Climate change and sustainable food production

Professor Pete Smith

Climate change and sustainable food production

Professor Pete Smith, University of Aberdeen and Director of Scotland's ClimateXChange

One of the greatest challenges we face in the 21^st Century is to sustainably feed 9 billion people by 2050 whilst at the same time reducing environmental impact (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, land use change and loss of ecosystem services). To this end, food security must be delivered. According to the United Nations definition, “food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”. At the same time as delivering food security, we must also reduce the environmental impact of food production.

Future climate change will impact upon food production. On the other hand, agriculture contributes up to 30% of the anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change. In this lecture Professor Smith will review some of the likely impacts of climate change on agriculture, the mitigation measures available within agriculture to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and outline the very significant challenge of feeding 9 billion people sustainably, under a future climate with reduced emissions of greenhouse gases. Each challenge is in itself enormous, requiring solutions that co-deliver on all aspects. The status quo is not an option, and tinkering with current production systems is unlikely to deliver the food and ecosystems services we need in the future; more radical change in production, consumption and diet are likely to be required over the coming decades.