For most citizens in affluent countries, the availability of food is usually taken for granted. Yet how secure is it in reality? Increasing numbers of people are concerned that unless agricultural practices move away from their present fossil fuel dependency, the future graph for food production will closely mirror the downslope of oil extraction. This pressing issue is being tackled by many inventive strategies to bring green and sustainable agriculture into the urban environment.

Under current projections, the world’s population is expected to climb from 6.8 billion today to 8 billion by 2025. At the same time, the total area of agricultural land is shrinking because of a range of factors including desertification, climate change, soil erosion, and development projects. Yields are also under threat from unpredictable weather, including droughts.

As the world comes to grips with the looming food supply issue, the old pattern of steadily sacrificing farmland for houses, industrial estates and golf courses is under increasing challenge. In the Seychelles, a hotel development was recently vetoed because it was earmarked for prime agricultural land.

It’s becoming obvious that to match food supply with population numbers, we need to find out-of-the-box sustainability solutions. Until we learn how to intensively farm arid areas and deserts, the extent of rural cultivable land can only be increased at the expense of forest cover, and this would significantly push up carbon emissions at a time when we can least afford it. Dubious technological fixes such as genetic modification and nanotechnology are not the answer. Sizeable efficiency gains can, however, be achieved through organic growing, sustainable, more intensive small-sized farms, and polyculture techniques.

National food insecurity can be roughly measured by the percentage of food a country imports. In Arab Gulf states, such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, this is as high as 90 per cent. Among developed nations, Japan imports approximately 60 per cent of its food, the result of a large population and relatively small landmass.

In a trend that suggests the way of the future, some low-food-security countries have been negotiating over the purchase or lease of land in other nations to ensure their own nutritional needs are met. Qatar is talking to Kenya about the Tana Delta region, a project that has experienced a backlash in this African country where widespread hunger remains a risk. Bahrain is currently eyeing rice farmland in the Philippines.