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There’s a concerning gap in the amount of food we produce today, and the amount needed to feed the world’s expanding population by 2050. Could transitioning from agriculture that relies on fossil fuels to agriculture that works in harmony with nature be part of the solution?

FAO’s flagship publication the ‘State of Food and Agriculture in the World’ points out that a growing population and rising incomes will lead to an increase in demand for agricultural products by 35–50 percent between 2012 and 2050, exerting increasing pressure on the world’s natural resources.

Governments, producers and consumers must address a huge range of concerns along entire food systems if we are to reduce the impacts of agriculture on the environment. Worldwide, we fail to consume around one-third of the food we produce and therefore one-third of the energy supplied along the food chain is already wasted. Much of this food is dumped, so it ends up in landfills where the resulting methane gas can’t be captured and utilized, nor can it be processed into biogas or other forms of bioenergy.

One way to reduce food loss and waste is by increasing the use of cold storage and packaging; but both may also lead to higher energy use so using renewable energy and environmentally friendly packaging should also be introduced.

FAO supports governments and practitioners to introduce sustainable energy technologies, adapted to each unique setting, at different stages in the food chain through, for example:

• The use of renewable energy systems in several FAO field projects, both in development and humanitarian settings.
• The FAO INVESTA project, which has developed a methodology to assess the environmental, social, economic and financial costs and benefits of introducing renewable energy in food chains. To date, it has applied this analysis to three food chains (rice, vegetable and milk) in five countries (Tanzania, Tunisia, Senegal, Kenya and The Philippines).
• The assessment of the potential to produce bioenergy from residues from food chains in Turkey and Egypt.
• The rapid assessment of the quality and replicability of integrated food energy systems in Ghana and Mozambique.

“FAO has called for a second ‘Green Revolution’, the first was about improving yields, this time it’s about doing it in a green and sustainable way, being resource efficient and affordable while producing food, and sustainable low-carbon energy for agri-food systems has a key role in achieving this objective.”

Explained Olivier Dubois, Energy Program Coordinator at FAO in a recent interview for CNBC Sustainable Energy Series  .

 
Further reading:

Opportunities for agri-food chains to become energy-smart

FAO Stories: Clean energy solutions in Tanzania

Watch:

FAO Energy Program Coordinator Olivier Dubois in an interview to CNBC International TV
CNBC International TV; Growing sustainable food | Sustainable Energy