Abstract

ZAMUDIO-SANCHEZ, F. J.; ROMO-LOZANO, J. L.  and  ESPINOSA-GARCIA, N.. Global food sustainaibility index: growth rate of foods against population. Rev. Chapingo ser. cienc. for. ambient [online]. 2008, vol.14, n.2, pp.135-140. ISSN 2007-4018.

The global food system's sustainability is of crucial importance and must be measured objectively. For this purpose it was built the global food sustainability index (GFSI) and a suitable model, with present hypotheses, which explains the global system production-consumption of foods to monitor it and determine if it keeps, the next 50 years, on its historical trend. The GFSI compare the rates of growth of main human foods' production and world population. Using confidence limits, which take into account the phenomenon's intrinsic variation, the lower one is used as a reference for the system's sustainability. Results from the information period 1961-1998 show that, in general, the food system stayed out of no sustainable. There were two intervals, 1976-1977 and 1993-1994, where it was close to a non sustainable condition, both related with political and socioeconomic accomplishments. During 1999 to 2002 the GFSI was above the prediction lower limit calculated with the original information, showing up that the system kept it away from a non sustainable condition. The information of those four years was added to the initial one to validate the model's stability. The proposed idea allows having a simple reference, but with a plausible background, that measures the food production system likelihood to stay out of a critical state until year 2050.

Keywords : monitoring; world population; world food production; food system; growth rate; intrinsic variation.

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