Essay on Agricultural Food Production Challenges

The food predicament is not a new phenomenon in the world. The world population has overly grown, and it is due to increase by two or three billion people by mid-century. Currently, around one billion people suffer food-related illness; chronic hunger. Thus, the more the increase in the population, the more people will continue to suffer chronic hunger. Only those will earn high incomes can comfortably afford food which is in the first place unfairly distributed. The modern world food system has several three main interwoven challenges that need careful execution; be able to feed the seven billion people living today, be able to double food production within the next 40 years and also ensure environmental sustainability in the process. Agricultural production has overly led to land degradation, for instance, farming in environmentally sensitive areas like in watersheds and forest regions, excessive water use and contamination, increased methane from animal waste production.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Not all food produced is for human consumption; some of it is meant for animal consumption while other is or biofuel purposes, hence the decreased food available for human consumption. There are however five viable solutions to environmental and food shortages. The first solution is to stop the expansion of agricultural footprints. Agricultural expansion into various ecosystems like forests and savannas biodiversity had an environmental damage to these areas like loss of biological diversity and escalated carbon dioxide production than it is in food production. The second solution is closing the yield gap in the world. For this solution, the productive capacity of existing farmlands can be improved; raising yield ceiling, or and also improve the yielding capacity of less fertile farms to their highest potential; closing the yield gap. The solution is most viable in areas that currently experience acute hunger.

The third solution to both agricultural food production challenges and its adverse effects on the environment is using the available resources more efficiently, and resources, in this case, is inclusive of land and the farm inputs used. Both high and low yield regions should ensure an increase in crop output per unit of energy, water and also fertilizers. The fourth solution is shifting diets from meat consumption. A lot of the farm produce is used to fatten livestock, a quantity that could have fed more human beings for a prolonged period. Current uses of crops have much more social and economic benefits as compared to grain-fed beef animals. The last proposed and viable solution is a reduction of food wastage. A lot of food produced is often consumed by the pests, discarded and even spoiled. A change in the consumption pattern of decrease in an oversize food portion, takeout in restaurants as well as food disposal to garbages count have a significant impact.

The above discussed five solutions are viable strategies to address environmental and food security challenges, and would as well lead to a networked food system in the world. If the steps are followed and executed diligently, then food availability in the world would increase between 100 to 180 percent. Moreover, greenhouse gas emissions would be lowered to some levels, land and water pollution reduced as well as a reduction in resource use like water and fertilizers. The above-discussed solutions cannot be effective when executed on an individual basis; they must be pursued together so that their impact can be realized. Best ideas should be incorporated so as to achieve environmental and social performance, sustainable food system that is focused on nutritional values as well as bringing responsible food production to a greater scale.