Humanity in 2025 is facing major and pressing problems. At the forefront are geopolitical tensions between Washington, Brussels, Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran. Wars in Ukraine, Sudan, and Myanmar, as well as global power struggles through instruments such as NATO, BRICS, and trade wars, present dangerous challenges that could lead to the end of the world through nuclear, chemical, or another form of Armageddon.
While conventional political and strategic challenges are extremely dangerous and should not be underestimated, some threats fly under the radar. In other words, even though a particular danger is visible to both powerful structures that govern the world and the average person, few take concrete steps to remove the issue from the agenda. One of the greatest emerging problems is the global food shortage, which could materialize in the coming decades.
Dark Forecasts
If current negative trends such as inflation in the prices of basic goods, declining crop yields, and insufficient investment in agricultural technologies and tools continue, the world could face a general shortage of food and agricultural products by 2050. This viewpoint has been expressed by numerous esteemed agricultural experts, including Dr. Cary Fowler, the Special Envoy for Global Food Security in the Biden administration from 2022 to 2025. Fowler is known as the founder of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which holds samples of more than a million different crop varieties, making his opinion highly relevant.
To alert the world to this impending danger, in January of this year, more than 150 Nobel Prize and World Food Prize laureates issued an open letter warning of a potential global hunger crisis. The population of the third planet from the Sun will continue to grow, while food production will decrease. Estimates suggest that by 2050, Earth’s population will reach 9.8 billion. As of early 2025, the figure stands at just over 8 billion. The problem lies in the forecasts that predict crop yields will decrease by 3 to 12 percent by 2050 due to climate change.
Experts, including Big Bang physicist Robert Woodrow Wilson, Nobel Prize-winning chemist Jennifer Doudna, economist Joseph Stiglitz, and NASA scientist Cynthia Rosenzweig, have emphasized the need for significant increases in investment in research and development to boost food production by 50 to 70 percent over the next two decades. Likewise, agricultural economists’ research indicates that the global economy will need to produce 50 to 60 percent more food by 2050 compared to early 2020s levels to feed the growing population.
Alarming Trends
The current state of global food security is far from ideal. In fact, it is highly concerning and moving toward the worst-case scenario. According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), in 2024, 735 million people worldwide were malnourished—equivalent to the population of two and a half U.S. This marks a massive increase compared to 2019 when 613 million people were malnourished. In just five years, the number of malnourished individuals has risen by 122 million. Essentially, a population the size of Japan has, within five years, become so impoverished that they lack sufficient food and nutrients to maintain normal nutrition and satisfactory health. It is projected that by the mid-21st century, the number of malnourished or at-risk individuals will reach approximately 1.5 billion—greater than the current population of China or India.
Hunger and malnutrition weaken the immune system and increase susceptibility to infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, and respiratory illnesses. Malnutrition can also cause chronic health problems, including anemia, cardiovascular diseases, and weakened bones. Over the long term, it can have severe impacts on child development, leading to physical and mental stunting. In extreme cases, chronic malnutrition can result in death, especially among the most vulnerable groups, such as children, pregnant women, and the elderly.
The global food crisis
Starkly Negative Numbers
The dramatic rise in global hunger in recent years has been driven by several factors: the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, droughts, and floods that have led to high prices of fertilizers and grains. Before the outbreak of the full-scale war in 2022, Russia and Ukraine were the world’s leading suppliers of wheat, barley, and sunflower oil. Additionally, many countries have insufficient grain reserves and other essential food supplies. In 2022, 131 out of 196 internationally recognized countries imported more food than they exported, logically worsening food security. That same year, nearly one-third of the global population was unable to produce or afford food.
The worst-hit countries were those already struggling to feed their populations, such as nations in Africa and the Middle East (Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia, Chad, and Niger). According to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the drought caused by El Niño (a natural phenomenon linked to climate changes in the tropics) during 2023-24 in sub-Saharan Africa was the worst in the past 40 years, threatening the food security of 2.2 million people in Angola.
Natural Causes of the Problem
In the near future, global food shortages could arise due to several causal factors. Primarily, these include unfavorable weather conditions, politically unstable environments characterized by negligence, and economic difficulties such as supply chain disruptions. Extreme weather events such as storms, floods, hail, fires, droughts, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and an unbalanced relationship between rainfall and sunny days lead to reduced crop yields. At the same time, rising global temperatures are harming agriculture. Since the beginning of the 21st century, air temperatures have increased by 0.4°C to 0.5°C, which is highly dramatic.
Climate change reduces the quantity and quality of available food. A warmer climate increases evaporation and decreases the availability of water for crop irrigation. High temperatures reduce the productivity of wheat, corn, and rice yields while also promoting the spread of insects and plant diseases. Irregular weather patterns (absence of traditional seasons) make it difficult to predict planting and harvesting times. Additional natural problems, such as soil erosion, land degradation, and biodiversity loss, also contribute to food shortages.
Author: Matija Šerić
