 The Hidden GFC. The world might be in the process of rebounding from the global financial crisis, but did you know that we're experiencing another GFC? The Global Food Crisis. This food crisis is due to factors including population growth, decreasing land and resources like fuel and water, and the ways we use and store food. Changing climatic conditions also affect the amount of food available. Many experts are predicting that this crisis will become worse in the next 40 years. This problem is frequently called food security. So what is food security? The Food and Agriculture Organization defines food security as being a state when all people at all times have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. In some countries food shortages have already caused riots like those seen in Tunisia and Algeria and there are often times of food insecurity even in countries like Australia or Japan. These are after interruptions to supply from natural disasters like cyclones and earthquakes or even droughts. Broadly there are five main issues that we as a society need to address if there is to be global food security. Availability. Is there enough food to feed the population of the world? Accessibility. Does everyone have access to enough food every day? Acceptability. Does the food available make cultural requirements? Adequacy. Is the food of sufficient quality and does it include all the nutrient requirements? Stability of source. Is it readily and always available? In Australia we produce enough food for about 60 million people but we only have 22 million people at the moment. Well what's the problem then? There are three main reasons for Australia to be concerned about food security. The first is food availability. Floods, cyclones and droughts cause significant interruptions to food supply and these result in big increases in price which affect people's quality of life. As more and more of the weekly income is spent on the grocery bill less is available for other necessities and lifestyle purchases. The second reason is that Australian society is becoming increasingly urbanised. This means that the general population is becoming disconnected from the land and the way that food is produced. The way Australians see food and their attitudes towards it are affecting food security. Thirdly Australia has a responsibility to lend a helping hand with global food supplies. Global food productivity needs to be increased by about 50% above the current levels in the next 40 years and this needs to be done in changing climatic conditions. So there's lots of work to be done but where do we start? We can start by recognising the importance of the food industry which nowadays is very sophisticated and scientific. Australia has great technical skills to offer other countries. We need to build on these strengths by encouraging training and careers in agriculture to ensure ongoing research collaboration and development. We also need to respect food. We need to understand what it takes to produce it and reduce our wastage of it. Start by growing your own veggie patch. We also need to improve the yield of our crops to ensure that we can meet global food demands. Increases in yields can be gained by a number of methods. Improvements in traditional plant breeding techniques, new technologies like genetic modification, selective breeding using DNA markers and resource management will help to get more food from fewer inputs. We essentially need to do more with less. Improvements in our attitudes, plant breeding techniques and accepting our responsibility to help ensure global food security will allow Australia to play a role in meeting the demands of a world population that is expected to be over 9 billion in the next 40 years.