The focus on local sustainability and locally-sourced foods is actually creating more problems than it solves for the planet, according to US food policy analyst Jack Bobo.

Speaking during a live webinar organised last week by Agri Aware and Alltech Ireland, Bobo said that many consumers today want locally sourced foods, while policymakers are designing new regulations that target local sustainability goals, such as country by country climate targets or the recently published EU Farm to Fork proposal.

However, Bobo said that this narrow view of sustainability and food production, albeit well-meaning, was actually creating more challenges for the planet than it was solving. With the global population set to hit 10bn by 2050, producing food where it is most environmentally and carbon efficient has never been more important, he said.

Bobo outlined how 12% of the world’s population (about 820m people) will go to bed hungry tonight, particularly in the global south, where food insecurity is a major issue.

In order to feed the world over the coming decades, Bobo says global farmers and food producers will need to produce the same amount of food over the next 40 years as farmers have over the last 10,000 years.

In order to achieve this enormous challenge, Bobo said the world needed to take a global approach to sustainable food production and not a local one.