mostly what i do is to try and understand one of the biggest issues

facing our world over the next fifty years

how can we feed nine billion people

start let's consider two images

the first shows us how much food you could buy for one dollar

on a market in the african nation of zambia

in two thousand and eight

the second shows us how much you could buy on the same market for one dollar

in two thousand and nine

what happened in between was skyrocketing food prices

a crisis for the strong tense

maybe even hundreds of millions into poverty

what's more

the victims haven't suffered quietly

they have rioted

smashed markets

and toppled governments

remember the revolutions that swept the middle east in two thousand eleven

they all began

with people in the street

upset over the price of food

what's more

many of the world's top agricultural experts believe that this is just a tip

of the iceberg

unless we figure out new strategies to deal with global food security

we may be entering a new and dangerous fades of human history

where food

and energy shortages

threatened not only worse poverty

but also civic unrest

and international conflict

there are a number of reasons for this alarm

the first reason is that in most years we produced only just enough food to

cover our uses

in fact

in six of the last eleven years we actually consumed slightly more food

than we produced

and the buffer we take from one year to the next has been steadily

so our system already seems pretty fragile

it's when we look into the future that things grow very dire indeed

rising populations

and are rich diets that take a lot more resources to produce than they used to

are driving our demand for food up

and scientists figure will need

fifty percent more food by twenty fifty

but producing this food is going to be hard

this is because the rising demand is coming precisely at the same time

as high energy prices and climate change

are making food harder

and more expensive to produce

shaking in these grim statistics is a four apart blueprint we need to follow

but since each of these strategies is extremely controversial

each requires careful analysis

the first strategy include science and technology

a major scientific hurdle is to develop technologies that will help farmers

reach their potential in terms of the amount of food they produce

some scientists figure we could easily boost production by fifty percent

just fighter plane currently available technologies

this is especially important in regions like sub-saharan africa

where many farmers only produce about twenty percent of what they could

due to a lack of good quality seeds

fertilizer

and better equipment

but it's not as if we can take the seeds equipment that seem to work on north

american firms

and simply give them away to african farmers

this doesn't work because african soils

cultures and communities

are totally different than in north america or europe

so scientists must partner with farmers

to develop locally appropriate solutions

to local challenges

just using science and technology won't be enough however

and this is where the second strategy comes in

we must do a better job of distributing the food we've got

to develop a strategy we need to consider an uncomfortable truth about

today's food system

if you take all the food on the planet

and divided equally by all the people on the planet

their is plenty

about twenty seven hundred calories per person per day

and seventy five grams of protein per person per day

that's more than enough

but because we feed a lot of our food animals

or true corn into ethanol or simply waste vast amounts

maybe twenty to fifty percent of the world's food is wasted

or because the people who need the food are too poor to afford it

hunger abounds

so we need to establish waste of making sure that less food is wasted

and the food we do have is better distributed

one way of doing this is through ensuring that international aid

organizations

have better access to food stories that can be used as short term food aid

in times of crisis

if we want to avoid hungry future

we need to make sure we keep the healthy population of farms and farmers around

our cities

this means we need to support local food systems which are important because they

stand as a buffer between individual consumers

and problems that might ocr in global markets

even if local food systems do not feed all of us all the time very critical

line of defense against hunger

none of this will be possible without stronger regulation and proactive

government policy

i was confronted with the need for better regulation while on a recent tour

of a feedlot that was license to hold a hundred thousand cows

there i saw a four hundred and ten thousand ton pile of newer

that's the weight of about thirty five thousand elephants

it was a sad reminder of the need for governments to get serious about

promoting more sustainable farming

course

each of these four strategies has its drawbacks

critics of technology and markets argued at new technologies inevitably seemed to

enrich corporations

more than helping humanity or the environment

anti regulation voices argue that all governments ever do is tight farmers in

red tape and stifle innovation

arguments for more equitable food redistribution

causes sometime after about the effects of big brother

forcing us all to read a uniform diet

but most often perhaps is the argument that with the world population poised to

reach nine billion by mid century

there will never be away for modern communities to feed themselves by means

of local

small farms

our cities are simply too big

our demands to great to be able to feed ourselves without relying on extremely

intense farms

but luckily based isn't a lost cause

takes southern africa in nineteen ninety two

that year it suffered the worst drought in a hundred years

purpose ranked by half stockpiles disappeared and seventeen to twenty

million people almost starved

yet apart from in war-torn mozambique there was no real crisis

and the story of how southern africa overcame the drought is a modern parable

for how to feed nine billion humans

it was the famine that wasn't

and the reasons for this

are that africans adopted the four strategies proposed here

before the emergency local plant breeding programs introduced drought

resistant varieties of the crops that small-scale farmers traditionally

cultivate

this meant that people had some food to fall back on when their main crops

failed

famine early warning systems

used up-to-date data and weather forecast to alert officials to the

problems months in advance

meanwhile international donors adopted proactive policies like for giving loans

they also contributed to food storage centers closed abominable communities

and so food prices stayed level

as such

local production systems on which poorer communities depend

bounced back

the key lesson from southern africa in nineteen ninety two

is that while all these criticisms have their points

they aren't universally applicable

and not across the entire complex landscape of the twenty first century

food system

to effectively tackle the challenges of feeding the future

the most sensible approach is to imagine these four types of solutions

as components of a well-balanced investment portfolio

one that's resilient enough to whether economic storms

is still able to provide strong year over year returns

and a secure against fraud

think of new agricultural technologies as similar to high-octane alrighty

stocks they're an important part of a profitable investment strategy

but in over-reliance on them

could cost you your shirt if the market turns against you

likewise local food systems are similar to more modest

rainy day investments

they can't be relied upon to feed everyone all the time

but there are a vital buffer between consumers

and the dangerous wings of the international market

and of course

every sound portfolio includes a cash reserve in case of emergencies

hence the need for more mechanisms to the store and distribute food

in times of crisis

lastly

one of the lessons of the present economic crisis is that left unregulated

financial institutions behave badly

in the same way we need a robust legal framework to restrain agriculture from

destroying the environment

in nineteen ninety-two southern african drew passed without excessive hardship

and the agricultural cycle trundle onwards

historically and always has

one of the few old testament stories to have a happy ending was the tale of

joseph enough

farrow's dream

this story recounts how the pharaoh dreamt that seven fac

cows emerged from the nile

followed by seven th in cows fold them and doubled the fat ones out

if era ended up listening to joseph

a prisoner has dungeons for the correct interpretation

joseph told him that the seven th fact housework good weather reports

signifying seven

years

they would be followed by seven dr years of no rainfall whatsoever

the signature from the famine

joseph it buys the pharaoh to taxes farms store the grain silos

and prepare for the rough times ahead

farah purposes vice the heart and age it was saved

today in stopping the global food crisis may seem like an impossible task

the stakes could not be higher

if we don't change how the world produces and distributes its food

then the suffering and violence of the past few years will be repeated

but a thousand times worse

but luckily today we have climate

and demographic modeling software that are far more reliable

then waiting for god to send a dream to a monarch

these models are quite clear

the years twenty fifty

two-twenty eighty are probably not going to be as productive as the ones between

nineteen fifty in nineteen eighty

but this doesn't necessarily mean disaster

we can avoid this nightmare

and replace it with a vision of a world where no one needs to starve

we have the solutions

all we need now

is the will to act on them

what can you do to help

first go to our website

there's more information about the each of the four strategies

and things you can do to make a difference locally

and internationally

we'll release an in-depth video and associated campaign for each of the four

strategies over the next year

but we need to know which you are most interested in

soco w_w_w_

dot feeding nine billion dot com

and vote on your favorite topic

then share this on twitter and face book

send it to your friends your colleagues your neighbors your families and get

them to do the same

our funding will flow if we have enough demand

and votes

to make the next video

until then

thanks for watching

and good luck