Food shortages could force the entire world to switch to vegetarianism

Leading scientists have released one of the most severe warnings about global food supplies, saying that in the next 40 years the world's population may need to almost completely switch to a vegetarian diet in order to avoid catastrophic shortages.

People about 20 percent protein obtained from animal products , but this level may need to be reduced to 5 percent in order to feed an additional 2 billion people who are expected to live on the planet by 2050.

« simply will not be enough water for the existing arable land to produce food for 9 billion people in 2050, if we follow the current trends and the world will change in the direction of the diet, common in Western countries ," the report said Malik Falkenmark and his colleagues from the Stockholm International water Institute .

dire warnings about the lack of water , which limits the production of food, were made at a time when the UN is preparing for the second possible food crisis in the last five years. Since June, the price of products such as corn and wheat in the food markets have grown by 50 percent, which was the result of a severe drought in the United States and Russia , and weak monsoon rains in Asia.

transition to a vegetarian diet is one of the options to increase the amount of water available to grow more food . For the production of animal protein requires 5-10 times more water to produce than vegetable protein. One third of the world's arable land is used to grow crops to feed livestock. Other options to feed people is to eliminate food waste and increasing trade between countries with surpluses and shortages of food .

The report was presented at the annual world water conference in Stockholm , Sweden , where discussion of the problems of the world supply in 2500 met politicians, UN officials , and members of non-governmental groups and researchers from 120 countries.

Competition for water between food production and other activities will increase the pressure on basic resources , scientists say. "According to UN estimates , we need to increase food production by 70 percent by mid-century. This will put additional pressure on our already experiencing water stress , while we still need to allocate more water to meet the global demand for energy, which should be in the next 30 years to grow to 60 percent , and the generated electricity for the 1.3 billion people who currently go without it, " the report said.

« We need more recipes to feed the world in the future," says the editor of the report , Anders Yagerskog .