Fewer than half the calories grown on farms now reach our plates. In 2020, the world produced more than enough calories to feed the global population, but only half of those calories reached people’s plates due to rising meat and biofuel production.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2493576-fewer-than-half-the-calories-grown-on-farms-now-reach-our-plates/
by The_Weekend_Baker
5 comments
Without paywall.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20250825173705/https://www.newscientist.com/article/2493576-fewer-than-half-the-calories-grown-on-farms-now-reach-our-plates/](https://web.archive.org/web/20250825173705/https://www.newscientist.com/article/2493576-fewer-than-half-the-calories-grown-on-farms-now-reach-our-plates/)
A massive portion also just rots in the fields because they’re not supermarket perfect or gets thrown away unused by the end consumer.
Which just goes to show how much slack is in the system.
If climate change disasters caused our yields to halve we would still have enough food to feed the world.
Around 700 million people in the world already don’t get enough food to eat, and around 2.3 billion people are considered to be moderately to severely food insecure. If we cared about people going hungry, we’d be rebalancing calorie production *now* to go to people who need it. We never have, and we’re not going to do it in the future either.
When the crop failures *really* start to kick in, the calories going to animal ag and biofuel will be prioritized, then the calories to the people in the wealthy countries, and then the rest of the world will have to do without, which is already the case.
We have the industrial capability to feed, clothe and house every human on the planet, but we do t because 8 guys have to have half the money.
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