How is it that we as a population can make enough food to feed all of the people on the planet, yet millions of people are still starving every day? This question was posed by author Hannah Ritchie in her book Not the End of the World. She also questions how we are to sustain our food needs without destroying our planet. Ritchie believes these questions are best answered in tandem, and she does so while giving her opinions and presenting research data about these matters. Breaking them into two individual questions helped me grasp her concepts and opinions while forming my own about her thoughts. Ritchie answers the question of starvation while making adequate food supplies by stating that it is due to world inequality. “Hundreds of millions don’t get enough …show more content…
Feeding almost half of all cereals made go to livestock, but only a small percentage of meat in return is a large reason why we struggle to feed the planet today. “How are we going to feed everyone without destroying the planet?” (pp. 167). One example Ritchie provided includes modern farming where she states we can feed our population with much less land than we currently use; “Possibly as little as 4 to 8 million km if we achieve very productive farming across the world and move to plant-based diets (which are very big ifs)” (pp 168). Since Ritchie knows that this solution is not very likely to happen, she instead proposes an idea to build a more sustainable food system. One example she gives is improving crop yields. To have a sustainable food system, all of the world will need to improve on crop yields; especially across sub-Saharan Africa where the crop yields are staggeringly low. Ritchie explains that we can accomplish this by developing new varieties of crops that are more resistant to drought, withstand higher temperatures, and will need less fertilizers and