Climate change poses a threat. In Sweden we take it for granted that our food supply is assured thanks to our own production and import from a functioning market. But in reality things are different. Sweden is vulnerable to global change, and the Government should establish a strategy for a secure food supply, say SLU:s Vice-Chancellor Lisa Sennerby Forsse and Johan Kuylenstierna, Adjunct Professor at Stockholm University, in a debate article in Dagens Nyheter on 31 December 2012.
The world focused more on food supply during the food crisis of 2007 – 2008, when the price of agricultural products soared. The causes were climate-related factors, low food reserves, high energy prices (and hence high costs for use of artificial fertilisers), growing competition for land from biofuels, market speculation and national panic measures relating to trade and import duties.
Since raw material costs are a very small proportion of the final price paid in Swedish food stores, we did not notice the crisis to any great extent at home. This lulled us into a sense of false security.
What will happen if climate change causes ever more harm in the handful of countries that currently account for the majority of staple food products? How will our own food supply capacity be affected as a growing proportion of productive agricultural land succumbs to urban sprawl? How will the tiger economies of Asia and Latin America affect prices and availability?
How can we assure continued high food production in Sweden in the face of rapidly growing competition for non-renewable resources and nutrients, particularly phosphorus, and soaring prices? What impact will the necessary transition to use of biofuels in the energy sector have?
Some of the factors unhappily combining to cause rising food prices during 2007 – 2008 can be regarded as underlying drivers that can be expected to become increasingly important:
Climate change threatens to have a serious impact on agricultural regions of key importance to global food supply, such as the US, Argentina and Australia. Last summer's severe drought in the US, which affected 80 per cent of agricultural land, gives a foretaste of what we can expect. A recent report by the World Bank identifies this as one of the truly central issues facing us in the future, in a world where the average temperature may be four degrees higher than today by the end of this century.
This will have an enormous impact on the agricultural sector, yet the outcome of the climate negotiations in Doha instils little hope that sufficient global action will be taken. Adaptation will be increasingly important.
Competition for natural resources such as land and water, as well as nutrients and energy, will increase. We will have to produce more food for a growing population, currently seven billion people; perhaps ten billion by 2050. Even now we can see massive urban expansion encroaching on former agricultural land, and changing patterns of consumption increasing the pressure on global resources.
The change in use of agricultural land from food production to production of other products and services, such as biofuels, fibres or cattle feed.
Powerful change processes thus continue to influence developments – and hence Sweden. We need better data on which to base decisions and a clearer strategy so that we can cope with both expected and potential changes affecting our own food supply in the near and long term.
We therefore propose that the Government initiate development of a Swedish strategy for a secure food supply focusing on 2030 and 2050.
The strategy should:
• be long-term and command broad political support;
• present an overview of various drivers already affecting and potentially affecting availability, price and supply capacity, and how those drivers can be managed;
• present proposed action to reduce the risks associated with extreme price fluctuations, and proposes ways in which Sweden can deal with risks arising due to food shortages;
• present measures for particularly vulnerable groups based on the trend towards less food supply security that can be seen in both Sweden and other OECD countries in the wake of the economic crisis;
• clarify Sweden's role in international efforts to achieve globally secure food supply (within the framework of the Policy for Global Development);
• present proposed ways in which Swedish agriculture can be developed to form a more integrated part of the work being done to achieve a nationally and internationally secure food supply. Here there is great potential;
• clarify the relationship between Sweden's present and future food supply and international trade, investments in other countries, etc;
• explain how Swedish research should be developed to respond to identified needs and trends.
The strategy should be formulated in broad collaboration between relevant public agencies, research institutions and representatives from the agricultural sector. It is also crucial to involve elements of private enterprise: companies that are directly involved in the sector, as well as the financial sector, whose role as a key player in global food trade has come increasingly to the fore in recent years.
The strategy should present various scenarios so as better to address the risks, alternative development routes and changing conditions in the world around us.
We hope that the Government sees the strategic value of a coherent Swedish strategy to secure food supply, and that this process can therefore be started as soon as possible, with the aim of being completed by 2014.
Johan Kuylenstierna, Director of the Stockholm Environment Institute and Adjunct Professor at Stockholm University.
Lisa Sennerby Forsse, Vice-Chancellor of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).