research reporting that a 1-degree Celsius rise in temperature can reduce grain yields by 10 percent means that energy policy is now directly affecting crop production. Decisions made in ministries of energy may have a greater effect on future food security than those made in ministries of agriculture.
The bottom line is that future food security depends not only on efforts within agriculture but also on energy policies that stabilize climate, a worldwide effort to raise water productivity, the evolution of land-efficient transport systems, and population policies that seek a humane balance between population and food.
Outgrowing the Earth advances our thinking on food security issues that the world will be wrestling with for years to come.
How human demands are outstripping the earth's capacitiesand what we need to do about it. Ever since 9/11, many have considered al Queda to be the leading threat to global security, but falling water tables in countries that contain more than half the world's people and rising temperatures worldwide pose a far more serious threat. Spreading water shortages and crop-withering heat waves are shrinking grain harvests in more and more countries, making it difficult for the world's farmers to feed 70 million more people each year. The risk is that tightening food supplies could drive up food prices, destabilizing governments in low-income grain-importing countries and disrupting global economic progress. Future security, Brown says, now depends on raising water productivity, stabilizing climate by moving beyond fossil fuels, and stabilizing population by filling the family planning gap and educating young people everywhere. If Osama bin Laden and his colleagues succeed in diverting our attention from the real threats to our future security, they may reach their goals for reasons that even they have not imagined.
