Global hunger requires urgent attention to feed 9.7 billion people by 2050, Nobel, World Food Prize laureates say in ‘wake-up call’
Business Record Staff Jan 16, 2025 | 11:21 am
2 min read time
502 wordsAg and Environment, All Latest News, Iowa Stops HungerMore than 150 Nobel and World Food Prize laureates have issued a call to world leaders to prioritize research and technologies they say are needed to meet the food needs of 9.7 billion people by 2050 and avert a global hunger catastrophe.
An open letter signed by 133 Nobel and World Food Prize winners warns that the world is “not even close” to meeting future food needs.
Citing climate change and market pressure challenges, the letter calls for “planet-friendly ‘moonshot’ efforts leading to substantial, not just incremental, leaps in food production for food and nutrition security,” according to a news release from the World Food Prize Foundation.
Cary Fowler, joint 2024 World Food Prize laureate and the outgoing U.S. special envoy for global food security, coordinated the appeal. Other World Food Prize laureates who joined the call were NASA climate scientist Cynthia Rosenzweig, Ethiopian-American geneticist Gebisa Ejeta and Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank.
“All the evidence points to an escalating decline in food productivity if the world continues with business as usual,” Fowler said in a prepared statement. “With 700 million food insecure people today and the global population expected to rise by 1.5 billion by 2050, this leaves humanity facing a grossly unequal and unstable world. We know that agricultural research and innovation can be a powerful lever, not only for food and nutrition security, but also improved health, livelihoods and economic development. We need to channel our best scientific efforts into reversing our current trajectory, or today’s crisis will become tomorrow’s catastrophe.”
Among those who endorsed the letter were Robert Woodrow Wilson, who won the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics for his discovery that supported the big bang theory; Wole Soyinka, the first African writer to win the Nobel Prize in literature; Nobel physicist Roger Penrose; the 14th Dalai Lama; Joseph E. Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001; and Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, who shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2020 for discovering the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors.
The laureates highlighted the threat of climate change to food production, particularly in Africa, where the population is growing fastest yet yields of the staple crop maize are forecast to decline across almost its entire growing area. Other factors undermining crop productivity include soil erosion and land degradation, biodiversity loss, water shortages, conflict and policies restricting agricultural innovation.
The laureates also described the “moonshot” goals of improving the storage and shelf life of fruits and vegetables and creating nutrient-rich food from microorganisms and fungi.
“This is an ‘Inconvenient Truth’ moment for global hunger,” Mashal Husain, incoming president of the World Food Prize Foundation, said in a prepared statement. “Having the world’s greatest minds unite behind this urgent wake-up call should inspire hope and action. If we can put a man on the moon, we can surely rally the funding, resources and collaboration needed to put enough food on plates here on Earth. With the right support, the scientific community can deliver the breakthroughs to prevent catastrophic food insecurity in the next 25 years.”