Sustainable food production is key to avoid food wars.

There is a rising danger of ‘food wars’ – conflicts over food, land and water – as the world food system begins to crack under the combined pressures of climate, water scarcity, toxicity and soil loss. In ‘Food or War’ – I show how food insecurity has driven conflict for thousands of years. A complete rethink of the current global food system is now urgent, to avoid widespread wars and migratory crises in the mid-century, as the human population surges past 10 billion and outruns its resources. “Ours is the Age of Food. Food is a central obsession in all cultures, nations, the media and society. Our future supply of food is filled with risk, and history tells us that lack of food leads to war. But this also presents spectacular opportunities for fresh human creativity and technological achievement.” Everyone depends on food, every single day. We take for granted it will always be there – but the scientific evidence suggests the global food system that fed us in the 20th Century is now in big trouble, from multiple causes. What the world most needs, before almost any other priority, is a new global food system that can feed ten billion people or more on a hot, overcrowded, resource-depleted Planet reliably, every single day – and do so for at least a century until we can bring human numbers safely back to a level the Earth can support. The alternative is catastrophe: a growing succession of climate-driven famines, mass migration out of affected regions, collapse of governments and outright wars. Anyone who doubts this need only look at our history, which records many such events.