Why just reduce meat consumption? It was the health food of the Stone Age, but now, we have trade and food preservation, which let vegans live five years longer, and healthier all the way.
piperTom
Do you remember the Green Revolution? In just two decades, circa 1960, agriculture changed immensely. We would have already starved if science hadn't taken us on its palm and lifted us up. SO: how can you consider the future of food, without considering the advance of agricultural science? This very e-mag reports on it regularly!
paul314
Also not unlike what a lot of americans ate pre-WW2, when chicken and beef were once or twice a week things. The new version has a lot more fruits and veg than people would have eaten back then, and less bread.
Aross
Everybody is missing the point. There are toooooo many people on the planet. It is time to stop the growth and work on a solution to reduce the population. And no I don't mean killing anyone. Just reducing the birthrates.
Douglas Bennett Rogers
Most of the developed world, that eats meat, doesn't have a replacement birth rate. As the rest of the world develops, it's birth rate, too will probably go below replacement. The population will probably reach 10 B before that.
jerryd
Again more very biased report ignoring many things.
First it is unlikely for the population to hit 9.2B, much less 10B as birthrates drop with education of women.
Next the by far major reason for hunger is politics, nothing else. Saying otherwise is ignorant.
Modern farming has greatly changed in the US and will around the world putting out far more food, biomass/acre, inputs, labor and 30% of the pollution .
The world is completely capable of supply the food including grass fed beef. Beef isn't the problem, factory feedlots are.
There were 50mm Bison here before so 20milion cattle isn't doing more impact than them.
And switching to managed wild meats, rewilding as without hunting and predators, they are breeding out of control denuding the land, starving themselves too.
Best is harvest these on a sustainable level.
With just a little adjustment, get politicians out of the way and we can feed 10B easily even though that number is unlikely from population trends.
Jerome Morley Larson Sr eAIA
The sky is falling.... the sky is falling; every few years this doomsday report appears, creates an alarm; the authors are recoginzed; then life goes on; the next day, new iventions appear, pushing doomsday farther back; in a few years, another ‘scientist’ will analyize the new stats and prophesize without considering the future; because that is impossible — obviously, if we waste 40% and 40% are obese, solving those means we can double the population to 20billion with today’s inefficient food production — simply making it more efficient as in growing lettuce in abandoned factories in downtown Newark NJ doulbes it again — then add inventions and voila! — soon enough you get to one hundred billion poplulation which is where medicine is leading us as they cure ageing; and before we can get enough people sustainabley on the Moon and Planets/Moons. Oh well, back to the drawing board...
TerenceKuch
Ten billion people is just an obscene number. The question should be, How many people do we need to sustain society, pursue science and art, keep the peace, keep everyone fed and doing what is most productive and satisfying for them, and, most important, preserve the planet in livable condition for all species, not just us. In the 1960s I was on the Board of the World Population Society, and we were even then alarmed about the rapid rise in the world population, which we're now experiencing "in spades," with starving and undernourished people, desperate migrants, millions with no hope for a better life.
LarryStevens
This is ridiculous. Diets around the world are changing to eat more, not less, protein. What will save us (yes, we need saving) is to bring new tech into the equation. Hyrdoponics for plants and manufacturing for meat will crush our environmental footprint while letting us eat what we want.