dilemma: how do we ensure enough food for all of us?
Happily are more satisfied stomachs on earth than ever before. Throughout the world less people go to bed on an empty stomach – a development that continues to move in the right direction.
Yet many people still suffer from starvation. And in recent years the price on food has increased dramatically. A major reason for this is that supply simply cannot keep up with the increasing demand – causing the prices to increase as well. And when the prices increase, the poorest among us can no longer make ends meet.
Experts anticipate that by 2050 we will be almost 9 billion people on earth. That is almost 3 billion more mouths to feed than today. And the possibilities for increase in farm land availability are very few. From where then will all the food come, at a price affordable to us all?
This is a tough nut to crack, but one we have to crack! Nobody has all the answers, but we do have enough answers to begin cracking the nut already today – if we want to.
- We can begin by using the available farm land to grow food. That way we grow food for humans and not for cars. Biofuel is a good idea. But if the consequence is that food is grown for fuel, it’s not a proper solution.
- And we can utilization the things we grow in the most effective way. For example, why feed our cows valuable corn when their stomach is designed to eat grass, something we humans don’t eat? And why feed our pigs soya beans when their stomach is accustomed to eat various kinds of leftovers that we humans dispose of anyway?
- And we can avoid food waste. Today more than one third of all the food we produce ends up as waste. This is perfectly good and edible food which ends up in the garbage bin. It is a foolish way to manage the household and bad for the global food scarcity.
- And finally, we can eat a bit mere of the green stuff. And we can limit ourselves to one steak a week, and instead eat fish, chicken and pork.
The list could continue, but we have to squeeze in one more point: we have a lot to learn from the Japanese and their consumption of ocean vegetables. Seaweed, that is. The oceans contain huge areas that are perfectly fitting for growing various kinds of seaweed. This could help close the gap between the amounts of food we need and the amounts of food we are capable of producing. In that regard the list of the positive qualities of seaweed can be added one extra point: seaweed can help ease the food scarcity today and in the future.
At Stick’n’Sushi we try to behave in a way that contributes to a sustainable present and future, where all can go to sleep on a satisfied stomach. Therefore we can’t support foolish biofuels, therefore we speak up against inefficient utilization of food, therefore we avoid food waste and find use of the leftovers - the best way we know, therefore we offer a varied meal that is not solely based on meat, and therefore we think that we should all eat some more seaweed.
We can always improve ourselves at Stick’n’Sushi, but we do the best we possibly can.
