THE food system we have today is
both a miracle and a disaster. Defying
Malthusian predictions of mass famine,
modern intensive agriculture produces
more than enough calories (albeit unevenly distributed) to feed 7.8 billion of us: the biggest global population in human history.
But the food we eat – and the way we produce it – is doing terrible damage to our planet and to our health. The global food system is the single biggest contributor to biodiversity loss, deforestation, drought, freshwater pollution and the collapse of aquatic
wildlife. It is the second-biggest contributor to climate change, after the energy industry.
