Food-Water-Energy Nexus.

Overview:

At the dawn of agriculture roughly 10,000 years ago (c. 8,000 B.C.), the world population was approximately 5 million people. Between 8,000 B.C. and the dawn of the industrial revolution (c. 1800), the population reached 1 billion. Where it had taken the totality of human history to reach the first billion, the second billion came in only 130 years (1930). The third billion came even quicker, taking less than 30 years to arrive (1959). Today, just 56 years later, the global population has more than doubled to 7.39 billion. By 2050, the United Nations projects that the there will be an astounding 9.7 billion hungry mouths to feed on our planet. Without meaningful advancements in food production, water conservation and energy efficiencies, our planet is in real trouble.

Feeding 9.7 billion people will place an unprecedented strain on our planet’s natural and capital resources. Today, agriculture already uses approximately 70% of the available freshwater on the planet and we still have almost 800 million undernourished people in our global community.

In order to adequately feed our current population as well as the 2.5 billion new individuals we are expecting, we will need to dramatically increase our global food production, and do so in sustainable ways. New farmland will need to come into production and these farms will compete with the rapidly expanding cities for every inch of space. In addition to new production, greater efficiencies will need to be achieved, both in overall crop yields but also their water footprint – “crop-per-drop”. Finally, it will be necessary to address the energy intensity of our food production methods and supply chains, which today accounts for 30% of the world’s total energy consumption. More food will certainly require more water and energy.

No single company or organization will ever have all of the answers we will need to achieve an adequate level of security for our food, water and energy resources. To face this challenge will require new and innovative multi-stakeholder partnerships, new technological advances and a tremendous amount of capital.

Moreland Advisors is doing its part, working with stakeholders across the food-water-energy nexus to identify and accelerate new technologies, capital structures and partnership models. We then bring these three disparate sectors together to engage in collaborative, transparent ways to meet our food, water and energy production challenges.