Why Sustainable Food Systems Matter | Future of Food

What does it take to grow enough food for all of us? How do we create food systems that meet the needs of our changing world—and what role does technology play? A wide-ranging panel discussion explores global issues of food sustainability.

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MODERATOR:
Joel Bourne - Journalist

PARTICIPANTS:
Jerry Glover - Senior Adviser, USAID
Nadine Azzu - Global Project Coordinator, FAO
Ben R. Jordan - Director of Supplier Sustainability, Coca-Cola Company
José Andrés - Chef, Author, Educator

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:

Why Sustainable Food Systems Matter | Future of Food

National Geographic

[aluxbalum]

I herd this from a German Phd Silviculturist who worked with indigenous groups and farmer COOP's around the world which pretty much sums up the current situation.  "As long as we continue seeking answers behind a desk we will never find them, only more theories followed by more questions followed by more theories.  Go ask the farmers they are the true innovators and nobody better than them know exactly how to treat the earth and solve our farming problems".  Here they are all experts in their respective fields yet I doubt any of them actually spend time working the land, so we get articulate well polished theories but few concrete real answers.  Civilizations like the Aztecs, Maya, Khmer, Inca, Persian, etc. fed large populations using so called "organic" techniques why can't we do the same today with all the knowledge and technology at our disposal?

[royortega]

In most parts of the Philippines, there is almost zero waste from
utilizing chickens, pigs and ruminants. We make good delicious healthy
dishes out of internal organs aside from the meaty and bone parts.
Literally, for fowls, barely its nails, beak, feathers, ceaca (a small
part of the intestine) and gall bladder are not eaten by
Filipinos...hence almost zero waste. Almost the same thing for pigs and
ruminants, tiny percentage is left as wastes (given to pet dogs even). I
hosted a small group of visitors from Uganda sometime in 2017. They
were kinda laughing and mystified with one of the dishes I served, a
deep friend pork knuckles. They told me that part is a rather a
low-grade, low-value part of the animal, simply they are not aware one
could make a delicious dish out of it. My Ugandan guests ended up
consuming one full plate of fried pork knuckles each one of them (some
500 g per plate). Zero waste, sustainable consumption?... solved (partly at least). Where else
could we learn "zero waste dishes".

[PennyEastman]

Really interesting panel! Love NatGeo!

[kianfarfarhangjavid]

Thanks I got a lot from the discussions.

[KillstreakPB]

The coke guy doesn't understand how that 20 thousand farms feeding 1 sugar mill isn't sustainable

[olivejimenez]

Great explanation of Sustainability be the the 4th speaker... aplauses for him!

[moondog]

Is the documentary Cowspiracy mentioned in this video?

[farajbeden]

Interesting! You're talking about sustainability of agricultural production, and yet what really needs to be urgently addressed is the lack of sufficient food!!! Over three billion people across the globe live in hunger. What I believe we should be thinking about more is how to sustainably provide SUFFICIENT food for the eight billion people inhabiting the planet, not just some of them. It's really embarrassing for us to fail feeding ourselves sufficiently despite the highly evolved brain we Really really embarrassing 😳

[christosantonopoulos]

Excellent discussion more foods incorporating fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds leaving animal flesh to last.

[yuliyakuzina]

Why nobody is watching this??!! Only 15000 views??!

[JNB]

The issue here truly is human greed. We have placed a higher value on economic sustainability than social or environmental sustainability. This forces trade-offs that continue to degrade our environment from the sector of the economy that depends upon it the most (besides maybe energy)- Agriculture.

[laurenbarber]

I don't understand why they asked Coca Cola to be represented on this panel

[cykoshadow]

Anyone else annoyed by that guy all the way on the left looking down the whole time when the presenter is listing all his accomplishments?

[cmclairemoore]

wow I have an idea. instead of worrying so much about environmental standards and sustainabiltiy for soda.. why not just not drink Coke! it's bad for human health anyway

[ZackGomez]

Is it a good idea for everyone to start their own farm?

[Dr_Xyzt]

If people currently eat 250 pounds of meat per year and they reduce that by 90%, you can still have two pounds of meat every month. Then, you can re-purpose all of that crop land for feeding people, and have some left over to experiment with. We just need to find new employment for people from the meat and dairy industry. Maybe we can have more manual farming by maintaining perennial crops. That would reduce the need for roundup ready GMO, but GMO made to tolerate heat better instead.

[nekonohige]

Population size also affects sustainability.

[seanpan]

It's not food production's sustainability, it's the population policy if any at all, the world will have no choice but to look seriously at China's one-child policy and emulate it.

[rchuso]

More food means more people, or didn't anyone else read Rev. Thomas Malthus. There's got to be a better way. The estimated population for 2050 will result in *even more* extreme destruction of natural habitats.

[christosantonopoulos]

Don't like the word sustainable well other words in the thesaurus are not much better.