[Julian Cribb]

The current world food system is haemorrhaging soil, water, nutrients, people and wildlife and has already lost the climate in which it arose. It is not sustainable and will certainly not feed 10 billion people in the hot, stressed world of the mid-century. The result will be war – unless there is a profound rethink of how we produce food.

In ‘Food or War’ (Cambridge University Press, 2019) I describe a new global food system that:
– feeds everybody adequately, safely and healthily in all continents
– is largely climate proof
– uses half the present land area, allowing rewilding (by farmers) of 25m sq kms of the Earth’s surface, to end the 6th Extinction
– dramatically reduces the likelihood of conflict and war
– recycles most of the water and nutrients used to produce it, and is therefore sustainable
– minimises its use of poisons, carbon emissions and other negative impacts.

The transition from our present unsustainable system to the one described is the most important single revolution in human history. Since food is indispensable to all life, it is far more important even than the global clean energy revolution.

I will describe this system in a future MAHB Dialogue. Those interested will find more detail at https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/food-or-war/2D6F728A71C0BFEA0CEC85897066DCAF

Julian Cribb
Canberra, Australia
July 15, 2019

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