This report from the World Resources Institute (WRI) was produced in partnership with the World Bank, UN Environment Programme (UNEP), UN Development Programme (UNDP), and France’s Agricultural Research for Development (CIRAD) and National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA).
The report offers a five-course menu of solutions to feed 10 billion people by 2050 without causing additional environmental pressures or exacerbating poverty. These actions will require cooperation from business, government, civil society and the public. The five courses, and the menu options for each, are outlined below:
1. Reduce Growth in Demand for Food and other Agricultural Products
-
Reduce food loss and waste
-
Shift to healthier and more sustainable diets
-
Avoid competition from bioenergy for food crops and land
- Achieve replacement-level fertility rates
2. Increase food production without expanding agricultural land area via yield gains for both crops and livestock
-
Increase livestock and pasture productivity
-
Improve crop breeding to boost yields
-
Improve soil and water management
-
Plant existing cropland more frequently
-
Adapt to climate change
-
Close the gap on land and greenhouse gas mitigation by boosting crop and livestock productivity
3. Protect and restore natural ecosystems by reducing deforestation, restoring peatlands, and linking yield gains with ecosystem conservation
- Link productivity gains with protection of natural ecosystems
- Limit inevitable cropland expansion to lands with low environmental opportunity costs
- Reforest abandoned, unproductive, and liberated agricultural lands
- Conserve and restore peatlands
4. Increase fish supply by improving aquaculture systems and better managing wild fisheries
- Improve wild fisheries management
- Improve productivity and environmental performance of aquaculture
5. Reduce GHGs emissions from agricultural production through innovative technologies and farming methods
- Reduce enteric fermentation through new technologies [enteric fermentation is part of the digestive process of ruminants that creates methane as a byproduct]
- Reduce emissions from manure left on pasture
- Reduce emissions from fertilisers by increasing nitrogen use efficiency
- Adopt emissions-reducing rice management and varieties
- Increase agricultural energy efficiency and shift to nonfossil energy sources
- Focus on realistic options to sequester carbon in soils
- The need for flexible technology-forcing regulations
The full report is available here: The World Resources Report: Creating a Sustainable Food Future
And this press release from the IISD SDG Knowledge Hub provides additional context to the report: WRI Proposes ‘Menu of Solutions’ to Achieve Sustainable Food Systems
