The Real Cost of a Meal

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The Real Cost of a Meal

A single meal requires over 200 gallons (760 l) of water and a loss of roughly 22 pounds (10 kg) of topsoil, and food production must double within the next 50 years to meet the world's needs.

As humanity continues to grow at a staggering rate, the resources needed to feed the global population are becoming ever scarcer, experts warn.

This is according to Julian Cribb, author of 'Surviving the 21st Century,' who warns that humans must 'reinvent' the way we get our food – or risk famine, war, and mass migration.

His book presents evidence for the ten greatest threats to humanity, and the ways we can combat them.

TnQxA8L.jpg'10 kilos of topsoil, 800 litres of water, 1.3 litres of diesel, .03 g of pesticide and 3.5 kilos of carbon dioxide – that's what it takes to deliver one meal, for just one person,' says Cribb.

'When you multiply it by 7 to 10 billion people each eating around a thousand meals a year, you can see why food is fast becoming the challenge of our age.

'The human jawbone is now by far the most destructive implement on the planet. 

'It's wrecking soil and water, clearing forests, emptying oceans of fish and destroying wildlife as never before – but fewer people realize it because of long industrial food-chains that hide the damage from them.'

According to Cribb, the world is currently losing roughly 75 billion tonnes of soil each year, and the problem is getting worse.

In the last 40 years alone, it's thought that we've lost a third of the world's soil.

The author also points to water shortage as a looming threat, with a recent study from the UN warning that global water demand could exceed supply by 40 percent by the 2030s.

'Governments and consumers fail to grasp that scarcities of soil, water, oil, nutrients, technology, fish, and finance are now acting in sync – and are being amplified by climate shocks,' Cribb said.

'Together they pose a major threat to world food security – and to world peace.

Cribb says the next few decades will bring a boom in local food production, including cultivation of new crops, recycling of water and nutrients in cities, urban agriculture, the use of soil microbial activity, and carbon farming.

Along with this, he says there will be a rise in soil-less aquaponics systems and biocultures, protected cropping, and algae farming.

To prevent negative effects on the climate and the risk of famine in megacities, he says food production will largely have to move indoors, and into the cities, through these methods.

Source: Daily Mail 


* Related topic: Enormous Water Requirements for Food Production

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