Global food security and nexus thinking

Excerpt

Major global issues of the twenty-first century (table 1), drastically impacting planetary processes and ecosystem functions, are driven by the unprecedented growth in human population and the ever-increasing affluential lifestyle. Important among these are climate change, food and nutritional insecurity, soil degradation, eutrophication and scarcity of water resources, tropical deforestation, and extinction of species. Whereas the Anthropocene began with the onset of settled agriculture about 10 millennia ago (Ruddiman 2003, 2005), its impact has been accelerated since the Industrial Revolution circa 1750 (Crutzen 2000). Thus, there is a growing emphasis on planetary stewardship (Sagan 1997) because of an increasing awareness that anthropogenic activities are driving the earth system into some irreversible changes (Steffen et al. 2011). There are indeed limits to economic growth (Meadows et al. 1972), the term “sustainable growth” is considered an oxymoron (Bartlett 1994), and realities of the Anthropocene (Steffen et al. 2007) cannot be ignored. As an industry, modern agriculture is extremely inefficient and highly flawed. It can take several times more joules of energy (from fossil fuel) to produce 1 J of food (Bartlett 2008). Most pressing global issues of the twenty-first century (table 1) have been created by inappropriate solutions to some routine concerns.