Assessment of the future sustainability of food supply and food security

Safwat Shakir Hanna, Irvin Osborne-Lee, Gian Paolo Cesaretti and Rosa Misso

Politica Agricola Internazionale - International Agricultural Policy, 2013, vol. 2013, issue 3

Abstract: The agro-ecosystem is a complex system, with various parameters that can impact on its productivity. Over time, human beings have put the sector under stress due to their demands for food and other agricultural products from it. The proposed Ecological-Footprint Agro-Ecosystem Model (EFAM) has shown that the increasing ecological footprint (i.e. demands on the agro-ecosystem) has a negative relationship with the efficiency of productive arable lands. Agricultural lands are extremely scarce. Additionally, in the present study, data on land used fo agriculture have been converted into global calorie received from the sun which are stored in agricultural products; this shows that land is only marginally producing the calories that human beings need for food security globally. This will lead to economic instability around the world. The policies for agro-ecosystems should monitor the condition of agriculture in the world from climate change to land productivity and good distribution of food throughout the world. This may be done by subsidizing world food production through United Nation programs. In this respect, the UN or governments should have funds reserved to support subsidizing food production in the impacted areas of lower production but without changing the policy for market commodities. This fund is to be used not for emergencies but to support farmers in producing agricultural commodities and to ensure food security.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Food Security and Poverty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/169840/files/ShakirHanna.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:eiapai:169840

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.169840

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Politica Agricola Internazionale - International Agricultural Policy from Edizioni L'Informatore Agrario
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().