Tackling a global food crisis

The world produces enough food to feed everyone on the planet, yet humanity faces the largest food crisis in modern times.

According to a panel of agriculture and food experts at Alberta Innovates’ annual Inventures event in Calgary, the factors underlying this crisis include unsustainable agricultural practices, climate change, food wastage, the COVID pandemic, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, 

Innovations in farming, agri-tech, and food systems production are vital, they said during a panel session on “Building a Resilient Food System,” moderated by Dr. Stan Blade, PhD, dean of the Faculty of Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences at the University of Alberta.

But panelists also insisted Canada and other countries need the political will to take action in building a more resilient and sustainable global food production system. 

“Right now, agriculture is not sustainable,” said Caroline Legros, the UN World Food Programme's deputy director, innovation and knowledge management.

Food production is responsible for 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and 70 per cent of freshwater use, she pointed out. Land converted to food production is the single most important driver of biodiversity loss. With the lingering impacts of the COVID pandemic, coupled with climate change and the conflict in Ukraine, the number of people across the world facing food insecurity has more than doubled. 

“We’re facing the largest food crisis in modern times,” Legros said, noting one in ten people in the world suffer from food insecurity. “Right now there are 828 million people who are unsure of where their next meal is coming from."

Before Russia invaded Ukraine, the two countries exported almost a third of the world’s wheat and three-quarters of its sunflower oil, she noted. Russia was the world’s largest supplier of fertilizer, but prices have increased so dramatically, many farmers can no longer afford the fertilizer they need. 

As a result, Legros observed, global production of wheat, rice, soybeans, and corn actually declined in 2022.

Food wastage is another big problem, especially in Canada, said Lori Nikkel, CEO of Toronto-based Second Harvest. It is Canada’s largest “food rescue” organization, rescuing and redistributing surplus edible food from across the supply chain to charities and non-profits across Canada. 

In Canada, 58 percent of the food produced in the country — about 35.5 million tonnes — is wasted, an amount about one-third higher than the global average for food waste. “We’re actually wasting more food than we eat,” Nikkel said.

The average Canadian household generates 79 kg of food waste per year, according to the UN Food Waste Index. Yet some 5.8 million Canadians, including 1.4 million children, lived in households with inadequate or insecure access to food in 2021, according to Statistics Canada.

Second Harvest rescued a record $64.35 million worth of food across Canada in 2020, feeding 1.3 million people and diverting about 34,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions from the environment.

Nikkel, who sits on the federal government’s Canadian Food Policy Advisory Council, said Canada needs to set targets to reduce food waste, including mandating the measurement of food waste and imposing consequences for unmet targets.

Accelerated deployment needed of new innovations, farming practices

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, under the federal Food Policy for Canada, in November 2020 launched the $20-million “Food Waste Reduction Challenge” which includes four targeted innovation streams.

The goal of the initiative is to accelerate and advance business models to prevent and divert food waste, food byproducts and/or surplus food, along with technologies that extend the life of food and transform food waste.

Six finalist companies announced in January each received up to $450,000 to test their technology in an operational environment with at least one partner. Two grand prize winners, each receiving up to $1 million, are to be announced in early 2024.

Nikkel called new technologies and innovations — such as the use of “smart” fertilizers, drones, and robots, as well as selected breeding based on genomics and monitoring crops or livestock with GPS mapping and sensors — an area of "huge growth”, with tremendous opportunities for investors.

Nevertheless, agriculture remains a seasonal and cyclical industry, said Chris Paterson, a partner at the venture capital firm Tall Grass Ventures in Calgary, during a separate Inventures panel on “Digital Agriculture Innovation.”

That variability means typical investment models do not work for agriculture, since speed and scalability of returns on agri-tech initiatives will be very different from those seen in other sectors. Also,  North America's regulatory system stifles innovation in agriculture, Paterson explained, although Canada has a lot of grant programs that are attracting international companies to do R&D and develop new technologies.

For veterinarian Dr. Calvin Booker, general manager of services and research, feedlot health, at TELUS Agriculture, new technologies and innovation will not necessarily be the limiting factors to achieving more sustainable agriculture.

“It’s really going to be validating what is the value proposition of data machine learning, artificial intelligence, or whatever that [technology] is in the ag application that we’re trying to use it in,” he said. “The focus should be on: Does this solve the problem on the farm? How much is it worth to solve that problem?”

Legros said the UN World Food Programme (WFP) regularly works on innovations with entrepreneurs and startups. The organization’s PRISM program is a climate risk monitoring system that integrates geospatial data on natural hazards, along with information on socioeconomic vulnerability, to inform disaster risk reduction and social assistance programs.

The WFP, in collaboration with Oxfam America, also runs a program called the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative. It reduces risk for the poorest farmers in developing countries, providing access to crop insurance and micro-credits, improving resource management through nature-based practices or improved agricultural practices, and increasing investments.

Another innovation, the ShareTheMeal application, enables people in wealthier countries to use their phones to donate a meal to a hungry person for about a dollar, supporting the WFP's delivery of meals.

“The greatest innovators are farmers,” said Inventures panelist Warren Parker, chair of Pāmu, the brand name for state-owned Landcorp Farming Limited in New Zealand. Farmers should be paid for using innovative practices to store more carbon in the soil, reduce emissions and improve water quality to make farming more sustainable, he said.

In Canada, the $200-million, three-year federal On-Farm Climate Action Fund supports farmers in adopting best practices for nitrogen management, cover cropping, and rotational grazing, with the ultimate aim of storing carbon and reducing GHGs.        

Canada’s agricultural land is under increasing pressure

The Ottawa-based Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute, in a report released last week, found that Canada’s agricultural land — comprising only about seven percent of the country — is under increasing pressure to produce more food to meet the needs of countries experiencing population growth, urbanization, and increased food demand.

At the same time, Canada’s agricultural industry faces limited resources, climate change and changing geopolitical pressures that threaten the agriculture and agri-food sector and its future sustainable land use, according to the report.

The key takeaways in the report are:

• Commodity shortages and price spikes due to food scarcity will exert upward pressure on prices, costs, farm income, and land values, putting pressure on land conversion.
• Biofuel mandates and current agriculture support measures — which are exerting pressure on prices and land use — need to be reassessed, to preserve land and food security for future generations.
• Climate change and extreme weather events are affecting productivity growth, risking insufficient food production. Investments in R&D, infrastructure, better data and knowledge and technology transfer will be essential to future sustainable productivity growth, helping to achieve food security while minimizing environmental impacts and protecting land use.
• Land zoning and protection of sensitive ecosystems must become an important part of the policy toolbox, drawing from international examples like the EU, U.S., and traditional Indigenous knowledge.

Growing demand for meat will put pressure on land use and generate GHG emissions, according to the report. Between 1961 and 2009, animal-based protein consumption grew by 59 percent per capita globally, while that of plant-based protein increased by only 14 percent.

“High demand for protein, projected to grow by 68 percent to 2050, will put pressure on agricultural resources," stated the report, "since animal-based protein requires disproportionately more agricultural land and water from production than plant-based products."

Research shows that in order to meet future food demand without land expansion, yields of grains and other crops such as fruits and vegetables, soybeans, pulses, and roots and tubers will need to grow about 10 percent faster than current rates during the 2010 to 2050 period.

“This implies greater agricultural intensification,” the report concluded. To sustain total productivity growth, “increased development, adoption and diffusion of new agricultural technologies and management practices will be required.”

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