Sustainable food system capable of nourishing the Earth’s burgeoning population -

There is an urgent imperative to establish a sustainable food system capable of nourishing the Earth’s burgeoning population. Can technology like AI, ML and cloud provide a solution? I shall ponder on a solution in this blog series.

From the following select box, choose language of your preference:

Blog from Aprajita Srivastava

Aprajita Srivastava

Cloud Support Engineer at Amazon Web Services (AWS) Analytics |Subject Matter Expert-OpenSearch| 4x AWS Certified |Oxonian | Ex Hon. Director WDF | Knowledge Agriculture (Trademark)
My Linkedin

Date: Nov. 10, 2023: Sustainable food system capable of nourishing the Earth’s burgeoning population

There is an urgent imperative to establish a sustainable food system capable of nourishing the Earth’s burgeoning population. The escalating climate crisis, perpetuated by conflict, reckless resource exploitation, and global disorder, poses a severe and irreversible threat. Around the world, we are witnessing unprecedented phenomena, such as record ice melt at the poles, widespread catastrophic flooding, unprecedented heatwaves in the United States and Europe, and severe droughts in Africa.
Ongoing conflicts, including the Russia-Ukraine dispute and the Israel-Hamas war, have the potential to escalate and further destabilize regions. This, in turn, could lead to higher energy prices, climate-induced droughts, and place immense strain on an already fragile global food system. Consequently, there has been a growing interest in reevaluating our agricultural practices to ensure they are as efficient as possible. The adoption of tools and technology for Knowledge Agriculture is essential to enhance food production efficiency, and nations must swiftly embrace these practices to break free from the cycle of disasters and debt.
The 2030 agenda, encompassing 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and adopted in 2015, aimed to eradicate poverty and malnutrition globally while safeguarding the environment and preserving the Earth’s resources. Regrettably, this ambitious agenda is progressively faltering. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI), released in 2022 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, has acknowledged that the world is backsliding in its endeavors to combat hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition. Alarmingly, many of the targets set under SDG2 are expanding each year.
In 2021, an alarming 828 million people, roughly 10.5% of the global population, endured the scourge of hunger, marking a distressing increase of 46 million from the close of 2020. Furthermore, in 2020, nearly 3.1 billion individuals worldwide were unable to afford a nutritious diet, witnessing a stark rise of 112 million from 2019 due to the pandemic and conflict.
In response to this dire situation, the Indian government initiated the distribution of free food to its vast population of 814 million people as a preventive measure against death from starvation, under the National Food Security Act. This initiative was earlier extended until December 2023 and now has been promised for 5 morre years. This means nearly half of the world population shall depend upon Government or other agencies support to survive from hunger and malnutrition.

Hungry during COVID