Food & Agriculture

• Apart from the utilities sector, Trend Micro anticipates attacks in 2020 to increase on the food production, transportation, and manufacturing sectors, which increasingly use IoT applications and human-machine interfaces.
• Reducing food loss and waste is an integral part of the EU's Farm to Fork Strategy for a fair, healthy and environmentally friendly food system, which proposes to set legally binding targets to reduce food waste across the EU by 2023.
• The number of food insecure people reached 7.7 million in Zimbabwe in the first quarter of 2020, and WFP projects 8.6 million people to be food insecure by the end of 2020 (3.3 million in urban areas).
• 270 million people will become acutely food insecure in the countries of WFP presence, by the end of 2020 if no action is taken, an 82% increase compared to the number of acutely food insecure pre-COVID.
• Covid-19 could double the number of people in low and middle-income countries facing acute food insecurity by the end of 2020.
• By 2050 the carbon market could provide income of $40 billion to the land sector (with particular opportunities for agriculture).
• Malaysia's Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industries expects the national durian production to increase up to 443,000 metric tonnes by 2030.
• The Irish government's Waste Action Plan for a Circular Economy plans to introduce a levy on disposable cups, introduce a deposit return scheme for plastic bottles and cans, and halve food waste by 2030.
• Rising incomes and shifts in food preferences will greatly increase demand for nutritious food in the coming decades, and the ocean can be a big part of meeting that demand.
• Interest in healthy and sustainable lifestyles could be worth $25 billion and make up around 10% of the value of Australia's food and agribusiness sector by 2030.
• The global demand for food is projected to increase by 50% by 2050, meaning that without a substantial increase in supply, many more people will be at risk of hunger.
• The US Department of Agriculture has scaled up its estimate for India's cotton output in 2020-21 (Aug-Jul) to 30.0 mln bales (1 US bale = 218 kg) from 29.7 mln bales projected in the previous month, in its latest report.
• Vegetation regrowth could remove as much as nine to 16 years of global fossil fuel CO 2 emissions, if demand for meat were to drastically plummet in the coming decades along with its massive land requirements.
• The world now has 60% less fresh water available than it did 50 years ago, while demand for food is forecast to rise by 50% in the next 30 years, driven in large part by the expansion of the middle class in Asia.
• Vegetables could be grown a number of times during the year via drip-irrigation as opposed to only once a year when relying on natural precipitation during the rainy season.
• The demand for water from the private sector is expected to drastically increase in coming decades - especially in agriculture, manufacturing, and energy production and distribution - whilst reliable water resources are under threat from pollution, overexploitation and climate change.
• The EU Green Deal includes the adoption of several strategies relevant to the preservation of freshwater including the Circular Economy Action Plan, the 'Farm to Fork' strategy, the Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, the EU Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change and the Zero Pollution Action Plan.
• Pork demand in the U.S. has been sluggish for several years, but soaring retail meat sales due to the COVID-19 pandemic offer a renewed opportunity to grow market share.
• The global market for 3D food printing was valued at $423.0 million in 2019 and is projected to reach a market value of $1.0 billion by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 16.1% during the forecast period (2020-2025).
• The world will have to produce 50% more food by 2050 if the global populOver the next 15 years, global demand for meat is expected to increase by 40% triggered by a growing number of people adopting protein-rich diets.
• The ban on Germany, which has supplied about 14% of China's pork imports so far in 2020, will push up demand for meat from other major suppliers like the United States and Spain, boosting global prices.
• By 2050, global demand for food will increase by 50% and 3.5 billion people could suffer from food insecurity.
• Necessary measures to transform U.S. crop production will include increasing the market share of organic food from its current 5.5% of all food sales and 10% of all produce (fruit and vegetable) sales to 50% of all sales by 2030.

Last updated: 04 October 2020