The Future of The Global Food Supply at Risk
by BBC
In the past year, we have seen food riots on three continents, food inflation has rocketed and experts predict that by 2050, if things don't change, we will see mass starvation across the world. This film sees George Alagiah travel the world in search of solutions to the growing global food crisis.
From the two women working to make their Yorkshire market town self-sufficient to the academic who claims it could be better for the environment to ship in lamb from New Zealand, George Alagiah meets the people who believe they know how we should feed the world as demand doubles by the middle of the century.
George joins a Masai chief among the skeletons of hundreds of cattle he has lost to climate change and the English farmer who tells him why food production in the UK is also hit. He spends a day eating with a family in Cuba to find out how a future oil shock could lead to dramatic adjustments to diets. He visits the breadbasket of India to meet the farmer who now struggles to irrigate his land as water tables drop, and finds out why obesity is spiralling out of control in Mexico.
Back in Britain, George investigates what is wrong with people's diets, and discovers that the UK imports an average of 3000 liters of water per capita every day. He talks to top nutritionist Susan Jebb, DEFRA minister Hilary Benn and Nobel laureate Rajendra Pachauri to uncover what the future holds for our food.