University of Minnesota senior research scientist Deepak Ray, along with global collaborators, mapped crop harvests for seven end-uses and found that harvests for direct food use will be insufficient to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SD2) of food security for all by 2030.
The top ten global crops (barley, cassava, maize/corn, palm oil, rapeseed/canola, rice, sorghum, soybean, sugar cane and wheat) currently account for over 80 percent of all harvested crop calories. Today, we grow and harvest sufficient calories from these crops to meet food security demands and will likely continue to do so in the future if all crops are harvested for direct food consumption. However, not all harvested crop calories are used for direct food consumption and increased competition for crops for other uses (such as processing or industrial use) means a smaller fraction of harvested calories are available to feed people directly.
Deepak Ray is available to comment on changing crop harvest use trends since the 1960s, the implications for our ability to effectively address food insecurity and challenges the agricultural sector faces to make meaningful change.
Source : umn.edu