WILLAGRI
The term “food polycrisis,” introduced by American economist Chris Barrett, is spreading and sparking debate in global agricultural circles. It challenges the optimism surrounding global food security, often based on agroecological theories and faith in technological progress (robotics, satellite monitoring of crops, sensors, etc.). While the general Western public remains unconcerned due to the abundance and variety of quality foods, wars, epidemics, and climate change cast doubt on the sustainability of this abundance. Polycrisis refers to a series of independent crises that exacerbate each other and call into question the effectiveness of various solutions. Although some believe that technology and agroecology could save us, the reality is darker: hunger is increasing, and our food system is under immense strain.
Several factors contribute to the formation of the food polycrisis. Climate change, biodiversity loss, soil pollution, and population growth all play a role in this phenomenon. Polycrisis refers to interconnected crises that worsen each other. These crises, initially independent, intertwine, creating a particularly complex and unstable situation for global food security. The world has become more unstable and unpredictable. The concept of polycrisis invites us to stop thinking in silos and to relate complex phenomena of diverse origins.
The idea of polycrisis also reflects the anxiety and sometimes the despair of those involved in agriculture. It highlights the urgency of finding radical solutions. While some still hope that technology and agroecology will save us, the situation is grim: hunger is on the rise, and our food system is under significant pressure.
Food Shocks Cannot Be Ruled Out
Given the current state of science, stability or low growth in yields would require the expansion of cultivated areas, which implies deforestation and, consequently, an increase in carbon emissions. We are trapped in a vicious cycle. According to Chris Barrett, professor at Cornell University and creator of the “food polycrisis” concept, the symptoms and manifestations of this polycrisis are numerous.
The first symptom is intrinsic to agriculture itself. A few years ago, the world celebrated a steady decline in undernourishment. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case. Today, global hunger is increasing by 20% per year. According to the World Food Programme (WFP), 282 million people in 59 countries suffered from hunger in 2023, 24 million more than the previous year.
Yield increases are no longer keeping pace with demand. Additionally, fruits and vegetables are increasingly lacking the essential nutrients needed for human and animal health.
The second symptom concerns the markets. Inflation has taken its toll. The global prices of food products, adjusted for inflation, have increased by 50% since 1999, not to mention the extreme volatility that undermines the effectiveness of public policies.
From the current 8 billion, the world population could reach 10 billion by 2050. In Africa, where the population has surpassed one billion, it is growing at a rate of 2.7% per year, compared to 1% for the rest of the world. However, three-quarters of the population in sub-Saharan Africa do not have access to healthy food. Price spikes cause cataclysms, famines, and riots. Agricultural productivity is stagnant on this continent, as is also the case in the United States. An econometric model published in the journal Nature suggests that anthropogenic climate change has reduced global total factor productivity (TFP) by 21% since 1961, with losses being more severe in warmer countries: a productivity decline of 26 to 34%. These figures correspond to the loss of productivity gains over the last seven years.
Should we expect “food shocks” in the form of mass famines and skyrocketing prices? Advocates of the “polycrisis” do not rule it out. They even consider it likely if technological progress fails to offset the devastating effects of climate change.
A 2023 report from Lloyd’s, based on 40 years of meteorological data, supports this apocalyptic vision. It estimates that within the next 30 years, there is a 50% chance of a severe climate scenario occurring, which would cost the world $3 trillion over five years, assuming climate damage does not increase year on year, which, unfortunately, it does.
Food Crisis, Energy Crisis, and Climate Crisis
Another consequence of global warming could be the disappearance of certain products. According to In These Times, coffee, chocolate, or avocados are endangered species due to climate change. In any case, diets will change, as will the production methods of staple foods.
Are there solutions to avoid these pessimistic scenarios? Could agriculture undergo a transformation of the same magnitude as the energy transition?
The food system consumes a third of the world’s fossil fuel production, while the agri-food sector is one of the least reliant on renewable energy. The overconsumption of fossil fuels by the agricultural sector is due to the enormous quantities of gas required for producing nitrogen fertilizers, not to mention the energy-intensive nature of the entire sector.
Northern farms, particularly those in the United States, consume thirty times more fossil fuels than farms in the South. According to the Swiss Courier Association, American agriculture consumes as much energy as that of India or Africa.
No one seems to know how to reduce this insane energy consumption by agriculture. The same Courier rightly notes: “We cannot resolve the energy crisis or the food crisis with measures that exacerbate the climate crisis; the three crises are deeply interconnected and overlap.”
The Challenge of a Generation
Can agriculture protect itself from long-term collapse? One-third of the Earth’s surface is devoted to agriculture, which also uses 70% of the world’s water resources. No human activity has an impact equivalent to that of agriculture. According to the Project Drawdown website, an area equivalent to the total landmass of Latin America is devoted to human and animal food production. An even larger area, equivalent to that of Africa, is devoted to livestock.
The combined areas of these two continents cover 37% of the Earth’s land, more than Asia and Europe combined. They exceed the area occupied by forests (31%). Seventy-five percent of the world’s agricultural land is used for livestock and growing crops for animal feed. Meat consumption is a major concern.
Historically, agriculture has developed at the expense of all natural environments. But its expansion may not stop there if we want to feed humanity in the second half of this century. According to a World Bank report, “Creating a Sustainable Food Future,” we would need to dedicate twice the area of India to it! Such an upheaval would only come at the expense of forests, which store… the carbon produced by agriculture (a third of global emissions). This is what we might call a vicious cycle.
Certainly, many ingenious practices have been adopted to reduce CO2 emissions from agriculture. For instance, regenerative agriculture, which sequesters carbon in soils, is a flagship practice. However, while beneficial, this practice would only have limited effects, according to the Breakthrough Institute. Similarly, vertical farming no longer holds much promise due to its astronomical consumption of fossil fuels.
Agriculture is so dependent on fossil fuels that it’s hard to see how it could free itself from them. On the contrary, Europe alone has invested 50 billion euros in energy infrastructure (gas, oil, exploration, and terminals) since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war. Therefore, the increase in energy production exacerbates the climate crisis, which threatens food security… It will take a lot of imagination to find ways to escape this vicious cycle.
In terms of dietary habits, veganism has not significantly reduced the consumption of animal products, while lab-grown meat struggles to gain traction. The situation is all the more frustrating as the industry has managed to revolutionize its manufacturing processes and begin a real green transition. The decarbonization of agriculture remains a major challenge.
Pessimist Chris Barrett cites promising advancements, including biofortified crops, nitrogen fixation in the air that limits the use of mineral fertilizers, GMOs, and the development of resilient varieties.
Humanity has found solutions in the past, as was the case with the Green Revolution. Similarly, reducing food waste, which accounts for 8% of global CO2 emissions, is an interesting avenue to explore.
But today, agriculture needs a truly global and large-scale revolution, the pace of which can be measured in decades.
However, in the United States alone, agricultural research budgets have fallen by a third since the beginning of the century when they should have tripled to meet the demand.