Food and feed (2024)

FAQs

Do we produce enough food to feed 1.5 times the global population? ›

The world's farmers produce enough food to feed 1.5x the global population . That's enough to feed 10 billion (we are at 7.6 billion currently). Despite this excess, hunger still exists.

More than enough food is produced to feed all of the 8 billion people currently alive on the planet, yet after a decade of steady decline hunger is back on the rise, affecting 10% of the global population.

There is enough food for everyone.

While progress on reducing hunger has stagnated in the last five years, evidence suggests that the problem we face today is not a lack of food. Rather, it is a problem of efficiency. We can see this throughout the production and consumption process, beginning with how land is used.

We produce enough food to feed 1.5x the global population. That's enough to feed 10 billion yet we are at just over 7 billion currently. There is enough for everyone. The problem is our food systems – the way we produce, harvest, transport, process, market and consume food.

With an estimated 10 billion people in the world by 2050, sixty percent more food will need to be produced (Source: Food and Agriculture Organization ). A business-as-usual approach to food production won't get us there. Today, there is enough food in the world. Yet millions of people still go hungry.

The United States is growing less and less of its own food and is becoming increasingly dependent on foreign countries to feed itself as a result. The U.S. has been a proud agricultural powerhouse, consistently running an agricultural trade surplus.

People have worried about overpopulation on Earth for centuries, and climate change has only recently accelerated that fear. But a new study found that feeding 10 billion people on Earth is not only possible—but it could be done sustainably as well.

People can survive up to three weeks after they stop eating. However, without staying hydrated (without water) as well, the human body can only live 3 to 5 days. Researchers believe that a person can live for up to three weeks without food as long as they have water to drink.

There is no global food shortage because we produce more than enough food to feed everyone in the world. We produce so much food globally yet one–third of it – 1.3 billion tons – is wasted.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP) identified 18 “hunger hotspots” to watch carefully in 2024. Their hunger hotspots include 22 countries where FAO and WFP see political and armed strife disrupting farming. That could lead to millions facing hunger.

Why is there still starvation if there is enough food to feed everyone? ›

The Cause of Hunger

The world produces enough food to feed everyone on the planet. The problem is access and availability, both of which are disrupted by things like extreme weather, food waste, one's gender and – worst of all – conflict.

As you eat, don't ask yourself if you're full; instead, ask yourself if you're not hungry anymore. Your goal should be to eat until you're no longer hungry, not to eat until you're full.

There are around 7.8 billion people on the planet now, and each needs about 1.4 kilograms of food on average per day, not including water. That means we require about 3.7 billion metric tons of food a year to feed everyone.

Malthusianism is the theory that population growth is potentially exponential, according to the Malthusian growth model, while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear, which eventually reduces living standards to the point of triggering a population decline.

As many as 828 million people were affected by hunger in 2021 – 46 million people more from a year earlier and 150 million more from 2019. After remaining relatively unchanged since 2015, the proportion of people affected by hunger jumped in 2020 and continued to rise in 2021, to 9.8% of the world population.

There is no global food shortage because we produce more than enough food to feed everyone in the world. We produce so much food globally yet one–third of it – 1.3 billion tons – is wasted.

Expert-Verified Answer

"There is enough grain in the world to feed up to 10 billion people on a vegetarian diet." Grain is the option that best aligns with the statement. Grains, such as wheat, rice, maize (corn), and barley, are staple food crops that are widely cultivated and consumed globally.

This means we can very easily feed every person on the planet using no more than about 500 million acres, which is roughly 1/9th of what is officially in agricultural production today. So we can certainly feed ourselves while cutting back on our land usage if that is a goal.

Here's how we'd get there. There are around 7.8 billion people on the planet now, and each needs about 1.4 kilograms of food on average per day, not including water. That means we require about 3.7 billion metric tons of food a year to feed everyone.