Why Nobody Knows How Much Food We'll Need by 2050
Feeding everyone requires increasing agricultural production, but we don’t know by how much.
Picture yourself at the supermarket, idly pushing the trolley, browsing through aisles stocked with foods from every corner of the planet. A banana from Ecuador, almonds from California, olive oil from Spain… Each item represents a miracle of modern food logistics.
But here's what might shock you… Billions of people will never see the inside of a supermarket.
Around a third of global food sales are through supermarkets. This means that most people on the planet obtain their food from somewhere else, such as market stalls, street vendors, kitchen gardens, or subsistence farms.
A vast number also lack the financial means to purchase food. As of 2019, approximately 47% of the global population—around 3.6 billion people—lived on less than $6.85 daily, the updated international poverty line for upper-middle-income countries.
But here's the thing.
Rich or poor, everyone has to eat to survive.
So, how much food has to be produced to feed everyone?
In calorie terms (the energy content of food), it's roughly 23 trillion kilocalories per day, increasing at approximately 156 billion kilocalories per year.
How much food is needed to meet this metabolic need today and into the future?
Well, here's the shocking part… we don't even know how much.
In this newsletter issue, you'll discover why predicting future food demand is like trying to hit a moving target while riding a unicycle. But understanding a little of the coming challenge will help you…
Cut through misleading headlines about food security
Make sense of competing claims about population growth and food demand
Understand why some proposed solutions might work better than others
Gain practical insights for your own food choices
Realise that not everyone is lucky enough to find the Cheerios in aisle 6
Contribute meaningfully to discussions about our food future
Most importantly, you'll learn why uncertainty about future food demand might not be a problem but, instead, a crucial piece of information that can guide better decision-making today.
After all, as a mindful sceptic, isn't it better to embrace uncertainty than cling to false certainty?
Future global food demand
What is the future global food demand for 8 billion people, increasing at 8,000 per hour?
It is big, scarily big.
And the worst part is, we don’t even know how much more food we will need.
You will have noticed that in several issues of this newsletter comes the brutal reality of human population growth. The fossil fuel pulse has enabled us to grow exponentially in numbers. Humanity is an order of magnitude more abundant than at any other time in pre- and recorded history.
The exponential increase in the number of humans on the planet started in earnest with the Industrial Revolution and took off with the arrival of oil in the early 1900s.
The growth phase of the exponential curve is indeed ending, but before it does, another 2 to 3 billion people will be added to this population spike, all things being equal.
In my lifetime (I was born in 1961), over five billion more humans appeared on Earth, each needing their daily bread. While we've performed miracles to feed them all, we're about to discover if we've escaped or just postponed the Malthusian trap.
It is almost a cliche, but the fundamental energetics and resource use implications of 8 billion people alive, together with the 1.3 million extra people per week, cannot be ignored.
One of the most significant issues is how much food will be needed to meet future global food demand.
More than today, for sure, and that is already a vast production volume with complex agriculture and distribution systems to get the food onto tables.
How big is the future global food demand?
It is always hard to predict the future.
Who would have believed a futurist saying there would be two Trump presidencies, Brexit or Boris? Precision is elusive even when the processes are understood and there is a reliable precedent.
First, we need a prediction date for how much food will be required. Is it tomorrow, ten years from now, a generation hence or longer?
Most politicians want it far enough ahead to avoid affecting their immediate decisions or re-election chances, and the international diplomacy story is so slow they need many years to affect anything.
So, the current target date has settled on 2050.
Roughly 25 years, a generation, is far enough off and conveniently the middle of the century.
Target projection date, 2050.
Taking this target date, the estimated agricultural production increase over the current levels of food production required to meet global demand in 25 years ranges from 25% to 70%.
We won’t dwell on the details here, but check out some of the important ones in this academic summary by Ken Giller and colleagues.
Giller, K. E., Delaune, T., Silva, J. V., Descheemaeker, K., van de Ven, G., Schut, A. G., ... & van Ittersum, M. K. (2021). The future of farming: Who will produce our food? Food Security, 13(5), 1073-1099.
The uncertainty that means it could be a quarter or three-quarters more food comes from a combination of three sources:
difficulties in estimating the current levels of food production,
an uncertain number of people in 2050, and
uncertainty over what these people will eat.
Here is a little more on each of these sources of uncertainty.
Food production uncertainty
Yield estimates, trade figures, and commodity prices can measure the amount of food produced. These work reasonably well for food from intensive agricultural production, but fail to capture the output of the 500 million farmers who grow food for themselves and their families.
There is also uncertainty in the ability of soils to maintain yields of crops and livestock even with adequate inputs, as soil degradation affects more extensive areas of agricultural land and impacts global hunger.
Similarly, the availability of water for crops is highly uncertain.
We also do not know exactly how climate change will impact food production but we do know that agriculture has a role in climate mitigation.
We feed a significant amount of the grain crops we grow to livestock. Given the land pressure, soil health, climate, dietary preferences and the arrival of healthy meat alternatives, projecting the current ratios of grains fed to livestock into the future is risky.
In short, it is hard to say precisely how much food can or will be grown.
Future population uncertainty
The global population is 8 billion, growing at 8,000 people per hour, roughly 70 million additional people annually.
So, by 2050, there will be another 1.6 billion people.
But we don’t know if this rate will continue. Another pandemic, global conflict, or famine could drastically change the projection.
Projections for the global population increase, which is the primary driver of future global food demand, differ based on the estimation method and changing circumstances, especially food shortages in areas where growth is expected.
By 2050, it could be 9.6 billion people or several hundred million more or less.
Uncertainty over what people will eat
Then, we are unsure of what people will eat.
What we currently eat to source the bulk of our calories and nutrition—grains, seed oils, sugar and animal products—are not necessarily good for our metabolic health. But we do know that foods processed from these ingredients are generally palatable and cheap. Chocolate croissant, anyone?
And what we eat is what we can afford. Projecting future economic growth and wealth distribution is even more precarious than estimating food production.
In Europe, the population is expected to decline and age by 2050, but Europeans are likely to be increasingly aware of health issues and the link between poor health and diet.
Meanwhile, in sub-Saharan Africa, grain demand is expected to triple as populations grow, and the diet reflects the economic reality of many people in poorer countries. These people will eat carbohydrates—wheat, maize, rice—because they can be supplied in bulk at relatively lower prices than fruit, vegetables and proteins.
What will people eat? Grains, sugar, seed oils and some fruit, vegetables and protein. In what proportion is a guess.
We must live with a degree of uncertainty.
The range in the projection for future global food demand is vast
How big is the future global food demand? Well, it seems that we don’t know. More than today, but how much more is uncertain.
If today’s production is standardised to 100 food units daily, we might need anywhere between 125 and 170 units by the 2050 target date.
This is a vast range.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) predicts a 60% increase in food demand by 2050.
In 2020, they simplified the size of the challenge into a snappy phrase: 2% for 30.
Sidenote here.
The human population is a precarious 8 billion, growing at 8,000 per hour due to a fossil energy-fueled population spike. Demographers predict a demographic transition from a peak in the global population to a more stable number. A sustainable one might be 2-3 billion, but this will take at least 100 years.
Ecologists might quote Jared Diamond or Paul and Anne Erhlich or refer to any number of studies of natural populations and predict a collapse. Global catastrophes could occur, putting a massive dent in absolute and growth rate numbers. Economic collapse, war, famine… mutually assured destruction. All are possible.
But for now, let’s look on the bright side and assume that the current trajectory persists and 2% for 30 is required to meet future global food demand…
125% to 170% of what we grow and distribute now.
A shipping fleet analogy
Think of the future global food demand as the shipping fleet made up of the massive container vessels and grain carriers steaming across the oceans.
Food cargo is around 10 per cent of our total transportation in containers.
If we take the global number of container ships in service (5,300) and assume that 10% are used for food (530), then by 2050, the food supply chain will need between 130 and 400 additional ships.
Construction costs are around $100 million per ship, roughly, as there is a vast range of sizes these days, so in investment alone, we are looking at $13 billion to $40 billion just to build the extra fleet capacity.
Tunisia's GDP is $40 billion, and there are over 100 countries with lower GDPS. And this is to move the food around.
Tightening the range in estimations of future global food demand would be helpful for everyone, even the well-suited capitalists keen on their next high-return investment.
The shocking truth
Given the complexity of landing on a reliable amount for the additional food production required by 2050, a global view may be unhelpful. The range in the prediction is too high to be meaningful and we are left with ideas like the ‘2% for 30’ that summarise the best guess.
What trying to estimate future global food demand does, though, is demonstrate the size and scale of the challenge.
Is it 130 or 400 extra ships, or perhaps no extra ships because the supply chains are simplified, and food is grown closer to where it is eaten, with the necessary change in diets with season and accessibility of various foods?
Can finance, build and run 130 or 400 extra ships within the planetary boundaries? Such an addition to the fleet would require money, mineral resources, and energy to establish a vast land to grow the produce the ships would need to move along the six-continent food supply chain.
The shocking truth about future global food demand is that it is large, scarily large.
To meet this requires ever more extraordinary output and distribution from the global supply chains.
Humans have never produced so much food before. The fact that we find it hard to predict how large it is and determine how much more to invest in the food production system makes the situation worse.
I don’t think I want the market to solve this problem.
Do you?
What should a mindful sceptic do?
Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the numbers' sheer scale or uncertainty, I channel my inner mindful sceptic.
First, I acknowledge the emotional response. The prospect of feeding billions more people while working within planetary boundaries naturally triggers anxiety. But rather than letting that anxiety spiral, I use it as energy for curiosity. What exactly are we uncertain about? Where does this uncertainty come from?
Then, I look for what we do know with confidence…
Population is growing at a measurable rate
Current food systems rely heavily on fossil fuels
Supply chains are complex and vulnerable
Local food production could reduce transport needs
But here's where it gets interesting. Instead of jumping to conclusions or seeking uncomplicated solutions, I ask better questions:
"What assumptions am I making about food systems?"
"How might my local food choices connect to global patterns?"
"What evidence supports different approaches to food security?"
As a mindful sceptic, I recognise that this issue exists in layers from the personal (my food choices) to local (community food systems), and global (international trade and policy).
I know that I need to follow credible food system researchers but don't accept their conclusions without examination. I should look for data from multiple sources, especially when they disagree and stay alert to both breakthrough solutions and their limitations
I should learn about where my food comes from, perhaps experiment with seasonal eating. I might track my food waste or question my assumptions about what makes a "proper meal".
Once I am across some of the evidence I share what I learn about food systems with others and support local food initiatives while understanding their scope and limitations.
Come election time I might evaluate policy proposals through evidence rather than ideology, look for ways to support systemic changes as I stay engaged with the issue without becoming overwhelmed.
Being a mindful sceptic doesn't mean having all the answers. It means staying curious, evaluating evidence, and maintaining awareness of both the bigger picture and our place within it.
Sometimes, the most valuable thing we can do is help others understand the complexity of the challenge while working on practical, local solutions.
I might also write a book on the challenge of food production…
And one on what it means for food security…
Mindful Momentum
The Market-to-Meal Investigation
Visit three different food sources in your area, perhaps a supermarket, farmers' market, and local grocery. Buy the ingredients for the same meal at each location.
Compare…
Price differences
Food miles
Packaging
Seasonality
Quality and freshness
Cook each version and note the differences. This hands-on experiment teaches volumes about food distribution systems and local versus global supply chains.
Key Points
The scale of future global food demand presents a unique challenge of uncertainty - while experts predict we'll need between 25% and 70% more production by 2050, this wide range reflects the complexity of estimating both population growth and changing consumption patterns in a world adding 8,000 people every hour.
Our current food system relies heavily on complex global supply chains that require significant infrastructure - just to transport an increased food supply could require between 130-400 new container ships, an investment equivalent to Tunisia's entire GDP, raising questions about the system's sustainability and resilience.
The uncertainty in future food demand stems from three key factors that interact in complex ways: difficulties in estimating current food production levels especially from small-scale farmers, unpredictability in future population numbers, and changes in what and how people will eat as diets and food preferences evolve across different regions.
A mindful sceptic's approach to this challenge involves accepting uncertainty as a source of insight rather than paralysis, questioning assumptions about food systems, and taking practical action at personal and local levels while maintaining awareness of global interconnections and planetary boundaries. This balanced perspective allows for both critical analysis of the challenge and constructive engagement with potential solutions.
Curiosity Corner
What this issue is about…
As humanity adds 8,000 new dinner guests every hour, our biggest challenge isn't just producing more food—it's navigating the uncertainty of exactly how much more we'll need and finding sustainable ways to deliver it to 10 billion plates.
Here are 5 better questions that emerge from this exploration of future food demand:
How can we make meaningful decisions about food systems when faced with such a wide range of future scenarios? This is better because it shifts from the paralysis of uncertainty to constructive action, engaging both our analytical and practical capacities.
What assumptions about diet, agriculture and economics are embedded in our current projections of future food demand? This is better because it prompts us to examine the foundations of our thinking rather than just accepting the numbers at face value, a core practice of mindful scepticism.
In what ways might local food production reshape global shipping needs beyond just reducing transport distance? This is better because it explores systemic connections and encourages thinking about cascading effects rather than simple cause-and-effect relationships.
How can we balance the urgency of scaling up food production with the need to work within planetary boundaries? This is better because it acknowledges the tension between competing necessities and invites creative problem-solving rather than either/or thinking.
What might we learn about food security from examining why our current estimates vary so widely? This is better because it transforms uncertainty from a problem to be solved into a source of insight, exemplifying the mindful sceptic's approach to complexity.
Each of these questions invites deeper exploration and leads to more questions which is exactly what a mindful sceptic hopes for when approaching complex challenges. They help us move beyond the initial overwhelm of statistics and into meaningful inquiry about causes, connections, and possibilities.
Remember, in mindful scepticism, the quality of our questions often matters more than the immediacy of our answers.
What is your question?
In the next issue
The Leadership Question Nobody's Asking
Who should conduct the science orchestra? It's not the question you'd expect from an ecologist, but watching a conductor at the Sydney Opera House changed how I think about environmental leadership.
In the next issue, I'll explore why soil scientists rarely talk to economists, how climate modellers and conservation biologists pursue different goals, and the surprising parallels between artistic collaboration and solving our sustainability challenges.
You might never think about teamwork the same way again.