RAWALPINDI, Feb 18: Unless action is taken, up to 25 per cent of the world’s food production may become lost because of ‘environmental breakdowns’ by 2050, according to a United Nations Environment Programme report.

“Already, cereal yields have stagnated worldwide and fish landings are declining.”

The report also cited the example of “disappearing glaciers of the Himalayas, linked to climate change, supply water for irrigation for near half of Asia’s cereal production or a quarter of the world production”.

“Globally, water scarcity may reduce crop yields by up to 12 per cent. Climate change may also accelerate invasive pests of insects, diseases and weeds, reducing yields by an additional 2 to 6 per cent worldwide.”

Food prices may increase by 30 to 50 per cent in coming decades with people living in extreme poverty, spending up to 90 per cent of their incomes on food,

The report, which outlines a plan to reduce hunger and food insecurity, calls for changing the ways in which food was produced, handled and disposed of across the globe – from farm to store and from fridge to landfill – can both feed the world’s rising population and help sustain the environment.

“Unless more intelligent and creative management is brought to the world’s agricultural systems, the 2008 food crisis — which plunged millions back into hunger — may foreshadow an even bigger crisis in the years to come,” the study said.

According to the report “Environmental food crises: environment’s role in averting future food crises”, the demand for food would continue to increase towards 2050 because of an increase in world population by 2.7 billion people, increased incomes and growing consumption of meat.

“Today, over one-third of the world’s cereals are being used as animal feed, rising to 50 per cent by 2050. Continuing to feed cereals to … livestock will aggravate poverty and environmental degradation.”

The report instead suggests that recycling food wastes and deploying new technologies, aimed at producing bio-fuels, to produce sugars from discards such as straw and even nutshells could be a key environmentally-friendly alternative to increased use of cereals for livestock.

The amount of fish currently discarded at sea — estimated at 30 million metric tons annually — could alone sustain more than a 50 per cent increase in fish farming and aquaculture production, which is needed to maintain per capita fish consumption at current levels by 2050 without increasing pressure on an already stressed marine environment. The report shows that many of the factors blamed for the current food crisis - drought, bio-fuels, high oil prices, low grain stocks and especially speculation in food stocks, may worsen substantially in the coming decades.

Climate change “may undermine the chances of feeding over nine billion people by 2050. Increasing water scarcities and a rise and spread of invasive pests may substantially depress yields in the future”.

Reorganising the food market infrastructure to regulate prices and generate food safety nets for those at risk backed by a global, micro-financing fund to boost small-scale farmer productivity in developing countries, the report suggests.