Food Security from an expert...what shortage?

Having read a degree, you would think that I should have met a few professors in my time....if I am honest to my knowledge I think I have only ever spoken to two. The first was pretty uninspiring and the second, Professor David Hughes was quite the opposite. So driving out of Melbourne, Victoria, on my way to meet Professor Albert Mcgill, I was not sure what I was going to ask, whether it would be relevant or more importantly whether it would get an answer....

Professor Albert McGill is a Fellow of the International Academy of Food Science and Technology (IAFoST), operates a consultancy and advisory service, Future for Food, is a Visiting Professor at Fuzhou University, PR China, and has been a Visiting and is an Associate Fellow at the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization at Oxford University.

So how did it go then...? Well I can honestly say one of the most interesting people I have ever met. You do not meet many people that you can listen to all day, but Albert is certainly one of them. Not only has he lived a interesting life of travel and adventure but he can challenge you and leave you thinking hard about how you have thought about things before.

As Nuffield scholars we spent a few days in London where we first met each other. We had some great meetings with Defra, NFU, Natural England and the then shadow minister for agriculture in the House of Lords. It is only now almost a year down the line am I starting to feel able to question what they said to us. 

When I asked Albert what he thought about the whole growing global population and what we as food people could do to solve this problem..(big question I know, but I thought I would go in there all guns blazing!!) He looked at me and said why is that people think farming and food are the same thing.....We all think that to solve the problem the answer is in growing more food but if you look at food security, which by definition is to make sure in good time not after natural disasters there is no hunger, in a global sense we have food surplasses at the moment. If you add to this the fact that at the moment there is a global food wastage rate of 12% then surely there is plenty of food to go around. 


As I sit in Hong Kong writing this blog, (doing a bit of catch up...) I see a panic article in the Telegraph from the CEO of Unilever stating the case for the need of increased food production...quite relevant to this blog....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/davos/8261856/Unilever-chief-warns-over-global-crisis-in-food-output.html

Albert at this point was looking frustrated....why is it that no government or professional body of which there are plenty have actually looked at this topic from the corner of the consumer. His view is that half of the problem is getting people to buy what they actually need and not what they think might be useful in the future. Getting supermarkets / retailers to buy all food that is grown and not just the straight veg as opposed to the beans that have a slight kink in them....

The next issue is to look at what blockers there are that are stopping this surplus from getting to the parts of the world that are hungry...are they economic, political or logistical??

Albert is a man that is a straight talker, and in my view talks a lot sense. Everybody is focussed on mass production when the biggest issue at the moment is mass waste. When talking about food shortages they are thinking about farming yet you can not walk into a field of wheat and pick up a loaf of bread. Food and farming are very different beasts and the challenge is surely getting the raw material from the farm into food in the most efficient fashion.....the problem is that this is not happening at all successfully at the moment.

Here is a recent paper written by Albert to wet your appetites further. Albert many thanks for a thought inspiring lunch, I will definitely be bugging you for further thoughts in the coming months and years!!

http://www.worldfoodscience.org/cms/?pid=1004536