Food Security in an Insecure World | Future of Food

Feeding a growing global population is a challenge that spans industries and governments. A panel discusses how research, technology, policy, and engagement with local farmers could help build a comprehensive strategy for improving our food system.

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MODERATOR:
Terry Garcia - Chief Science & Exploration Officer, National Geographic Society

PARTICIPANTS:
Dan Glickman - Co-Chair, AGree
Tjada D'Oyen McKenna - Feed the Future, USAID
Danielle Nierenberg - Co-Founder and President, Food Tank
Jack Sinclair - Executive Vice President, Walmart U.S.

At National Geographic's Future of Food forum on May 2, 2014, leading experts gathered to discuss how we can feed a global population set to top nine billion by 2050.

Click here for National Geographic's eight-month series on the future of food:

Food Security in an Insecure World | Future of Food

National Geographic

[shijunhong]

It is a very important world problem, and it need all of countries to work hard

[JamieHumeCreative]

The answer to feeding everyone and how to do it, depends on what paradigm you believe in.

[damarismwarimugambi]

This discussion is applicable even at this moment when food crisis is increasing every day.

[jerrydrake]

Aquaponics is a food revolution in the making.  It is a closed water system - there is very little water needed to produce crops and animal protein - that rears fish in a tank in the lower part of the system and the fish produce waste product that supplies organic fertilization for vegetable crops in the upper levels.  This system provides the opportunity to sunny arid water restricted climates like Africa to produce vegetables and animal protein in very productive farm where they were not able to do before.  It also provides the opportunity for developed nations to provide sustainable local food production varying from home production to commercial supply.  

[titaniumcreed]

Why don't we focus on ways of encouraging people from every nation to have less children? It makes absolutely no sense, in fact, I'd say it's borderline insanity to actively encourage population explosions whereby everyone born in to this world becomes a person that expects a home, a car and the the 'must-have' accessory of the fleeting moment. It's just not possible. What we need is less people but of better quality in regards to education, morality and understanding. Consumerism will be the undoing of mankind.

[mhmals]

it's not solve by make conversation it's solve by worked hard

[economicseducation]

Suggest me measuring parameters or survey of food security only for BPL people

[krishnagaru]

I support that politics related to food directly affects the politic related to health
and what we digest gonna is obviously affect the health.

[spudnik]

Not a farmer amongst them.  Business majors, not Agriculture.   Worthless  !!!

[kirangwagodfrey]

All responsible organs and governments have the right strategies for global food security, but the only problem is how to implement the policies and decisions. All in all is cooperation, there is no separate entity in the agriculture ecosystem. Identifying local farming is fine, but there must be good cooperation with climate change and surrounding urban communities in case to achieve a balanced and sustainable environment besides the stability of internal social principles.

[stephaniestennis]

To Dan, Why are those ideologies' who can't see the urgency so? To Jack, Why don't you feel it your responsibility to inform consumers but to solely provide a choice of goods.

[annastepanyan]

 
Great video by the way, here is another way of helping planet earth from over exhaustion.... STOP HAVING MANY CHILDERN! I myself don't have any and I'm not planning to... I admire with couples who have got 1 child and can provide her/him with food, education and care, it's just harder to do these things righteously if there are many of your copies in this life.

[Camcrazy]

This was an remarkably ineffective forum. Dan Glickman and Danielle Nirenberg are the only two who provided any hands on information, and the rest of the discussion was in lofty abstracts that those in the World Bank or Monsanto speak in... Abstract, vague goals, cellphones to improve food sovereignty? Empowering women with more education? absolutely, but doing this through the conventional manner of food aid and fertilizer subsides? How does that help the collapsing of our river and ocean systems that billions depend on due to fertilizer runoff?
And I'm sorry, but how do the panelists keep a straight face when Wal-Mart's rep is tooting the horn that Wal Mart is helping small farmers and businesses? Scottish irony I suppose

[bsuddzen]

Take a really close look at supercycles, and the Elliott Wave Principle. We learn by trial and error, again and again, but we are maintaining more steps forward than we take backwards. Human history is filled with huge setbacks that end up resulting in huge leaps in mousetrap engineering! This is a great time to be alive, we are potentially going to inhabit the cosmos! We have to face these challenges with exponential advancement, we have only had airplanes for a little over a century! The real challenge is keeping the setting of our future agendas somewhat democratic, corporations and bankers and politicians have to be tempered, possibly in increasingly exponential ways by society as a whole, Try and develop knowledge of what 'antifragility' is in nature, and how we as humans need to integrate more of it into our abilities to deal with cycles and supercycles, that we really can't live without, but we will survive if we continue to evolve in our reactions to them!  

[clementgavi]

In Africa in the year 1963, at the foundation of the African Union, food security was one of the core objectives. Ethiopia was the hosting country and host of the African Union.
But string of food crisis will affect the very region where the African Union is located corn. Somalia is famous for its hunger crisis.
Despite the arable lands and despite thousands of Organizations on earth, it will appear that the war in Ukraine equate to hunger crisis in Africa because wheat and other cereals and fertilizer come from Russia and Ukraine.
If food security is a core objective and if fertilizer is key to that objective, why since 1963 to nowadays, wheat, other cereals and fertilizer should come from elsewhere when there are arable lands available in Africa?
Why African nations being member states of hundreds of International Organizations such as the Commonwealth, Francophonie, etc none of all these hasn't led via a synergy between all these countries to a fertilizer production plant somewhere on the continent of Africa?

[rchuso]

Why do you want more people in the world? If you provide more food there will be more people, and the problem just gets pushed into the near future. Time to reread Rev. Thomas Malthus.

[dertemple]

They don't know overseas food business, they only mention Peru, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Honduras, cause they went their on vacation....they pointed the Chinese needs to feed their population, but they didn't mention Chinese are taking world business in food and build infrastructure around the world, ignorants....

[ntchriest]

The answer to global food security is giving everyone cell phones? How far has society abstracted food as a market commodity from the real world? The only two who have anything substantial to say are the women panelists, and between the two the one with world travels and ground level experience has the most pertinent thoughts.

[camilajohnson]

ONE FAMILY NEEDS 1 OR 2 CHILDREN! IF YOU WANT A KINDERGARTEN, GO WORK IN ONE! THAT'S HOW YOU ARE GOING TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM!

[camilajohnson]

Around 22:20 the gentleman starts talking about the need to offer affordable food of high quality, and how price shouldn't be what determines if one makes the choice to eat healthy or unhealthy. My question is: How can a not so well educated person with a low lifestyle and low criteria for satisfaction and happiness have the knowledge and awareness when it comes to making informed choices? How can the above-mentioned individual know what the difference between high-sodium and low-sodium soup is, and how significant it is?!? What about all the marketing catchy phrases on the pretty cute boxes full of poison? What percentage of the population know what those labels mean and what all chemicals included in the ingredient list mean?? "Cholesterol free", "Healthy for the heart", "Sugar free", "Gluten free", "Fat free", "Natural" .. this is what the average buyer pays attention to: all the useless words made up by the marketing department to make the box more appealing. The sad part is that the stores that sell these poisonous products are completely aware of it; the agencies that set the restrictions for what is allowed to go in the food people consume are aware of it; everybody who is capable of making an educated and informed choice makes the choice to allow, market, and sell food I wouldn't want to give to my pet but, unfortunately, like millions of other people, I am forced to consume it due to it being cheaper. A small box of blueberries at Giant Eagle is about $4 in Ohio. Most people make around $9-10 an hour. You do the math. What's bad is, this is not even the organic version! So instead of buying those blueberries, people will just go get a doughnut for 80 cents and move on. At the end of the day all the unsold and spoiled blueberries will be thrown away. But what matters here is profit, right? However, WalMart is significantly cheaper, so I give them that.


To conclude, listening to the answers of these important people whose decisions really could make a change only made me feel more desperate about the situation we're in. Yes, they can speak articulately and persuasively, know how to combine big words in phrases and sentences, but I don't see how that could contribute to anything. There was absolutely no passion or care whatsoever. Probably the only positive thing I heard was that WalMart are trying to have the same price for organic and non-organic. Can't wait to see that!