Water and food shortages will force people to change their eating habits.

The Guardian (UK) published a report on August 26, 2012, pointing out that water shortages will have a huge impact on food production, and that solving the food problem for the 9 billion people expected in 2050 will require some drastic changes, scientists say.

Water resource scientists have issued a serious warning on the issue of global food supply: the world population may have to go almost entirely vegetarian within the next 40 years in order to avoid a catastrophic food shortage. Currently humans obtain about 20% of their total protein from animal-based foods, but research shows this must fall to around 5% to be enough to feed the additional 2 billion people between now and 2050. Scientist Malik Falkenmark of the Stockholm International Water Institute (IWMI) in Sweden, together with research partners, pointed out: "If we continue to maintain the current Western diet, there simply is not enough water to grow the food needed for the 9 billion people of 2050. To achieve this goal, the conditions required include: reducing animal-based foods to 5% of total calorie intake, and ensuring that water-scarce regions have a reliable food trade system."

Water shortages reducing food production will leave the United Nations (UN) and Oxfam facing a second wave of global food crisis within the next 5 years. Staple foods such as corn, because of drought in the United States and Russia and monsoon rainfall in Asia, have already risen 50% in price on international markets from June to now. In the Sahel region, 18 million people are already facing food shortages. Oxfam predicts that soaring food prices will bring devastating shocks to many developing countries that rely on imported food. Food shortages caused civil unrest in 28 countries back in 2008.

A vegetarian diet is one way to provide more food. Compared with a vegetarian diet, high-protein animal foods require 10 times the amount of water, and one third of the world's arable land is used to grow feed for animals to eat. Other methods include avoiding waste and increasing trade between food-deficit countries and food-surplus countries. Scientists also noted that although the amount of food production available per person continues to rise, 900 million people are already in a state of hunger, 2 billion are undernourished, and 70% of water resources today are used in agriculture; producing enough food in 2050 to satisfy an additional 2 billion people will place enormous pressure on water and land.

These research findings were presented at the annual water conference in Stockholm, Sweden, with participants including 2,500 political figures, UN agencies, and scholars and NGO representatives from 120 countries. The report also pointed out that food production will have to compete with other users for water resources. The United Nations estimates that we need to increase food production by 70% by the middle of this century, which will bring enormous pressure, because we also need to allocate some water resources for power generation, and electricity demand will rise 60% over the next 30 years -- especially for the 1.3 billion people who currently have no electricity in their daily lives.

Another IWMI report pointed out that the best way to protect farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asian countries is to help them invest in small pumps and simple technology, rather than expensive large-scale irrigation projects. Director General Dr. Colin Chartres also pointed out: "From past experience, we have seen time and again that the majority of the world's poor who depend on agriculture for their living suffer from water shortages, especially in today's fragile global food system; many smallholders urgently need small-scale local water resource solutions, which could help them increase their harvests by 300%, bringing tens of billions of US dollars in income to sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia."

This article was translated from: The Guardian (UK) - report dated August 26, 2012