In the past century, global food security has improved greatly. Yet its foundation today relies heavily on international trade, high agricultural inputs and stable climate conditions. Many nations lack the capacity to produce sufficient food domestically. Altogether, this renders the global food system vulnerable to large-scale shocks. Global catastrophic events, such as massive volcanic eruptions, nuclear warfare, geomagnetic storms disrupting electricity, asteroid impacts, or pandemics, would have severe compound effects across natural and human systems. But although there is a significant likelihood that one of these events could occur within this century, the extent of their impacts on global food security remains uncertain.
To address this vulnerability, this session will bring together Earth and food system experts from diverse fields of science. The primary goal is to foster connections and deliberate on how to enhance the resilience of our food system both before and after such catastrophic events. Given the complex and far-reaching nature of these events, which would impact all aspects of society and the Earth system, an interdisciplinary approach is essential.
This session welcomes contributions that look at global food security from diverse perspectives, e.g. (but not limited to): production, distribution, disruptions, storage, trade, economics or legislation. In particular we welcome contributions which explore global food security from a holistic perspective, that integrates insights from several disciplines.