Well you're talking about a huge shift in the food industry there. I'm not saying that can't or won't happen, but as it is right now the main source of food (a conscious decision of the industry itself) is grain. It is the primary commodity of the industry and it is used for everything. It is used to feed over 90% of all livestock, is used in nearly all packaged food (try going down the isles and see how many products with an ingredients list you actually find that have no corn-based ingredients in them, there won't be many. try doing the same thing but selecting products that have no grain based ingredients at all. there'll be almost none), and it is subsidized by the government so that it can happen as fast and large as possible in order to meet the demand put on it by both industry leaders and the consumers themselves. The number is around 85, eighty five freaking percent of all food produced in the whole world is grain.
So what we have is a global population that subsists almost entirely off grain. The problem is that grain takes a huge amount of land and water to produce; it is actually a relatively inefficient organism (in fact the species we've selected to mass produce aren't even very efficient as far as grains go, there are much better species to choose from). Since it's such an inefficient crop, needed to be replanted every year no less, our farming practices have had to focus on maximizing the output of each acre of land. Well this would seem like a good idea even at first glance, get the most out of what you got why not right? Again the problem is how it's done. We developed our farming methods and technology to a huge extent in order to get as much out of the ground as possible and during the 20th century grain output exploded at an exponential rate. I could say that it was the demand that forced the methods to change, but it is also true that the farming methods themselves made it possible for such a spike in demand. In any case, the two have grown hand in hand and now there are some er.. bad things that should be noticed.
bad thing 1: the methods we created are harmful to the land we're trying to grow from itself. I don't mean harmful in a 'oh no your big metal tillers are hurting the poor earth's skin' hippie bullshit way. I mean that each year the soil itself is depleted, nutrient levels are reduced, chemical balances are skewed and have to be recorrected artificially, and the amount of top soil itself is lessened. In short the way we farm is unsustainable because it slowly destroys the very land we need to grow. This isn't just a scientific theory of industrial farming, this is actually already happening in places all around the world where industrial farming has either been going on for a long time or where the soil was already deficient but was used anyway.
bad thing 2: the rate of expansion of grain output was tremendous only a few decades ago. However, in the last couple decades and especially in the last 5 years, grain expansion has been drastically reduced. The growing demand hasn't. The lack of expansion is due to several things. Firstly our technological methods have been quite refined and there hasn't been any major discovery that's made it possible to further boost our existing efficiency by any large margin. Secondly as mentioned in bad thing #1, the soil itself around the globe is becoming less able to produce due to our overproduction. Around 40% of the worlds agricultural soil is already nutrient deficient. The number is growing exponentially with demand. And thirdly it's because we're running out of space to grow.
This last point is something further exacerbated by the climate shifts already happening and which are expected to continue happening. We don't see it here as much (it is, however, evident), but in hotter places in the world, millions of hectares are undergoing drought and the dry areas are growing in size each year.
Every heard of the food reserve? It's a backlog of surplus grains the world kept aside in case of emergency food shortages. Well for the past 6 years humanity has eaten more food than it's produced and that food reserve has gone from a supply capable of feeding the planet for around 120 days to under 50. That number is going to be even lower by the end of next year. In less than a decade that food reserve wont exist.
The demand for food is expected to increase by another 50% by 2050.
The soil is getting worse.
The climate is getting worse.
There are getting more of us.
This is just one angle. I haven't even mentioned water.
Smile.
