The solution to global food security?
Unprecedented occurrences like the current pandemic, conflict, and climate change have inevitably resulted in significant setbacks, therefore the sector has had to find innovative ways to address food poverty.
In order to enable populations in difficult regions grow crops that are more resistant to pests, diseases, and weather conditions brought on by climate change, solutions like gene editing and boosting water productivity are becoming more and more popular.
Crops with genetic engineering
Gene editing is a great way to produce crops that are higher in nutrients and contain essential vitamins, allowing people to subsist on readily available meals.
Nevertheless, testing and developing crops suitable for this use can be time-consuming. For this reason, in order to support themselves, farmers frequently grow these crops alongside their current crops on a smaller scale.
Additionally, gene editing is a relatively new approach to addressing food insecurity, and many nations are still unaware of how to use it successfully. It appears to be a longer-term experiment with slower results as a result.
Insufficient use of water
Another approach to addressing food insecurity that has gained traction recently is raising water productivity.
Most places with high rates of hunger don’t always have access to clean, flowing water, so installing a system for collecting water and storing it could be the perfect fix. By capturing rainfall and using it for drip irrigation, these systems enable farmers to raise agricultural yields without depending on water supplies being accessible all year round.
Having enough room and funds to build and operate these storage systems, however, could be a hurdle to their implementation.
You may also like:
Food security in emerging nations: issues and remedies
Are drinks the secret to increasing cannabis use among consumers?
Managing the lack of labour for mushroom picking
Regional manufacturing networks
We believe that the best way to ensure global food security is to build and diversify local production systems so that people can become self-sufficient, or as near to self-sufficient as possible, across the globe.
While there is widespread overproduction in the industrialized world, local resources are often not employed effectively in emerging nations. Uneven distribution and waste result from the large amounts of food that are stored in local markets and sold there for higher prices.
Reducing dependency on outside resources and cutting production costs can be achieved by cultivating a variety of pest-resistant crops, employing animal husbandry and composting systems as organic fertilizers, and developing local water resources for year-round irrigation.
Creating cooperatives out of local communities will also be advantageous. This increases their ability to invest in methods like agro-processing, which can extend the shelf life of products, and provides them more negotiating leverage in the market.
In situations where school lunches are served alongside locally produced goods, not only are local livelihoods secured, but the community’s potential is increased for coming generations. Farmers have a local market to sell their goods at thanks to school feeding programs. It is more cost-effective for schools to purchase locally, and it is simpler for farmers to sell locally rather than shipping to bigger cities, so everyone wins.
In order for kids to receive an education, graduate, continue their education, and eventually return to the workforce as skilled professionals—or at the at least, to be able to support their families—school food programs also assist make sure that kids show up to school every day and stay there for the whole school year.
This is how the community’s short- and long-term benefits from school nutrition and local production are multiplied. This appears to be the most effective way to ensure global food security in our opinion.