Why We Should Be Concerned About 'Peak Food' Production
The concept of "peak food" is relatively easy to grasp. Food production has steadily increased since the beginning of the 20th century, through the use of new technologies and inventions like irrigation techniques and fertilizers. This is good, because population growth has steadily increased over the last few centuries. (The world's population was 1 billion in 1800 and now over 7 billion.) However, with all those technological advances, various kinds of food production have already begun to plateau. This means that while global production continues to increase, it's doing so at relatively lower levels than before.
The population, meanwhile, isn't showing any signs of slowing down. That's a problem.
A new study published in Ecology and Society looked at this issue by taking 27 renewable resources (such as corn, wheat, and rice) and non-renewable resources (like coal, gas, and oil) and analyzed just how close resources and food production are peaking. The results aren't all that pretty:
In every category, the rate of growth is still increasing -- except for wild-caught fish -- but at a monumentally slower rate than previously measured. Peak production of most food products occurred between five and 30 years ago. Peak corn production occurred in 1985; peak rice in 1988; peak milk and wheat in 2004.
I spoke with one of the study's authors, Dr. Ralf Seppelt from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany, about "peak food" and what it means for the future.
Why did you want to study peak food?
Dr. Ralf Seppelt: We weren't necessarily beginning by looking for peak food. We approached the whole thing as more positive, to see if everything is looking as disastrous as it's always published. We looked at the data, and we put together a laundry list of resources that we were interested in. We were surprised to find that many peaks, and we were surprised that they were synchronized and close to each other. But, getting back to the initial idea is there are chances to adapt and to react to the whole thing, so I think the second important message is that we try to look for early warning signals. We don't necessarily want to experience what happens if production of food resources plateaus and is equal to our consumption.
Is there a known date for when we'll reach peak food?
Seppelt: We had this discussion at one point in the paper. We didn't dare do something like a prognosis or projection. We could do this based on the data, you could fit some kind of model that could extrapolate, and we could say when they plateau. It could be done, mathematically. But there are two important arguments why this does not make sense. First of all, it's that the resources we look at depend on each other. So, for instance, if you look at the peak for meat production. This depends, of course, on the availability of resources to feed animals, and getting food produced somewhere with soybeans and others. This, of course, depends on irrigated land, etcetera. The second reason we didn't dare to do a projection is that we are not clear about possible disruptive innovations which might be there. We know for plant breeding, there is a chance of having one or two percent further increase just by selecting new varieties which adapt to circumstances. But there might be a chance to have a really great innovative idea, which was not necessarily obvious.
How do we stop this trajectory of peaking out then?
Seppelt: The major message of the paper is that infinite availability of renewable resources does not exist. So, what's the solution? It's debatable. There are still regions in the world where you could close the food gap, in a very sustainable way. So, we need to have better distribution, and in a way where nobody would have to suffer from hunger. And you have to also close the diet gap, meaning, to change consumption patterns. The last thing is throwing away less. It's 40 to 50 percent of stuff we can use is going to into the trash. These are actually the low hanging apples, the easy targets.
How effective is someone's own personal actions?
Seppelt: This is a really crucial thing, to tell people what to eat. This is something that the Green Party here in Germany lost one to two percent in the last elections, because they were arguing for something like a Vegetarian Day a Week plan. I don't know. I think it's hard to argue for this top-down. If you go for any kind of animal-based diet, you use 90% of the energy that goes in there, just because of the metabolism of the animal. The more energy-effective thing is, of course, a more vegetarian diet. But, there are other options. The most energy efficient way to get animal proteins is fish, chicken, then pigs, then at the end of the food chain is cattle. So, even by deciding on which kind of meat you eat, you could change something on the energy balance there. At the end of the day, I wouldn't say that the solution is for everyone to be vegetarian. But eat more quality food, and be aware of what you're doing.