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Sustainability
"Sustainability: Food Security"
September 19, 2011
In this session, chaired by Rudy Rabbinge (Wageningen University, The Netherlands), an overview was given of the challenges of future food production and the sustainability thereof from a food and feed perspective.
Prof M. van Ittersum, teacher plant production systems at Wageningen University, explained that based on research of Wageningen University in theory the world is able to produce sufficient food with the current land bank. They made these calculations based on scenarios of future consumption and theoretical estimations of the future production capacity. Whether this will be achievable in practice will depend on whether full yield potential can be reached. This depends on the production practices of individual farmers and will differ per production region. It is thus important to invest in agriculture and stimulate use of best practices. One of the ways to do this is education of farmers.
To estimate the possible production of food the following assumptions were made: We use the current land area, we use multiple cropping where this is possible, we realise an 80 % yield gap closure and climate change has 0 % effect (bold assumption!). Based on these assumptions, it is theoretically possible to produce 36 Gigatons of Grain Equivalent. If you assume that max 50 % of the land can be irrigated, you come to the possible production of 27 Gigatons of Grain Equivalent.
For the global requirements in 2050 different scenarios were calculated. If the production is only used for food and feed 12 Gigatons of Grain Equivalents is needed. If it is also used to generate 10 % of the energy needs (not fuel!) 17 Gigatons of Grain Equivalents is needed. This means there is not a huge gap between potential production and what is needed in the future, so it is important to invest in strengthening agricultural production capacity! It appears education of farmers increases the chance they reach high yields. Another factor to increase their production is to use fertilisers.
Click here to download the presentation.
Then Daan Dijk (Rabobank, The Netherlands) explained in his presentation 'sustainability and security of the global food supply chain' that food security implies the sustainability of food supply chains. According to Dijk, the new trend is 'bioneering': the merge of chemical industry and food industry. In his opinion the agricultural sector can lead the transition towards a circular economy. Rabobank sees itself playing a role in financing the BioBased Economy. But transition requires long term commitment to firstly funding of research and development and secondly the introduction to the market which can take more than 10 years.
In the post oil era economy agriculture will take a central stage as source of renewable high quality non-food products. At the end the Food and Agriculture companies will:
- Become less dependent on oil
- Favour locally available resources
- Become more resource efficient
- Recycle nutrients and water
- Develop natural fertilisers
- Preserve top soil and biodiversity
- Become a source of renewable high quality non-food products
The final speaker of this session was Dr. C. Th. Martin Scholten (Wageningen University, The Netherlands). In his presentation entitled 'sustainable feed industry in sustainable supply chains' he presented the research of the role of oils and lipids in future sustainable feed production. In 2050 there will be a need for 845 megatons of dairy and 435 megatons of meat. This implies that we need to double animal feed production to 1500 MT feed, which will have to come from sustainable supply chains. In his opinion the feed industry has to meet this challenge by selected regionalisation. It will require an effort because some sources are becoming more and more scarce. This concerns for example poly unsaturated fatty acids. For this we should use not only fish but also other sources like algae and insects.
He stressed this gives also opportunities for the oils and fats sector namely:
- Stimulate European based production;
- Development of new focus on poly unsaturated fatty acid sources like algae, seaweeds, insects;
- Look into options for extraction from residuals of the bio-based economy;
- Look into options for upgrading agri- and food residuals (high loss);
- Look at grass and green forage refinery: extract lipid fraction;
- Fats and Lipids very important for animal health. Oil content in feed is very important for gut health of animals; it leads to better digestion and a lower production of methane (GHG).
Click here to download the presentation.
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