Global Challenges For Future Food And Agricultural Policies

This book examines the current and future challenges facing the food and agricultural system and their implications for policymaking at the national and international level.The growth in global population and income is expected to result in increasing demand for food and agricultural raw materials, intensifying concerns over food security and increasing pressure on the planet's natural resources. Moreover, climate change — a challenge on its own — is likely to increase the urgency for reforms in the food and agricultural sector. As a substantial contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, the sector will need to participate in efforts to slow global warming and to adjust to the effects of climate change, while ensuring global food security and resource sustainability. These pressures define a new set of priorities for policymaking at the national and international level. They also necessitate changes in the framework of global institutions for effective governance of the food system.Global Challenges for Future Food and Agricultural Policies presents a comprehensive analysis of the inter-related policy challenges of food security, management of natural resources, climate change, and international governance. The book also offers valuable insights into options for effective policymaking with the goal of inducing positive policy changes to the food and agricultural sector.

Handbook of International Food and Agricultural Policies is a three-volume set that aims to provide an accessible reference for those interested in the aims and implementation of food and farm policies throughout the world. The treatment is authoritative, comprehensive and forward looking. The three volumes combine scholarship and pragmatism, relating academic writing to real-world issues faced by policy-makers. A companion volume looking at the future resource and climate challenges for global agriculture will be published in the future. Volume I covers Farm and Rural Development policies of developed and developing countries. The volume contains 20 country chapters together with a concluding comprehensive synthesis of lessons to be drawn from the experiences of the individual countries. Volume II examines the experience of countries with food policies, including those dealing with food safety and quality and the responsibility for food security in developing countries. The chapters address issues such as obesity, nutritional supplements, organic foods, food assistance programs, biotech food acceptance, and the place of private standards. Volume III describes and explains the international trade dimension of farm and food policies -- both at the bilateral and regional level -- and also the multilateral rules that influence and constrain individual governments. The volume also looks at the steps that countries are together taking to meet the needs of developing and low-income countries. The volumes are of value to students and researchers interested in economic development, agricultural markets and food systems. Policy-makers and professionals involved in monitoring and regulating agricultural and food markets would also find the volumes useful in their practical work. This three-volume set is also a suitable source for the general public interested in how their food system is influenced by government policies.

This book features a comprehensive foresight assessment, exploring the pressures — threats as well as opportunities — on the global agriculture & food systems between now and 2050. The overarching aim is to help readers understand the context, by analyzing global trends and anticipating change for better planning and constructing pathways from the present to the future by focusing on the right questions and problems. The book contextualizes the role of international agricultural research in addressing the complex challenges posed by UN 2030 Agenda and beyond, and identifies the decisions that scientific leaders, donors and policy makers need to take today, and in the years ahead, to ensure that a global population rising to nine billion or more combined with rising incomes and changing diets can be fed sustainably and equitably, in the face of the growing climate threats.

This study is concerned with how changes to the world’s food and agriculture system can contribute to improvements in global food security.

Globalization of the food supply has created conditions favorable for the emergence, reemergence, and spread of food-borne pathogens-compounding the challenge of anticipating, detecting, and effectively responding to food-borne threats to health. In the United States, food-borne agents affect 1 out of 6 individuals and cause approximately 48 million illnesses, 128,000 hospitalizations, and 3,000 deaths each year. This figure likely represents just the tip of the iceberg, because it fails to account for the broad array of food-borne illnesses or for their wide-ranging repercussions for consumers, government, and the food industry-both domestically and internationally. A One Health approach to food safety may hold the promise of harnessing and integrating the expertise and resources from across the spectrum of multiple health domains including the human and veterinary medical and plant pathology communities with those of the wildlife and aquatic health and ecology communities. The IOM's Forum on Microbial Threats hosted a public workshop on December 13 and 14, 2011 that examined issues critical to the protection of the nation's food supply. The workshop explored existing knowledge and unanswered questions on the nature and extent of food-borne threats to health. Participants discussed the globalization of the U.S. food supply and the burden of illness associated with foodborne threats to health; considered the spectrum of food-borne threats as well as illustrative case studies; reviewed existing research, policies, and practices to prevent and mitigate foodborne threats; and, identified opportunities to reduce future threats to the nation's food supply through the use of a "One Health" approach to food safety. Improving Food Safety Through a One Health Approach: Workshop Summary covers the events of the workshop and explains the recommendations for future related workshops.

The issues of food security and agricultural competitiveness are central to agricultural and food policy making in the 21st century. Although developed and developing countries are at different stages of achieving food security and their agricultural competitiveness varies, they face a common and increasingly urgent challenge: feeding their growing populations with finite natural resources. The issues, constraints, and challenges related to competitiveness and food security have not been fully understood or studied in the context of policy making at the national and global levels.

Climate change is a significant and growing threat to food security—already affecting vulnerable populations in many developing countries, and expected to affect ever more people in more places, unless action is taken beginning today. Current scenarios for business-as-usual farming under climate change project growing food security challenges by 2050. Worst hit will be underdeveloped regions of the world where food insecurity is already a problem and populations are vulnerable to shocks (Rosegrant et al. 2014). Improvements in agricultural technology and management are expected to increase food security, but if we do not address climate change, climate-related losses in crop and livestock productivity will reduce those gains (Lobell and Gourdji 2012). In this challenging environment, countries will need to contend with shifts in which crops they can best produce, significant changes in global prices, and change in countries’ comparative advantages. New analytical tools that allow policy makers and decision makers to integrate data from the global to the local level offer an important opportunity for countries to identify the most effective ways to address climate change. As the 22nd Conference of the Parties (COP22) gets underway and the role of agriculture as a key element in reducing emissions is widely recognized, countries can use these tools to identify locally appropriate policies that will reduce the impact of climate change on food security over the long term.