The UK's Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn, government has just formed a Council of Food Policy Advisers to rethink the fundamentals of food policy to address concerns of food security and rising prices.  BBC News reported that Benn warned at the Council's launch,  "Global food production will need to double just to meet demand.  We have the knowledge and the technology to do this, as things stand, but the perfect storm of climate change, environmental degradation and water and oil scarcity, threatens our ability to succeed."

The BBC also interviewed Professor Tim Lang, a professor at City University, London, and a member of the new Food Council, who says, "A sustainable global food system in the 21st Century needs to be built on a series of 'new fundamentals'.  The new approach needed to address key fundamentals like biodiversity, energy, water and urbanisation."  Professor Lang said that in order to feed the projected nine billion people by 2050, policymakers and scientists will need to ask "how can food systems work with the planet and biodiversity, rather than raiding and pillaging it?"

Lang explained that "the current system, designed in the 1940s, was showing 'structural failures', such as 'astronomic' environmental costs".  He said that the current system was developed to address the dust bowl in the US, the collapse of food production in Europe and starvation in Asia.  Then, like now, there was "a mismatch between producers and the need of consumers".

Lang continued to explain the outcomes of the system laid out in the 1940's.  He said that food scientists and policymakers in the post-war period assumed that increasing production would reduce the cost of food, and improve diets and the impact on public health.  By the 1970's it was becoming clear that the outcomes were not what had been expected and that there was an immoral amount of waste.  In addition, a whole new set of problems associated with the environment were showing up, made only more complex over the intervening thirty years.  Now, we find that "The level of growth in food production per capita is dropping off, even dropping, and we have got huge problems ahead with an explosion in human population."

During a recent speech, Professor Lang outlined a set of "new fundamentals" which will shape future food production, including:

• Oil and energy: "We have an entirely oil-based food economy, and yet oil is running out. The impact of that on agriculture is one of the drivers of the volatility in the world food commodity markets."
• Water scarcity: "One of the key things that I have been pushing is to get the UK government to start auditing food by water," Professor Lang said, adding that 50% of the UK's vegetables are imported, many from water-stressed nations.
• Biodiversity: "Biodiversity must not just be protected, it must be replaced and enhanced; but that is going to require a very different way of growing food and using the land."
• Urbanisation: "Probably the most important thing within the social sphere. More people now live in towns than in the countryside. In which case, where do they get their food?"

The BBC also interviewed another Food Council member, Michelin-starred chef and long-time food campaigner Raymond Blanc, who focused on the need for people to reconnect with their food.  He notes that there will likely be more people growing their own food as the prices for food rises.  He hopes that will lead to better cooking, better nutrition and a more diversity of food.  Mr. Blanc also hopes that there will be less wasted food.  Before a recent amendment to European rules, 30% the food grown did not appear on the shelves of retailers because "it was a funny shape or odd colour."  He added that the problem was that people chose food based on sight alone, not smell and touch. 

"The way that seeds are selected is about immunity to any known disease; they have also got to grow big and fast, and have a fantastic shelf life.  Never mind taste, texture or nutrition, it is all about how it looks. The British consumer today has got to understand that when they make a choice, let's say an apple - either Chinese, French or English one - they are making a political choice, a socio-economic choice, as well as an environmental one.
They are making a statement about what sort of society and farming they are supporting."

The BBC News article then went on to say that the FAO (the UN Food and Agriculture Organization) estimates are that "another 40 million people have been pushed into hunger in 2008 as a result of higher food prices", bringing the total of undernourished people in the world to 963 million.  FAO assistant director-general Hafez Ghanem reported, "The structural problems of hunger, like the lack of access to land, credit and employment, combined with high food prices remain a dire reality".

As Professor Lang said, "The 21st Century is going to have to produce a new diet for people, more sustainably, and in a way that feeds more people more equitably using less land."