Leverage points for improving global food security and the environment

By Paul C. West, James Gerber, Peder Engstrom, N. Mueller, K. Brauman, K. Carlson, E. Cassidy, M. Johnston, G. MacDonald, D. Ray and 1 more. Science, 2014

722 citations recorded by the source corpus.

How to optimize global food production Keeping societies stable and managing Earth's resources sustainably depend on doing a good, steady job producing and distributing food. West et al. asked what combinations of crops and regions offer the best chance of progress. Their analysis focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, nutrient pollution, water use, and food waste. They identify regions that are likely to yield the best balance between applying fertilizer to increase crop yields versus the resulting environmental impact. Science, this issue p. 325 A limited set of interventions could disproportionately improve crop production and environmental sustainability. Achieving sustainable global food security is one of humanity’s contemporary challenges. Here we present an analysis identifying key “global leverage points” that offer the best opportunities to improve both global food security and environmental sustainability. We find that a relatively small set of places and actions could provide enough new calories to meet the basic needs for more than 3 billion people, address many environmental impacts with global consequences, and focus food waste reduction on the commodities with the greatest impact on food security. These leverage points in the global food system can help guide how nongovernmental organizations, foundations, governments, citizens’ groups, and businesses prioritize actions.

Subfields: Ecology, Food Science, Water Science and Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/78ad030704bbb76e67dffecf574593aa7e37260c

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Citations in the corpus

The Global Food‐Energy‐Water Nexus (2018, background): “The overall greater footprint of livestock production is in large part attributable to the inefficiencies by which plant biomass can be incorporated into animal tissue, particularly for cattle (Figure 6; e.g., Mekonnen & Hoekstra, 2012; West et al., 2014).”
System dynamics modeling for agricultural and natural resource management issues: Review of some past cases and forecasting future roles (2016, background): “In many circumstances, these problems could be characterized as complex, as they have many interacting and overlapping feedbacks, where a systems approach to problem solving has been increasingly promoted, including strategies for enhancing ecosystem services [21], agricultural intensification [22],”
Household Food Waste Behavior: Avenues for Future Research (2016, background): “The reduction of food waste—especially in staple commodity foods such as rice—is seen as a key leverage point for improving global food security and environmental sustainability (West et al. 2014).”
Addressing future trade-offs between biodiversity and cropland expansion to improve food security (2016, background): “Despite the negative externalities of cropland expansion and continuing calls for sustainable intensification (Garnett et al. 2013; Tilman 1999; West et al. 2014), the future expansion of agricultural land is still considered to be a likely scenario (see, e.g., the OECD/FAO Agricultural Outlook).”
Effects of Fertilizer Broadcasting on the Excessive Use of Inorganic Fertilizers and Environmental Sustainability (2018, background): “In global terms, China has contributed about 33% of N a d 36% of P in nutrient surpluses [60]).”
Industry-Scale Evaluation of Maize Hybrids Selected for Increased Yield in Drought-Stress Conditions of the US Corn Belt (2015, background): “The current and future challenge of production agriculture is to not only meet demand for grains but to do so in an environmentally sound manner on land that is currently devoted to agriculture rather than by expanding the cultivated area (Cassman and Liska, 2007; Tilman et al., 2011; West et al., 2”
Subnational distribution of average farm size and smallholder contributions to global food production (2016, methodology): “We calculated the proportion of global production of 17 major crops— the 16 highest-calorie producing crops consumed as food, as well as cotton, as per West et al [39]—that takes place in units where MAA is less than five hectares.”