Why
Food security is defined as having enough, nutritious, safe food available and accessible ensuring a healthy and productive life for everyone. Food security is affected by many aspects; urbanisation, population growth, erratic climatic and environmental conditions, dependency on imports and inflation of production commodities.
To ensure global food security it is estimated that the total food production will need to be increased by more than 70% by 2050. This alone already alludes to the magnitude of the challenge we face.
Even more alarming is the fact that we are currently behind, still having hunger and malnutrition problems in many countries. The FAO through the 2023 State of Food Security and Nutrition articulates this clearly.
About 29.6 % of the global population – 2.4 billion people – were moderately or severely food insecure in 2022, of which about 900 million (11.3 % of people in the world) were severely food insecure.
Climate change / erratic weather patterns, environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity and resource scarcity due to historical non-sustainable practices further add to the challenge.
The importation of products is also an indicator that we currently are not on a sustainable trajectory.
The world food import bill was estimated to have reached an all-time high in 2022 of nearly 2 trillion USD, increasing by 10% from 2021. World fertiliser prices also soared as a result of rising energy and natural gas prices. Added to this the input import bill was estimated to increase by 48% in 2022!
All of these factors heavily contributed to the overall inflation of prices on local and national levels. This ultimately influences not only access to nutritious food, as it is becoming more and more difficult to produce food but also the availability because of the affordability of healthy food.
It should also be noted that although these figures are very alarming the challenge of food security is not only linked to developing third-world economies but also to established first-world countries. A key factor in food security is associated with access to nutritious food. Looking at the prevalence of micronutrient deficiencies and overweight or obesity figures and also non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and certain types of cancer. It quickly becomes clear that this is a multifaceted global problem of all nations and nationalities.
Green Stream Nutrients aims to solve not only the sustainable food production / security problem but the holistic agricultural problem.
In order to create a sustainable future we need to develop Sustainable Agriculture Systems to produce the 3 main agricultural products:
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Nutritious Food
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Nutrient dense Medicines/Nutraceuticals
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Beautiful Ornamentals
At Green Stream Nutrients we are creating an agricultural solution that prioritises recirculation or upcycling of nutrition/biological streams while focusing on nutritional density/quality, resource efficiency, climate volatility resilience, renewable technologies, and environmental and natural resource stewardship.
Sustainable across three main factors/considerations namely, economic, social and environmental. These considerations are intrinsically interconnected but need to be integrated, kept in tension and adaptable considering viability for current and future generations.
17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted in 2015 by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
At least 7 or up 13 of these goals are promoted through GSN products. Healthy nutritious food / ornamentals is produced sustainably and accessible to all consumers.
