By 2050 we will have ten billion mouths to feed in a world profoundly altered by environmental change. How we meet this challenge will be the difference between food abundance and shortage, environmental preservation or destruction, and even life and death. We have the tools and ingenuity needed to achieve global food security—but the pursuit of a secure future begins with a clear understanding of the challenges facing our food system today.

In response to this challenge, seventeen diverse researchers from one of the nation’s premiere land-grand universities banded together to write an accessible and comprehensive primer on global food security. In How to Feed the World, this multidisciplinary group of experts from Purdue University reveal a complex web of factors that must be addressed in order to reach global food security. Chapters tackle big issues one-by-one, covering population, water, land, climate change, technology, food systems, trade, food waste and loss, health, social buy-in, communication, and, lastly, the ultimate challenge of achieving equal access to food. 

Check out Chapter 8: Spoiled, Rotten, and Left Behind below.