We already grow enough crops to feed an extra 10 billion people
But we need to be smarter about what we do with them
It turns out that about a quarter of the calories from crops we grow are wasted during harvest, storage, distribution, preparation or consumption. Cutting these losses would provide food for about 4 billion people¹.
On top of that, some crops that could have been eaten by humans are turned into fuels for vehicles instead (called biofuels). With relatively minor changes, these crops could be used as food for people, and would deliver enough calories to sustain about 2 billion people instead.
On top of that, a lot of human-edible crops globally are fed to farm animals instead.
The human-edible crops we feed to animals contain enough calories to sustain 5 billion people.
In addition to these human-edible crops, animals eat feed that cannot be eaten by people, such as grass, pasture and stover.
In return, we get milk, eggs and meat from the animals. But the nutritional value of what we get is only a fraction of what the animals eat. This is because they do use up a lot of nutrients to stay alive themselves².
