By 2015- global warming will be beginning to have a major impact on food production. Dislocation in climate patterns, increasing frequency of droughts and floods-including the drying up of the major river systems of Asia, plus rising population and cultivation of biofuels will result in less arable land and rising costs of food production.
This will lead to increased prices of staple foods such as rice, wheat and maize as well as meat, forcing another 100 million people in developing countries into malnutrition, including 10 million children in India alone. This is in addition to the already 1 billion already affected by poverty and malnutrition.
This will have severe flow on effects for the future of developing countries as malnutrition severely impacts the cognitive capacity of the next generation.
Food aid will also be under pressure from richer countries, as governments are forced to provide priority for food security to their own populations, particularly following a decade of financial turmoil. Friction will also be created as major population countries such as China begin buying up arable land in poorer countries such as africa as a hedge against future food shortages.
By 2025- the world population will have grown to more than 8 billion. Global demand for grain and animal production will now significantly outstrip supply. To satisfy demand, cereal production needs to increase by 50% and animal production by 90%.
Additional arable land equal to 150 million hectares or a minimum 10% of the 1.5 billion hectares already under cultivation will be required to keep pace despite improvements in agricultural management and technology. This is likely to come in the short term from areas such as the Congo and Amazonia, accelerating the onset of global warming and drought as forests are further fragmented.
This will inevitably create global unrest and conflict with waves of mass migrations in developing countries to the cities. In turn this will accelerate the need to make cities and urban environments more food self sufficient, through use of treated sewage, local community food gardens, based on urban harvested water runoff and solar energy collection.
By 2030- major programs will be underway to recover genes from ancestor plant species that originally evolved to cope with drought and salinity, together with a return to original middle eastern and African dry land farming techniques.
There is recognition that conventional breeding techniques for plant traits such as tolerance to dry conditions, may be too complex and time consuming to achieve within the available urgent timeframes. Genetic modification provides the only answer, with accelerated cooperative science initiatives to increase crop yield, drought tolerance and disease resistance.
Bright spots will be a major shift from grains to tuber crops such as potatoes, which need less land and water than grain and are extremely nutritious, with four times as much complex carbohydrate and better quality proteins than grains. In addition meat products will synthesized from culturing the muscle cells of a broad range of animals, bypassing the need to slaughter them.
Animal production as a primary source of protein will also be seen as unsustainable, as is large-scale use of arable land for cattle grazing. Monoculture and irrigation farming is also phased out as unsustainable in terms of inefficient water and land useage. Poultry remains viable on edge of farmland and cities.
World fisheries are also at major risk by 2030, with fish traditionally providing 20% of animal protein. All fish, crustacean and sea mammal stocks are already severely depleted despite greater conservation controls. The oceans are rapidly becoming too acidic to support sea life including plankton and shellfish. Ocean dead zones, depleted of oxygen, are spreading fast.
The UN Food and Agricultural Organization- FAO draws up contingency plans for global food management, planning for relocation of populations from the drying tropical zones to those of the more habitable northern and southern latitudes.
By 2040- glacial and mountain snow fed sources of water will be in full retreat across the globe. As a result the major river systems in Europe, South America and Asia, providing water to the traditional farming areas of southern Europe, Pakistan, China, India, Afghanistan and Vietnam, begin to dry up.
China’s vast rice fields, providing food for 400 million people and India’s wheat, fruit and vegetable farming locus in the Punjab are severely affected. Most of Africa, the Middle East and Australia will be in permanent drought, combined with major depletion and contamination by natural gas extraction of the groundwater aquifers.
Human habitation in the mid latitudinal belts- 30 degrees north and south of the equator, becomes unsustainable. The only regions with adequate rainfall, guaranteed to support stable food production and human society, are in the high latitudes such as- Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia, Russia, Siberia, part of Northern Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica. Small communities continue to survive in drought areas by building shelters and growing food underground, using still active aquifers and solar energy.
By 2050- global warming will be out of control with unsustainable limits to suitable land for agriculture, with contention between retaining forest as a carbon sink and clearing it for agriculture.
Friction reaches flashpoint between the major nations over land, food and water security. Massive human migrations are occurring globally – from poorer to richer countries and from drier to wetter habitats.
Giant solar energy generating belts become operational across North Africa, Middle east, Southern US and Australia, providing power for high density population centers and high intensity farming hubs to feed them.
With the world population reaching 9 billion, an extra 1 billion hectares more land are needed for food production- equal to the landmass of US. At the same time commercial fish and seafood species have collapsed.
It is recognized that only global cooperation beyond national borders can avoid conflict, anarchy and starvation for billions. Global food production, distribution and allocation plans are activated under the auspices of the UN.
Global cooperation in achieving the equitable allocation of land, water, energy and food resources through the advanced communication and knowledge mechanism of the Intelligent web 4.0, becomes the only realistic means of avoiding global anarchy and the disintegration of human civilization.
National boundaries and political hubris become irrelevant when the survival of human life- perhaps the most advanced life-form in the universe - is threatened
