The second episode of The Future of Food was shown last night and it’s now available on the iPlayer. Once more George Alagiah was globe trotting to find out what’s causing the current food crisis.

He began by touching on the rising population – there are 10m more people in the UK than there were 40 years ago, and the world population has doubled to around 7 bn.

Hi first trip was to Grimsby, a port that used to be the hub of the UK fishing industry but is now used by only a handful of boats. Most of the fish that comes through here is now imported – 150 years of intensive fishing has decimated the local fish stocks. Over 80% of UK fish species are under threat. Fish farming is not a complete answer – 1/3 sea fish caught are used as feed for farmed fish.

The European Union now pays poor countries for fishing rights, and the next port of call is Senegal, where local fishermen are suffering because of the European trawlers in their waters. But these trawlers are flying Senagalese flags – when Senegal pulled out of an agreement to allow Europeans to fish these waters (because of disputes over the size of the catch), the boats simply re-registered. The fish (and profits) are still being exported to the EU.

Fish, once the main source of animal protein in coastal Senegal, is now more expensive than meat and too expensive for the poor to buy. Further collapse of fish stocks will lead to hunger in countries like Senegal, but in Europe it would only lead to less food choices.

In India, the expansion of the middle classes (and the rising population) has led to a dramatic rise in consumption of dairy products. In China, meat consumption is rising. But these countries have a long way to go before they reach our levels – the UK average meat consumption is 70kg per person per year (including over 17kg of beef) and in the US it is over 90kg.

The problem is that feeding cattle (and other animals) uses grain that could be used to feed humans. Producing 1kg of lamb requires 23kg grain; for beef it’s 15 kg; for pork 6kg and for chicken 2.3 kg. Grains for animal feed take up 1/3 of the world’s arable land. Irrigating them uses 10% of world water and, of course, cows contribute a considerable amount of methane to our climate change problems.

One proposed solution would be to cut meat consumption in industrialised countries by half, allowing it to rise in developing countries.

In the UK uplands there is an alternative – grass-fed cattles kept on land that is good for nothing but grass. About 80% of UK cattle are grass fed and not fattened on corn for the last 6 months of their life, as they would be on US feedlots. The animals grow more slowly, turn grass into useful products and help to maintain the British cultural landscape. But the flip side to the coin is that beef produced this way is more expensive – if all beef was produced this way then it would not make it into the diets of poorer people.

We should all be eating more fruit and vegetables, but a lot is currently imported. In Covent Garden market, one trader had onions from Tasmania and Chinese garlic. The UK average consumption is 2kg per week – 3.7 portions per person per day (short of the 5-a-day target).

In Kent we see that a lot of fruit farmers have gone out of business and grubbed up their orchards due to competition from imports, and once orchards are gone they are rarely replaced, due to the cost of replanting. (Personally I’d be happy for some of my taxes to be spent on grants for replanting orchards!)

Kenya is in the middle of a food crisis, partly caused by drought, but they are still exporting food to Europe. Only 1/5 of Kenyan land is suitable for farming, and export crops are using valuable water for irrigation. But these farms are creating jobs for Kenyans; horticulture is the second largest source of export income.

I’m going to fast-forward over the appearance of the CEO of Sainsbury’s (a UK supermarket chain) because I didn’t agree with his assertions that supermarkets aren’t in the business of encouraging excessive consumption, that quality standards are so high because consumers demand them (leading to a lot of waste) or that supply and demand will be enough to alter people’s diets.

Instead I will focus on the next section – the number of people in the world going hungry is rising. 1 child dies every 6 seconds from hunger; 25,000 people die from hunger every day. 32 countries are curently experiencing food emergencies.

In Kenya, slum children are receiving a free meal at school everyday, paid for by the UN. For some it will be their only meal. But is food aid part of the problem? Oxfam state that some food aid saves lives, but when food is shipped from rich countries to poor ones it can arrive at precisely the wrong moment and suppress local markets, causing ongoing problems. Dumping our surpluses on them is a bad idea; giving hungry people money is a better one – hunger is usually caused by being unable to afford food, rather than food being unavailable, and allowing people to buy their own food locally stimulates the local market, helps small farmers and slows the migration to cities.

In 2007 food price rises caused riots (into 2008) in manny countries. A 10% rise in prices in India, for example, pushes an extra 40m people into poverty. Some of the price rises can be blamed in the rise in oil prices and the rush to produce biofuels. In some places, biofuel crops are being grown on land previously used for food. Land in India is being replanted with Jatropha, and a land grab is displacing the poor – literally taking food from people to give fuel to cars.

In Norfolk, British Sugar have a refinery which is turning some of the sugar beet crop into biofuel – the current legal requirement is for UK fuel to be 2.5% renewable, rising to at least 6% by 2020. In the programme, a biofuel expert suggested we could have both food and fuel if we managed the balance – using food surpluses for biofuel production.

So, to recap, this episode looked at the depletion of global fish stocks, and competition between people, animals, and cars for food. Again, there were very few proposed solutions, although there was an acceptance (which was lacking in episode 1) that our diets will have to change. If you’re looking for solutions then you will still have to look outside mainstream thinking – pick up a copy of Permaculture Magazine to see what grassroots solutions are being developed.

If you haven’t seen episode 1 then it’s still available on iPlayer. The third and final episode is scheduled for next Monday and will feature more footage from Havana and Africa and at look at new scientific techniques for crop-growing, including GM.