United Nations — While the modern agricultural system has helped stave off famines and feed the world's 7 billion residents, the way we eat and produce food is posing a threat to future populations' food security.
With an expected increase in population to 10 billion in 2050, ensuring food security is more important than ever.
However, current food production is among the largest sources of environmental degradation across the world.
If such production and consumption patterns continue, we will soon exceed our planetary boundaries such climate change and land use needed to survive and thrive.
"It was quite dramatic to see how much those planetary boundaries would be exceeded if we don't do anything," said Marco Springmann, one of the authors of a report examining the impact of the food system on the environment.
"The food system puts pressure on land management, in particular deforestation. If you knock down too many forests, you basically really mess up the regulating system of the ecosystem because forests store carbon dioxide but they also are habitats for wild species and biodiversity reservoirs," he added
Over 40 percent of the world's land has been converted or set aside for agriculture alone. This has resulted in the loss of more than half of the world's forests.
The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) notes that commercial agriculture is a key driver, especially the production of beef, soy beans, and palm oil.
This can be seen in the Amazon where trees have been cut down and land converted to make way for agricultural activities such as cattle ranching and soy cultivation, much of which is used as animal feed rather than for human consumption.
In fact, half of the planet's usable land surface is devoted to livestock or the growing of feed for those animals, an area equivalent to North and South America combined.
The intensive use of fertilizers has further diminished land productivity, leading to degradation and even desertification.
Moreover, such actions have contributed significantly to greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).
According to the "Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits" report, published in the Nature journal, the food system emitted over 5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2010 alone.
The study also estimates that the environmental effects of the food system could increase by 50-90 percent without any targeted measures, beyond the "safe operating space for humanity."
Springmann pointed to three ambitious measures that are necessary in order to stay within environmental limits including technological improvements which can increase sustainable food production and thus decrease the demand for more cropland.
Another measure seems to be even more daunting: shifting to a plant-based diet.
"If you go even more plant-based that would be even better for greenhouse gas emissions, and also it is more well-balanced and better for your health the estimates are such that we would reduce the pressure on land use if we changed our diets," Springmann told IPS.
The Nature report found that dietary changes towards healthier diets could help reduce GHG emissions and other environmental impacts by almost 30 percent.
A new report from the EAT-Lancet Commission also highlighted the need for dietary changes for environmental sustainability and public health.
"The food we eat and how we produce it determines the health of people and the planet, and we are currently getting this seriously wrong," says one of the commission authors Tim Lang.
"We need a significant overhaul, changing the global food system on a scale not seen before in ways appropriate to each country's circumstances. While this is unchartered policy territory and these problems are not easily fixed, this goal is within reach.... the scientific targets we have devised for a healthy, sustainable diet are an important foundation which will underpin and drive this change," he added.
EAT-Lancet Commission's recommended planetary health diet requires the consumption of red meat to be cut by half, while vegetables, fruit, and nuts must double.
North America has one of the highest meat consumption rates in the world. In 2018, American meat consumption hit a record high as the average consumer ate over 222 pounds of red meat and poultry.
If they are to follow the planetary health guidelines, North Americas would have to cut their consumption of red meat by 84 percent and eat six times more beans and lentils.
While plant-based diets have gained popularity in the region, seen through the success of the Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger companies, Springmann noted that information alone may not be enough to promote dietary changes.
"Of course, everyone can change their diet and it would be great if they can do that. But if it is not made easy for the average consumer to do that then many people won't do it," he said.
Springmann suggested changing the prices of food products to include health and environmental impacts.
Beef for example would need to cost 40 percent more on average due to its contribution to GHG emissions.
This provides governments with potential revenue to invest in other areas such as the subsidization of healthier products.
In addition to dietary changes, the EAT-Lancet Commission state that zero loss biodiversity, net zero expansion of agricultural land into natural ecosystems, and improvements in fertilizer and water use efficient are needed.
"The transformation that this Commission calls for is not superficial or simple, and requires a focus on complex systems, incentives, and regulations, with communities and governments at multiple levels having a part to play in redefining how we eat," said The Lancet's Editor-in-Chief Richard Horton.
"Our connection with nature holds the answer, and if we can eat in a way that works for our planet as well as our bodies, the natural balance of the planet's resources will be restored. The very nature that is disappearing holds the key to human and planetary survival," he added.

Source: Allafrica.com

Much has been written about how buying cheaper, smaller companies with rising prices, and shorting the opposite, has helped investment returns. These concepts, often called factors, were popularized by the research of Eugene Fama and Kenneth French. Indeed, this approach is now sufficiently popular that low-cost Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) exist to programmatically replicate aspects of these strategies. Nonetheless, research, including papers by Fama and French once again, have unpicked other themes that help drive investment performance.
Investing Less
Generally, companies that spend less money on big projects, see better share price performance than those that are big spenders on a new plant or machinery. This makes sense because spending money on plant and machinery is cash that is not being returned to shareholders, and may tend toward empire-building rather than disciplined capital allocation. Also, large capital projects have a tendency to run late and over-budget, so greater capital spending exposes companies to potentially greater risk. The idea was highlighted in Fama and French's 2015 paper updating their asset pricing model.
Higher Profitability
One insightful measure of profitability is to look at profits relative to assets. What return is a company actually making on the investments it has already made? When this number is higher, it has historically lead to improved share-price performance on average. This result appears to be quite robust, since other measurements of profitability seem to reach the same result. Arguably, this is an important aspect of Warren Buffett’s investing approach, building on the work of Ben Graham. Buffett works to find companies that are not merely earning profits, but are doing so in a way that they can then reinvest those profits at a high rate of return. Academic research has shown the validity of that approach. This has been highlighted again, in the 2012 paper by Robert Novy-Marx and subsequently reflected in Fama and French's work.
Not Issuing Shares
Issuing shares typically hurts share price performance. Again, the issuance of shares may suggest a firm that demands capital rather than producing it, hurting investment performance. Also, management's decision to issue equity rather than to fund projects differently or delay them, may suggest a lack of alignment with shareholders. Research by David Ikenberry found that companies that repurchase their own shares tend to outperform the market. R. David McLean has shown that companies issuing shares tend to underperform, and this result tends to hold across countries.
Taking Less Risk
Contrary to what you might expect, researchers have not found an expected relationship between risk and return, in fact, they have found the opposite. Companies which are less financially secure, actually tend to perform worse than more robust firms. It appears that, on average, investors have a tendency to seek out risky situations, and bid them up in price more than they should, but that returns to these setups can be unattractive on average.
Source: forbes.com