Food counts!

Even though this is Expo's year, we are struggling to find answers to the main question that underlies the whole event: Is it possible to guarantee a correct, healthy, satisfying and sustainable nutrition to the whole humankind? People often try to solve new problems with old solutions, even though interpreting Expo's question from a quantitative point of view could help making the answer's research easier. This is what the exposition is trying to prove: food's numbers are able to summarize the phenomena, "weight" and compare them, understand their evolution and find the connections between them. Because food is much more important than we think, whether for health or for environmental protection, for society, economy or history. 
Six topics on show:   

1) Let's count our food
It takes an enormous quantity of food to feed seven billion three hundred million people. The many regions of the world produce not only different types of food, they produce them in very different amounts. We no longer have local farms that produce everything. For better or worse, our "farm" is now the whole world. 
2) How did we get to where we are today? 
Food is much more important than we think, because almost everything else is a consequence of it: demography, civilization, culture, development. A long timeline shows the milestones of the food's system that influenced the great stages of human history. 
3) Some have too much, others nothing
In theory, the planet could feed us all, but the world is divided in countries where people eat too much and countries where people eat too little. It is easy to notice, supporting statistics, exactly what happens when a poor nation becomes rich and why redistributing food is (unfortunately) not a solution. 
4) The impact of food on the planet 
Even though few people is aware of it, among all human activities, food production has the greatest impact on the environment. Looking at the mechanisms and numbers behind this impact, it is clear what we can do to mitigate it.  
5) Above and under the sea
Fishing is the last hunter-harvester activity on earth. Its numbers are one of the most worrying in the whole environment issue, even though they are not known and discussed. Other numbers, however, suggest that this could be the fastest resolvable problem. 
6) Rendezvous 2050
What will happen when the planet's population reaches nine and a half billion? According to the experts, we will be able to produce enough food for everyone, but at a very high cost to the environment. 

Source: www.muse.it