2020: You get up in the morning, treat yourself to a fresh cup of Fairtrade coffee with oat milk. You go to the supermarket, buy pasta, tomatoes, cheese, maybe some ham for today’s dinner.
2030: You go to the supermarket because you need a new coffee. You are surprised, they have increased the prices again! You consider maybe skipping your coffee every other day to save some money to regularly afford your weak spot, that nice buffalo mozzarella.
2050: You have lost your job, as the company you were working for had to radically restructure in consequence of the multiple economic crises. Political unrest, rising food prices, immigration problems and exhausted health systems is keeping everyone on their toes. With the little unemployment benefit you get, you might be able to afford to have a coffee on Sundays as a very special treat, while you had to give up on luxuries, like your favourite mozzarella, altogether.
Sounds like a fatalistic fantasy? Sadly, numbers about food insecurity today and models predicting the consequences of climate change on global food production over the next decades say otherwise. This is not just about your morning coffee, but about actual hunger and malnutrition. It is about our current and future ability to provide healthy, nutritious and sufficient food for a growing world population.
Food Security in Light of the Environmental Crisis – Controversies and Misconceptions by Judith Rybol and Karolina Kneller is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0