Will reaching the maximum achievable yield potential meet future global food demand?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.126285Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The gap between global food supply and demand will gradually increase until 2050.

  • Considering population, income, and economic to predict food demand.

  • Prediction of food production by polynomial statistical model and WOFOST crop model.

  • The yield of food crops will be stagnant at 75% of their yield potential.

Abstract

Population growth, an increasing proportion of animal-based food consumption, shortage of water and land resources, and impacts of climate change all make the situation of world food security more and more severe. In order to understand the future global food security situation, we quantitatively predicted global demand for food crops, yield trends of food crops, and global crop production from 2020 to 2050. Based on the analysis of caloric demand of three types of food crops (cereals, pulses, and potatoes) in the past nearly 60 years, future global food demand was projected by combining predictions of the population and gross domestic product (GDP) of various countries. At the same time, four polynomial statistical models were used to predict the yield temporal trend of the three food crops in 19 regions of the world. The crop growth model WOFOST was used to predict global yield potential. Finally, global food production was predicted under the condition of constant cultivated land area. The results showed that the food demand would maintain a steady growth rate in the next 30 years. While the growth rate of crop production is expected to gradually slow down, the yield of main food crops will likely stagnate in some countries in Europe, America and Asia. In order to achieve balance between food supply and demand, we should reduce future food demand by adjusting the diet structure and reducing food waste as much as possible. Additionally, we should clarify the potential for increasing global food production. Global food production could be increased by several possible measures, such as increasing irrigated area, appropriately increasing the amount of fertilization, and improving the efficiency of water and fertilizer use.

Introduction

Since the spike in food prices in 2008, the question of how to feed the world in 2050 has received increasing attention (FAO, 2009a). United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs predicts that the world’s population will total 9.3 billion by 2050, which will require a 70–100% increase in global crop production, taking into account projected trends such as changes in dietary structure, consumption and income growth (Bruinsma, 2009; van Wart et al., 2013). The current steady increases in food production have supported marked population growth and greatly reduced the incidence of global malnutrition (Rosa et al., 2018; Pingali, 2012). However, with the development of the economy and the improvement of income level, the future demand for animal-based food will gradually increase (Godfray et al., 2018). The diet structure of many developing countries has also shifted from plant-based foods to animal-based foods (Behrens et al., 2010; Kawabata et al., 2020) while this transformation requires more arable land and water resources. The livestock industry currently uses 70% of the world’s agricultural land (FAO, 2009b), and the increase in animal-based food demand will further increase global land and water resources pressure (van Zanten et al., 2016; Kang et al., 2017). In order to meet the growing demand for food and ensure food security, we can start from two aspects: (1) on the food demand side, adjust the dietary structure and set up scenario modes to guarantee the sustainable diet of all countries; (2) on the food production side, update agricultural technology to increase crop production.

Over the past few decades, dietary patterns have experienced vast shifts in many countries, from undernutrition to overnutrition, away from freshly produced to processed foods rich in carbohydrates, fats and sugars (Weindl et al., 2020; Popkin et al., 2012). At the same time, the production of food, especially the production of animal-based food, to some extent aggravates environmental changes and threatens the space for humans to live in safety (Weindl et al., 2020). Therefore, reducing the environmental impact of the food system is receiving increasing attention. In order to reduce the impact of animal diets on the environment, some researchers consider the environmental impact of the food system in relation to total resources and emission budgets, and then recommend limiting livestock and poultry to lower-cost feed and to minimize beef consumption. (Frehner et al., 2020). Other researchers adjust the diet structure from the perspective of nutritional balance to meet human demand for many basic nutrients and protein (Geyik et al., 2020; Gurinovic et al., 2020) and adjust the diet structure according to different countries to ensure the sustainable diet of various countries in the future (Benthem de Grave et al., 2020; Schleifer and Sun, 2020).

There are currently two broad options for increasing global food production: (1) expanding the area of cultivated land at the expense of other ecosystems; (2) increasing the yield of our existing cultivated land. Previous studies have shown that about half of the land we are currently cultivating is suitable for agricultural production, but most of the remaining arable land is located in tropical rain forests in South America and Africa. These biomes have high social, economic, and ecological values. Therefore, it is urgent to increase the yield of existing cropland (Licker et al., 2010).

However, at present, yield stagnation has occurred in many countries. The main reason for yield stagnation is that crops have yield potential (Yp), which is defined as the yield of crops grown under conditions where water and nutrients are not restricted and biological stress is effectively controlled (van Ittersum and Rabbinge, 1997). When it is possible to grow under Yp conditions, the crop growth rate depends only on solar radiation, temperature, atmospheric CO2, and genetic traits that govern length of growing period. Since farmers cannot achieve the perfect state of crop and soil management required to achieve Yp, the average yield of a region or country cannot reach Yp. Previous studies have shown that the average national yields begin to plateau when average farm yield reaches 75–85% of Yp (van Wart et al., 2013). Yield potential research helps to clarify the space for increasing crop yield in various regions, identify the factors that limit yield increase, and then study the main techniques for increasing yield, and finally increase the crop yield in this region. Table 1.

The world’s arable land area is limited, water resources are limited, and crops have yield potential, so the future growth rate of food production will gradually decrease until it stabilizes. As the population continues to grow and the economic level increases year by year, the per capita food caloric demand of developing countries increases rapidly, which will lead to an increase in global food demand. Over time, the gap between world food supply and demand will gradually increase, and global food security will be threatened. Predicting the future global food demand situation and food production potential helps countries adjust crop planting structure and food import and export market structure in a timely and effective manner to achieve sustainable global food development and ensure global food security.

The study of food security can be divided into two parts. One is to adjust the diet structure from the perspective of economy, population and nutrition to pursue a sustainable diet and a healthy diet system (Dwivedi et al., 2017; Frehner et al., 2020; Schleifer and Sun, 2020) while setting scenarios for the future world economy, population and food sustainability to predict the future food demand situation (van Dijk et al., 2020; van Meijl et al., 2020). On the other hand, use crop growth models to calculate crop yield potential, water-limited yield potential and yield gap to predict the future food production status (van Wart et al., 2013; Pasuquin et al., 2014; Huang et al., 2019). We combine these two parts, consider economic development, population growth and income differences to predict future food demand and combine existing yield trends and the WOFOST crop model to predict future food production. Then, we analyze the balance of global food supply and demand in the next 30 years, and put forward measures to ensure future food security in countries.

Section snippets

Food demand forecast zoning

The 185 countries in the food balance sheet of the FAOSTAT database of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization were divided into four categories of economies according to the GDP data of the World Bank; namely, high-income countries, upper-middle-income countries, lower-middle-income countries and low-income countries. The specific classification is shown in Table S1. Table S1 is in the supplementary materials.

Food production forecast zoning

In order to predict crop yield potential and adjust parameters

Food demand forecast

We took the per capita GDP as the abscissa and the annual per capita crop caloric demand as the ordinate; then the per capita food caloric demand and the per capita GDP of the four economies were nonlinearly fitted, and the correlation is shown in Fig. 2.

A significant correlation between per capita GDP and per capita food caloric demand in the four economies could be observed, which provided a means to predict future food demand. According to the fitted curve, we first used the GDP forecast

Scenario construction

van Dijk et al. (2020) constructed four FOODSECURE scenarios based on two major uncertainties: (1) sustainability, lifestyle and use of natural resources ranging from a sustainable to an unsustainable world and (2) equality, equality can refer both to inter- and intra-national differences in income. The combination of the two axis defines the four different scenarios: (1) 1% world (ONEPW); (2) Ecotopia (ECO); (3) Food For All but Not Forever (FFANF); and (4) Too Little Too Late (TLTL).

ONEPW is

Conclusions

In order to understand the future global food security situation, we quantitatively predicted the global demand for food crops, the yield trends of food crops, and global crop production from 2020 to 2050. The results showed that in the future, global food demand would maintain a steady growth rate, while the growth rate of food production would gradually slow down, and would significantly slow down after 2035. The gap between food supply and demand gradually increased.

Population growth,

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Xiaoyu Tian: Conceptualization, Data curation, Methodology, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing - original draft. Bernie A. Engel: Writing - review & editing, Data curation, Formal analysis, Resources. Haiyang Qian: Data curation, Formal analysis. En Hua: Formal analysis, Visualization. Shikun Sun: Writing - review & editing. Yubao Wang: Resources, Methodology, Writing - review & editing, Supervision.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

This work was jointly supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFC0400205), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41871207) and the 111 Project (No.B12007).

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