Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Correspondence
  • Published:

Food systems carry heavy burdens and politics are making things worse

Nature Food volume 3, pages 389–390 (2022)Cite this article

Subjects

To the Editor — The food systems of the world are being asked to carry a very heavy load these days. It used to be ‘fine’ if they were productive and supplied adequate food supplies to their households, community or country. Norman Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for helping to achieve this goal for a generation, but he warned in his Laureate acceptance speech that the Green Revolution offered only a temporary respite, perhaps 30 years, before the return of Malthusian ‘solutions’1.

The focus on food production as the solution to hunger was never entirely satisfactory. But keeping grain production ample and food costs low did give societies some breathing space to solve the household demand side of the food equation as well as the production side. After the colonial era ended in the wake of the Second World War, many poor countries sought this balance. Only a few in Asia succeeded2.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

  1. Norman Borlaug — Acceptance Speech NobelPrize.org https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1970/borlaug/acceptance-speech/ (1970).

  2. Acemoglu, D. & Robinson, J. A. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty (Currency, 2012).

  3. Timmer, C. P., Falcon, W. P. & Pearson, S. R. Food Policy Analysis (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1983).

  4. The Food Systems Dashboard (Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition and Johns Hopkins Univ. 2020); https://doi.org/10.36072/db

  5. Denning, G. Universal Food Security: How to End Hunger While Protecting the Planet (Columbia Univ. Press, 2022).

  6. Timmer, C. P. Food Security and Scarcity: Why Ending Hunger Is So Hard (Univ. Pennsylvania Press and Center for Global Development, 2015).

  7. Smil, V. How the World REALLY Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We’re Going (Viking, 2022).

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    C. Peter Timmer

Authors
  1. C. Peter Timmer
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to C. Peter Timmer.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The author declares no competing interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Timmer, C.P. Food systems carry heavy burdens and politics are making things worse. Nat Food 3, 389–390 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00537-4

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Version of record:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00537-4

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing