How we can reach for a food utopia 2at3e

Humans have done an amazing job of reducing malnutrition in the past 70 years or so. The Green Revolution in the 1960s saw a huge leap in agricultural productivity, with yields of crops such as wheat increasing dramatically in some parts of the world, allowing food production to match population growth for most of the 20th Century. While these more intensive farming methods produced some negative environmental impacts, for decades the world saw a year-on-year fall in the total number of people going hungry.

But this situation has reversed. We are now seeing an increase in human hunger, with 60 million more people undernourished today than in 2014. All at once, agricultural yields have plateaued while environmental problems such as climate change, biodiversity loss and a growing problem with pests and diseases are beginning to impact our supply of food. Meanwhile, not only are there more and more mouths to feed, but those mouths are rightly asking to be fed the right things. The threats to our ability to feed ourselves are unprecedented in many ways. We desperately need another leap in agricultural productivity. 

Fortunately, there are now a huge variety of new solutions being developed around the world to ensure our food is plentiful, sustainable, nutritious and affordable. Scientists, farmers and businesses are already trying to mitigate our food problems and stave off widespread food insecurity. If we set our minds to it, we can feed the world sustainably by 2050. And this time, we can learn from the mistakes of the past. 

To understand how things can get better, it helps to paint a picture of where you'd like to get to. A food utopia may sound fanciful and impractical, but in reality, many of us already live there. We can go to a supermarket within a few minutes and access foods which meet our basic nutritional needs, affordably and without worrying about where our next meal will come from. Now we need to figure out how everyone can have access to the types of food the middle and upper levels of rich Western societies take for granted. 

In the new Follow the Food series, I explore the five utopian dream elements we need our food system to deliver in the next 30 years, looking at on-the-ground examples where people are already attempting to make this happen.

Could we have choice and variety all year round?

There is sometimes a kind of fetishisation of the food of the past. We're told that everything would be better if only we would eat seasonal and local foods. The people who say this obviously didn't live in the past, because in reality seasonality meant restricted choice and poor nutrition. In some parts of the world, people would be unable to make even their minimum fruit and vegetable needs for most of the year, which was not only monotonous, but failed to provide basic nutritional needs. 

For all of human history, we have tried to extend the seasonal availability of foods and the trading of food also stretches back far into prehistoric times. The natural season for harvesting some crops is around one week a year, but through breeding, storing and processing foods we've now made some of them available year round. The question is, can we make food both nutritious and sustainable throughout the year">6% of the total carbon footprint from food comes from transport. Growing tomatoes in a heated, lit greenhouse in Northern Europe, for example, is much worse environmentally than importing tomatoes grown in an open field in Southern Europe. 

But more artificial or high intensity farming does not always mean worse farming. You can also find different ways to provide plants with what they need in a more sustainable way, no matter the season. We looked at an example of vertical urban farming at 80 Acres Farms in Ohio that had 10 floors of different crops, with everything grown under pink and blue artificial strip lights, all constantly moved and controlled by robots with essentially no human involvement at all. There weren't even walkways for people to get inside: you were basically running around hoping a robot wasn't going to slide past and knock you over with a tray of lettuce. But in that one acre of land they were producing 10 acres of crops, year round. This incredibly intensive form of agriculture was able to use 99% less water and produced around 90% fewer carbon emissions.

What's more, because they can control all the parameters, they can theoretically create crops just as nutritious and flavourful, if not more so. I was also able to visit a hydroponic tomato farm in Portugal where I was shown how it is possible to grow crops without any soil at all that are even more nutritious than those grown outside. In the video below you can see how it is done.

Growing crops in these confined environments, where all the nutrition and flavour can be tweaked while using far less land, water and carbon could be crucial for year round food security and food availability. It is one tool in a toolbox, but it's a useful solution in the appropriate place. 

Can we make sustainable food affordable for everyone?

It's very easy for me at home in west London, UK, to think that issues of food accessibility and affordability is a problem that exists in developing countries. But in reality, there is a food bank just two streets from me, providing ingredients for meals to people who cannot afford to buy them. Food poverty is a huge international problem which has been getting worse in recent years, even before Covid-19 hit incomes and supply chains. 

The first and most important thing is for people to be able to get fruit and vegetables at all. But much of the debate about healthy food overlooks a key problem: inequality. Accessibility and equality in the food system is the number one determinant of food outcomes. We need to figure out how we can make food more affordable, either by making it less expensive, or by tiering it based on people's incomes – as I saw in action in Los Angeles, US. It means residents in wealthier areas have to pay a little bit more for their weekly shop, but it means those in poorer areas can access healthier, better quality food.

Globally, we have a growing population which is in many cases much more affluent. In places like China, many people are able to afford meat for the first time ever, leading to a huge explosion in the demand for meat. Of course, if you're protein deficient, being able to afford meat for the first time is not a negative thing. But there's a key need to find sustainable sources of protein in order to increase the total quantity. Sometimes that may involve non-animal substitutes such as beans or meat analogues. But we can also eat more sustainable sources of animal protein, such as mussels, which don't require many inputs and lock a huge amount of carbon in their shells.

Perhaps the most impressive solution we covered in the series was at the University of Illinois, where scientists are working to make photosynthesis more efficient using a combination of different techniques including genetic modification. They are trying to figure out ways to make plants better at adapting to different light levels, for example, or how to change the architecture of leaves to make them more efficient at photosynthesis. 

This could allow us to produce more crops with the same amount of resources, as well as increasing the ability of crops to absorb atmospheric carbon. It was really going back to the biological drawing board to figure out what we could do. The research included a focus on crops such as cow peas, a hugely important source of protein in Asia and Africa.

Throughout filming the series, it made me optimistic to encounter so many people who are on the case to find solutions around the world, and who have such a genuine ion and dedication for the cause they are looking at. 

The one thing that unites many farmers is that they are really ionate about the environment in general, because they have a heritage to live up to, and want to this on to the next generation. They may not necessarily all agree about what the best thing is to do for the planet. But they're all increasingly interested, and really open to innovation and science. 

* James Wong is an ethnobotanist and presenter of the BBC's Follow the Food series.