More than 150 recipients of the Nobel and World Food prizes yesterday released an open letter calling for a dramatic increase in research and a commitment to new food distribution efforts, with a goal of producing more crops and avoiding a global hunger crisis in the coming decades.
The letter says that an estimated 700 million people now are “food insecure and desperately poor,” but that without a “moonshot” effort to grow more and different kinds of food, far more people would be in dire need of food because of climate change and population growth.
“As difficult and as uncomfortable as it might be to imagine, humanity is headed towards an even more food insecure, unstable world by mid-century than exists today, worsened by a vicious cycle of conflict and food insecurity,” says the letter, signed by 153 recipients of the two prizes. “Climate change is projected to decrease the productivity of most major staples when substantial increases are needed to feed a world which will add another 1.5 billion people to its population by 2050.”
Photo: AP
Corn production in Africa is expected to decline and much of the world could see more soil degradation and water shortages, the letter says.
“We are not on track to meet future food needs. Not even close,” it adds.
The letter grew from a meeting of food accessibility experts in autumn last year. Despite the potential gloom, it holds out hope for an optimistic vision of the future if people take needed actions. The letter says that a dramatic increase in research funding coupled with more effective ways to share information and distribute food could prevent a hunger crisis.
Brian Schmidt, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011, said the need to dramatically increase food production in the coming decades is a huge challenge.
He calls it a “destination with destiny,” but one that can be achieved with proper funding to enhance existing knowledge as well as global leadership.
“It is an imminently solvable problem. It is a problem that will affect billions of people in 25 years. It is a problem that to solve it, there are no losers, only winners,” Schmidt said in an interview. “All we have to do is do it.”
Schmidt said he hopes governments in the US, Europe and elsewhere can commit to solving the problem, but he thinks private groups such as the Gates Foundation might need to take the lead in funding initial steps that would draw attention and prompt action by politicians.
The letter calls for “transformational efforts” such as enhancing photosynthesis in essential crops such as wheat and rice, developing crops that are not as reliant on chemical fertilizers, and lengthening the shelf life of fruits and vegetables.
Cynthia Rosenzweig, a climate research scientist at NASA who won the World Food Prize in 2022, said in an interview that researchers are already making progress toward breakthroughs, but their work needs to be turbocharged with more funding and emphasis from world leaders.
“It’s not that we have to dream up new solutions,” Rosenzweig said. “The solutions are very much being tested, but in order to actually take them from the lab out into the agriculture regions of the world, we really do need the moonshot approach.”
The term moonshot refers to an unprecedented effort, stemming from then-US president John F. Kennedy’s call in 1962 for Americans to rocket to the moon.
Rosenzweig, noting she works for NASA, said meeting the food needs of a growing population would take the kind of commitment the US made in achieving Kennedy’s goal of reaching the moon.
“Look at how the scientists had to come together. The engineers had to be part of it. The funding had to come together, as well as the general public,” she said. “That base of support has to be there as well.”
MONEY GRAB: People were rushing to collect bills scattered on the ground after the plane transporting money crashed, which an official said hindered rescue efforts A cargo plane carrying money on Friday crashed near Bolivia’s capital, damaging about a dozen vehicles on highway, scattering bills on the ground and leaving at least 15 people dead and others injured, an official said. Bolivian Minister of Defense Marcelo Salinas said the Hercules C-130 plane was transporting newly printed Bolivian currency when it “landed and veered off the runway” at an airport in El Alto, a city adjacent to La Paz, before ending up in a nearby field. Firefighters managed to put out the flames that engulfed the aircraft. Fire chief Pavel Tovar said at least 15 people died, but
LIKE FATHER, LIKE DAUGHTER: By showing Ju-ae’s ability to handle a weapon, the photos ‘suggest she is indeed receiving training as a successor,’ an academic said North Korea on Saturday released a rare image of leader Kim Jong-un’s teenage daughter firing a rifle at a shooting range, adding to speculation that she is being groomed as his successor. Kim’s daughter, Ju-ae, has long been seen as the next in line to rule the secretive, nuclear-armed state, and took part in a string of recent high-profile outings, including last week’s military parade marking the closing stages of North Korea’s key party congress. Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) released a photo of Ju-ae shooting a rifle at an outdoor shooting range, peering through a rifle scope
South Korea would soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps does not work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-precision map data to overseas servers. The approval was made “on the condition that strict security requirements are met,” the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. Those conditions include blurring military and other sensitive security-related facilities, as well as restricting longitude and latitude coordinates for South Korean territory on products such as Google Maps and Google Earth, it said. The decision is expected to hurt Naver and Kakao
India and Canada yesterday reached a string of agreements, including on critical mineral cooperation and a “landmark” uranium supply deal for nuclear power, the countries’ leaders said in New Delhi. The pacts, which also covered technology and promoting the use of renewable energy, were announced after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney hailed a fresh start in the relationship between their nations. “Our ties have seen a new energy, mutual trust and positivity,” Modi said. Carney’s visit is a key step forward in ties that effectively collapsed in 2023 after Ottawa accused New Delhi
RSS