Today the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) at MIT announced a new research project, supported by the Jameel Community, to tackle one of the most urgent problems facing the planet: food insecurity. Around 276 million people around the world are food insecure, and more than half a million are facing hunger.
To better understand and analyze food security, this three-year research project will create a comprehensive index that assesses countries’ food security, called the Jameel Index for Food Trade and Vulnerability. Global changes driven by social and economic change, energy and environmental policy, regional politics, conflict, and climate change can affect food demand and supply. The Jameel Index will measure countries’ dependence on global food trade and imports and how these environmental threats may affect the ability to sell food products in different regions. The main output of the study will be a model to generate global food demand, supply balance, and bilateral trade under different future scenarios, with a focus on climate change. The work will help guide policymakers over the next 25 years as the world’s population is expected to grow, and the climate crisis is predicted to worsen.
The work will be a foundation project for the Food and Climate Change Alliance led by J-WAFS, or FACT Alliance. Officially launched at the COP26 climate conference last November, the FACT Alliance is a global network of 20 leading research centers and partner organizations that conduct research and innovation and deliver ideas for making better decisions for healthy, sustainable, balanced and sustainable food systems. rapidly changing climate. The effort is led by Greg Sixt, director of research for climate and food at J-WAFS, and Professor Kenneth Strzepek, climate, water and food expert at J-WAFS.
The poor state of our food systems
The need for this project is proven by the hundreds of millions of people around the world who are currently food insecure. Although there are several factors that contribute to food insecurity, climate change is one of the most prominent. Extreme weather events continue to cripple crop and livestock production around the world. From Southwest Asia to the Arabian Peninsula to the Horn of Africa, peoples migrate in search of food. In the United States, extreme heat and a lack of rain in the Southwest have lowered Lake Mead’s water levels significantly, impounding water and drying out fields.
Social, political and economic issues also hinder the food system. The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, supply disruptions, and rising prices are exacerbating food shortages. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dramatically worsens the situation, disrupting agricultural supplies from Russia and Ukraine – two of the world’s largest producers of wheat, sunflower seed oil and corn. Some countries such as Lebanon, Sri Lanka and Cuba are facing food shortages due to domestic financial problems.
There are few countries that will not be attacked by the threat of food security due to sudden interruptions in food production or trade. When the giant container ship reached the Suez Canal in March 2021, the important international trade route was closed for three months. Delays in international shipping affected food supplies around the world. These situations show the importance of food trade for achieving food security: a crisis in one part of the world can greatly affect the availability of food in another. This shows how interconnected the world’s food systems are and how vulnerable they are to external shocks.
A menu for preparing the future of food
Despite the need for secure food systems, there are huge knowledge gaps when it comes to understanding how different climates can affect agricultural production and food supply around the world. The Department’s Global Trade Analysis Project from Purdue University, and the current IMPACT modeling system from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), help test the status quo but are is to introduce or modify changes in the future.
In 2021, Strzepek and Sixt created the first Food Vulnerability Index (FIVI) as part of an environmental assessment of the threat of climate change to food security in the countries of the Cooperation Council Gulf and West Asia. FIVI is also limited in that it is able to assess current trade conditions and climate change threats to food production. In addition, the FIVI is a national index and does not address issues of hunger, poverty, or equality that result from regional differences within the country.
Greg Sixt of J -WAFS and FACT Alliance. “This timely list will be an important tool for policy makers to understand their food security vulnerabilities from different perspectives of the countries they buy their food from. The project will also demonstrate the sponsor-led approach, which is at the core of the FACT Alliance,” Sixt adds.
Phase 1 of the project will support collaboration between four FACT Alliance members: MIT J-WAFS, Ethiopian Agricultural Research Institute, IFPRI (also part of the CGIAR network), and the School of Martin of Oxford University. An external partner, the University of the United Arab Emirates, will also assist with project work. This first phase will build on Strzepek and Sixt’s previous work on FIVI by developing a comprehensive Global Food System Modeling Framework that takes into account climate and global changes projected to 2050, and evaluate their effects on domestic production, world market prices, and national balance. of payments and bilateral trade. This plan will also use an integrated approach that includes the evaluation of bilateral trade and macroeconomic factors related to different types of agricultural production under different climatic conditions and economic policy. In this way, consistent and consistent estimates of global food demand and supply balance, and bilateral trade under climate and global change can be achieved.
