Is There Enough Food for the Future?

For week 7, I wanted to look at the future of food and food access. I found a wonderful batch of reports by the University of Michigan's Institute on the Environment titled Food Matters. These reports go over a variety of problems we face as humans who constantly use the resources we have at our fingertips, and not always for the betterment of society. My favorite of these reports is called Is There Enough Food for the Future? This report delves into the possibility that with a population rise of only 1/3--from seven to nine billion people on Earth--we will require double the amount of food we have now! I know, you're probably wondering why those number don't really match up, as I did, and the report declares the reason for that is growing affluence of the population we already have as well as the growth of that affluent population. More people will have more money, which means they will want to live richer lives. These lifestyles of the affluent are actually some of the greatest factors that contribute to the environmental impact of food on our planet because these people are filling their diet with food likes red meat and dairy, products that require a lot of resources to make. The use of those resources--such as water and resources that cause CO2 emissions--is causing them to deplete at rate that is not sustainable for our planet or population. The report goes into further detail about what we must do in order to provide for our population in by 2050 without causing our planet to dive into further ruin, and I highly recommend you check it out!


Another great report (all of them are great, but I'm talking about my favorites) by the U of M's Institute on the Environment is Can We Eat Less Water?  This article talks about global agricultural consumption of water and how that affects our environment. One insane fact about our water consumption is that we eat 500 times more water than we drink, and to me, that is a wake-up call. The image to the right shows just how much water goes into each serving of food we eat, and the numbers are unfathomable to me. I never knew the extent of our water usage and what that means for the environment, but this report shows exactly that, bringing more attention to my own water use and food consumption. The report goes into further detail about how global water consumption breaks down and how we can change in order to create a better future for ourselves and our children. Check out the rest of the report for more information.

Feel free to explore all the Food Matters reports, as every report has intensely interesting and potential future-saving information!