Sharma's viewpoint is that the world produces more than enough food already, and that there are other factors we need to consider rather than be bounced into this brave new world of 'sustainable intensification'.
Here is a collection of extracts from the report :
"Hunger remains widespread. 925 million people experience hunger: they lack access to sufficient of the major macronutrients (carbohydrates, fats and protein). Perhaps another billion are thought to suffer from ‘hidden hunger’, in which important micronutrients (such as vitamins and minerals) are missing from their diet, with consequent risks of physical and mental impairment. In contrast, a billion people are substantially over-consuming, spawning a new public health epidemic involving chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Much of the responsibility for these three billion people having suboptimal diets lies within the global food system.
This challenge is already recognised in the target of Millennium Development Goal 1. This aims to halve the number of undernourished people from the 1990 level of 16% to 8% in 2015. The current figure is 13.5%. Although China met its target in the early 2000s, many countries in Africa and south Asia are unlikely to succeed by 2015; although there has been a slight fall (from 1,020 million to 925 million over the past 12 months), progress has been slow.
Although global estimates of waste are reliant so far on a weak evidence base, there is little doubt that the scale is substantial. It has been estimated that as much as 30% of all food grown worldwide may be lost or wasted before and after it reaches the consumer. Some estimates have placed it as high as 50%. Addressing waste across the entire food chain will be critical in any strategy to feed around eight billion people sustainably and equitably by 2030, and nine billion by 2050. Halving the total amount of food waste by 2050 is considered to be a realistic target, in view of the evidence reviewed by this Project. If the current global estimate of 30% waste is assumed, then halving the total could reduce the food required by 2050 by an amount approximately equal to 25% of today’s production."
I'm not sure if the maths of all this adds up to the conclusion that we already produce enough food but we distribute it badly, waste it directly and indirectly by over consumption. With the projected population growth and the consumption aspirations of developing regions I am sure it suggests more production is required even if we can solve the inequities in the current system.
Far from the current system being broken let's celebrate its successes. As well as the hunger reduction mentioned above, against a background of population growth (I haven't found the growth figure for the same period), there are these production growth figures:
"Overall, relatively little new land has been brought into agriculture in recent decades. Although global crop yields grew by 115% between 1967 and 2007, the area of land in agriculture increased by only 8% and the total currently stands at approximately 4,600 million hectares."
